(Re)assembling a boat

Exploring different body worlds of funerary models

Abstract

'Yet in that dry, still, dark little chamber those boats and statues had stood indifferent to all that went on in the outer world' (Winlock, 1955: 7–8). This quote is part of an introductory narrative capturing the 1920 find of the chief royal steward Meketre’s tomb models, where Winlock describes the 'spirits of these little servants' working 'eternally' for Meketre, demonstrating an interpretation of these models as being enlivened to serve their deceased owner, and these models having a lack of relations with the outside world (Winlock, 1955: 5–6). Both aspects—being enlivened to serve their owner and a lack of relations to the outside world—remain common to Egyptological thought. By tracking the changes of relations with and within a single object of a similar type and date to Meketre’s models, Model Solar Boat (Michael C. Carlos Museum 2018.010.415), the potential of relational approaches to tomb models, in particular, body worlds (Robb & Harris, 2013) and assemblage theory (Harris, 2021) to generate new questions and a more nuanced understanding of an object with a complex biography is exemplified. Model Solar Boat is made from at least three ancient tomb models, held together with modern pins and plaster. This case study focuses on two snapshots of time: the Middle Kingdom, when the ancient models were placed in burials, and the late 19^th and early 20^th when those models were modified into the object before us today. The different aims of the model are viewed in relation to the deceased’s body, the ancient living community, and the encounters with 19^th and 20^th century bodies of knowledge.