Introduction: Egyptology in Dialogue

Abstract

Though scholarship broadly acknowledges that understandings of the body are historically situated, such an idea has not yet been appraised in a sustained manner by Egyptology. By drawing on recent archaeological and anthropological theory, this volume recognizes that every society understands the human body in its own way, that the body not only has a history and a culture-specific logic but also that it is relationally contingent. Relations are imperative, be they those foreground relations that are explicitly described in the records between people, bodies of different kinds, and entities inside or outside bodies, or those more diffuse past, present, and future background relations to other bodies, situated contexts, taken-for-granted assumptions and categorisations. Comparisons and negotiations place further emphasis on these relational encounters, between what can be described as spatially and temporally fractal positions, perspectives, and records. Through these concepts, this special issue includes conversations that extend well beyond the discipline, enabling us to engage with Egypt’s rich archaeological record with new methodological awareness. The concern of the different chapters is to question and unsettle what we think we know to create the conditions under which one can see things that one would not otherwise have been able to see. This includes both critique of dominant paradigms and positive formulations of alternatives that further our knowledge about bodies in ancient Egypt but also force us to reflect critically on current assumptions and categorisations.