Essay on the study of archaeological sites and how they can aid in our understanding of Ancient Egypt and her culture.
O’Connor has usefully defined Egyptology as ‘the study of the textual and archaeological material generated by the Egyptians of the ‘Pharaonic’ period c.3100BC to 332BC’ and including ‘the latter phases of Egyptian ‘prehistory’, of roughly 4500 to 3100BC’ but ‘has only a marginal involvement with the so-called ‘Graeco-Roman’ period’ (1990, 236). While admitting that Egyptology is an interdisciplinary field, this otherwise useful definition masks the complex relationships between the nature, uses and interpretation of different types of evidence concerning ancient Egypt and how our knowledge and understanding of ancient Egypt and her culture has developed. The suggestion that archaeological sites may be able to aid our understanding and knowledge seems to imply that they are somehow supplementary to other evidence, which should take precedence (Shaw 2004, 79-80). In order to consider how the study of archaeological sites can aid in our understanding and knowledge of ancient Egypt, this essay will initially discuss the development of Egyptology in the context of evidence and trends in the field. Then the effects of recent study of the sites of Abydos, Hierakonpolis and Naqada on our understanding of the transition from Pre-Dynastic to Dynastic periods will be examined. Following this, some mention will be made of how a shift away from more traditional concerns towards the study of archaeological sites has helped determine the nature of settlements and the lives of their inhabitants and the sites of Amarna and Deir el-Medina will be focused on. Finally some concluding remarks will be made.
