Maria Gatto presented: Bordering Nubia: Egyptian border-making in the First Cataract region and its impact in Lower Nubia The process of state formation has been of paramount importance in the history of ancient Egypt. It led to the creation of the earliest form of territorial polity worldwide, defined by geopolitical borders of some sort. Ancient …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 18: Our Abstracts from our ICNS 2022 Talks”
After our blog’s summer hiatus, it is great to have the occasion to write about our wonderful experiences at the 15th International Conference for Nubian Studies in Warsaw. It was a really exceptionally well organized event, and a wonderful setting to reconnect with old friends. From thought-provoking keynote lectures to the fantastic banquet near the …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 17: The 15th International Conference for Nubian Studies in Warsaw”
Rather than blog this week, we would like to congratulate our colleague Dr. Jade Bageot and the TECHNOPREGYPT team for winning a fellowship through the POLONEZ BIS 1 funding program. The project investigates relationships between ceramic technology and socio-political development in Egypt during the 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE. The project will investigate Naqada …
This week, we will be discussing those boundary stelae established to mark inter-polity boundaries, building on last week’s discussion of those boundary stelae used to delineate fields or mark internal administrative boundaries. Previously, we concluded that often times the materiality and placement of these stelae were crucial as ways in which power could be dramatically …
In one of our first blogs (ages ago now, it seems), we talked about how boundaries must be maintained and shaped after they were created in order to remain effective—forgive the pun, but they must be “borderscaped”! We will begin talking about some of the ways this might occur in the coming weeks, but for …
This week on the Borderscape Blog, we are discussing “nomes”. If you are not an Egyptologist, it is quite possible you may not have come across this term before! Often times, nomes are simply described as ancient Egypt’s equivalent to “provinces” or “states.” The term is derived from the Greek term nomos, often translated as …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 13: A Quick Introduction to Nomes”
It has been a couple of weeks since our last post, so rather than covering a specific topic, this blog will discuss our recent activities, our upcoming plans for the project, and set out an agenda for future blog posts! Last weekend, both Maria and I presented papers at the 73rd annual meeting of the …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 12: ARCE 2022, General Updates, and Plans for Upcoming Weeks”
At last, we have come to the concluding section of our three part series on Nile flooding! The first blog in this series discussed when the inundation occurred together with a brief discussion of how this impacted life in Pharaonic Egypt, while the following section examined nilometers, since they were used to recording the height …
Last week, we discussed how the Nile was a structuring element of ancient Egyptian life, playing a key role in seasonal agriculture together and as a conduit facilitating trade and (to an extent) centralized control. Because of its importance, the ancient Egyptians took great pains to measure the height of the river using specialized stations …
In the past weeks, we have focused on the challenges of reconstructing the ancient landscape and patterns of past land usage. For our purposes, a crucial part of this is understanding the character of the Early Bronze Age Nile—after all, it was not without reason that classical authors like Herodotus described Egypt as a “Gift …
Read more “Borderscape Blog 9: Reconstructing Past Nile Floods”
