Dissertation

Fashioning Identity in Eighteenth-Dynasty Egypt: Costume, Communication, and Self-Presentation in the Tombs of the Nobles

McGovern, Elizabeth Ann

2019

Overview

In the Eighteenth Dynasty, particularly during the reign of Amenhotep III (ca.1391—1353 BCE), Egypt reached new heights in terms of both the geographic extent of its empire and contact with the larger Mediterranean world. Trade and diplomacy flourished, the army and bureaucracy expanded, and the city of Thebes thrived. The royal tombs and mortuary temples of the period were located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the great Temple of Amun at Karnak, and nearby, nestled into the rocky hills of the low desert, were the tombs of the nobles who served the royal family and priesthood. The majority of these tombs had three parts: an exterior terraced courtyard, a T-shaped chapel, and a subterranean shaft and burial chamber. The tomb chapels were open to the public and decorated with a series of colorful and captivating wall-paintings long termed by scholars “scenes of daily life”. These scenes should be understood not only as preserving for eternity what was literally depicted, but also as multi-faceted tools in which the architecture, art, and text worked in tandem for the regeneration and eternal well-being of the tomb owner by communicating and eternalizing his identity, an integral part of successfully achieving rebirth in the Afterlife.This dissertation explores, for the first time, the extensive and detailed representation of costume in these scenes and how it functioned as a means of communicating and reinforcing identity, a critical component of the decorative program that has not been sufficiently addressed in previous scholarship. The term “costume” encompasses any combination of clothing, hair, jewelry and other accoutrements, and body modifications (such as tattooing, piercings, etc.) used by one individual to communicate with another. Costume is an effective means of communicating information that could be considered awkward to relay verbally, information such as age, gender, sexual preference and availability, marital status, etc. Therefore, it often provides a wealth of information that would otherwise be unavailable to the viewer due to rules of decorum. Here, two case studies are presented to show how costume was used as a form of non-verbal communication to help establish and maintain the identity of the tomb owner and other individuals present in the tomb chapel decorative programs: the tomb of Nebamun (British Museum) and Menna (TT 69), two officials in the court of Amenhotep III.While costume has long been acknowledged as a form of non-verbal communication, it remains to be a topic explored in depth in Egyptology. There is no established framework within the field for undertaking such a study; therefore, approaches developed by anthropologists and sociologists for studying the use of costume will be combined with art-historical and archaeological examinations of the scenes to arrive at a model for analyzing the use of costume in this context. Further themes that will be explored include the efficacy of non-verbal communication within the tomb chapels, theories regarding the establishment and expression of identity, and issues surrounding the authenticity of the identity being expressed and the ways in which costume could be manipulated to alter identity.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Archaeology / Art history / Fashion
• ISBN: 9781085674652, 1085674657