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Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia: From

Egyptianization to Cultural Entanglement

W. Paul van Pelt

Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 23 / Issue 03 / October 2013, pp 523 - 550

DOI: 10.1017/S0959774313000528, Published online: 24 October 2013

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774313000528

How to cite this article:

W. Paul van Pelt (2013). Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia: From Egyptianization to Cultural
Entanglement. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23, pp 523-550 doi:10.1017/S0959774313000528

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 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia

Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower

Nubia: From Egyptianization to Cultural Entanglement

W. Paul van Pelt

Building on recent criticisms of Romanization, this contribution formulates a systematic

critique of the concept of Egyptianization and suggests a different theoretical approach
to cultural process in New Kingdom Nubia that benefits from the insights of ‘cultural
entanglement’. This approach emphasizes multidirectional and interactive perspectives
that allow for a variety of acculturative outcomes rather than one-sided assimilation. A
useful epistemological framework for its application in archaeology is illustrated through
two case studies, focusing respectively on representations of Egyptianized Nubians in
Egyptian art and Lower Nubian burial customs. The outcomes of the case studies argue
for a provocative re-reading of cultural process in New Kingdom Lower Nubia, and may
help to clarify the general picture of Nubian history by explaining why and how Nubian
traits re-appeared in the Napatan-Meroitic Kingdom of Kush. Finally, the article considers
some broader methodological and theoretical issues relating to cultural mixture in the
archaeological record.

Conventional accounts of Egyptian New Kingdom
(c. 1550–1069 bc) colonialism and its cultural influ-
ences in Lower Nubia1 tell the story of a unidirectional
transfer and modification of one set of lifestyles over
another. According to these accounts, Lower Nubian
styles of administration, material culture, cults and
customs were side-lined and eventually completely
substituted by Egyptian forms over the course of the
New Kingdom. (e.g. Brugsch 1891, 2–3; Reisner 1910,
340–42; 1918, 236–7; Firth 1912, 27; 1915, 20–21; 1927,
25; Griffith 1921, 71; Junker 1925, 37, 43–4; Emery
& Kirwan 1935, 4; Säve-Söderbergh 1941, 129–35,
184–90; 1967–1968; 1969, 12–20; Emery 1965, 177–8;
Trigger 1976, 110, 131–5; Kemp 1978, 34–5; Leclant
1978, 70; O’Connor 1978, 56; 1982, 910–12; Frandsen
1979, 169–70; Adams 1984, 235; Zibelius-Chen 1988, 63;
Smith 1991, 84, 91–4; 1995, 148–54; 1997, 71; 1998, 260,
277–9; 2001a, 156; Taylor 1991, 32–3; Redford 1992, 192;
2004, 44–5; Morris 2005, 96–7). This pattern of cultural
change is referred to as ‘Egyptianization’.
In the absence of indigenous written records
from Nubia, scholarly perceptions of the coloniza-
tion of the area have been largely based on Egyptian
historical sources. However, the results of archaeo-
logical fieldwork in Nubia are increasingly enabling
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23:3, 523–50 © 2013 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
doi:10.1017/S0959774313000528 Received 31 May 2012; Accepted 16 Nov 2012; Revised 12 Jun 2013
523
archaeologists to tell the story from a different per-
spective. Even though some forays into this research
have already suggested that traditional notions of
Egyptianization are not appropriate for all contact
situations in Nubia (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a; Sinclair
& Troy 1991; Cohen 1992; Edwards 2003; Fuller 2003;
Smith 2003; Buzon 2006; Török 2009), no one has hith-
erto attempted to formulate a systematic critique of the
theoretical and ideological foundations of Egyptiani-
zation, nor has anyone formally proposed to replace
the concept with something more sophisticated. Egyp-
tianization therefore still dominates the analysis of cul-
tural process and change in Egypt’s foreign territories.
Building on recent critiques of the similar con-
cept of Romanization (Hingley 1995; 1996; 1997; Woolf
1997; Webster 2001; Pitts 2008), this contribution aims
to demonstrate that Egyptianization is a simplistic
and unconvincing model of cultural change that
glosses over cultural diversity and transculturation
phenomena in New Kingdom Lower Nubia.2 It adopts
a somewhat unusual framework by first tackling
nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstructions of
Egypto-Nubian relations in order to draw attention
to some of the ideological prejudices and assump-
tions that have coloured past views of the wholesale
 W. Paul van Pelt
Egyptianization of the area. It is important to empha-
size these attitudes as they have deeply affected
subsequent perceptions of Nubian cultures and are
still apparent in a number of Egyptological writings
(cf. Morkot 2003, 168). A different theoretical approach
is then suggested to better describe the nuances of
cultural contact and change in New Kingdom Lower
Nubia, benefitting from the insights of ‘cultural
entanglement’ (Stockhammer 2012a,b,c). A useful
epistemological framework for its application in
archaeology is illustrated through two case studies,
focusing respectively on representations of Egyptian-
ized Nubians and burial customs in Lower Nubia.
Finally, the article considers some broader meth-
odological and theoretical issues relating to cultural
mixture in the archaeological record. However, as a
preliminary it is useful to briefly sketch the cultural
and historical background of the Egyptian colonial
expansion into Nubia in the early New Kingdom (cf.
Table 1 for chronological terms).
Historical background
Nubia is the southward continuation of the Egyptian
Nile Valley, beyond the ancient frontier at Aswan at
the First Cataract (Fig. 1). During the Middle Kingdom,
the Egyptians occupied Lower Nubia (i.e. the area
between the First and Second Cataracts, referred to
as Wawat) with a series of fortresses and fortified
towns that were manned and supplied from Egypt
(Kemp 1986, 134; 2006, 240–41). These fortresses and
towns seem to have been culturally isolated from the
surrounding indigenous C-Group and Pan-Grave
populations (e.g. Trigger 1976, 77–81; Säve-Söderbergh
1989, 3–4; 1991a, 12).
During the Second Intermediate Period internal
governmental weakness resulted in the end of Egyp-
tian hegemony in Lower Nubia, while Egypt itself was
divided between a northern kingdom ruled by Asiatic
kings (the so-called Hyksos) centred at Avaris and a
southern kingdom centred at Thebes.
During the Middle Kingdom Upper Nubia
(i.e. the area between the Second and the Fourth
Cataracts, referred to as Kush) remained independ-
ent. Here a powerful Nubian state developed with a
distinctive material culture of its own, named after its
most important centre at Kerma (Bonnet 1990; 2004).
Towards the end of Kerma’s existence at the end of the
Second Intermediate Period its power reached into
Lower Nubia, where a combination of indigenous
Pan-Grave and C-Groups populations and expatriate
Egyptians lived (Smith 1976, 73–6; Kemp 1982, 748–9;
Bietak 1987, 116–25; Säve-Söderbergh 1989, 4; 1991a,
7–8).
524
The New Kingdom began with the reunification
of Egypt, and was shortly followed by the conquest of
both Wawat and Kush (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 1–6).
The foundation of settlements with stone temples
and new productive enterprises brought a significant
number of Egyptian settlers to Nubia, and allowed
for the introduction of a typically Egyptian economy
(e.g. Trigger 1965, 110–12; 1976, 129–30; Hayes 1973,
348–9; Kemp 1978, 29–33; Adams 1984, 230–31; Säve-
Söderbergh 1991a, 6–7; Smith 1997, 68; Redford 2004,
40–43). This economy was set within an administra-
tive matrix consisting of several Nubian princedoms.
The indigenous ruler of each of these simultaneously
functioned as a leader of his people and as an official of
the Egyptian administration, and was responsible for
maintaining order, the collection and delivery of rev-
enue, and possibly also the maintenance of the cults
of Nubian gods (Arkell 1961, 98–100; Säve-Söderbergh
1991a, 209–11; O’Connor 1993, 61; Török 2009, 273).
By the mid-18th Dynasty the indigenous pottery
traditions of Lower Nubia rapidly abided and eventu-
ally almost disappeared. At the same time, Egyptian-
style shaft tombs with end chambers were introduced ,
and spread into areas where few, if any, Egyptian-type
burials had been made before. The bodies of the
deceased were furthermore no longer predominantly
buried in their traditional contracted positions on their
right or left side but were in most cases placed supine
and fully stretched, while their graves were often
furnished with Egyptian pottery and other Egyptian
artefacts. These changes are traditionally seen as a
result of the rapid Egyptianization of Lower Nubia
(Säve-Söderbergh 1941, 129–35, 184–90; 1963a, 58–63;
1967–1968, 237–42; 1969, 12–20; 1989, 10–11; 1991a,
9–10; Bietak 1968, 113; 1987, 122; Kemp 1978, 34–5;
Smith 1991, 91–2; 1995, 148–54; 1998, 277–8; Williams
1992, 2–3). The eventual predominance of Egyptian
material culture has supported the opinion that the
native population had either largely immigrated into
Upper Nubia and been replaced by Egyptian settlers
(Reisner 1910, 340–42; Adams 1964; 1977, 240; 1984;
Billy 1976, 112–13), or had completely acculturated to
the Egyptian way of life (e.g. Vagn Nielsen 1970, 86–7;
Trigger 1976, 133–4).3
Egyptianization and its discontents
Egyptianization as a civilizing force
It was within this historical framework, in an attempt
to explain the apparently sudden archaeological
decrease of indigenous material culture in New
Kingdom Nubia, that George Andrew Reisner (1910,
340–42) coined the term Egyptianization. Reisner prof-
fered that the Hyksos presence in the north of Egypt
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia

Table 1. The chronological divisions of Pharaonic

MODERN TOWNS ASWAN
history and the reigns of Egyptian kings
Ancient sites 1st cataract
mentioned in the text (Shaw 2000, 480–81). The
dates for the Napatan and Meroitic periods were
taken from Edwards (2004).
Lower Nubia
Period Date
Aniba

Wa
e l- First Intermediate Period 2160–2055 bc

d
Toshka Alla

i
qi
Faras
Debeira
Qustul Middle Kingdom 2055–1650 bc
Fadrus Adindan
Buhen
Second Intermediate Period 1650–1550 bc
2nd cataract New Kingdom 1550–1069 bc
Askut
18th Dynasty 1550–1295 bc
Ahmose 1550–1525 bc
Wa
Amara West
d
iG
Thutmosis III 1479–1425 bc
ab
Sai
gab
Upper Nubia a Amenhotep II 1427–1400 bc
Sesebi
Thutmosis IV 1400–1390 bc
3rd cataract
Tombos ABU HAMED
Amenhotep III 1390–1352 bc
Kerma
Akhenaten 1352–1336 bc
le
Ni

Tutankhamun 1336–1327 bc
KARIEMA 4th cataract
Sanam
5th cataract 19th Dynasty 1295–1069 bc
Sety I 1294–1279 bc
ar
ED-DEBBA
ATBARA Ramses II 1279–1213 bc
ow
di H Merenptah 1213–1203 bc
Wa

20th Dynasty 1186–1069 bc

Ramses III 1184–1153 bc
At
m

N
ba

Third Intermediate Period 1069–664 bc

d i Mu qadd a

ra
k
eli

di el - M
Wa Napatan Period c.760–300 bc
6th cataract

Meroitic Period c.300 bc–ad 350

Wa

OMDURMAN
0 200 km KHARTOUM KASSALA

Figure 1. Map of Nubia showing the principal sites mentioned in the text.
(Adapted from the frontispiece of Sudan & Nubia 15. Image courtesy of The
Sudan Archaeological Research Society.)

had pressured Egyptian settlers into Nubia, where and individuals advance towards a “higher” level
the Egyptian immigrants conquered the indigenous of civilization or development by shedding the least
communities one by one, enslaving part of them, desirable features of “traditional” society’ (Woolf 1997,
and expelling the rest into Upper Nubia. Given the 339). Although Reisner was the first to formally adopt
nature of the country and the presumed lack of cen- the term Egyptianization, the Egyptocentric views he
tral authority, Reisner (1910, 342) assumed that this expressed were already far from new in his day. In the
‘process would not have been difficult’. The Nubians nineteenth century, the German Egyptologist Brugsch
that remained supposedly intermixed with Egyptian (1891, 3) had first postulated that the Egyptians had
colonists and rapidly adopted the customs of their ‘ascended the river to found in Ethiopia [northern
conquerors (cf. Firth 1912, 27; 1915, 20–21; 1927, 25). Sudan] temples, cities, and fortified places, and to
Reisner was convinced that what Egypt offered native diffuse the blessings of a civilised state among the
C-Group and Pan-Grave societies was inherently rude dark-coloured population’. In doing so, Brug-
more desirable than their own culture. In his words sch broke with an earlier tradition, based on Greek
‘these men [the Egyptians], by their intelligence and Roman literature that Egyptian civilization had
and the greater physical comfort of their existence, originated in Aithiopia (cf. Morkot 2000, 8–22). Almost
impressed on the Ethiopian [Nubian] mind day by a century later, Emery (1965, 177–8) still attributed
day the superiority of the Egyptian race’ (Reisner the supposed Nubian assimilation to the ‘superiority’
1918, 236). Consequently, cultural homogenization of Egyptian culture, which was naturally imitated by
was inevitable in Reisner’s view. His reconstruction the Nubians as interactions increased. However, the
of Egyptianization might be compared to concepts underlying reasons for these viewpoints were less
such as Westernization or modernization, ‘denoting straightforward than a simple faith in the virtues of
a progressive movement through which communities writing and decorated tomb chapels.
525
 W. Paul van Pelt
Egyptologists in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries commonly rejected any consid-
eration of the Egyptians as dark-skinned by defining
them as white non-Africans (Morton 1843, 157–8;
Campbell 1851, 10–78; Nott & Gliddon 1854; Brugsch
1891, 2–3; Smith & Jones 1910, 15–16). One classic
example in Egyptology is Petrie’s (1920, 49–50) crea-
tion of a ‘Dynastic race’ to explain the rise of Egyptian
civilization, a position which was still adhered to by
Emery (1961, 30–31, 38–40) long after the concept
had been generally discarded. Petrie hypothesized
that it was not Africans, but a ‘superior’ white race,
migrating to Egypt from the north, that produced
the pyramids and ancient Egypt’s other great cultural
and material achievements. Brugsch (1891, 2–3) had
similarly posited that ‘the Egyptians appear to form a
third branch of the Caucasian race, called the Cushite
… that crossed that bridge of nations the Isthmus of
Suez, to find a new fatherland on the banks of the Nile’.
Clearly, these arguments were imbricated in
then-current Eurocentric colonial ideologies that mar-
ginalized the achievements of supposedly imperfectly
developed black Africans. In Brugsch, Petrie, and Reis-
ner’s days many Europeans and Americans openly
adhered to what would now be considered racist
viewpoints and did not credit black Africans with the
ability to produce civilizations. They drew ‘evidence’
to support these ideas from the various archaeological
findings they encountered in Africa, which according
to them ‘proved’ the presence of non-African civiliza-
tions,4 and highlighted the cultural decline after these
civilizations passed into the hands of black Africans
(O’Connor & Reid 2003, 4).5 Reisner’s reconstruction
of cultural process in Nubia built on such interpreta-
tions by explaining the rise and fall of indigenous
cultures through the influxes of peoples from Egypt
and ‘negroes’ from the south respectively (cf. Morkot
2003, 167). Thus, for Brugsch, Reisner and Emery the
Egyptianization of ‘rude dark-coloured’ Nubians
by ‘white’ Egyptians was inevitable because it was
nothing less than the triumph of their own colonial
worldview (cf. Morkot 2000, 21–2; Wendrich 2010, 2–4).
Admittedly, this paradigm of Egyptianization as a
civilizing force owed much to the accounts of empire
and civilization formulated in Egyptian literature and
art. Egyptian texts and representations show that skin
colour and culture were often linked in Egyptian state
ideology in a worldview that considered Egyptians to
be civilized superiors to their barbaric foreign coun-
terparts (Smith 2001b, 112). In Egyptian art foreigners
were represented according to strict rules of decorum
that differentiated Egyptians, Canaanites, Libyans and
Nubians in terms of skin colour, physiognomy, dress,
526
hairstyle and items of personal adornment (Fig. 2).
Although these representations are highly idealized
and standardized, depictions of Nubians do indicate
that they on the whole were distinguished from the
Egyptians by their darker skin. On the other hand,
Egyptians depicted Canaanites and Libyans in much
lighter shades than themselves (Leahy 2000, 226; Smith
2001b, 112; 2007a, 219; O’Connor & Reid 2003, 13).
Several textual sources, such as the Great Hymn to
the Aten, also explicitly acknowledge the existence of
different racial groups in Egyptian thought (cf. Smith
2001b, 113–14):
You made the earth as you wished, you alone, all
peoples, herds and flocks … You set every man in his
place. You supply their needs. Everyone has his food.
His lifetime is counted. Their tongues differ in speech.
Their characters likewise. Their skins are distinct. For
you distinguished the peoples (Lichtheim 1976, 98).
Unlike Egyptians, foreigners were not desig-
nated as rmT, which is commonly translated as ‘people’
(Erman & Grapow 1971, 421–8), but were described
through distinctive terms. This indicates that foreign-
ers — at least in ideological portrayals (Smith 2003;
2007a; Schneider 2010, 147–8) — were considered sub-
or even non-human (Loprieno 1988, 26–9; Smith 2007a,
224). This notion of inferiority is made explicit in the
New Kingdom Instruction of Ani who likens foreign-
ers to animals (cf. Smith 2001b, 113): ‘One teaches
the Nubian to speak Egyptian, The Syrian and other
strangers too. Say: “I shall do like all beasts”. Listen
and learn what they do’ (Lichtheim 1976, 144). Such
derogatory descriptions of non-Egyptians were sup-
plemented by more specific bigoted designations for
individual ethnic groups. From the Middle Kingdom
onwards, Nubians were often described as ‘wretched’
or ‘vile’ cowards (Smith 2003, 24–9; 2007a, 221–3;
Kemp 2006, 23). These terms were intended to help
define notions of Egyptian bravery and superiority as
well as to render these enemies harmless through sym-
pathetic magic (Smith 2007a, 223–4; Muhlestein 2008).
The ideological representations of Nubians, both liter-
ary and artistic, fit within a propagandistic manipula-
tion of reality that celebrated Egypt as the centre of
the universe with foreigners representing malevolent
threats to the universal order ma’at (Smith 2001a, 153;
2001b, 114–15; 2003, 173). They were invented as a
powerful strategy that promoted xenophobia in order
to justify Egyptian kingship and Egypt’s subjugation
of foreign populations (Kemp 1978, 8).
Although the Nubian, ideologically-laden eth-
nic stereotype very much approximates modern defi-
nitions of racism, it seems that the Egyptians did not
make skin colour the main criterion for discrimina-
tion (Smith 2001b, 112; 2003, 22). Unlike most modern
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
Figure 2. The four ‘races’ from
the Tomb of Seti I in the Valley
of the Kings. Depicted from left
to right are (1) a Libyan, (2) a
Nubian, (3) an Asiatic and
(4) an Egyptian. (Freiherrn von
Minutoli 1827, pl. III.)
racial models, the Egyptians separated language and
cultural achievement from skin colour, acknowledg-
ing that foreigners could act in positive ways and be
incorporated into the Egyptian world as long as they
were willing to assimilate to Egyptian cultural norms
(Smith 2001b, 112). In this way the Nubian soldier
and ‘Fan Bearer to the Right of the King’ Mahirper
was allowed to achieve a high position in Egyptian
society. He was even rewarded with an elaborately
furnished tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Daressy
1902, 1–61), which was normally the prerogative of
royalty. In his copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Mahirper was depicted as culturally Egyptian, but
with Nubian dark skin, physiognomy and curled
hair (Smith 2003, 22–4). Other Nubian men also fared
well in Egyptian society, and were free to marry
with Egyptian women (Smith 2003, 23). The ethnic
identity of immigrants to Egypt thus seems to have
been more important to their success in Egyptian
society than their skin colour (Smith 2003, 23–4).
The ideological ethos of the Egyptians was in short
combined with an everyday approach to cultural
interaction that was guided by political pragmatism
rather than xenophobia (Meurer 1996; Smith 1998,
278–9; 2003, 22–4; 2007a, 230–31; Kemp 2006, 26–8;
Schneider 2006). Scholars of Egyptianization became
increasingly aware of this, and as a result shifts in
perspectives soon became apparent.
Egyptianization and notions of resistance
Junker (1925, 43–4) and Säve-Söderbergh (1941, 130–31)
further developed the concept of Egyptianization by
527
placing greater emphasis on the role of indigenous
populations in the Egyptianization process. They, for
the first time, added the notion of resistance to Egyp-
tian culture in their reconstructions of Egyptianiza-
tion. Junker (1925, 43–4) and Säve-Söderbergh (1941,
130–31; 1989, 9) attributed the apparent lack of cultural
assimilation in the Middle Kingdom as a response by
the indigenous C-Group and Pan-Grave populations
to the Egyptian military occupation of Nubia. The
withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons at the end of the
Middle Kingdom would have facilitated more amiable
interactions that paved the way for Nubian accultura-
tion and the adoption of ‘superior’ Egyptian culture and
technology. Expatriate Egyptians remaining in Lower
Nubia would also have popularized Egyptian civiliza-
tion, a process which was furthered by Nubians who
had served as mercenaries in the Theban armies of the
Seventeenth Dynasty and had subsequently returned
home (Junker 1925, 37; Säve-Söderbergh 1949, 57; 1989,
4). Säve-Söderbergh (1949, 57) further posited that ‘if
Lower Nubia was governed at that time by one single
ruler who had a certain predilection for Egyptians and
Egyptian civilization, the rapid change in the fashions
[would be] … still more easy to explain’.
Although Egyptianization in the models of Jun-
ker and Säve-Söderbergh remained a self-generating
process, they did at least acknowledge that the indig-
enous population played an active role in accepting or
rejecting Egyptian culture (cf. Smith 1991, 80). While
this represented a major advance in the state of Egyp-
tianization studies, both models are still significantly
flawed and based on a series of simplistic assumptions.
 W. Paul van Pelt
The models particularly fail to account for the differ-
ences in the Middle and New Kingdom acculturation
patterns in Lower Nubia. S.T. Smith (1991, 80) has
already rightly argued that the Egyptian garrisons of
the New Kingdom were as much an occupying force
in Lower Nubia as the Middle Kingdom army had
been two centuries before. It is therefore difficult to
see why the New Kingdom armies should have been
perceived as less of a threat by the native C-Group
and Pan-Grave communities. Nubian mercenaries
had also been employed as Egyptian soldiers as early
as the civil wars of the First Intermediate Period, and
may even have played a part in the Middle King-
dom conquest of Lower Nubia (Smith 1991, 80–81).
These early Nubian mercenaries had clearly failed
to make C-Group and Pan-Grave populations more
receptive to Egyptian culture during the Middle
Kingdom. There is at least no clear evidence for the
large-scale adoption of Egyptian material culture by
the indigenous inhabitants of Lower Nubia during
this period. It is even uncertain whether Nubian
mercenaries returned to their homelands at all after
they quit Egyptian military service (Kemp 2006, 27).
Funerary stelae from Gebelein, a site c. 40 km south
of Thebes, show that at least some of them chose to
settle in Egypt instead (Fischer 1961). There is also
ample archaeological evidence for the presence of
Nubian Pan-Grave groups in Egypt during the Second
Intermediate Period (Petrie 1901; Wainwright 1920;
Brunton 1930; 1937; Bourriau 1981; 1991; 1999; 2000,
201–3; Meurer 1996; Friedman 2001).
Another problem is that the Nubian mercenaries
(medjay) of the Second Intermediate Period texts cannot
be seamlessly associated with the C-Group culture in
Lower Nubia — a point that Säve-Söderbergh himself
was already well aware of (1949, 57). He nonetheless
completely ignores this observation in his reconstruc-
tion of the Egyptianization of Lower Nubia, and as
such unwarrantedly conflates the culturally diverse
archaeological evidence of the area. In general Säve-
Söderbergh appears to have had some misconceptions
of the organization of the indigenous communities of
the area. Most scholars would agree that Lower Nubia
was not governed by a single ruler as Säve-Söderbergh
suggests, but was culturally diverse and not culturally
bounded. During the Second Intermediate Period the
social cohesion among the individual C-Group and
Pan-Grave tribes of Lower Nubia was presumably
never very strong (Bietak 1966, 75). Egyptian texts
at least hint at the existence of distinct indigenous
groups by sometimes adding toponyms to general
designations of C-Group and Pan-Grave populations
(e.g. Bietak 1966, 76), or by adding toponyms to the
titles (wr, ‘great one’) of their leaders (e.g. Bietak
528
1966, 76; Drenkhahn 1967, 32–3). This evidence sug-
gests that although archaeologists tend to talk of the
C-Group and Pan-Grave people within the boundaries
of a general ethnicity, they would themselves have
recognized and sanctioned more precise and numer-
ous ethnic subdivisions within their shared ethnicity.
That during the New Kingdom not all native groups
were amenable to integration into the Egyptian social
and economic systems seems likely from the repeated
references in Egyptian texts to insurrections in Lower
Nubia, for example in the reigns of Thutmosis IV,
Akhenaten, Ramses II and Merenptah (e.g. Sethe 1909,
1545–8; Säve-Söderbergh 1941, 162–3, 174; 1991a, 3–6;
Smith 1976, 124–9; Kitchen 1979, 192–3; 1982, 1–2).
Thus, while some native groups may have chosen to
cooperate with the Egyptians and adopted Egyptian
material culture, this cannot be simply turned into a
rule of thumb.
A final major conceptual difficulty with the
models of Junker and Säve-Söderbergh is that they
present a monolithic, essentialized word of imagined
absolutes, with Egyptians on the one hand and Nubi-
ans on the other. Such points of view were spawned
by cultural essentialism, one of the major trends in
twentieth-century cultural anthropology. Cultural
essentialists see culture as a continuous and norma-
tive structure that allows them to make an overall
definition of particular civilizations or ‘cultures’. The
perception of ancient Egypt in Egyptology largely
corresponds to this perspective, and often paints a
nomothetic picture of Egyptian society devoid of
dynamism, innovation, and internal diversity (Ray
1998, 10; Schneider 2003, 155–8). It is nonetheless much
more realistic and productive to see Egyptian society
as a structured but fluid system of differences that was
highly diversified in terms of region, social status, age,
and gender (cf. Woolf 1997, 341). This system did not
function in splendid isolation, but was continuously
influenced by exogenous cultural traditions, particu-
larly in Egypt’s frontier areas. In the wake of the New
Kingdom conquest various fusions of cultural tradi-
tions also manifested themselves in Lower Nubia (cf.
infra). By polarizing Nubian and Egyptian cultural
traditions, Junker’s and Säve-Söderbergh’s6 models
fail to explain for the emergence of such phenomena.
Egyptianization, trade and wealth
Later models further elaborated on the role of Egypt’s
subjects in the process of Egyptianization, often citing
trade and wealth, especially for the elite, as the prime
driver of acculturation (Smith 1991, 92; 1995, 148–54;
1997, 71; 1998, 277–9, 281). S.T. Smith (1991, 92; 1997,
71; 1998, 278) suggested that the native polities of
Lower Nubia became more centralized and socially
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
stratified during the Second Intermediate Period,
thus creating a leadership that could be co-opted by
the Egyptian administration after the New Kingdom
conquest. These indigenous elites were provided with
‘powerful positive economic and social incentives to
meet Egyptian imperial goals through acculturation’
(Smith 1998, 278). At the same time, the Egyptian
expatriates in Lower Nubia would have provided
the needed infrastructure and goodwill to make
acculturation more appealing (Smith 1998).
The most important problem with S.T. Smith’s
model is that it regards the Egyptianization of urban
elites as representative of the cultural development
of the entire population. As a result, Smith does not
expand on how and with what success Egyptianization
operated at the lower levels of society (cf. Webster
2001, 210). It is evident how distorted such a view is
considering that the large majority of the inhabitants
of Lower Nubia would not have belonged to the class
of higher and lower officials that were employed by
the Egyptian state. In general, burials of the broad
populace in Nubia become increasingly impoverished
in the course of the 18th Dynasty (Säve-Söderbergh
1991a, 249–51; Smith 1998, 278; Török 2009, 276–7).
Economically speaking, Nubian non-elites thus appear
to have gained very little from the Egyptian produc-
tive enterprises during the New Kingdom.
Another drawback is that S.T. Smith places his
model within a larger core–periphery relationship
that emphasizes cultural innovation coming from
the dominant Egyptian culture (Smith 1998). As such,
Smith omits a critical examination of the mutual
transformation of the colonizer and the colonized, and
the formulation and reformulation of identities on
both sides. There are, however, many instances where
foreign objects and technology had provided models
worth copying in Egypt, particularly during the New
Kingdom, some of which went on to have deep and
lasting effects on Egyptian society and technology
(Schneider 2003; Sparks 2004; cf. infra for examples).
S.T. Smith (1991, 92; 1997, 71; 1998, 278) also sug-
gested that the apparent cultural mixing between the
C-Group and Pan-Grave peoples may have weakened
the C-Group’s ‘traditional’ cultural identity, which
adversely affected their ability to resist Egyptian cul-
tural domination. Bietak (1987, 122) similarly stressed
that in its latest stage the C-Group populations
completely lost their own substance, and therefore
offered no resistance to the monopolizing of Egyptian
culture at the beginning of the New Kingdom. This
argumentation is somewhat problematic. To S.T. Smith
and Bietak cultural mixing appears to automatically
result in a decline of social cohesion and identity. This
is a rather crude surmise that ignores the possibility
529
that mixed communities can be stronger, more crea-
tive and more resilient to outside conquest. One could
also argue for a different perspective in which the
degree of mixing between some of the C-Group and
Pan-Grave populations may be taken as an indicator
that positive encounters took place between these
groups. Under these circumstances, the gradual devel-
opment of mutual trust and relations may arguably
have increased rather than decreased social cohesion
among mixed C-Group and Pan-Grave populations.
Perhaps this process of cultural mixture can even be
interpreted as part of a strength in numbers dynamic
in opposition to Egyptian conquest.
Egyptianization and religion
Trigger (1976, 134) and Adams (1977, 229–30) argued
that the propagation of Egyptian state cults may
have accounted for the rapid and thorough adoption
of Egyptian cultural practices in Lower Nubia (cf.
Bianchi 2004, 121). This hypothesis, to be sure, is not
entirely without merit. During the New Kingdom the
Egyptians introduced the worship of a large number of
gods into Nubia, many of whom acquired new histo-
ries, regional associations, and roles peculiar to Nubia
and not their Egyptian and Asiatic homelands (Otto
1968; Žabkar 1975, 79–80; O’Connor 1993, 79–80; Trig-
ger 1996, 804). Some of these gods, Amun in particular,
came to play very important roles in later manifesta-
tions of Nubian state religion (Török 1997, 300–312).
However, even though the burial assemblages and
tombs of some indigenous elites suggest that certain
Nubians came to identify themselves partly or even
largely with Egyptian religious values, there is little
evidence in the burial record that Egyptian religious
practices were widely observed amongst the lower
echelons of Nubian society (cf. infra).
Even a passing reflection on some of the char-
acteristics of Egyptian state religion reveals that it
may have had little, if any, immediate appeal to the
lower social classes of Nubian society. Unlike Chris-
tianity or Islam, Egyptian religion had no coherent,
unchanging holy scripture ― deemed to be the word
of God ― that could be used to teach and preach
to the faithful (Frankfort 1948, 3; Černy 1952, 39;
Morenz 1973, 4, 214–16). It similarly lacked a clearly
defined doctrine of deliverance or salvation from sin
to appeal to the sensibilities of the masses (Frankfort
1948, 73–80; Morenz 1973, 132–3). Except for a small
number of so-called contra temples (Gabolde 1998, 21;
cf. also Bell 1985, 270–71; Murnane 1985), communal
places of worship such as churches or mosques were
likewise absent. During the New Kingdom Egyptians
who were not part of the official priesthood could
also not directly partake in state rituals or enter
 W. Paul van Pelt
Egyptian temples (Kruchten 1989, 251–63). The veiled
figures of the gods were only visible to the common
man during special outdoor processions that took
place at religious festivals. The religious rites of the
Egyptian-style temples in Lower Nubia were in all
probability similarly performed by and accessible to
only a handful of resident Egyptian priests. Under
these conditions, it is very unlikely that Egyptian state
religion would have sufficiently ‘awed’ the indigenous
populations of Lower Nubia to abandon their own
religious beliefs and culturally assimilate (cf. Trigger
1976, 118), especially since there are no indications
that the Egyptians ever attempted to actively convert
indigenous groups through missionary activities.
Without an active policy of religious conversion
of Nubian societies, indigenous groups must have
adopted Egyptian religion in a self-generating proc-
ess even though they would have little or nothing of
value to gain from it. This does not seem like a very
convincing assumption to make.
Egyptianization as elite emulation
The concept of Egyptianization was most recently
revised by Higginbotham (1998; 2000) with regard
to the Levant. In her model, which borrows heavily
from Millett (1990a,b), indigenous elites emulated
Egyptian material culture in order to reinforce their
social position and win a share of the proceeds of the
Egyptian Empire. Egyptian architecture, symbols and
practices were adapted to meet local demands, and
were used to create prestige at home rather than to
please the Egyptian overlords; ‘Egypt and all things
Egyptian, after all, symbolized power and authority’
(Higginbotham 1998, 39). According to S.T. Smith
(2003, 95) this model of Egyptianization is consistent
with acculturative patterns south of the Third Cataract,
but not with those of Lower Nubia.
Higginbotham’s paradigm of Egyptianization,
whereby elites adopted Egyptian symbols as a means
to create power and infer prestige, introduced the idea
that acculturation and emulation had at least as much
to do with power relations as with the recognition of
cultural values (cf. Webster 2001, 215). Nevertheless,
acculturation is still by and large assumed to be a
self-generating process, and emulation remains the
catalyst of indigenous engagement with Egyptian
material culture at all levels of society.
New Kingdom Egyptian policies of cultural change
There can be little doubt that Egypt had a deliberate
policy of attempting to Egyptianize her elite subjects
(Frandsen 1979, 174). It had been understood from
the beginning of the New Kingdom onwards that
political and cultural assimilation went hand in hand,
530
and that the development of Egyptian cultural values
among foreign elites was essential for the develop-
ment of a unified ruling class. During the New King-
dom the Egyptians introduced a system of educating
foreign children in Egypt for their future tasks as
ruling princes in their homeland (Säve-Söderbergh
1941, 185–6; Redford 1992, 198–9; Moran 1992, 23–9;
Morris 2005, 97). These children simultaneously
served as hostages to ensure the allegiance of their
families back home (Trigger 1976, 115). The delivery
of Nubian children is documented in Egyptian rep-
resentations (Fig. 3) and texts (Säve-Söderbergh 1941,
185; 1991, 210–11; Frandsen 1979, 163). Local elites
were thus actively encouraged to acculturate, and
some of them, both Asiatic and Nubian, were allowed
to rise to high positions in the Egyptian bureaucracy.
The fact that some Nubian rulers, such as Hekanefer
(Simpson 1963), Dejhuty-hotep (Säve-Söderbergh
1960), and Amenemhat (Säve-Söderbergh 1963b;
1991a, 191–204) came to identify themselves in part
or even largely with Egyptian cultural values seems
relatively certain, but the Egyptians were in all likeli-
hood not as active in acculturating the lower levels
of society. It seems rather that the efforts to foster
Egyptian values were aimed by one elite, the Egyp-
tian, at another, whether in Nubia or the Levant (cf.
Webster 2001, 210). Despite Egyptian hegemony, the
large majority of Nubians and Canaanites were thus
in all likelihood not pressured or forced to accultur-
ate. Even if the Egyptians would have attempted to
determine all possible forms of indigenous decision-
making, local material organization, and cultural
identity, it is highly unlikely that they would have
been able to do so. Even recent colonial superpow-
ers have been incapable of entirely controlling the
existence of their foreign subjects; to postulate that
the Egyptians would have been able to is to adopt a
very myopic view of the past.
Thus the matter stands at present, and important
questions which have to be solved — about what
the rural poor had to gain by adopting the symbols
of Egyptianization, and how and with what success
Egyptianization operated at lower levels of Nubian
societies — are all as far from a solution as ever (cf.
Webster 2001, 210). This observation exposes the real
weaknesses of Egyptianization as a model for cultural
mixture and change. Egyptianization models do not
address localized choices from the bottom up, but
rather assume that all levels of society must have
equally aspired to adopt Egyptian symbols, even
though many groups would have had little or noth-
ing of value to gain from them (cf. Webster 2001, 215).
Without an element of self-interest, the only impetus
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
for assimilation becomes the supposed ‘superiority’
of Egyptian culture, bringing us full circle after a
century of scholarship to Reisner’s original paradigm
of Egyptianization as a civilizing force.
This statement of course does not negate that our
understanding of the history of Nubia has changed
significantly over the last hundred years. Egyptolo-
gists fortunately no longer make crude associations
between skin colour and the level of culture, and
the models discussed here have all made important
contributions to the debate. However, what the
observation does imply is that subconscious or inher-
ent attitudes of a ‘superior’ Egyptian culture are still
firmly rooted in Egyptology (cf. Morkot 2003, 167).7
Elements of Nubian culture continue to be addressed
in contemptuous tones, often being immoderately
termed ‘barbaric’, in Egyptocentric frameworks that
completely eschew how Lower Nubians viewed
themselves. To illustrate, Redford (2004,10) stated that
‘[s]omething more than a grudging admiration had
overcome Nubian chiefs such as Heka-nefer or Ruya:
they had “realized” that to be Egyptian meant to be
an Übermensch’. In a footnote he added that the ‘utter
contempt in which the Egyptians held … Nubians
needs no stressing’ as a result of which ‘elite emulation
appears a far better explanation of what is happen-
ing in Nubia than any conscious policy on Egypt’s
part’ (Redford 2004, 176, n.88). Such Egyptocentric
value judgements highlight how the ideas of earlier
generations, such as Eurocentric oppositions between
the civilized and the uncivilized, are still influencing
Egyptological interpretations. If Egyptologists ever
want to write a more nuanced reconstruction of cul-
tural process in New Kingdom Nubia, it is necessary
to follow a different line of enquiry that is far removed
from the straightjacket of the ‘Egyptian’ history of the
area (cf. Edwards 2003, 140).
Thus, even though Egyptianization has some
worth in reconstructing the mechanisms by which
Canaanite and Nubian elites outwardly assumed
the symbols of Egypt, the concept is fundamentally
flawed when applied to the lower societal echelons
of Egypt’s foreign territories. The model refuses
to examine the diversity and varying degrees of
acculturation within cultural groups (e.g. in terms of
social class, gender and age), and does not allow for
transculturation phenomena in which Egyptianized
material culture could be reworked into a new local
framework (cf. Webster 2001, 217). Several forays
into some of these problems have already suggested
replacing the term Egyptianization with the neologism
Egyptianizing in an attempt at furnishing a term that
would more accurately describe the limited and selec-
tive adaptation of Egyptian material culture rather
531
than the wholesale adoption of Egyptian cultural
values (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, 122). However, the
term Egyptianizing has hitherto been used hap­
hazardly and often with little effort to specify in detail
what it is supposed to mean and which antecedent
contexts of usage are being embraced or rejected. The
term also still supposes a simplistic, unidirectional
transfer of culture from Egypt to its foreign territo-
ries, and as a result is little more than an emperor
of the Egyptianization school in new clothes. Most
Egyptologists will agree that even deep within the
Egyptian heartland, far away from the border terri-
tories, Egyptians found much to admire and emulate
in other cultures. The cultural transfer between Egypt
and its neighbours was thus far from a one-sided affair.
Foreign influence on Egyptian culture
The model of Egyptianization tends to suggest that
foreign influences on Egypt were marginal and had
a minimal impact on Egyptian culture. However, as
already alluded to above, there are many examples
of Egyptian cultural appropriation, particularly dur-
ing the New Kingdom. One of the most recognizable
spheres of Egyptian cultural appropriation is religion.
During the New Kingdom, shortly after Egypt started
building its empire in the Near East, several gods local
to that region began to be worshipped in Egypt and
were often equated with Egyptian deities (Redford
1992, 231–3). Temples to the Asiatic gods Anat, Astarte,
Qadesh and Reshef were established at Pi-Ramesses,
Memphis, Giza and Deir el-Medina, with some dei-
ties developing their own priesthood (Kitchen 1969,
89; David 1986, 83; Sparks 2004, 38–9), while Baal
was promoted to be a god of Egyptian kingship by
Amenhotep II (Schneider 2003, 160–61). It has also
been suggested that the ram imagery associated with
Amun and Ra may have been borrowed from Nubia
around the beginning of the New Kingdom (Bonnet et
al. 1984, v; Bonnet 1990, 77; Kendall 1997, 76–8).
In terms of dress and personal appearance, the
tightly-curled, cropped hairstyle and leather kilt were
copied from Nubia during the New Kingdom (Wain-
wright 1920, 29; Brovarski et al. 1982, 175–6; Vogelsang-
Eastwood 1993, 17). Leather kilts are depicted in New
Kingdom Theban tombs where they are worn by
soldiers, farmers, sailors and workmen engaged in
different crafts, illustrating that their use was relatively
widespread (Davies & Gardiner 1926, pls. 5, 13, 18, 31;
1936, pl. 45; Davies 1943, pls. 50, 58, 61, 68). Another
introduced custom from Nubia is the use of earrings
during the New Kingdom (Bianchi 2004, 128). Some
of the earliest earrings of this period were found in
Pan-Graves dating to the Second Intermediate Period,
 W. Paul van Pelt
and included hoops of silver wire, gilded and plain
copper, travertine and shell (Wilkinson 1975, 121).
There is also evidence for mutual influence between
certain types of Egyptian and C-Group pottery during
the Middle Kingdom (Rzeuska 2010), while burial
evidence from Diospolis Parva in Upper Egypt, dating
to the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate
Period, shows that Pan-Grave pottery was sometimes
interred in graves that otherwise contained purely
Egyptian grave goods (Bourriau 2009, 50–51).
It is important to acknowledge here that tech-
nological innovations often have significant effects
on social and economic contexts. For example, the
introduction of the chariot from Canaan not only
represented a major advance in Egyptian military
technology, but was also accompanied by important
changes in the way the Egyptian army was organized
and played an important part in forming a new mili-
tary segment of society (Shaw 2001, 68; Schneider 2003,
160). The construction and maintenance of the chariot
divisions also necessitated the introduction of new
industries and workshops such as those discovered
at Qantir (Herold 1999; Rehren et al. 2001, 227–8). In
terms of religious ideology, the appropriation of the
horse and chariot resulted in the incorporation of the
goddess Astarte in the Egyptian pantheon as protector
of the royal horses and chariot (Schneider 2003, 160).
Chariots were also used as status goods that were
restricted to Egyptian royalty and the highest elite as
only they could afford to purchase and keep a chariot
and a pair of horses (Schneider 2003, 160). The seem-
ingly simple introduction of the chariot thus resulted
in a multitude of long-term changes in a variety of
domains (Schneider 2003, 159–60).
Spoils of war, tribute and diplomatic gift exchange
also brought large quantities of foreign commodities
to New Kingdom Egypt that formed a template for
producing imitative and derivative styles in Egyptian
workshops (Sparks 2004, 40). Take the pilgrim flask
for example. These were a popular type of vessel
throughout the Aegean and the Levant during the Late
Bronze Age and their canteen-shape was adopted by
Egyptian potters early in the New Kingdom. These New
Kingdom pilgrim flasks were occasionally decorated
with distinctly Egyptian motifs including foreign cap-
tives (Bourriau 1987, pl. 27) and flower garlands (Hope
1989, 53, fig. 13:,G). Egyptian artists also created pilgrim
flask skeuomorphs in different media such as faience
(e.g. Petrie 1891, 17, pls. 17:9, 19:14), glass (e.g. Petrie
1891, 17–18, pls. 17:35, 18:13, 15, 17, 19), ivory (Randall-
MacIver & Mace 1902, 101, pl. 44), tin (Ayrton et al. 1904,
50, pl. 17:20), and travertine (e.g. Petrie 1891, 17–18, pls.
17:42, 19:25, 27:4) that have no parallels in the Aegean
or the Levant. They illustrate the creative dialogue
532
that was triggered by the encounter of Egyptian artists
with a foreign vessel. Similar creative processes can be
traced for many other New Kingdom vessel types with
a foreign origin such as Mycenaean stirrups jars and
Cypriot base-ring juglets.
The impact of foreign goods on Egyptian artisans
must have been amplified by the growing number of
foreigners living and working in Egypt (Sparks 2004,
40). By the New Kingdom foreigners played a promi-
nent role in Egyptian society,8 and foreign craftsmen
were evidently responsible for stylistic and technologi-
cal innovations in a wide range of fields, including
textiles and metal working. These influences can be
identified through the introduction of loanwords into
the Egyptian vocabulary (e.g. Kitchen 1969, 84; Kemp
& Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001, 55; Shaw 2001, 65) as well
as through certain types of archaeological remains
(Sparks 2004, 41–5).
Foreign influences can even be found at Egypt’s
multicultural court, where there is ample evidence
for marriages between Egyptian kings and foreign
princesses, particularly from the Amarna Archive
(Moran 1992, 6–8, 101–3, 268–9). King Amenhotep III
married two princesses from Mitanni, one princess
from Babylonia, and one princess from Arzawa in
southeast Anatolia (Kemp 2006, 293). These mar-
riages brought costly dowries, bodyguards and
attendants to the Egyptian court. The available
evidence suggests that the material culture, dress
and language of New Kingdom court life on the
whole followed a relatively multicultural style. This
implies that even the kings of Egypt were willing
to sacrifice their cultural integrity to a considerable
degree (Kemp 2006, 296). One tell-tale example
comes from the tomb of Kenamun in Thebes, where
there is a depiction of two statues of Amenhotep II in
the full dress of a Nubian soldier (Davies 1930, 26, pl.
17). The existence of such statues highlights that the
Egyptians did not held Nubians in ‘utter contempt’
(Redford 2004, 176, n.88), but sufficiently admired
their military prowess for an Egyptian king to be
depicted in this manner.
All these examples demonstrate that New King-
dom Egyptian culture was not self-contained, isolated
and static: it comprised a fluid repertoire of styles and
practices that was altered, to a considerable extent,
by absorbing and adapting influences from foreign
neighbours. Cultural exchange was thus not simple,
linear, nor unidirectional, but influenced Egyptians,
Canaanites, and Nubians alike. Woolf (1997, 347) aptly
compares similar phenomena in the Roman Empire
to ‘the growth of an organism that metabolizes other
matter and is itself transformed by what it feeds on’.
Emphasizing this mutual adaptation is important as
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
Egyptology does not generally adhere to such a view.
Schneider (2003, 158) already argued that the idea of
a pure Egyptianness of Egyptian civilization must be
dismissed as ‘there was never an Egyptian civilization
that arose without influences of some kind’. Thus rather
than adhering to untenable essentialized views, it is
necessary to adopt a conceptual framework that allows
for cultural flexibility.
From Egyptianization to cultural entanglement
In recent decades archaeologists have increasingly
embraced a number of concepts involving cultural
mixture and exchange developed in the humanities
and social sciences as a means to describe cultural
process in colonial situations and their postcolonial
reactions (e.g. Webster 2001; Antonaccio 2003; van
Dommelen 2006; Knapp 2008).9 Within this broad
theoretical panoply, Stockhammer (2012a,b) recently
introduced an epistemological framework applicable
to the study of ‘cultural entanglement’ processes in
the archaeological record. The framework aims to
identify and highlight archaeologically the creative
potential of ‘liminal spaces’ which are conceptualized
as situations and spaces of intercultural encounter.10
Stockhammer’s approach is heavily imbricated in
cultural hybridity theory, which emphasizes the con-
tinual mediation of indigenous agency, local cultural
practice, and colonial structure in an ever hybridizing
culture (Bhabha 2007), but avoids hybridity theory’s
biological background and political connotation
(Stockhammer 2012b, 46–7).11 Stockhammer (2012b,
49–51) distinguishes two kinds of cultural entangle-
ment, which he calls ‘relational entanglement’ and
‘material entanglement’ respectively.
In the case of ‘relational entanglement’ the crea-
tive powers of liminal spaces only result in new prac-
tices connected with the appropriated object, not in
physical changes to the object itself. Stated in different
terms ‘the state of relational entanglement is not a state
of entanglement of the object, but a state of entangle-
ment of social practices and meanings’ (Stockhammer
2012b, 50). Relational entanglement can be hard to
recognize in the archaeological record as it is often
very difficult to reconstruct what social practices and
meanings were associated with objects.12 However, in
some instances social practices can be partly accessed
through a methodological approach that highlights
the context of an object and its interrelationship with
other objects (cf. Stockhammer 2012b, 56).
In the case of ‘material entanglement’ the crea-
tive energies in the liminal space result in the creation
of a new object that combines the familiar with the
previously foreign.
533
The entangled object is not the result of local conti-
nuities, but of changes triggered by encounters with
otherness. It is more than just a sum of the entities
from which it originated. It is an indissoluble combi-
nation of all of them … and might be seen as a new
entity (Stockhammer 2012b, 50–51).
Because the object itself is changed in terms of its
materiality, material entanglement is much easier to
identify archaeologically than relational entanglement.
In general, examples of material entanglement are
rare in New Kingdom Lower Nubia, but they become
ubiquitous in later periods, particularly during the
Napatan-Meroitic Kingdoms.
Before applying Stockhammer’s epistemological
framework to the study of cultural entanglement proc-
esses in Lower Nubia13 it is useful to draw attention
to some of the processes that have produced Egyptol-
ogy’s and Nubian archaeology’s particular data sets.
This will familiarize the general reader with some of
the problems of the source material and highlight in
what areas evidence is scarce or even absent.
Potential and limitations of the archaeological and
Egyptological record
Three intensive campaigns connected with succes-
sive dam-building projects near Aswan have made
Lower Nubia, archaeologically speaking, one of the
best known regions of Africa. Yet despite the appar-
ent wealth of archaeological information, the object
archaeology of Lower Nubia suffers from many of the
same limitations as many other areas of archaeological
inquiry.
No Nubian language was written down until the
Meroitic script was developed in the second century bc,
and as even this script remains largely untranslatable,
the archaeology of Lower Nubia analyses objects and
materialized social practices in a situation where there
are no textual sources to inform scholars about the
perception of objects. Egyptologists have tradition-
ally attempted to mitigate this caveat by studying
Nubia through the writings of ancient Egypt, but
this has incorporated a significant degree of bias into
their results (Edwards 2003, 140; Morkot 2003, 152).
Egyptian images of Nubians, both literary and artistic,
were often hostile and derogatory, and do not neces-
sarily reflect Egyptian viewpoints of foreigners that
correspond to their actual position in Egyptian society
(Smith 2003, 22–4, 168–71). Even purely administrative
documents by their very nature represent mainly the
viewpoints of the elite literate administration, and
do not show much of the opinions of Egyptians or
indigenous peasants, field labourers or craftsmen.14
The interpretation of Egyptian artistic compositions
 W. Paul van Pelt
is also still problematical as Egyptologists do not have
a complete understanding of how ancient Egyptians
artistic styles were used, or how the personal pref-
erences of the draughtsman or the commissioner
influenced artistic output (e.g. Wachsmann 1987, 4–26).
The Egyptian source material should therefore only be
used with the utmost caution.
The archaeological record of Lower Nubia is,
on the other hand, palpably incomplete. Museum
artefacts are often separated from their past functional
context, and many objects have doubtlessly been
destroyed over the course of the last three and a half
millennia. The archaeological data set is also heavily
distorted towards cemetery data as only very few
C-Group and Pan-Grave habitation sites in Lower
Nubia have been properly excavated and published.15
As a result, archaeologists do not have a full picture
of the archaeological expressions of cultural identity
and entanglement in the domestic and ritual spheres.
Consequently much of what is ‘known’ about Nubian
social relations and religious ideology (both prior to
and during the New Kingdom) is largely based on
conjecture.16 Since Lower Nubia is now flooded by
Lake Nasser, additional source material will not be
forthcoming, meaning that it is only possible to re-
assess the data that is currently available.
There are also considerable problems with the
ceramic chronology of late New Kingdom (late 19th
and 20th Dynasty) and Third Intermediate Period con-
texts, both in Egypt and in Nubia, due to the absence
of sound stratigraphic data from contemporary set-
tlements. The principal question is to what extent
the inhabitants of Nubia retained the same ceramic
tradition as Egypt, and to what extent they developed
a ceramic repertoire along their own lines (P.J. Rose
pers. commu.). Fieldwork at Amara West in Upper
Nubia is starting to improve academic understanding
of these issues, but archaeologists have to be aware
that the dating of certain Lower Nubian graves may
be open to re-evaluation in the near future (assum-
ing that mortuary and settlement ceramics follow
the same basic dynamic, which is an issue in itself).
Such re-evaluations may have a significant impact
on discussions of cultural process in New Kingdom
Nubia. These particular characteristics and issues of
the archaeological and Egyptological sources must
be kept in mind when studying examples of cultural
entanglement in New Kingdom Lower Nubia.
It is now appropriate to focus on some of the
cultural entanglement processes that took place
in Lower Nubia during the New Kingdom. There
must have been a multitude of liminal spaces where
Nubians came into direct contact with Egyptians and
Egyptian material culture, for example at Egyptian
534
temple-towns, garrison forts, markets and river quays,
but this discussion will limit itself to two case stud-
ies, focusing on the representation of Egyptianized
Nubians and Lower Nubian burial customs.
Hekanefer and the representation of
Egyptianized Nubians
Egyptian representations are frequently used to argue
for the wholesale Egyptianization of Nubian elites.
One often-discussed depiction of supposedly fully
Egyptianized Nubians comes from the tomb of Huy (c.
1330 bc) who served as Viceroy of Kush under Pharaoh
Tutankhamun. The scene consists of two registers that
depict members of aristocratic families from Upper
(bottom register) and Lower Nubia (top register)
presenting tribute to the Egyptian court. Normally
Nubians were heavily stylized in Egyptian art, but
in this case the artist evidently followed a somewhat
different approach. The striking dress of the Nubian
elite differs markedly from earlier Egyptian depictions
of Nubians, and many Egyptologists therefore argue
that the scene portrays a contemporary social reality
(e.g. Wachsmann 1987, 47).17 For example, Kemp (2006,
36–3) characterizes the scene as a careful study of
‘cultural integration’. The upper register of the scene
is reproduced here, and shows the procession of the
rulers of Lower Nubia and their entourage (Fig. 3). The
procession is fronted by the princes of Lower Nubia,
who are followed by the ‘children of the princes of
all the foreign lands’. These Nubian children wear
Egyptian wigs and are dressed in the Egyptian fashion
of the day consisting of linen short-sleeved tunics
with billowing drapes. However, these Egyptian-style
garments are combined with elements of a mark-
edly un-Egyptian character, particularly the added
pairs of animal tails suspended from their elbows.18
Other figures in the scene have other accessories that
belong to an indigenous rather than Egyptian cultural
repertoire. For example, the Nubian princess in front
of the group of children has a superabundance of
armlets, while the Nubian noblewoman at the end of
the procession wears an un-Egyptian diadem with
an elaborate parasol of ostrich feathers. The adult
males in the scene wear ostrich feathers in their hair,
which is a common feature of Egyptian depictions of
Nubians. The rendition of the hair of some individuals
also contrasts strongly with the Egyptian hairstyles
in the tomb. These un-Egyptian coiffures consist of
a yellowish ground with added black strokes, which
may reflect the Nubian custom of working clay into
the hair (Kemp 2006, 37).
As a result of this unusual combination of
indigenous and Egyptian elements of dress, Säve-
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
Figure 3. Nubian princes, including Hekanefer, present tribute to Tutankhamun, from the tomb of the Viceroy of Kush,
Amenhotep, known as Huy (Davies & Gardiner 1926, pl. XXVIII). (Image courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.)
Söderbergh sees in these figures (1967–1968, 241) ‘a
wonderful exhibit of often misunderstood or misused
Egyptian elements in their dress and other outfit’,
while Kemp (2006, 37) describes them as ‘people
who are aspiring to be Egyptian courtiers but who
have not yet quite made it’. Other Egyptological
discussions even completely gloss over the presence
of indigenous elements, and simply state that these
Nubian elites had masked their Nubian ethnicity by
utterly adopting foreign Egyptian style (O’Connor
1982, 910–12; Bianchi 2004, 117). However, it is pos-
sible to offer quite a different and perhaps provocative
reading of the evidence. It is contended here that this
scene is not a careful study of ‘cultural integration’
but a representation of people who had developed a
culturally entangled identity, which combined their
local identity with an identity linked to the colonial
culture. These Nubian elites borrowed elements of
Egyptian dress that became transformed through their
combination with indigenous elements into ‘new’,
relationally entangled expressions of embodiment
and collectivity. These individuals, whose families had
supposedly been acculturated for well over a hundred
years, were thus not Egyptianized, but dwelled in the
interstices of two cultural traditions, being neither
fully Egyptian nor Nubian.19 The persistence of indig-
enous elements of dress should not simply be ignored
or set aside as an inconsequential detail. Within the
indigenous idiom, certain of the represented elements
were highly significant symbols. For example, the
animal tails suspended on the elbows of some of the
figures were not mere markers of ethnic identity, but
highly important magical signs that were associated
with the power of animals and the power over animals
535
(Török 2009, 270). They appear to have belonged to
the ancient symbols of the Nubian chief’s authority
and re-appear centuries later as ribbons around the
arms of the Meroitic god Apedemak (Säve-Söderbergh
1991a, 208; Török 2009, 270). In the ethnographic past,
Mossi medicine men ― who were both sorcerers and
prophets ― still wore animal tails around the elbows
in west Sudan (Drenkhahn 1967, 27). The ostrich feath-
ers in the hair were similarly important ethnic symbols
that had been used in Nubia over several centuries.
The ethnic association of Nubians and ostrich feathers
was even so close that a 20th Dynasty Egyptian letter
refers to ‘feather-wearing Nubians’ (Wente 1990, 38).
Archaeological finds indicate that these ostrich feath-
ers were actually used and not simply exotic-looking
fabrications by Egyptian artists (Taylor 1991, 24; Teeter
2010, 3–4). Their inclusion in the tribute scene can
therefore potentially be seen as an important state-
ment of ethnic identity.
The argument against a wholesale Egyptianiza-
tion of the Nubian aristocracy can be furthered by a
closer scrutiny of some of the other Nubian individu-
als in the scene. The first is a Nubian noblewoman,
depicted behind the group of Nubian children, who
is riding in an Egyptian six-spoked chariot drawn
by a pair of oxen (Fig. 3). Egyptologists sometimes
question whether ‘such a conveyance at such a state
occasion was meant as a slight to the amusement of
the ancient Egyptians’ (Bianchi 2004, 117) or describe
the figure as ‘strange’ (Davies & Gardiner 1926, 24) or
‘incongruous’ (Wachsmann 1987, 47). However, such
Egyptocentric viewpoints are dominated by conscious
and unconscious associations between travel by ox-
cart and rusticity and poverty, and do not give equal
 W. Paul van Pelt
Figure 4. Bucrania around a grave of the Middle Kerma
Period (c. 2000–1600 bc) at Kerma (Bonnet 2000,
fig. 39). (Image courtesy of Charles Bonnet, Mission
Archéologique Suisse au Soudan.)
consideration to both the evidence and the entire train
of thought implied by the question and the answer.
It is generally agreed from the many representa-
tions of cattle in C-Group art and the frequent asso-
ciation of bucrania with Nubian mortuary structures
(Fig. 4) that cattle had traditionally occupied a place of
crucial symbolic and economic importance in Nubian
society (e.g. Steindorff 1935, 119; Williams 1983, 4;
Säve-Söderbergh 1989, 11; Bonnet 1999; Reinold 2000).
As a medium for channelling the distribution of pres-
tige, cattle also seem to have had an important role in
the development of social hierarchies (Edwards 2003,
148). Rather than seeing the oxen as incongruous from
an Egyptocentric perspective, they can therefore be
alternatively viewed as meaningful indigenous sym-
bols of wealth and power. The ecology of oxen may
also be important to consider here. Although oxen are
much slower than horses, this has both its advantages
and disadvantages. Their pulling is much steadier
than that of horses and by extension more comfort-
able for passengers in drawn carts. Horses would also
have been more expensive to raise and maintain and
are less adaptable to arid environmental conditions
than oxen (White 1984, 130–31). There are manifold
cultural parallels of ox-drawn carts as a general mode
of travel for the well-to-do, for example in sixth- or
536
seventh-century Merovingia (Murray 1998, 131–2)
and in the ethnographic past of India (Fig. 5). Building
on these observations, it is argued here that the ox-
drawn chariot in the tribute scene represents another
example of relational entanglement. The chariot itself
is unchanged in terms of its sheer materiality, but its
combination with a pair of oxen represents a new,
markedly un-Egyptian practice. There is at least no
evidence that the Egyptian elite ever employed oxen
to draw their chariots.
Another figure worthy of special note can be
found at the extreme right of the tribute scene (Fig.
3). One of the kneeling princes here is identified by a
label in front of his chest as Hekanefer, Prince of Miam
(modern Aniba). He wears an Egyptian-style linen
robe, but again details such as the ostrich feather in
his hair, the panther skin on his back, and large gold
earrings clearly reflect his Nubian origin. The tomb of
Hekanefer is known, cut into an outcrop of Nubian
sandstone at Toshka in Lower Nubia (Simpson 1963;
Kemp 2006, 36). In plan it was modelled on that of
the viceroy Huy at Thebes (Kemp 1978, 36; 2006,
38) but, more importantly, on its walls Hekanefer
was depicted as a fully Egyptian official according
to Egyptian stylistic conventions. The princes of
Tehkhet, Djehuty-hotep and Amenemhet, were simi-
larly represented as Egyptian officials on the walls
of their Nubian tombs (Säve-Söderbergh 1960; 1963b;
1991a, 191–204; 1991b).20 However, Nubian princes
depicted in the tomb of Rekhmire, the Vizier of
Thutmosis III, in Egypt are shown wearing distinctly
Nubian leather loincloths (Davies 1943, pl. 18). There
thus seems to have been a recurring duality of depic-
tion of Nubian princes and dignitaries (Török 2009,
269): to Egyptians these princes are systematically
represented with certain elements reflecting their
Nubian origins, while in their homelands they often
display an Egyptian rather than a Nubian appear-
ance. S.T. Smith (2001a, 153; 2003, 173) explains this
duality on ideological grounds. Nubians in Egypt
were forced to don their ‘barbaric’ Nubian costume
during state tribute ceremonies in order to reflect
their ‘otherness’ to the Egyptian king. However,
they were fully Egyptianized in everyday life. This
Pharaonic framework of analysis is questionable as it
reduces the Lower Nubian princes to passive dupes
of the Egyptian administration, rather than seeing
them as active agents that could act as progenitors
in the creation of ‘new’ entangled socio-political con-
stellations. While the burial assemblages and tombs
of Hekanefer, Dejhuty-hotep and Amenemhat are
indeed very Egyptian in appearance, it is important
to realize that these figures, although being depicted
as Egyptians, still often bore a second Nubian name
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
Figure 5. This
photograph of Nautch
girls in an ox-drawn
cart was taken in Kerala,
India, in the early
twentieth century. As in
C-Group and Pan-Grave
religious thought, cattle
are considered sacred in
Hinduism. (Photograph
by George Grantham
Bain. Image courtesy
of Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs
Division, LC-DIG-
ggbain-00377.)
(Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 206; 1991b, 188) and alleg-
edly paid special homage to Nubian deities in their
homeland (Török 2009, 270). This suggests that even
these ‘Egyptianized’ Nubian elites retained certain
elements of indigenous culture that cannot be easily
traced in the archaeological record. The context of
the representations is also key here. It has become
axiomatic in archaeology that the burial record is a
prime forum for the negotiation of social roles and
power relations (Hodder 1982, 196–201). It seems
reasonable to postulate therefore that Nubian
elites, by depicting themselves as Egyptians in their
funerary monuments and objects, tried to impart
to their tombs (and by extension their personae) a
cosmopolitan aspect and grandeur that was com-
mensurate to their status as rulers of the local country
side. The fact that Hekanefer modelled the layout of
his tomb on that of Huy certainly seems indicative
of such re-negotiating strategies for the afterlife. In
this state of affairs, the Egyptian-style tombs of the
Nubian princes can be seen as part of a local legitima-
tion strategy through connection with the colonial
power. However, this strategy need not have been
necessarily reflected in the realities of everyday local
life.21 It is very regrettable in this respect that little is
available in the way of settlement data to juxtapose
with the available mortuary evidence. Török (2009,
274) already highlighted the mediatory position
of the indigenous princes between the Egyptian
government and the local communities. Redford
537
(1992, 199) made a similar case with regard to the
co-opted elite rulers of Canaan who had to perform
a precarious balancing act between the interests of
the Egyptian government and the expectations of the
local population. According to Redford (1992, 199)
they could therefore not have completely assimi-
lated to Egyptian culture for fear of appearing too
submissive to Egyptian interests. It is important
to acknowledge that processes leading to cultural
assimilation are not only steered by individual
agency, but also by the social rules and customs of
a society. Under these circumstances, it seems far
more likely that individuals such as Hekanefer did
not fully assimilate to Egyptian culture, but rather
developed and mastered two cultural traditions
on which they could draw according to context (cf.
Webster 2001, 218). Ethnic identities are situational
and can change between different social contexts
and according to the interests and positions of the
individual actors (Barth 1969; Jones 1996; Smith 2003,
16–17). The issues of gains and losses that occur
when an individual forms a multicultural, entangled
identity rather than an identity based primarily on
one cultural tradition are complex and not always
easily discerned. The Nubian elite may have ben-
efited from rewards and incentives provided by the
Egyptian colonial administration as suggested by
S.T. Smith (1998, 278). Documentary evidence from
Egypt indeed shows that foreigners who followed
Egyptian standards were accorded more social and
 W. Paul van Pelt
professional opportunities and were accepted within
society to a considerable extent, while those who
adhered to their foreign customs tended to belong
to the lower echelons of society (cf. Ward 1994, 67–9).
On the other hand, the princes’ emphasis on their
indigenous identity may have smoothed interactions
with the indigenous population, and maintained
their local goodwill and credibility.
The tribute scene in the tomb of Huy not only
provides evidence that argues against the wholesale
adoption of Egyptian culture by the Nubian elite, but
also for the general persistence of cultural diversity
within New Kingdom Nubia. The Nubian noble-
woman in the ox-drawn cart is followed by a group of
five tethered, half-naked prisoners that wear typically
Nubian cowhide loincloths with tails showing at the
back (Fig. 6). Behind the bound captives there are two
Nubian women with polychrome loincloths and three
small children with their hair bound in tufts. These
prisoners are being presented to the Egyptian court as
slaves, and had clearly not acculturated to Egyptian
norms. Egyptologists often assume that these Nubians
were captured further south in Upper Nubia (e.g.
O’Connor & Reid 2003, 13–14), but such claims are
based upon superficial evidence and are made within
a framework of assumptions about the wholesale
Egyptianization of Lower Nubia. If these slaves had
indeed been captured in Upper Nubia, it would be
somewhat strange that they were not included in the
register below that depicts the delivery of tribute by
the princes of Kush. It is, moreover, highly doubtful
whether Lower Nubian princes would have been
allowed to go on slave raids in the territories of their
538
Figure 6. Nubian captives
brought as tribute to the
Egyptian court by the Lower
Nubian elite (Davies & Gardiner
1926, pl. XXX). (Image courtesy
of the Egypt Exploration
Society.)
elite Upper Nubian neighbours. It is perhaps more
viable to suggest that the Lower Nubian elites col-
lected slaves from among local, idiocentric C-Group
and Pan-Grave groups who retained their tribal ways,
and rejected any sort of acculturation or cooperation
with the new colonial administrative system. This
alternative reading can be corroborated by archaeo-
logical data. For example, in the Faras-Debeira area
there are small burial grounds dating to the New
Kingdom that do not show any Egyptian influence
on burial customs (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 8). If this
interpretation is correct, the image of these captives
provides evidence for the persistence of cultural diver-
sity within Lower Nubia. This would be a powerful
argument against the wholesale Egyptianization of the
area. It is interesting to note that the captive fronting
the group, who is presumably their leader (cf. Bianchi
2004, 116), is clad in the festive kilt of the Egyptian elite,
but was nonetheless captured and brought to Egypt as
a slave. Clearly, he had not become fully Egyptianized
by his outward adoption of Egyptian dress.
The archaeological corollary of the culturally
entangled identities discussed above would be a
complex pattern of overlapping material culture dis-
tributions (Wiesnner 1983). The tribute scene in the
tomb of Huy further indicates that even when material
assemblages are similar they can be relationally entan-
gled and imbued with different meanings in different
contexts (cf. Kopytoff 1986, 67; Webster 2001, 218;
Edwards 2003, 142; Fuller 2003, 173; Hahn 2004a, 64–7;
2004b, 218–20; 2005, 102–4; 2007, 209–10; Stockhammer
2012b, 48–51). There are indications in the burial record
of New Kingdom Nubia that this was indeed the case.
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
Burial customs in Lower Nubia
Because several Egyptian burial forms and goods
have been found in New Kingdom Lower Nubia,
Egyptological research is dominated by the view that
Egyptian funerary practices were adopted wholesale
by local C-Group and Pan-Grave populations. Many
cemeteries indeed show an almost total shift to
Egyptian burial forms and the use of Egyptian objects,
but the dominance of Egyptian material culture was
by no means absolute. There are important ways in
which members of the local C-Group and Pan-Grave
cultures continued to manifest their cultural charac-
ter in the New Kingdom, if sometimes subtly. In the
Faras-Debeira area there are small burial grounds
dating to the 18th and potentially also early 19th
Dynasty that continue indigenous burial customs
(Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 8), while in the same area
there are also co-called ‘transitional’ cemeteries that
represent a return to Nubian burial customs with a
break in the movement towards Egyptian customs.
Säve-Söderbergh (1989, 9; 1991a, 8) interprets this
return to indigenous burial customs as a Nubian
backlash and an opposition to Egyptianization. At
Adindan C-Group-type tumuli continued to be erected
high on the cliff behind older C-Group cemeteries
(Williams 1983, 121), while elsewhere New Kingdom
burials continued the expansion of a Nubian cemetery
in a manner that suggests intentional continuity (Säve-
Söderbergh 1963a, 59; 1964, 31; Adams 1977, 236). This
persistence of indigenous funerary customs is worth
emphasizing as it argues against traditional views of
Egyptianization that present their argument in terms
of homogenization and cultural convergence.
Even at cemeteries where Egyptian objects pre-
dominate, detailed analyses have shown that Egyptian
practices were being adopted in ways that do not
always neatly correlate with what can be considered
to be Egyptian ‘norms’ (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 8–9).
One well-studied cemetery is that of Fadrus (Säve-
Söderbergh 1991a, 212–93; Smith 1995, 150–54; 2003;
Török 2009, 276–9), which is located near the seat
of the prince of Tehkhet. At Fadrus 18th Dynasty
Egyptian pottery almost totally prevailed and the
deceased were often buried in coffins, a practice that
was originally not part of the C-Group and Pan-Grave
funerary cultures. Yet it is equally important to notice
that writing and many items of great importance
to Egyptian conceptions of the afterlife are lacking
at the site (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 247–51). On the
whole there are no clear indications of adherence
to Egyptian religious ritual among the 692 mostly
unplundered tombs. Inscriptions, shabtis, offering
tables and canopic equipment are all markedly lacking,
539
and even generic type amulets are rare.22 According
to S.T. Smith (1998, 277) the lack of these grave goods
is relatively common in poorer burials in Egypt (cf.
Smith 1992), and to him the east–west orientation
of the burials provides sufficient evidence for the
adoption of Egyptian religious beliefs (Smith 2003,
159). However, Török (2009, 277–8) since shown that
on the whole the cemetery does not display a clear
preference for the orientation of the body. In addition,
Török (2009, 277–8) has argued very plausibly that
the cemetery contained well-off members of society
who were buried in coffins and were wrapped in
expensive shrouds. The lack of inscriptions, shabtis
and canopic equipment can therefore not be simply
explained through the poverty of the deceased. At
Fadrus archaeologists instead seem to be dealing
with the burials of indigenous people who appro-
priated only a part of the broad range of Egyptian
material culture (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 249). They
appear to have been highly selective as to which
Egyptian traits they chose to adopt. Some forms
of material culture were presumably found to be
functionally useful, like coffins for the protection of
the body, kohl pots for eye paint and mass-produced
Egyptian ceramics for storage, while others may have
provided a vocabulary for expressing local ideas. The
best explanation for the absence of certain Egyptian
grave goods is that the deceased simply had no
need for them, and that certain elements of Egyptian
funerary tradition were neglected. Researchers have
hitherto failed to explain what is actually going on
at sites such as Fadrus by equating the use of certain
Egyptian burial goods and forms with a total accul-
turation to Egyptian ideology and beliefs. The form,
function and meaning of material culture have been
erroneously perceived as unchangeable, transcultural
constants (cf. Stockhammer 2012c, 19), rather than
being open to cultural reinterpretation. Admittedly,
this fallacy is understandable when we consider that
the appropriated objects often became only relation-
ally entangled and remained unchanged in terms of
their materiality. This has certainly rendered their
reinterpreted nature(s) far less obvious.
To sum up, many cemeteries in Lower Nubia
do not represent the gradual replacement of one way
of life (the Nubian) by another (the Egyptian). The
archaeological picture is much more diversified and
highlights variations in the acculturation process.
Further upstream in Upper Nubia, cemetery data from
Tombos, Amara West, and Sanam similarly illustrate
the presence of both Egyptian and Nubian burial
customs and the cultural blending of grave goods
(Griffith 1923; Smith 2007b; Lohwasser 2010; Binder
et al. 2010; Binder 2011).23
 W. Paul van Pelt
Mechanisms of cultural mixture and change
Although Stockhammer’s approach provides more
nuanced ways of describing the physical characteris-
tics or results of cultural mixing at specific moments
of cultural encounter, it does not provide any real
understanding of the mechanisms behind cultural
mixture and change. It remains to ask how Egyptian
material culture became so widely accessible to
indigenous C-Group and Pan-Grave populations
during the New Kingdom and not during the Mid-
dle Kingdom. Török (2009, 275) explained the New
Kingdom accessibility of Egyptian material culture
in terms of the swift integration of Nubia into an
Egyptian structure of administration, production
and redistribution. Although this explanation
doubtlessly overestimates the deadening weight of
the Egyptian redistributive economy (cf. Warburton
1997), local production of Egyptian commodities and
their associated redistribution through temples and
state institutions would indeed have made Egyptian
goods more readily available. Indigenous populations
presumably played an important role as suppliers of
foodstuffs and labour to the Egyptian bureaucratic
and religious institutions in the area.24 A mechanism
of trade or barter of foods and services for other
goods then emerges that suggests that the Egyptian
settlements in Lower Nubia functioned as important
market- and workplaces, and not simply as places
for the collection of tribute and the control of river
trade as the Middle Kingdom fortresses presumably
did (Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 249).25 The routine avail-
ability of mass-produced Egyptian goods may also
have gradually undermined indigenous C-Group
and Pan-Grave crafts and adversely affected their
productive output (Trigger 1976, 134). Seen as such,
the predominance of Egyptian material culture in
tombs would be more a result of wider socioeconomic
developments, than a supposed total acculturation
to Egyptian norms. This interpretation goes far in
explaining the differences in acculturative patterns in
Nubia during the Middle and New Kingdom.
This meta-mechanism of cultural entanglement
was of course given shape by everyday interactions
between people and between people and objects. It
is essential to study these everyday interactions to
suggest a more human and practical view of cultural
change in New Kingdom Nubia. Fortunately the
archaeological evidence of the area sheds light on
several potential processes that resulted in Nubia’s
culturally mixed landscapes. For example, at the New
Kingdom settlement of Askut in Upper Nubia there
is evidence for ethnic complexity within households
with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women. These
540
Nubian women entered into colonial society and
maintained certain Nubian practices such as methods
of food preparation in an otherwise Egyptian setting
(Smith 2003; 2007b, 233–4). The evidence from Askut
illustrates the existence of exogamy and multi-ethnic
households, and draws attention to the fact that indig-
enous men and women may have played significantly
different roles in the liminal spaces of Nubia.26 In
general, archaeological reconstructions have done lit-
tle to account for the role of gender in cultural mixture
processes, which seems an opportunity missed.
There is of course also the multi-ethnic offspring
to consider. Somewhat paradoxically, their role in
cultural process has rarely been considered from an
archaeological perspective as a potential source of
cultural change (van Gijseghem 2013). Nonetheless
much can be done along these lines. The offspring
of Egypto-Nubian marriages would have lived and
functioned in a social environment that was native
to them and may have been introduced to (Egyptian)
practices and institutions that may have gradually lost
relevance. Van Gijseghem (2013) describes such phe-
nomena as cultural encounters between two cultures
that in essence emerged from the same one. Would
these children have been conscious of their mixed
ethnic identity, or did they take their own ‘composi-
tion’ for granted (cf. Stewart 2011)? And how could
they have influenced long-term cultural change? The
potential roles of multi-ethnic offspring in cultural
process have been amply documented in other dis-
ciplines, and archaeologists could presumably learn
much from recent literature on modern second- and
third-generation immigrants (cf. Stewart 2011).
At sites such as Askut the long-term effects of
cultural mixture can, potentially, also be studied
through foodstuffs. Distinct cultural patterns are
often observable in cultural idiosyncrasies such as
food ways, which vary systematically both within
and between societies (Goody 1982; Wood 1995).
Given the African emphasis on sorghum and millet,
which in nomadic communities is often combined
with cow or goat milk and consumed as porridge or
dumpling-type foods and fermented alcoholic beers
(Richards 1939; Edwards 2003, 143), a greater reliance
on these grains may be expected among Nubian pop-
ulations. Egyptian culinary traditions, on the other
hand, were mainly focused around the Near Eastern
dietary staples wheat and barley (Samuel 1996; 2000).
Egyptian texts indicate that they too distinguished
their culinary habits from those of Nubia (Sauneron
1959). As millet and sorghum are C4 plants and wheat
and barley photosynthesize along the C3 pathway, it
is possible to distinguish these foodstuffs in human
osteological material and study their change over time,
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
even within the life span of single individuals. This is
because different skeletal elements form at different
stages of life and subsequently remodel at different
rates (e.g. Cox & Sealy 1997). It would be interesting
to determine whether Egyptian men adopted the
Nubian cuisine of their foreign wives, but even more
interesting would be the study of the dietary habits
of their children and how these changed over time.
Finally, it is necessary to draw attention to the
potential importance of object agency in the creation of
cultural entanglement phenomena in the archaeological
record. In certain cases the general circulation of objects
may have sufficed to create liminal spaces that resulted
in relationally or materially entangled objects. For
instance, the creative dialogue between the Egyptian
artisan and the Mycenaean pilgrim flask only required
the presence of the imported object, not of Mycenaean
tradesmen or artisans. Egyptian-style pilgrim flasks
were almost surely created in Egyptian workshops,
often in typically Egyptian materials such as faience,
without the assistance of foreign craftsmen. In this case,
the materially entangled object was created through
the agency of the artist and the Mycenaean prototype,
rather than any conscious policies of acculturation or
direct interaction between people. Similarly, the adop-
tion of Egyptian material culture in Lower Nubia would
not have always required direct interactions between
Egyptians and Nubians. If Egyptian commodities
became ubiquitous on Nubian marketplaces during
the New Kingdom, object agency is likely to have
played a pivotal role in the formation of the relationally
entangled material record of Lower Nubia.
It is in the exploration of such phenomena and
processes that the future of cultural mixture research
in Lower Nubia lies. Rather than simply identifying
and describing examples of ‘mixed’ social forms
(which abound as no culture is truly isolated), it
would be more fruitful to consider through which
processes cultural entanglement comes into being.
Such a change in approach will better emphasize the
crucial dimension of time in the formation and refor-
mation of identities and cultural entities (cf. Stewart
2011, 55), and as such make better use of archaeology’s
particular data sets.
Conclusion
Drawing these different themes together, it becomes
clear that the normative story of wholesale cultural
assimilation in New Kingdom Lower Nubia is a myth.
By polarizing different cultural traditions and equat-
ing the appropriation of objects with the appropria-
tion of cultural practices, researchers have hitherto
largely failed to explain what is actually going on. In
541
New Kingdom Lower Nubia, archaeologists are not
dealing with the replacement of pre-New Kingdom
ethnic diversity with New Kingdom uniformity, but
with the introduction of diversity generated by local
choice within the constraints and socioeconomic
framework of Egyptian colonial power (Woolf 1997,
344). Egyptianization is a rigid and simplistic top-
down model that does not facilitate a diversified
archaeology of cultural change, and tends to gloss
over the abundant variability present. The model
refuses to examine the diversity and varying degrees
of acculturation within cultural groups (e.g. in
terms of class, gender and age), and omits a critical
examination of the mutual transformation of the
colonizer and the colonized. In general researchers
need to recognize the need to explain more clearly
the interactive nature of liminal cultural encounters
in New Kingdom Lower Nubia. It is necessary
not only to accommodate Nubian acculturation to
Egyptian culture and vice versa, but also to allow for
the ‘emergence of new, highly differentiated social
formations that incorporate new cultural logic and
new configurations of power’ (cf. Woolf 1997, 347). In
addition, it is necessary to leave room for individu-
als such as Hekanefer, who could draw on different
cultural traditions according to context, and for
the cultural persistence of idiocentric groups who
rejected any sort of acculturation or cooperation with
the new Egyptian colonial administration.
The epistemological framework of cultural entan-
glement allows for a flexible, bottom-up (idiographic)
approach that acknowledges such a complex view in
which cultural change can be multidirectional, atavis-
tic, and differentially negotiated in different moments
and spaces of encounter. As such, the concept favours
dynamic descriptions of Egypt and Nubia as cultures
that changed through time rather than seeing them as
monolithic, unchanging entities. The concept further
draws attention to the important distinction between
the appropriation of objects and the appropriation
of the social practices and meanings connected with
those objects. Admittedly, social practices associated
with objects are often very difficult to reconstruct in the
archaeological record, but as demonstrated here they
are sometimes partly accessible through a systematic
methodological approach that highlights the context
of an object and its interrelationship with other objects
(cf. Stockhammer 2012b, 56). Finally, an emphasis on
cultural entanglement processes provides a culturally
neutral, unbiased interpretative framework. Although
Egyptian influence is not denied, the term facilitates a
more inductive and inclusive approach that does not
privilege a single cultural tradition to the exclusion of
others (cf. Pitts 2008, 494).
 W. Paul van Pelt
The reassessments of New Kingdom Egypto-
Nubian relations presented here are potentially of
great importance to Nubian cultural history, and may
help to explain why and how Nubian traits, after
disappearing behind a veil of historical silence for 350
years (Zibelius-Chen 1989; James et al. 1993, 204–19;
Morkot 1994; Török 1995, 17–28), reappeared in the
Napatan-Meroitic Kingdom of Kush (Trigger 1976,
138–48; O’Connor 1993, 70–84; Török 1997). Rather
than postulating a wholesale assimilation of Nubia,
it has been argued here that certain indigenous cul-
tural norms persisted throughout the rise and fall of
the New Kingdom Empire. By acknow­ledging this
cultural continuity, it becomes clear that elements of
indigenous practice did not pop back up like a Jack-in-
the-box in the eighth century bc but had been retained
for centuries although remaining largely invisible to
archaeological research.
Notes
1. The use of the ethnic designation Nubians is strictly
speaking not correct in the present context. The Nubians
are an ethnic group that only first appear in Hellenistic
and Axumite texts dating to the mid fourth century ad
(Hintze 1967; Edwards 2004, 183–4). The term should
therefore not be used to describe the much earlier
C-Group and Pan-Grave populations of Lower Nubia.
However, since the ethnonym is conventionally used
as such in the Egyptological literature it is adhered to
here for the sake of clarity.
2. It is interesting to note that the concept of Romanization
lead to heated debates in Romano-British archaeo­logy
(cf. Webster 2001), while Egyptianization has only rarely
been explicitly discussed as a concept. Perhaps this
should not come as a complete surprise, considering
Egyptology’s introspective tradition and renowned
‘fear’ of theory, particularly social theory (Weeks 1979,
1; Lustig 1997, 7–8; Meskell 1999). Regardless, Egyptolo-
gists are clearly imbricated within a social discipline and
there is potentially much to gain for them by applying
theories developed in related fields of research. Vice
versa, Egyptology and Nubian archaeology have
much to offer to archaeological theory because of the
long-term perspective of continuity and sociocultural
change afforded by their rich written, iconographic, and
archaeological records.
3. The apparent Egyptianization of the C-Group and
Pan-Grave populations was allegedly followed by the
complete depopulation of Lower Nubia by the end
of the Ramesside Period (Adams 1964). The Egyptian
settlers of Lower Nubia would have returned to Egypt
(Adams 1964), while the indigenous populations would
have retreated into the Eastern Desert and Upper
Nubia where they regressed into a ‘tribal way of life’
(Trigger 1976, 140). The meaning of this Lower Nubian
exodus remains unresolved, but certain scholars have
plausibly suggested that the withdrawal is only virtual
542
(Kemp 1978, 39–43; O’Connor 1982, 910; Zibelius-Chen
1989, 333; Jansen-Winkeln 1995, 22–37; O’Connor 1993,
64–5; Török 1999, 149–50; Darnell 2006, 56–7). Textual
evidence indicates that the Egyptian agricultural
system was still in operation in some parts of Lower
Nubia during the reign of Ramses VI, suggesting the
presence of peasants who presumably did not leave
many archaeological traces (Kemp 1978, 39). Also, in the
later New Kingdom, Egyptian-style family vaults with
multiple burials were adopted in the larger cemeteries
of Lower Nubia. Kemp (1978, 39–43) argued that the
number of tombs in these cemeteries gives no idea
about the numbers of burials they originally contained,
nor how they would have been distributed over time.
It is therefore not possible to confidently state that
the archaeological record of Lower Nubia was empty
during the later and Post-New Kingdom. These are
important considerations when studying the long-term
developments of Nubian culture(s).
4. When Kerma was first excavated in the 1920s, Reisner
(1923b, 3–5) believed that the site had originally been an
Egyptian trading colony. His interpretation was based
on the presence of inscribed Egyptian statues in the
royal burials of the site, which he thought belonged to
Egyptian viceroys (Reisner 1923a, 116–21). It has since
been shown that Kerma was not an Egyptian outpost,
but a powerful independent state that arose in com-
petition with Egypt (Bonnet 1990; 2004). The Egyptian
statues in the royal tombs at Kerma have presumably
been brought back as war trophies from raids in Egypt
(Davies 2003a,b). Other Egyptian commodities in Kerma
possibly arrived there through trade.
5. For example, at Great Zimbabwe the later African phase
was designated as ‘Bantu degeneracy’ and ‘the Age of
Decadence’ (Hall 1905; cf. O’Connor & Reid 2003, 4–5).
6. Säve-Söderbergh significantly altered many of his initial
viewpoints in his later work (compare for example Säve-
Söderbergh 1967–1968 with Säve-Söderbergh 1991a,
247–51) and ultimately argued against the wholesale
Egyptianization of Lower Nubia. Cf. the discussion on
Lower Nubian burial customs later in this article.
7. Schneider (2003, 155) already highlighted that implicit
Egyptological viewpoints of the superiority of Egyptian
culture are particularly prominent in discussions of
foreign cultural and technological influence on Egypt.
The supposed foreign ‘contamination’ of Egypt during
the Third Intermediate and Late Periods is arguably
partly responsible for the relatively limited Egypto-
logical interest in Egypt after the New Kingdom. The
notion of cultural decline in the first millennium bc is
also reflected in the Egyptological nomenclature. Egyp-
tologists speak of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms
vis-à-vis the Late Period. Egypt in the first millennium
bc was nevertheless no less Egyptian than the periods
immediately preceding it as there was never an era in
Egyptian history that flourished without any kind of
outside influences (cf. Schneider 2003).
8. Foreigners presumably came to Egypt for economic
reasons, although some may have been forcibly brought
as prisoners of war (Ward 1994, 61).
 Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations in New Kingdom Lower Nubia
9. The vocabularies for describing cultural mixture in
archaeology are very tangled and present confusion for
even the most experienced researchers. Cf. Burke (2009,
34–65), Stewart (2011, 48–51), and Stockhammer (2012b,
46–7) for a discussion.
10. Bhabha (1990) calls these liminal spaces ‘the third space’,
which displaces the certainties of either parental tradi-
tion.
11. Cf. Stockhammer (2012a,b) for discussions of cultural
hybridity and its most important conceptual drawbacks.
Cf. Stewart (2011, 52–3) for an effective rebuttal of many
of these critiques.
12. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that many of
the early excavation reports dealing with sites in Egypt
and Nubia are tantalizingly incomplete (cf. Bourriau
2009, 43).
13. For cultural entanglement to occur there has to be an
encounter between exogenous traditions or groups that
are seen as different or discrete by those involved (cf.
Stewart 2011, 52; Stockhammer 2012b, 49). There can be
little doubt that the Egyptians ethnically distinguished
themselves from other groups and that the quality of
being ‘foreign’ was definable in Egyptian society (Riggs
& Baines 2012, 2). It seems very likely that this Egyptian
self-ascription of ethnicity was accompanied by a simi-
lar and consistent ethnic ascription by Lower Nubians.
The multitude of Egyptian designations for C-Group
and Pan-Grave populations moreover suggests that
these cultures made similar and additional ethnic dis-
tinctions among themselves. Ethnic terms for various
Nubian groups appear in Egyptian sources throughout
the New Kingdom, even long after many of them had
supposedly become fully Egyptianized (Zibelius 1972).
This suggests that their material disappearance in itself
does not signify that these ethnic groups ceased to be
distinguished in meaningful ways from the general
Egyptian population (cf. Riggs & Baines 2012, 3). Under
these conditions, Stockhammer’s epistemological frame-
work is applicable to the study of cultural entanglement
processes in New Kingdom Lower Nubia.
14. In New Kingdom Egypt literacy was the accomplish-
ment of a small elite minority (Baines & Eyre 2007, 67).
As a result Egyptian texts largely reflect elite viewpoints,
beliefs and interests.
15. Limited indigenous settlement data has been recovered
from Aniba (Steindorff 1935, 202–19), Karanog (Stein-
dorff 1937, 35), Wadi el Arab (Emery & Kirwan 1935,
106–8), Areika (Randall-MacIver & Woolley 1909), Wadi
es-Sebua (Sauneron 1965), Debeira (Säve-Söderbergh
1963a, 58), Faras (Verwers 1961), Sayala (Bietak 1966,
31–4), and several sites in the Scandinavian Joint Expe-
dition concession area (Säve-Söderbergh 1989, 261–72).
16. That the burial record of Lower Nubia should not be
seen as a complete mirror of past life is easily illus-
trated. Upper Nubian town sites such as Sai and Sesebi
contain a small, but significant assemblage of Nubian
handmade pottery (mostly cooking vessels) during the
New Kingdom (Budka 2011, 28–9; Spence et al. 2011, 37).
Yet due to their poor quality and purely utilitarian func-
tion, such handmade vessels only rarely find their way
543
into Upper Nubian burial contexts. The burial record
is, in other words, distorted towards certain types of
goods; they are after all called grave goods for a reason.
If cultural reconstructions would be based on Upper
Nubian grave goods alone, it is clear that crucial social
information may be missed. For example, the Nubian
cooking pots from Sesebi and Sai potentially illuminate
key social activities as specific eating and drinking prac-
tices are often closely connected with cultural identity
and display of status (cf. Edwards 2003, 142).
17. There is textual evidence from Egypt that gives some
credibility to the indigenous elements of dress in the
tribute scenes. It comes from a model letter addressed
to a Nubian prince by an intendant of the foreign land
of Kush: ‘Think about the day when the Tribute is sent
and you are brought into the presence [of the King]
under the window [of appearances], the nobles to either
side in front of His Majesty, the princes and envoys of
every foreign land standing, looking at the tribute …
Tall Terek people in their leather garments, with fans of
gold, high, feathered hairstyles, their jewellery of ivory,
and numerous Nubians of all kinds’ (Smith 2003, 185).
Also note that the text explicitly refers to the existence
of different Nubian groups.
18. Depictions of Nubians with animals tails suspended
from their elbows are also known from the tomb of
Horemheb (Wreszinski 1923, pl. 247). Another example
can be found in a scene in the tomb of Kenamun, where
two statues of king Amenhotep II, dressed in Nubian
military garments, are equipped with pairs of animal
tails at the elbow (Davies 1930, 26, pl. 17). The tomb of
Senena (TT169) contains an unusual representation of
Nubians with animal tails suspended from the knees
(Drenkhahn 1967, 2).
19. The tomb of Ramses III in the Valley of the Kings
contains several depictions of Nubians that similarly
combine Egyptian and indigenous elements of dress. In
these depictions, native elements consist of a short kilt
made of animal skin combined with a patterned sash,
the loose end of which is hanging down between the
legs (Drenkhahn 1967, 26–7, 47). Further Nubian traits
include pairs of animals tails tied around the waist and a
broad collar with a row of dots that was first introduced
in the reign of Ramses III (Drenkhahn 1967, 47–8). The
rendition of these entangled figures deviates from ear-
lier Egyptian representation of Nubians, but has close
parallels on polychrome faience tiles from the palaces
of Ramses III at Tell el-Yahudiya in the Nile Delta and
Medinet Habu in Thebes (Hölscher 1951, 39–46; Saleh
& Sourouzian 1987, no. 226). While it is difficult to
determine whether these Nubians came from Upper
or Lower Nubia, they do suggest that Egypto-Nubian
relationally entangled identities survived well into the
20th Dynasty.
20. Although at first glance very little in the tomb decora-
tion of the princes of Tehkhet betrays a non-Egyptian
element, there are in fact subtle differences in terms of
composition, use of colour and depicted details. For
example, the positioning of the musicians in the banquet
scene in the tomb of Djehuty-hotep is markedly un-
 W. Paul van Pelt
Egyptian. The musical ensemble also uses a drum that
appears to be a Nubian rather than an Egyptian type
(Säve-Söderbergh 1991a, 199). The tomb’s gardening
scene is likewise unconventional both in terms of its
colour use and the appearance of certain of the figures,
which include a man with a fat belly and long black hair.
21. Fuller (2003, 178) similarly argued that during the
Meroitic Period the pyramid tombs in the royal cemetery
of Meroe in Upper Nubia were mimicked as part of
social legitimation strategies in Lower Nubia. Somewhat
surprisingly, pyramid tombs even become more common
in Lower than in Upper Nubia, which suggests that
this referencing of royal practices may have been ‘more
important at the distant periphery of suzerainty than
within the region of clear sovereignty’ (Fuller 2003, 178).
22. In terms of the use of inscriptions, a brief comparison
with the tombs at Buhen (Randall-MacIver 1911) and
Aniba (Steindorff 1935; 1937) is instructive. At Buhen
only seven stelae inscribed with names were discovered
among the site’s 152 New Kingdom tombs. In contrast,
43 of the 156 New Kingdom tombs at Aniba contained
tomb elements or objects inscribed with names (Säve-
Söderbergh 1967–1968, 242).
23. Elements of indigenous burial practices such as tumulus
superstructures, bed burials and flexed burials occur in
these cemeteries, sometimes with Nubian-style pottery,
but are always mixed with Egyptian cultural elements
(cf. Binder 2011, 52).
24. A similar situation presumably occurred at the
nineteenth-century Turco-Egyptian fort at Laboré in
South Sudan. Here overlaps of material culture between
inhabitants of the fort and outsiders together with the
agricultural nature of the surrounding population sug-
gest that local community played an important role in
supplying the fort (Davies & Leonardi 2012).
25. For example, at Doukki Gel in Upper Nubia there are
strong indications that the Nubian population of Kerma
directly participated in the construction of some of
the Egyptian buildings, particularly the precinct walls
(Bonnet 2007, iv–v). The Egyptian Empire thus seems
to have provided work in various professions such as
construction.
26. Similarly, in Iceland and Britain genetic lines show dif-
ferent patterns of how past populations were structured
(Helgason et al. 2000; Wilson et al. 2001). For example,
a large amount of Icelandic maternal DNA appears to
be of indigenous British origin, while paternal DNA
largely originated in Scandinavia (Helgason et al. 2000).
Gender thus clearly plays an important role in cultural
encounters.
Acknowledgements
The author is extremely grateful to Dr Kate Spence (University
of Cambridge), Dr Janine Bourriau (University of Cambridge),
Jeffrey Watumull (University of Cambridge), Danika Parikh
(University of Cambridge), Tessa de Roo (University of
Cambridge), David Armstrong (University of Cambridge),
and Dr Sally-Ann Ashton (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)
544
for their valuable comments on a draft version of this paper.
I would also like to thank Dr John Robb (University of Cam-
bridge) and Dr Preston Miracle (University of Cambridge)
for stimulating me to publish my work. My research into this
subject has been supported through a financial award from
the Wallis Budge Fund from Christ’s College, Cambridge.
Unless otherwise credited, I take full responsibility for the
ideas and opinions expressed in this article.
W. Paul van Pelt
Division of Archaeology
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology
University of Cambridge
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3DZ
UK
Email: wpv20@cam.ac.uk
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Author biography
W. Paul van Pelt is a PhD candidate in Archaeology at
the University of Cambridge. His PhD project examines
ancient Egyptian lime and gypsum technology through a
multidisciplinary approach that combines the analysis of
textual and pictorial sources with state-of-the-art materials
science analyses and advances in archaeological theory. He
is involved in archaeological fieldwork in Kerma, Doukki
Gel, Sai and Sesebi in Sudan. His recent publications include
Archaeology and Cultural Mixture (ed.), Archaeological Review
from Cambridge 28.1 (2013).