Identities Carved in Stone. Sarcophagi as Means of Social Crafting and Personal Identification in Late Period Egypt.
GALLI, Ludovica
This paper, which is the outcome of my MA thesis, wishes to investigate the crucial role that sarcophagi played in shaping social identity in Late Period Egypt (second half of the First Millennium BCE). By taking into account a wide sample of artefacts coming from all over the country and by analyzing their artistic and craftsmanship features, the author will show one of the main peculiarities that characterizes these objects, namely their constant reuse. This seems to be due not only to the preciousness of the material, but primarily to the appropriation of the status symbol that the object represented: the sarcophagi were in fact commissioned by people belonging to the highest ranks of the priestly, administrative, judicial, and political elite of that time. The analysis of the geographical distribution of these sarcophagi will further highlight the existence of both specific manufacturing centers (in particular in the capital city of Memphis) and targeted burial places. Among them, the main one was certainly represented by the Serapeum in Saqqara, most likely on account of its connection with the renewed cult of the Apis Bull.
Session 4. Crafting Identity and Clusters through Material Culture, Iconography and Texts [info]