Kathlyn M. Cooney

Yekaterina Barbash

An examination of the myriad lifetimes lived by ancient Egyptian artifacts Egypt has a particular longue durée, a continuity of preservation in deep time, not seen in other parts of the world. Over the centuries, ancient buildings have been adopted for purposes that differed from the original. Temple sites have been transformed into places of worship for new deities or turned into houses and tombs. Tombs, in turn, have been adapted to function as human dwellings already in the Late Antique Period. The Afterlives of Egyptian History expands on the traditional academic approach of studying the original function and sociopolitical circumstances of ancient Egyptian objects, texts, and sites to examine their secondary lives by exploring their reuse, modification, and reinterpretation. Written in honor of the Egyptologist, Edward Bleiberg, this volume brings together a group of luminous scholars from a wide range of fields, including Egyptian archaeology, philology, conservation, and art, to explore the historical circumstances, as well as political and economic situations, of people who have come into contact with ancient Egypt, both in antiquity and in more recent times. Contributor Affiliations: Yekaterina Barbash, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA Lisa Bruno, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA Simon Connor, F.R.S.–FNRS, Brussels, Belgium and University of Liege, Liege, Belgium Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA Richard Fazzini, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA Peter Lacovara, Ancient Egyptian Archaeology and Heritage Fund, Albany, NY USA Ronald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto, Canada Mary McKercher, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA Edmund Meltzer, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California USA Joachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio USA Paul Edmund Stanwick, independent scholar, New York, NY USA Emily Teeter, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL USA Kathy Zurek-Doule, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA

Reuse and Reformulation of Objects, Places, and Texts

The Afterlives of Egyptian History

This new study is the first translation of the papyrus of Padikakem, with an extensive commentary. The complete early Ptolemaic manuscript from the Walters Art Museum contains two uncommon texts in hieratic. The initial text, a Ritual of Introducing the Multitude on the Last Day of Tekh, is identified as a temple liturgy by its rubric title, while its themes recall love poetry and the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys. The second text, a rarely attested Book III of glorification spells (sakhw) has an exclusively mortuary character. The spells of this section largely originate in the Pyramid Texts and include specific instructions for recitation by the lector priest. The two texts are established as a coherent composition that belongs to the Greco-Roman tradition of merging Egyptian funerary practices with temple liturgies. The diverse sources and themes of the texts shed light on the evolution of Osirian and mortuary theologies from the Old Kingdom onwards. The study also thoroughly examines the development of grammar and paleography among the parallels.

Yekaterina Barbash

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