Conference Paper: Foreigners meeting Foreigners: Sustaining Cross-Border Relations in the Middle Kingdom

Description

Throughout the decades, many studies have arisen on the establishment and development of cross-border social relations in the Middle Kingdom. However, only recently have their inherent complexities been considered. This paper explores such complexities of sustaining relations across and between the geographical regions of Egypt and Western Asia. It first offers a brief overview of its theoretical approach with a consideration of terminologies used in Egyptology to identify groups from these regions. It then specifically focusses its discussion on the agents of negotiations and their motivations in promoting cross-border social relations. Examples are provided from three sites, each offering different insights from variant types of data that span the Middle Kingdom. These include Beni Hassan, with its decorated tombs of local officials of the Oryx nome; Serabit el-Khadim, with its inscriptions in and around its mines and sacred areas; and Tell el-Dab’a, with its plethora of administrative, domestic, cultic, and funerary material. By assessing and comparing the evidence from these sites, the paper aims to show the role of agency in the pursuit of sustained cross-border relations, and its posited connection with larger-scale social, political, and cultural transformations.

Period	29 Mar 2021
Event title	Meeting the Other: Transfers and Cultural Interactions around the Nile Valley
Event type	Conference
Location	Cairo, EgyptShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International