Conference Paper: What Is and What Is Not in the Early Middle Kingdom: A Case for the Role of Boundaries

Description

Ancient Egyptian representations of the foreign and the ‘other’ have been commonly approached in view of the cosmic significance of the maintenance
of order and chaos. Associated with the latter are the concepts of existence and
nonexistence. In a seminal analysis on ‘the challenge of the nonexistent’, Erik
Hornung proposed that it permeates and surrounds all that exists and can thus
be encountered at any time or place (Hornung, Der Eine und die Vielen [1971]
/ Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt [1982]). An entity or event may also be
described as nonexistent if it has not yet been created or has not yet occurred.
Representing these varied meanings is the expression n.tt iw.tt ‘what is and what is not’, or, as translated by some, ‘everything’. Among its earliest attestations are those in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, which clearly reflect the importance of existence and nonexistence in cosmic and funerary beliefs. However, by the early Middle Kingdom, ‘what is and what is not’ also occurs in titles and epithets of officials, some of whom were involved in boundary formation and boundary transgression. This paper provides an overview of these developments and the insights they offer on early Middle Kingdom conceptions of the world and the cosmos. It explores the role of transregional activities in association with these developments, and questions whether altered representations of ‘what is and what is not’ were related with increased activities at and beyond the mutable borders of Egypt.

Period	11 Jun 2022
Event title	Sixth Australasian Egyptology Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Australia, New South WalesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International