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The Body Both Shapes and Is Shaped by an Individual’S Social Roles UCLA UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology Title Body Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8f21r7sj Journal UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 1(1) Author Riggs, Christina Publication Date 2010-11-17 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California BODY الجسد Christina Riggs EDITORS WILLEKE WENDRICH Editor-in-Chief University of California, Los Angeles JACCO DIELEMAN Editor University of California, Los Angeles ELIZABETH FROOD Editor Area Editor Individual and Society University of Oxford JOHN BAINES Senior Editorial Consultant University of Oxford Short Citation: Riggs 2010, Body. UEE. Full Citation: Riggs, Christina, 2010, Body. In Elizabeth Frood, Willeke Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles. http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0025nqg2 1149 Version 1, November 2010 http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0025nqg2 BODY الجسد Christina Riggs Körper Corps The human body is both the physical form inhabited by an individual “self” and the medium through which an individual engages with society. Hence the body both shapes and is shaped by an individual’s social roles. In contrast to the cognate fields of archaeology, anthropology, and classics, there has been little explicit discussion or theorization of the body in Egyptology. Some recent works, discussed here, constitute an exception to this trend, but there is much more scope for exploring ancient Egyptian culture through the body, especially as evidenced in works of art and pictorial representation. جسد اﻹنسان عبارة عن الجسد المادي الذي تقطنه «النفس» المتفردة، وھو الوسيلة التى يقوم من خﻻلھا اﻹنسان بالتفاعل مع المجتمع. ومن ثم فالجسد يشكل ويتكيف على حد سواء تبعا للوظائف اﻻجتماعية الفردية. مقارنة بالمجاﻻت المتعلقة باﻵثار وعلم اﻹنسان (اﻷنثروبولوجية) والدراسات الكﻻسيكية، فأنه لم يحدث أي نقاشات أو أفكار واضحة حول الجسد في علم المصريات. يتم ھنا مناقشة بعض اﻷعمال الحديثة والتي تُ َشكل إستثناء لھذا اﻹتجاه ولكن ھناك أكثر من مجال ﻹستكشاف الثقافة المصرية القديمة عبر الجسد خاصةً ما يظھر بالفن والتصوير. ince the 1980s, the social sciences self.” Each individual in society has a material have developed analytical body through which the self, society, and the S approaches to the concept of the world are experienced: “to be human is to be body, the individual, and the construction of embodied” (Meskell 1999: 37). Moreover, personhood, which have particular relevance social discourse constitutes the body (as a for issues of gender, sexuality, class, and concept) and gives it meanings that are lifecycle. Building on these approaches, specific to each society. The physical human interpretive archaeology has also begun to body is a readily available image around which concern itself with the individual in ancient bodily practices, understandings of bodily societies as a core unit of agency on which difference, and ideological constructions social relations, progress, and institutionalized accrue. In the words of sociologist Bryan S. behavior are based. This notion of the Turner, the body is the critical juncture individual moves beyond earlier between “the natural order of the world and anthropological and philosophical claims that the cultural ordering of the world” (Turner the individual is a Western, Christian, or post- 1984: 39). Enlightenment concept. As an ontological The culture of ancient Egypt offers rich category, the individual retrieved through resources for analyzing the Egyptians’ studies of the ancient past is inextricably tied conceptualization of the body and the to theories of the body and the “embodied Body, Riggs, UEE 2010 1 embodied self, in terms of texts and language, HAtj) was a metonym for emotion and pictorial representation, religious beliefs and cognition, and the pumping of the heart was eschatology, rituals, bodily practices (including recognized as an indicator of health and life grooming and medicine), and social (Brunner 1988; Rueda 2003: 34 - 38). The jb- differentiation (such as class, age, and gender). heart connoted emotions and cognition, while The practice of mummification informs us, the HAtj-heart was the physical organ, although not only of the Egyptians’ knowledge of the two words could be used interchangeably human physiology, but of their (Rueda 2003: 27; but cf. Assmann 2005: 29 - conceptualization of the body, which is 30). An individual was also linked to his culturally constructed in every society, while parents and ancestors through both the life extant physical remains give a much greater force (kA) and the physical body, as the insight into the physical anthropology of the expression “heart (jb) of my mother” may populace than is possible for other ancient suggest (Book of the Dead 30 a - b, for which societies. see Allen 1960: 115). Bringing together these elements of the person is a goal expressed in In the Egyptian language, the physical form funerary literature and in art, for instance of the person is the Dt or Haw, the latter of through the symbolism of coffin iconography which may refer more broadly to the concept (Meyer-Dietrich 2006), including the Four of self (Walker 1996: 3 - 18). The Dt-body Sons of Horus associated with the integrity of outlasts the physical body, but at the same the corpse. A scene from the Ramesside tomb time is distinct from the corpse or the of Amenemhat (TT 163) depicts each of the mummy. Assmann (2005: 88 - 89) interprets Four Sons presenting one of these elements the Dt-body as a physical form, whereas to the deceased: Amset bears the heart (jb), Walker (1996: 17) argues for the Dt as an Hapi the bA, Duamutef the kA, and eternal, transcendent form—not the human Qebehsenuef the XAt-corpse, presaged as a body itself. The dead body, or XAt, forms a mummy (saH) by being shown in the wrapped binary opposition with the bA (ba) in funerary form (fig. 1; Assmann 1979: 67 - 77). texts: “Your ba will live in the sky in the presence of Re. Your corpse will endure in The vessels, sinews, and muscles of the the underworld in the presence of Osiris” physical body were known as mtw (e.g., (Papyrus Leiden T32, in Smith 2009b: 405; see Papyrus Ebers: Fischer-Elfert 2005b), and the also Assmann 2005: 91). Loprieno (2003) Egyptians had some conception of bodily treats the kA (ka), ba, and the transfigured fluids, especially blood, flowing through the spirit, Ax (akh), as distinct conceptions of body and making it whole and intact. Parts of personhood, with the ka based on relations the body that could be removed or excreted— among the living, the akh associated with the especially hair, semen, saliva, and menstrual dead and the gods, and the ba mediating blood—were potent symbolic loci. Locks of between these worldly and otherworldly states hair were incorporated into amulets (Arnst of being. Smith (2009a: 3) goes further in 2006), and the shaving of children’s heads proposing that the ba is not a component of might have signaled a rite of passage or the individual person, but the whole person as invoked healing (Ikram 2003). Bodily fluids, manifested after death. which transcend the boundaries of the body and are created within it, were both powerful The human being as a complete entity was and dangerous (Meskell 1999: 45 - 50). Saliva composed of numerous elements in addition was used in magical practice, through spitting, to, or residing in (cf. Assmann 2003), the licking, or swallowing actions, and spittle was physical body. These included fate (SAw, SAy), thought of as having generative powers. the extent of one’s lifetime (aHaw), the name Semen and menstrual blood were pollutants, (rn), the shadow (Swt), one’s personal magic though their power could be corralled (HkAw), the life force (kA), and in some through magic (for magical practice, see Pinch interpretations, the soul (bA). The heart (jb or 1994; Ritner 1993). The word mtwt could Body, Riggs, UEE 2010 2 Figure 1. Sandstone relief from Theban Tomb 163, Dynasty 19 or 20, British Museum EA 55336. The tomb owner, Amenemhat, kneels at right, adoring the Four Sons of Horus who present his heart (jb), ba, ka, and body (XAt), depicted in the form of a wrapped, mummiform figure. mean both semen and poison; magical spells body not being intact or being destroyed express fear of being inappropriately violated (Meskell and Joyce 2003: 144 - 153; Zandee by semen, for instance by a demon ejaculating 1960; and discussions in Hare 1999: esp. 1 - in one’s ear during sleep (Borghouts 1978: 38, 43). Spell 59). There is some evidence that women Physical fracture is also at the core of the undertook purification after menstruation hieroglyphic writing system, where human (Robins 1993: 78), and for the isolation of body parts (displayed in Gardiner sign-list women during their menstrual periods section D) are even more numerous than (Wilfong 1999). The tyet-amulet, which may animal body parts; the former are chiefly represent a blood-soaked menstrual cloth, was limbs and facial features, while the latter are a protective symbol linked especially to the internal organs (Hare 1999: 26). Human body goddess Isis (Westendorf 1965: 144 - 154; parts are core alphabetic signs (Gardiner sign- 1980). Women’s procreative ability meant that list: D21 r, D36 a, D46 d, D58 b), common bi- breast milk and the urine of pregnant women and tri-literals (Gardiner sign-list: D2 Hr, D4 were used in predictive magic and medical jr, D37 dj, D40 nxt), and determinatives diagnoses (e.g., Borghouts 1978: 24 - 25, spells (Gardiner sign-list: D9, a weeping eye; D54, a 34 and 35 against burns). pair of legs to show movement). The whole The fragmentation of the self into several human body is essential for the range of components—ka, heart, shadow, etc.— hieroglyphic determinatives (Gardiner sign-list mirrored the fragmentation of the body in sections A and B), which include sitting, Egyptian thought.
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