Research Blog #10- Final Paper Abstract and Works Cited

Abstract:

Ancient Egypt, often referred to as the cradle of civilization, was said to be the birthplace of many different ideas and theories, all affecting us even to this day. Many acclaimed feats were achieved by the ancient Egyptians, such as building the pyramids and creating their own language. To this day, many mysteries of Egypt are largely unknown, which fuels the fascination behind discovering the ancient Egyptians’ true knowledge and purpose behind their many rituals, oftentimes leading to different abstract theories being sparked. Our orientalist interpretation and representation of these rituals and theories can be clearly seen throughout western media and thoughts, detailing the almost obsessive fascination behind many of Egypt’s controversial and fascinating rituals and discoveries. This paper will examine hieroglyphs and mummies, and how the portrayal of both led to a looming fear of the “magic” of Egypt leading to Egypt being strongly associated with the occult in the western mind, while also diving deeper into how and why the orientalist analysis and depiction of  these ideas and artifacts led to the westernization and alteration of Egyptian culture in western minds and media.

Works Cited:

  “Hieroglyphics.” Britannica Student Encyclopedia : An A to Z Encyclopedia, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 53–54.

  Budge, E. A. Wallis, and John Romer. The Egyptian Book of the Dead . Penguin Group, 2008.

Forman, Werner, and Stephen. Quirke. Hieroglyphs and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt . University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Glynn, Basil. The Mummy on Screen: Orientalism and Monstrosity in Horror Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019.

Lehrich, Christopher. The Occult Mind : Magic in Theory and Practice . Cornell University Press,, 2012, doi:10.7591/9780801460548

Nell, Erin, and Clive Ruggles. “The Orientations of the Giza Pyramids and Associated Structures.” Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 45, no. 3, SAGE Publications, 2014, pp. 304–60, doi:10.1177/0021828614533065.

 Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014.

Silverman, David P. Ancient Egypt . Oxford University Press, 1997.

Teeter, Emily. Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

  Westerfeld, Jennifer Taylor. Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.


Comments

  1. Michael GoellerMay 28, 2021 at 5:22 AM

    Thanks for posting your Works cited and abstract. I hope future students take up this topic. I myself am still curious about it.

    Reading around today, I came upon an interesting article on the long controversy among biblical scholars pitting the monotheistic Israelites against the supposedly "idolatrous" Egyptians, and I think that might have something to do with it also:
    Jan Assmann, Moses The Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
    (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

    ReplyDelete

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