Beyond the urban elite – tracing identities in ancient Egyptian ‘Quarry Art’ through social semiotics

Motivated by post-colonial theory, gender studies and socio-cultural history, scholars approach ancient Egyptian identity through reliefs, sculptures and literature.

But these media represent the urban elite, and exclude the larger society and peripheral communities, leading to biased and restricted results.

Responding to such imbalance, this three-year project will trace socio-cultural biographies of diverse non-elite individuals by decoding their visual communication, inscribed within the world’s largest ancient quarry ‘Kheny’:How is Kheny acting as a mediating canvas for the biographies of the quarry workers and their visual expressions?

The material includes 10,000 petroglyphs (‘Quarry Art’) from c. 2700 BCE to 200 CE when the quarry was active.

The main aims are to 1) assess the socio-cultural and discoursing agency of Quarry Art; 2) discern social systems and processes; identities and daily life; 3) digitally record unique and threatened panels for long-term preservation.

To do so, the theory of social semiotics will be revised from language-driven to material-driven research, with Quarry Art as the mediator. Project leader, M.

Nilsson (Lund University), runs the Swedish expedition in Egypt since 2012, and has intimate knowledge and access to the material. A research assistant and technician at HumLab will offer digital expertiese.

The work will have international impact by its new approach to Egyptology, Anthropological rock art research, and Communication science.