The Archaeology of Achaemenid Rule in Egypt.

This dissertation is an archaeological examination of the period of Achaemenid Persian rule of Egypt, Manetho’s 27th Dynasty, c. 525-404 BCE. As an Achaemenid satrapy, Egypt in the 27th Dynasty presents an invaluable opportunity to study both Egyptian experiences with foreign imperialism and the nature of Achaemenid rule. Egypt is especially interesting as a case study because of its profound cultural and political importance in the greater Mediterranean and the Near East, and in the Achaemenid Empire in particular. The dissertation has three major goals: 1.) To examine the intellectual foundations of our knowledge of the archaeology of the 27th Dynasty, with a view towards distinguishing between the products of ancient agency and those of modern scholarship. 2.) To assemble a corpus of material culture pertinent to the 27th Dynasty. 3.) To use that corpus to characterize the nature and impact of Achaemenid rule on both institutions (cultural, economic, religious and political) and individuals (natives and foreigners) living in Egypt. My main findings are 1.) that contrary to conventional wisdom, the Persian Period was one of significant presence in Egypt, having important impacts on a wide range of institutions, individuals, and localities; and 2.) that during the 27th Dynasty people living in Egypt (Egyptians and others) had a wide variety of experiences with Achaemenid rule. For some the empire presented opportunities and options which were advantageous or attractive; for others its impact ranged from the negligible, invisible, or restricting, to one worthy of resistance. This variability is reflected in the spectrum of material culture from Egypt belonging to this period assembled and analyzed in this dissertation.PHDClassical Art and ArchaeologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107318/1/preater_1.pd

Communication with the divine in ancient Egypt: hearing deities, intermediary statues and sistrophores

This thesis examines the desire for contact with deities in Egypt, the artistic and textual expression of which can be viewed as characteristic of ‘personal piety’. The attribution of hearing abilities to deities through epithets and phrases is evocative of human attempts to communicate with the divine sphere, and the Egyptian evidence is presented. A case study of so-called ‘intermediary statues’, which claim to facilitate communication between human and god, offers an opportunity to investigate how some members of the elite adapted their artistic output to take advantage of popular beliefs, furthering their own commemoration. Sistrophorous statues (bearing a naos-sistrum) are well-represented in the intermediary corpus, and their symbolism is explored alongside the significance of statue form and temple location in the context of communication with gods. The nature of the authority and power present in the communicative relationships between human, god and statue is considered, in part through the lens of compliance-gaining theory. It is argued that the notion of hearing deities and mediation provided humans with some power over their gods, and statue-owners with a means to maintain elite governance over what were ostensibly more personal and accessible modes of worship

Bowdoin Orient v.133, no.1-25 (2001-2002)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1002/thumbnail.jp

Go, and you will return: Locating meanings in young Muslims’ lived experience at schools in Christchurch, New Zealand via an adapted IPA method influenced by Ramadanian philosophies (IPA-R).

This thesis explored the lived experience of Muslim students in schools in Christchurch, New Zealand; how they made sense of their experience and the meanings they placed on it, and their coping strategies. Its central argument is that young Western Muslims engage in a highly personalized version of everyday ijtihad in managing their social affairs within their everyday encounters of a secularised environment. For this group of participants, their acts of sensemaking helped them construct meaning frameworks in building their social identity. As the findings of this study suggest, this identity is constantly shaped and re-shaped along dimensions of time and space. It is a result of individual awakenings that find synergy within their own critical reasoning, a form of everyday ijtihad. The use of an adapted IPA method influenced by Ramadanian philosophies (IPA-R) was necessary to enable the exploration of the participants’ Muslim consciousness while the small sample size made it possible to study the personal experiences of a group of young Muslims from an idiographic approach. A limitation of this study stemmed from the constraints of member-checking that was substituted with the peer-review process. This study conceptualized that understanding young Muslims’ sensemaking and meaning-making is part of inclusive practice and within the broader context, suggests that the IPA-R approach is a solution to the ‘textbook Muslims’ approach