Uroš Matić

University of Innsbruck | UIBK · Institute for Ancient History and Ancient Oriental Studies

This paper investigates different body techniques for carrying heavy loads by individuals buried at Abu Fatima, a Nubian Bronze Age cemetery in Sudan. Drawing on iconographic evidence from ancient Egypt and Nubia, as well as African and other ethnographic records, the paper aims to understand gendered patterns behind load-carrying practices and the...

Not much is known about the forces of the Hyksos, 15th Dynasty rulers of the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt. This was a time when Egypt and Nubia were divided between several competing royal houses and corresponding dynasties, e.g., the 14th and 15th Dynasty in Lower Egypt, 16th and 17th Dynasty in Upper Egypt, as well as the Kushite kingdom i...

The mummified remains of ancient Egyptian king Seqenenre Tao (c. 1560 BCE) reveal traces of trauma caused by violence. Several blows to his head produced cuts, allowing scholars to identify the weapons of the attackers. Considering that among these weapons were Levantine Middle Bronze Age II chisel-shaped, socketed axes, and that Middle Bronze Age...

The Ancient Egyptian Tale of the Doomed Prince allows us to add another level of under- standing to the New Kingdom Egyptian imperialist ideology. The superior masculinity of the Egyptian prince in this tale is contrasted to inferior masculinities of Syrian princes, and has parallels in other contemporary texts thematizing New Kingdom Egyptian mili...

This paper analyzes the body poses of victorious and defeated warriors depicted in Late Bronze Age (LBA) Aegean iconography. It argues that early LBA Aegean depic-tions of victorious swordsmen defeating enemies represent an appropriation of the Egyp-tian motif of a 'pharaoh smiting his enemies'. Moreover, through a comparative analysis of the depic...

Gender archaeology and historical studies of gender are in a unique position to explore the diverse ways in which social relations between sexes/genders produce varying notions of sexual difference. While acknowledging that sex is a natural phenomenon and gender is a cultural construct, archaeology and historical studies can sometimes overlook crit...

This volume challenges the status quo by addressing a selection of intensely discussed themes in contemporary archaeological practice from a gender perspective. It aims to demonstrate that gender is intrinsic to archaeology and that gender archaeology can enrich our studies, irrespective of the discipline’s possible future directions and so-called...

This chapter, and the volume that it introduces, situates gender in current archaeological debates. The central argument is that gender archaeology as a field of study is in crisis, although some research communities are better positioned than others. This predicament not only affects the relevance and credibility of the field before the larger arc...

Archaeology has long studied violence in the past through a modern and sexist lens. Current debates in gender archaeology are increasingly clarifying on these issues, by both studying the complex entanglements of violence and gender in various prehistoric and historic societies, and raising awareness on gendered violence within the field and ancien...

Ancient Egyptian ideas about sex changed over time in close relation to changes in gender power relations. The comprehensive overview of textual and iconographic sources in this chapter indicates that discourses on sex did exist. Desirable bodies were either depicted or described in poetry. Pleasures could be sought in different sexscapes such as e...

Building on the ongoing debates surrounding the archaeological application of New Materialism, posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and the anthropological ontological turn, this paper examines sexual interactions between deities and humans, as well as among deities represented as statues in ancient Egypt. Acknowledging the...

This article presents the results of five seasons of excavation and study at the townsite of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt. The work, carried out by the Cairo branch of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI), has concentrated on remains of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. From the latter, an exceptionally well-preserved building contai...

Considering that mythology and storytelling are an integral part of the human experience, in this paper we will take a look at contemporary iterations of certain archetypal myths. While the authors do not espouse the idea that ?science fiction is the mythology of modern society?, we believe that there is something to be said about popular culture a...

This paper argues that what advocates of the ontological turn refer to as the question of ontology cannot be understood without taking ideology into account. Enki Bilal's comic book The Nikopol Trilogy (1980-1992) and the movie Immortel, ad vitam (2004), juxtaposed with ancient Egyptian sources, are used as a demonstration. The issue of appropriate...

In scholarly backroom discussions, archaeologies of the Balkans are often labelled as conservative and ignorant of gender studies, their impact on archaeology, and how it deals with gender in the past. Indeed, androcentrism and heteronormativity are commonly found in archaeological interpretations throughout the Balkans, but not there alone. In thi...

Ongoing debates on the third science revolution seem to provide a heavy dose of optimism that issues such as identity can now finally be resolved using stable isotope analyses and ancient DNA. Such an understanding of iden- tity falls into the essentialist trap, similar to the one of racial anthropology and culture historical archaeology, and more...

Special issue on postcolonial theory in Egyptology

This paper investigates the use of postcolonial theory in Egyptology and Sudan archaeology. Theories and concepts developed out of examinations of specific historical colonial encounters were often applied by Egyptologists with little or no critical historical contextualization. Consequently, when using postcolonial theories and concepts some Egypt...

This piece reviews the emerging debate over the ‘decolonization’ of Egyptology and thus sets the frame for the special issue on ‘Postcolonial Theory in Egyptology: Applications, Debates and Potentials’. The authors contextualize the theme against the backdrop of the status quo of the international relations of archaeology in Egypt and Sudan, before...

The 'archaeology of the body' explores human remains not only as carriers of information on nutrition, mobility, or biological kinship, but also as a source for research into the role of the body in shaping social relations in ancient societies. Corporeal aesthetics and ideals can be understood as analytical concepts, as they played a decisive role...

Tell el-Dab c a, ancient Avaris (eastern Delta in Egypt), was initially settled in the late 11 th-early 12 th dynasty, when a planned settlement was built in area F/I. This settlement was abandoned two times. The first abandonment was followed by the return of the same people, or the people of the same social background and class, to the existing p...

This paper examines depictions of male nudity, flaccid penises and phalli (erect penises) attested in the representations of boys, defeated warriors and figures of authority in the Late Bronze Age Aegean (ca. 1700–1050 BCE). It is argued that, similarly to ancient Egyptian iconography, the flaccid penis, as a sign of weakness and the lack of develo...

This paper discusses the use of the terms ʿȝ and wr for the designation of enemy leaders in ancient Egyptian texts of the Ramesside period. Focus is placed on the choice of the term for leaders of the various Sea Peoples’ groups in the texts of the Medinet Habu temple of Ramesses III. The leaders of the Sea Peoples and Shasu are referred to as ʿȝ.w...

Book contribution, to a volume addressing gender stereotypes in archaeology, edited by Laura Coltofean-Arizancu, Bisserka Gaydarska & Uroš Matić. the full book is available here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/gender-stereotypes-in-archaeology

This paper analyses the change in the metanarrative of the Alien franchise initiated by the movie Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and continued with a series of three sequels. The franchise was revived in 2012 with the prequel Prometheus. The story of the first four movies is set at the end of the anthropocene, and it deals with the horror...

Were men the only hunters and producers of tools, art and innovation in prehistory? Were women the only gatherers, home-bound breeders and caregivers? Are all prehistoric female depictions mother goddesses? And do women and men have equal career chances in archaeology? To put it short, no. However, these are some of the gender stereotypes that we s...

Gender and violence intersected in ancient Egypt in many ways. In general, the ancient Egyptian gender system privileged men and the masculine. Exceptions to this were status dependent. Gendered patterns of violence are evident in cases of mistreatment of women through beating and rape. War-related royal texts used gendered language to frame enemie...

The paper examines epistemological problems behind a recent study claiming to provide a synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of a man named Nesyamun and behind racial designations in Egyptian mummy studies more generally. So far, responses in the media and academia concentrated on the ethical problems of these studies, whereas thei...

Ethnic Identities in the Land of the Pharaohs deals with ancient Egyptian concept of collective identity, various groups which inhabited the Egyptian Nile Valley and different approaches to ethnic identity in the last two hundred years of Egyptology. The aim is to present the dynamic processes of ethnogenesis of the inhabitants of the land of the p...

Ethnic Identities in the Land of the Pharaohs deals with ancient Egyptian concept of collective identity, various groups which inhabited the Egyptian Nile Valley and different approaches to ethnic identity in the last two hundred years of Egyptology. The aim is to present the dynamic processes of ethnogenesis of the inhabitants of the land of the p...

Milorad Rajčević (1890–1964), a famous Serbian traveller, adventurer, and travelogue writer, also went to Egypt in 1921 as part of his world travels. Impressions and experiences from his travels were published consecutively in Belgrade magazine Little Journal and in the form of monographs Under the African Sun (1924 and 1925) and In the Far East (1...

This paper deals with the three most important concepts of post-colonial theory (third space, hybridity and mimicry) and their epistemological potential for Egyptology. Firstly, the colonial genealogy of the culturo-historical paradigm (in Egyptology) is outlined, and is then followed by a post-colonial criticism. The three most important concepts...

gyptische Gottheiten und ars erotica: Ein Versuch der ontologischen Anthropologie erotischer Netzwerke im alten Ägypten Uroš Matić Considering the ongoing discussions on the ontological turn in anthropology and archaeology , this paper explores the various forms of erotic encounters between humans and deities in ancient Egypt. It will be argued tha...

Ongoing discussions in anthropology call for the abandoning of the representational approach of cultural constructivism, which opts for one nature or world (reality) and many worldviews or cultures (e.g. Viveiros de Castro 2015). ‘Ontological turn’ and ‘cosmological perspectivism’ instead plead for the existence of many different ontologies and man...

Diplomatic relations between the 18th-dynasty Egyptian court and the polities of the Aegean Bronze Age are gaining increasing scholarly attention. The work conducted so far on chronological synchronization has established a relatively firm base for further discussions on social relations. The role of the prestige objects arriving from the Aegean to...

Staša Babić. Metaarheologija. Ogled o uslovima znanja o prošlosti (Metaarchaeology: An Essay on the Conditions of Knowledge about the Past) (Belgrade: Clio, 2018, 188pp., ISBN 978-86-7102-596-6) - Volume 22 Issue 2 - Uroš Matić

The process of epistemological de-colonization of the historiography and archaeology of ancient Egypt and Nubia has begun unfolding only in the last two decades. It is still set in the context of descriptive disciplinary history with little reflection on and criticism of background theories and methods. As a consequence, some of the old approaches...

Two pits (L1016 and L1055) from the early New Kingdom cemetery in areas H/I and H/III at ʿEzbet Helmi, Tell el-Dabʿa (ancient Avaris), have long been identified as remains of execration rituals in which Nubians were killed. In this paper I will argue that nothing in these two pits suggests execration of Nubians. The racial attribution of the indivi...

Death and destruction of peoples and lands are the reality of war. Since the Old Kingdom the destruction of enemy landscape is attested in Egyptian written sources and the number of attestations increases in the following periods, culminating in the New Kingdom. This is also the period when the first visual attestations of enemy landscape destructi...

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/test/archaeological-method-theory/archaeologies-of-gender-and-violence.html

The change in the dress of Aegean figures in the Egyptian 18th dynasty Theban tombs from breechcloth to a kilt has long been a topic of discussion for both Aegeanists and Egyptologists. In this paper we build on the work of Paul Rehak (1996; 1998), who convincingly showed that the change in dress could not be interpreted as evidence for a change of...

The representations of Egyptian female king Hatshepsut are, as a consequence of a binary heteronormative sex/gender bind, continuously queered in scholarship. Statements on her body and identity are often made by directly equating her representations with the corporeal. This paper offers a critique of the heteronormative interpretations of Hatsheps...

This article looks at new trends in the study of sex and gender in ancient Egypt, especially as influenced by gender and queer theories. We shall consider notions of binary gender, third gender, and same sex relations, with a final look at the endurance of folk tradition in Egyptian fertility practices.

First report on the archaeological excavations in the harbor of Avaris, area R/IV, Tell el-Daba.

Violence and Landscape in New Kingdom Representations of War. Ex-curs of my Ph.D study on violent treatments of enemies and prisoners of war in New Kingdom Egypt.