High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt - John Baines
Egypt as physical, social, and represented landscape
High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt - John Baines
John Baines [+]
University of Oxford
John Baines is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. His principal publications are on Egyptian art, literature, and religion. He has also studied the role of writing in Egyptian society and high-cultural legitimations and concerns of elites. His publications include Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (2007) and The Disappearance of Writing Systems (co-edited with John Bennet and Stephen Houston, Equinox, 2008).
Description
This chapter presents the landscape as a phenomenon and the ways in which it can be approached and applied to specific cultures. It further presents different aspects of the Egyptian environment as it is now and as it was in antiquity, as well as significant modifications of that environment. Moreover, the cosmological organization of sacred spaces and pictorial and symbolic representations of landscapes are discussed; while the concluding section recapitulates the material reviewed and offers the first stage of a synthesis that also serves as an introit to the discussion of planning in Chapter 3.