Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

The human body is both the physical form inhabited by an individual “self” and the medium through which an individual engages with society. Hence the body both shapes and is shaped by an individual’s social roles. In contrast to the cognate fields of archaeology, anthropology, and classics, there has been little explicit discussion or theorization of the body in Egyptology. Some recent works, discussed here, constitute an exception to this trend, but there is much more scope for exploring ancient Egyptian culture through the body, especially as evidenced in works of art and pictorial representation.