Joshua Aaron Roberson
• Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania '07, Egyptology, concentration in Egyptian language, minor program in Mesopotamian languages
• Associate professor of Art History (Egypt, Egyptian language) and Assistant Director, Institute of Egyptian Art & Archaeology, University of Memphis
• President, Tennessee chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt
• Current research project affiliations: University of Memphis mission to Karnak temple, Great Hypostyle Hall project; German Archaeological Institute excavations on Elephantine island; French Research Institute excavations at Karnak temple
Address: Dr. Joshua Roberson
The University of Memphis,
202 Art & Communication Bldg.
3715 Central Ave.,
Memphis, TN 38052 USA
• Associate professor of Art History (Egypt, Egyptian language) and Assistant Director, Institute of Egyptian Art & Archaeology, University of Memphis
• President, Tennessee chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt
• Current research project affiliations: University of Memphis mission to Karnak temple, Great Hypostyle Hall project; German Archaeological Institute excavations on Elephantine island; French Research Institute excavations at Karnak temple
Address: Dr. Joshua Roberson
The University of Memphis,
202 Art & Communication Bldg.
3715 Central Ave.,
Memphis, TN 38052 USA
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Books by Joshua Aaron Roberson
ILONA ZSOLNAY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. ILONA ZSOLNAY
SECTION ONE: EXPERIENTIAL WRITING
CHAPTER ONE. TEXT IN CONTEXT: RELIEF AND HIERARCHY ON PIEDRAS NEGRAS PANEL 3
CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHAPTER TWO. THE ICONICITY OF THE VERTICAL: HIEROGLYPHIC ENCODING
AND THE AKHET IN ROYAL BURIAL CHAMBERS OF EGYPT’S NEW KINGDOM
JOSHUA ROBERSON, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
CHAPTER THREE. FOR THE EYE ONLY: ASPECTS OF THE VISUAL TEXT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
ANDRÉAS STAUDER, ÉCOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS SCIENCES ET LETTRES (UMR 8167 AOROC)
SECTION TWO: CLASSIFIERS
CHAPTER FOUR. ANIMAL CATEGORIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
GEBHARD SELZ, VIENNA UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER FIVE. WAS THERE AN “ANIMAL” IN ANCIENT EGYPT? STUDIES IN LEXICA AND CLASSIFIER SYSTEMS, WITH A GLIMPSE TOWARDS SUMER
ORLY GOLDWASSER, HEBREW UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER SIX. THE COGNITIVE ROLE OF SEMANTIC CLASSIFIERS IN MODERN CHINESE WRITING
AS REFLECTED IN NEOGRAM CREATION
ZEV HANDEL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
CHAPTER SEVEN. ICONIC AND GRAMMATICAL DIMENSIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSIFIERS
DIANE BRENTARI, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
SECTION THREE: SCRIPT EVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER EIGHT. ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN SCRIPTS IN BRONZE AGE ASIA MINOR
ELISABETH RIEKEN AND ILYA YAKUBOVICH, UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG
CHAPTER NINE. ICONICITY, COMPOSITION AND SEMANTICS:
A STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF PICTURES IN AN EARLY WRITING ENVIRONMENT
HOLLY PITTMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
CHAPTER TEN. ABa AND ABb, A MEMOIR, OR THE CURIOUS CASE OF NIĜIN/NANŠE SIGNIFICATION
ILONA ZSOLNAY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SECTION FOUR: RESPONSE
HAICHENG WANG, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
Book Chapters by Joshua Aaron Roberson
CONTENTS: Introduction. The Book of the Dead. Etiological Compositions (The Litany of the Sun. Book of the Heavenly Cow. Book of Nut). The Cosmographic Books of the Underworld and Sky. The Twelve-hour Cosmographic Tradition (Book of Amduat. Spell of Twelve Caves. Book of Gates. Books of the Night and Day). The Bipartite Cosmographic Tradition (Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity. Book of Caverns. Books of the Earth. The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques). Bibliography + Tables of Occurrences in the Valley of the Kings (Figs. 21.1–8).
Articles by Joshua Aaron Roberson
horizontality, and verticality were employed to draw focus to important moments of transition during the sun’s mythological voyage through the divine world. These scenes of transition functioned as integral elements in what may be termed a “hyper-logogram,” which I define here as a unified architectural-decorative program, within which the walls and ceiling were intended to be read in cyclical fashion—west to east, and east to west,
according to the internal directionality of the monument—as an elaborate, three-dimensional expression of the akhet-concept.
added to the third edition of J. Allen’s Middle Egyptian teaching grammar. This article offers a critical re-examination of the premises, supporting evidence, and logic employed in Werning’s argument for the reading of the head and dagger signs as dp. In addition, it introduces new primary evidence, ranging in date from the Middle Kingdom through the Ramesside era, which provides additional support for the traditional reading of the D1 and T8 ideograms as tp.
Les fouilles récentes dans le temple de Ptah bâti par Thoutmosis III à Karnak confirment l’existence d’un édifice antérieur daté de la fin de la Deuxième Période intermédiaire ou du début de la XVIIIe dynastie. L’analyse des vestiges en briques, à la fois très détériorés et difficiles d’accès découverts sous le temple, révèle un édifice antérieur en brique composé de trois salles mais dont l’orientation diffère de celle du temple thoutmoside. La composition tripartite est toutefois comparable au temple en pierre, analogie qui permet de proposer que le temple antérieur ait pu, dès l’origine, avoir les mêmes fonctions que son successeur : un sanctuaire consacré à Ptah et à Hathor et un lieu d’accueil lors des sorties processionnelles d’Amon.
ILONA ZSOLNAY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. ILONA ZSOLNAY
SECTION ONE: EXPERIENTIAL WRITING
CHAPTER ONE. TEXT IN CONTEXT: RELIEF AND HIERARCHY ON PIEDRAS NEGRAS PANEL 3
CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHAPTER TWO. THE ICONICITY OF THE VERTICAL: HIEROGLYPHIC ENCODING
AND THE AKHET IN ROYAL BURIAL CHAMBERS OF EGYPT’S NEW KINGDOM
JOSHUA ROBERSON, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
CHAPTER THREE. FOR THE EYE ONLY: ASPECTS OF THE VISUAL TEXT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
ANDRÉAS STAUDER, ÉCOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS SCIENCES ET LETTRES (UMR 8167 AOROC)
SECTION TWO: CLASSIFIERS
CHAPTER FOUR. ANIMAL CATEGORIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
GEBHARD SELZ, VIENNA UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER FIVE. WAS THERE AN “ANIMAL” IN ANCIENT EGYPT? STUDIES IN LEXICA AND CLASSIFIER SYSTEMS, WITH A GLIMPSE TOWARDS SUMER
ORLY GOLDWASSER, HEBREW UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER SIX. THE COGNITIVE ROLE OF SEMANTIC CLASSIFIERS IN MODERN CHINESE WRITING
AS REFLECTED IN NEOGRAM CREATION
ZEV HANDEL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
CHAPTER SEVEN. ICONIC AND GRAMMATICAL DIMENSIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSIFIERS
DIANE BRENTARI, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
SECTION THREE: SCRIPT EVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER EIGHT. ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN SCRIPTS IN BRONZE AGE ASIA MINOR
ELISABETH RIEKEN AND ILYA YAKUBOVICH, UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG
CHAPTER NINE. ICONICITY, COMPOSITION AND SEMANTICS:
A STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF PICTURES IN AN EARLY WRITING ENVIRONMENT
HOLLY PITTMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
CHAPTER TEN. ABa AND ABb, A MEMOIR, OR THE CURIOUS CASE OF NIĜIN/NANŠE SIGNIFICATION
ILONA ZSOLNAY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SECTION FOUR: RESPONSE
HAICHENG WANG, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
CONTENTS: Introduction. The Book of the Dead. Etiological Compositions (The Litany of the Sun. Book of the Heavenly Cow. Book of Nut). The Cosmographic Books of the Underworld and Sky. The Twelve-hour Cosmographic Tradition (Book of Amduat. Spell of Twelve Caves. Book of Gates. Books of the Night and Day). The Bipartite Cosmographic Tradition (Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity. Book of Caverns. Books of the Earth. The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques). Bibliography + Tables of Occurrences in the Valley of the Kings (Figs. 21.1–8).
horizontality, and verticality were employed to draw focus to important moments of transition during the sun’s mythological voyage through the divine world. These scenes of transition functioned as integral elements in what may be termed a “hyper-logogram,” which I define here as a unified architectural-decorative program, within which the walls and ceiling were intended to be read in cyclical fashion—west to east, and east to west,
according to the internal directionality of the monument—as an elaborate, three-dimensional expression of the akhet-concept.
added to the third edition of J. Allen’s Middle Egyptian teaching grammar. This article offers a critical re-examination of the premises, supporting evidence, and logic employed in Werning’s argument for the reading of the head and dagger signs as dp. In addition, it introduces new primary evidence, ranging in date from the Middle Kingdom through the Ramesside era, which provides additional support for the traditional reading of the D1 and T8 ideograms as tp.
Les fouilles récentes dans le temple de Ptah bâti par Thoutmosis III à Karnak confirment l’existence d’un édifice antérieur daté de la fin de la Deuxième Période intermédiaire ou du début de la XVIIIe dynastie. L’analyse des vestiges en briques, à la fois très détériorés et difficiles d’accès découverts sous le temple, révèle un édifice antérieur en brique composé de trois salles mais dont l’orientation diffère de celle du temple thoutmoside. La composition tripartite est toutefois comparable au temple en pierre, analogie qui permet de proposer que le temple antérieur ait pu, dès l’origine, avoir les mêmes fonctions que son successeur : un sanctuaire consacré à Ptah et à Hathor et un lieu d’accueil lors des sorties processionnelles d’Amon.
two copies of the cosmological treatise known to modern scholarship as the Book of the Night. Both versions of the book in KV9 include a cryptographic annotation to the twelfth hour, which is unique to that tomb. This annotation accompanies a file of jackals, the “bas of the westerners,” who tow the solar barque through the Underworld, toward the moment of sunrise. The content of this “Jackal Hymn” overlaps partially with cryptographic annotations to the baboon-, ibis-, and ram-headed bas of the east, north, and south, found in the Book of the Day. The present study offers a new translation and analysis of the Jackal Hymn, discarding numerous readings proposed in earlier studies, which had been based upon the phantom “principle” of acrophony, while taking into consideration orthographic, grammatical, and thematic parallels from the broader cosmological corpus. A careful reading of the cryptographic signs, utilizing only well attested substitution mechanisms (e.g., reduction of weak consonants), demonstrates clearly that the two versions of the text agree in every major respect and that divergences presumed in earlier studies are largely illusory. In addition, analysis of the grammatical structure of the text itself and identification of its thematic divisions help to clarify the meaning of several otherwise obscure passages.
II. Case study: New translation and analysis of a short cryptographic text from the twelfth hour of the Book of the Night, discarding earlier readings based on acrophony, as proposed originally by Étienne Drioton.
The genre of texts known as the Books of the Underworld and Sky employed the cryptographic script more than other. For translators who lack familiarity with their stylistic conventions and mythological foundations, these texts can present a seemingly impenetrable façade—an impediment that has long stymied recognition of their importance alongside more well-known compositions, such as the Book of the Dead. This difficulty is due in part to a proliferation of non-standard spellings, mediated through the intrusion of contemporary (Late Egyptian) orthography into the archaizing (neo-Middle Egyptian) script and grammar, in addition to the use of individual signs, words, and longer passages written in the cryptographic script. This paper will consider rationales for the assignation of “scribal error” to such texts, given the heterogeneous character of their writing system(s). In addition, we will consider the possibility that certain texts, which survive only as fixed, monumental expressions in the “standard” Hieroglyphic script, might have been transmitted through a lost, cryptographic intermediary.
In a 1985 study, W. Barta catalogued more than one hundred and seventy apparent examples of the dependent pronouns in proclitic use. Unfortunately, many aspects of that corpus remain problematic, as K. Jansen-Winkeln (2004) has now noted. Our discussion proceeds from a thorough re-examination of all currently known instances of this unusual construction, including examples published in the past decade as well as select, unpublished occurrences. This analysis allows us to remove a number of questionable exemplars, while vindicating others as probable legitimate occurrences. In addition, the grammar and syntax of the construction are scrutinized in an effort to present a coherent picture of its diachronic development and place in the grammar of classical and post-classical (“Neo-”) Middle Egyptian.
A careful reading of the extant passages (whose cryptic orthography is fairly standard, being paralleled in the nearby “dramatic text,” and elsewhere) has revealed a number of interesting points. Five individual, narrative sections can now be identified. Somewhat surprisingly, none of these (with the exception of the tableau’s short caption) can be reconciled with any of the texts that accompany the parallel mound scene, from the tomb of Ramesses VI. One of the cenotaph texts, however, appears to contain a distinctive refrain, whose grammar and vocabulary closely resemble a passage from the tomb of Ramesses IX. Iconographic parallels with the latter also support the proposed textual identification. The second text to be examined presents a somewhat different picture. Although very little grammar has been preserved in this case, the phraseology is unambiguous, and is clearly paralleled in the Ramesses VI corpus. But while the text in question belongs to the Book of the Earth, it is associated with a separate tableau containing Aker and the solar barque, which has not been preserved in the cenotaph version.
These observations suggest the existence of an intermediate copy, from which the three extant sources were derived. In addition, the apparent variability with which these elements could be arranged argues against an interpretation of the corpus as a strictly linear, formal composition, along the lines of the Amduat or Book of Gates. The available evidence for textual transmission in the Book of the Earth instead suggests that a common pool of related Underworld scenes could have been combined in various permutations of text and image.
In the settlement the DAI continued its archaeometric project “Realities of Life” in the ancient northwestern town (section 2). Between autumn 2015 and summer 2016, two seasons of excavation and one study season dedicated to the finds were conducted. The Swiss Institute resumed the excavation of a building to the south of the sanctuary of Heqaib in the framework of its study of the New Kingdom town of the island. In the Khnum temple area work concentrated on various aspects of the late temple, its precinct and its furnishings (section 3).
In addition, several projects were conducted aimed at the study of objects and object groups. The DAI completed the investigation of the relief blocks from the New Kingdom temple of Khnum (section 4).
During the clearance of debris a stela of Senwosret III was found (section 5). The study of the decoration of the Greco-Roman temples of Elephantine was continued (section 6). The Swiss Institute continued the conservation and rebuilding of the temple of Osiris Nesmeti (section 7). In cooperation with the IFAO the DAI conducted a project on the context and objects of the early periods of the history of Elephantine through functional settlement analysis (section 8) and a project on flint objects
and their functional analysis (section 9).
In addition the DAI, in cooperation with the Aswan inspectorate and the Nubian Museum, made major efforts this season to improve the relationship between the archaeologists and the inhabitants of the
area of Aswan and to provide training for our local colleagues in archaeological fieldwork and public relations (section 10–11).
Handed in to the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt for publication in ASAE.