Description
Immortality in ancient Egypt was intimately connected to remembrance, which is here seen as a memory or reference to the past, real or fictional, through which individuals were able to overcome death. Both immortality and remembrance were dependent on the living, who were expected to visit the tomb. As such, this paper considers the design of the tomb as crucial to the experience of its visitors and, therefore, to the way the deceased was memorialized and remembered by the living.This paper investigates how individual and collective memories regarding deceased individuals were shaped by the physical space of their tombs, or “houses of eternity.” Focusing on a few case-studies of the 3rd millennium BCE, this paper foregrounds the importance of physical and visual aids in the crafting of memory and remembrance, considering both the individual agency of the tomb owner in designing and building the tomb as a monument to his/her memory, and the importance of the experience of the tomb visitor as an agent in perpetuating the memory of the deceased.
To do so, it uses analytical approaches from the disciplines of science and cultural communication, particularly from the subfields of narrative models and techniques, public engagement, and neuromarketing. These approaches offer a deeper understanding of how the brain is affected by visual and cognitive messages passed on through material culture, and how the audience was engaged by different narrative techniques. The intersection between these disciplines provides a promising understanding of the relationship(s) maintained between tomb owner(s) and visitor(s) through the tomb space, while also highlighting how gender, class, and lived experience could have influenced the ways in which memory and meaning were crafted through, and within, the tomb.
| Period | 17 Nov 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event title | ASOR Annual Meeting 2022 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Boston, United States, MassachusettsShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |