Annotation
This course will provide students with a wide overview of the documentation concerning the ancient Egyptian festival during their overall historical development. A special focus will be given to the study of the Sed festival, and to its direct implications on the development of the Egyptian religion and the royal ideology. At the same time the course will teach students, in an interactive way, how to investigate, methodologically, all the necessary sources.
Students will thus finally learn how to approach a given subject but also how to enlarge the horizon of the analysis from a given phenomenon to the contiguous ones.
Texbooks:
Bleeker, C.J., Egyptian festivals. Enactment of religious Renewal, Leiden: Bril 1967.
Frankfort, H., Kingship and the Gods. A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and
Nature, Chicago: Oriental Institute 1948 (chapters 4-5).
Hornung, E., Staehelin, E., Neue Studien zum Sedfest (AH 20), Basel: Schwabe 2006.
Nuzzolo, M., The Sed-Festival of Niuserra and the Fifth Dynasty Sun Temples, in: Der Manuelian, P., Schneider. T.
(eds.), Towards a new History of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 364-388.
Spalinger, A., The Private Feast Lists of ANcient Egypt (AA 57), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1996.