A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

202 Stuart Tyson Smith

Foriegners

Akhenaton

Meryra

Egyptians

(Procession/Onlookers)

Egyptians Nubian Libyan Nubian Asiatics

Asiatic Asiatic Asiatic

Northern Bound Enemies

(Libyan & Asiatics)

Southern Bound Enemies

(Nubians)

Figure 13.4 Foreigners and ethnic stereotypes at the rewards ceremony of Meryra II from his
tomb at Amarna. After plates XXXIII to XXXV in Davies (1905). Courtesy of the Egypt Explo-
ration Society.

toposlook on (Figure 13.4; N. Davies 1905, Pls. XXXIII–XXXV). Hekanefer and the
other princes appeared at such ceremonies as living icons for “Wretched Kush,” present-
ing and/or abasing themselves in front of the pharaoh before all the assembled nobles,
and in a procession of exotic peoples and goods to the pharaoh viewed by large numbers
of people.

Foodways at New Kingdom Askut

Hekanefer was a member of the Nubian elite, but how did ordinary Egyptians and
Nubians express their ethnic identity? At first glance, Egyptian colonists in Nubia
apparently forged a society identical to the Egyptian core, unlike the northern empire
in Syro-Palestine (Trigger 1976; Kemp 1978; Adams 1984; Higginbotham 2000). The
fortress at Askut is no exception. Built in ca. 1850BC, this small fortified settlement was
occupied continuously through the initial period of Egyptian colonization in the Middle
Kingdom (ca. 1850–1680BC), through Nubian control in the Second Intermediate