Abstract

During the New Kingdom, Egyptian pharaohs waged wars against their neighbours in the Levant and Nubia, while also defending their borders against incursions by Libyan and Sea Peoples marauders. Unsurprisingly, the number of battle representations on temple walls is particularly high in this period. At the same time, autobiographies of military personnel in private tombs and royal inscriptions on stelae and temple walls vividly describe experiences of battle from different perspectives. Although both the visual and textual representations of war and battle have been extensively studied in terms of composition, motifs, historicity, and ideology, they have so far not been examined from a sensorial perspective. In attempting this, one should bear in mind that the sensory perspective conveyed by these representations is mediated by their creators.

In this lecture, I will explore ancient Egyptian battle representations from a multisensory perspective, first by identifying the sights, sounds, and smells of war as attested in these sources, and then by reflecting on how they depict and distort reality. The sights of carnage and the humiliation of enemies and captives; the sounds of Egyptian trumpets, roaring armies, galloping horses, and grieving women and children taken as prisoners of war; the smells of blood, dead bodies, severed hands and phalli piled as trophies, and burned rebels and captives, all work together to produce a synaesthetic experience that differentiates between victors and the defeated.