In earlier taxonomy of ancient graffiti, terms like intrusive texts or secondary, unplanned, even parasitic texts may be encountered. More recently, ancient graffiti have been better understood as a rich and diverse cultural practice of...
moreIn earlier taxonomy of ancient graffiti, terms like intrusive texts or secondary, unplanned, even parasitic texts may be encountered. More recently, ancient graffiti have been better understood as a rich and diverse cultural practice of the ancient world, which in most instances lacked the illicit character typical for more modern graffiti productions. One of the key approaches to the ancient graffiti consists of site- and time-specific and culturally sensitive contextualisation of the texts. A specific graffiti category, visitors’ graffiti of ancient Egypt, was left on walls of numerous monuments, chiefly temples and tombs, by generations of visitors. The visitors’ graffiti most probably flourished mainly in the New Kingdom, and specifically in the Eighteenth Dynasty. To our present knowledge, they appear in the cemeteries of Memphis, Thebes, Assiut and Beni Hasan.
In some instances the texts were added centuries, even more than a thousand years, after the host monument had been built. Some specific aspects of the collective mentality and culture of New Kingdom Egypt might have been articulated in the graffiti. It seems likely that inscriptions on monuments of a relatively distant past could have expressed elements of historical awareness, literate culture and religious concern, and that the elements in question could have been adroitly mixed in graffiti to answer requirements of self-fashioning of Egyptian elites.
Located between Giza and Maidum in Egypt, there are four major monuments with visitors’ graffiti. They are the pyramid complex of Sahure in Abusir, the Step pyramid complex of Djoser in Northern Saqqara, the pyramid complex of Senwosret III in Dahshur and the pyramid complex of Sneferu in Maidum. The graffiti texts in the pyramid complexes are often dated to the reign of Thutmose III or the joint reign of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut.
The graffiti found in the four locations convey messages with a wide scope, concerning writers, as well as their audiences. The texts are also rather suggestive of contemporary understanding of the space they were produced within. We can identify recognition both of sacred spaces, and of historical significance of the visited building, specifically in the graffiti within the complex of Senwosret III. Since the visitors had frequently recognised the character of the building – a sacred space with a funerary significance, they were likely capable of decoding some of the signs that surrounded them.
The graffiti were apparently a trace of direct interaction with a recognised monument of the past, moreover with a monument, which contained a wealth of symbolic messages concerning religion and kingship. Yet graffiti are also part of an edifice, and the graffiti location is an important source for the archaeological history of the building. The Memphite graffiti analysis addresses mainly the issues of space appropriation, while recognising also the questions of group identity of the graffiti writers, temporality and manuscript culture, especially as they appear to have been extremely closely related in the visitors’ graffiti.
