thatlittleegyptologist:

Asking a lot there, anon. It’s an incredibly complex topic, and one I cannot even begin to delve into in a tumblr ask. 

‘Stereotype’ implies that there was a set way they viewed their neighbours and how they behaved. We cannot know if they truly had one. What we do know is that they had a ‘set’ way of depicting various neighbouring civilisations, but this is not inconsistent with their very archaic art style. We can’t say that it’s a ‘stereotype’ as everyone in Egyptian art looks the ‘same’. It’s an archetype, not a stereotype. And to wit you should never take Egyptian art at face value anyway. It’s highly idealised, standardised, and propagandistic. Anyway, here’s how the Egyptians showed themselves next to neighbouring civilisations:

This is a facsimile of a wall mural from the tomb of Seti I. It’s been impossible to find the real one in any decent quality due to the inability to take photos within tombs, but here’s a crappy quality one:

and a less crappy, but only of two figures one:

In the original image, from right to left: An Egyptian (Reth), an Asiatic (Aamu), a Nubian (Nehesu), and a Libyan (Tjehemu). Don’t take the skin colours from the facsimile as ‘truth’; just look at the Egyptian renderings and not the painting of a white guy from the early 1900s. (if anyone messages me on ‘race’ I will delete the ask). 

Outside of these depictions of neighbouring civilisations, often having these civilisations bring ‘tribute’ to the Egyptians (remember these images are propaganda and also images contain divine power to come to life so they’re not going to depict their ‘enemies’ as anything other than subjugated and pliant), we have no idea how the Egyptians truly viewed their neighbours in any concrete form. Sometimes they’re enemies, sometimes they’re trade partners. Depends on when in the 6000 years of history you’re asking about. 

I’d suggest reading Barry Kemp’s Anatomy of a Civilisation for a better understanding of how the Egyptians saw themselves within their own world, and how they related to the outside world.

As for stereotypes of Egyptians themselves, again this is very difficult to answer, as it requires extensive written culture from the people at large in order to ascertain what the ‘stereotype’ would be. We simply don’t have this. 

What we do have is a document known as The Teachings of Khety (P.Sallier II & P.Anastasi VII), or more commonly known as the Satire on the Trades (read the University College London translation here). The problem I have here is that in order to explain why this document is both useful and ultimately not useful to the idea of ‘stereotypes’ requires me to explain the nature of ‘wisdom texts’ and also the situational context, and ideals that this specific text exudes, which makes everything in it both an accurate display of how Egyptians viewed trades other than that of a scribe, and also a horrendously biased piece reflecting the superiority complex of those who were literate. There’s a lot of background and linguistic context that I simply cannot cover in a tumblr ask that would be sufficient enough to explain this text. All I can do is link this article from AncientHistory.eu (which I’m not a huge fan of to be honest because it focuses too much on ‘biblical’ aspects/connections and not y’know…situating the text in an Egyptian context, but does give some decent background even if it is rudimentary), and then link this article ‘Notes on the Satire of the Trades’, which is only fun if you like linguistics, but does go to show the difficulties in merely rendering a meaningful and true reflection on Egyptian intent in translation. 

Basically that text describes ‘stereotypes’, but from an extremely biased viewpoint, that may or may not be a satirical take on the hubris of the literate within Egyptian society, which we’re still trying to work out because the rendering of the grammar within this text is extremely difficult, and also its contents are really only reflective of the attitudes of the Middle Kingdom, even if one of the surviving, but badly corrupted, copies is from the New Kingdom, as we cannot say it is reflective of the attitudes of that period (much like how Victorian attitudes are not reflective of our own modern attitudes even if we continue to reprint the works of Dickens). Yes, that run on sentence makes perfect sense. 

It’s now gone midnight, so I’ll drop my Ko-fi link here, and run off to bed.