Melanie Pitkin, “Egypt in the First Intermediate Period: The History and Chronology of its False Doors and Stelae”
Melanie Pitkin, Egypt in the First Intermediate Period: The History and Chronology of its False Doors and Stelae, Golden House Publications, Middle Kingdom Studies 13, London 2023.
This volume provides a detailed study of false doors and funerary stelae from the First Intermediate Period, providing new historical and chronological insights. Five dating criteria are applied to 677 false doors and stelae. The criteria include: (1) the hybrid false door stela; (2) the representation of the wedjat eyes; (3) mutilated and suppressed hieroglyphs; (4) the representation of the owner holding a bow and arrows and, (5) the writing of the ‘revered one’ ( jmAxw and its variants). The study looks at Egypt during the First Intermediate Period on a national level, rather than as a limited group of nomes, showing how particular styles, iconographic peculiarities and political and religious ideologies ‘travelled’ between nomes or, perhaps, remained entirely local. The study also establishes a relative dating typology for particular groupings of false doors and stelae, providing a new chronological benchmark for dating other objects and events of the time.
