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For the Living and the Dead
The Funerary Laments of Upper Egypt, Ancient and Modern
For the Living and the Dead
The Funerary Laments of Upper Egypt, Ancient and Modern
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Description
The funeral laments of Upper Egypt have an elaborate and ancient history stretching back more than 5,000 years. Even the chants of modern-day lamenters, echo the words of their ancestors. Yet this ancient tradition is now under threat from social and political change. The laments - known as idid in Arabic - are composed orally in performance. Elizabeth Wickett explores the performance, motifs and meanings of the laments and reveals their relation to myth, religion, cosmology and the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. The author was given unique access to this fast disappearing tradition, and her book provides a unique cultural archive that will interest Egyptologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and all those with an interest in the language and culture of the Middle East.
Table of Contents
Part 1
1. The laments of Kom Lolah
2. Strange contexts: the laments of Luxor
3. Life in the women's domain
4. Contemporary lament performance:the funeral and the mourning
Part 2
5. The hermeneutics of lament: signs, symbols and referents
6. The performance of emotion: rhetoric, auhtenticity and the boundaries of grief
7. The Contemporary Laments: concordance and thematic analysis
Part 3
8. Ancient Egyptian Lamentation: kinesics, performance and the semiotics of gesture
9. The Pyramid Texts: orality, structure and cosmology
10. Cosmologies of Lament: from ancient to modern
11. Towards a Cosmology of the Afterlife: continuities and transformations
Appendix A: Comparative Index of Lament Themes
Appendix B: Detailed Concordance of Ancient Lament Themes
Index
Product details
| Published | Mar 30 2010 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 328 |
| ISBN | 9780857712684 |
| Imprint | I.B. Tauris |
| Illustrations | 59 bw integrated |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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