Paper short abstract:

This paper suggests a processual understanding of bowls and dishes from ancient Egypt carrying Nile imagery. The theoretical interpretation is supplemented by considerations of the ancient Egyptian image-concept of seshemu, which conceptualises images as a 'leader' or 'guide' of what they depict.

Paper long abstract:

Ancient Egyptian objects with depictions of Nile landscapes exemplify a number of parallels between image-making and world-making. This is particularly true of the so-called 'fish dishes' and 'marsh-bowls' from the Middle and Late Bronze Age which can be understood as presenting a processual coming into being of the fertile environment of the Nile. An emphasis on flux and movement belying the apparently fixed and brittle nature of the objects is evident from the conceptual affordances offered by the materials, manufacture, shapes and decoration of the objects, as well as the likely practices in which they were involved. Drawing inspiration from a suggestion by Alberti (2012: 21), such relational connections to the natural world and its coming into being are 'not an analogue or metaphor, but are themselves enactments of it'.

To supplement such a theoretical reading, the paper further draws on the ancient Egyptian image-concept of seshemu, from a root meaning 'to lead' or 'to guide'. The encounter between the modern notion of matter as processual and the ancient concept of (ritual) images as 'leading' or 'guiding' what they depict yields insights of potential interest beyond the ancient Egyptian material.