“Lights of Eternity”. A Plenumsvortrag by Yossra Ibrahim

A Blogpost by David Usieto Cabrera

On June 24^th, 2021, the members of the GRK 1876 "Early Concepts of Humans and Nature" met once more for an online plenary session. During this meeting, the Egyptologist Yossra Ibrahim presented her dissertation project entitled:” Lights of Eternity – Investigating Concepts, Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Egyptian Celestial Diagrams”, which started in October 2020. 

Figure 1. Yossra’s Doctoral Project.

Her study aims to investigate and assert the different versions of the celestial diagram, as well as to highlight the various foreign influences on these sets of illustrations that date from different periods of time and space, including on a larger scale from the New Kingdom up to the Graeco-Roman period. As Yossra clearly defined, scenes that depict astronomical elements (celestial diagrams) are considered a unique source of information to build the concept of astronomy in her dissertation. As Figure 2 shows, these scenes can vary in shape and form as well as in locations, such as inside  coffin lids, water clocks, and religious buildings (i.e. temples). 

Moving forward, Yossra’s study aims to highlight the evolution of ideas and the reception and introduction of the zodiac and foreign concepts. The dissertation aims to offer an insight into the understanding of the celestial diagrams and how they developed over time. 

 

She uses diverse iconographic material to investigate, under a comparative multilateral approach on case-by-case basis to glean the similarities, and to examine what is common and what has changed. 

Figure 2. Tomb of Ramses V/VI. (photo from Theban Mapping Project)

Regarding concepts that are relevant for her study, she is focusing on different concepts such as immortality and perpetual rebirth, but overall, as in the case of the diagrams, she focuses on the iconographic perspective and hence,  not relying so much on textual sources. She argued that the textual sources have been deeply analyzed in the past and as a result, the iconographic perspective has either been forgotten or neglected. 

The discussion that followed the presentation was very rich and productive in terms of expectations and future work. As an example, she mentioned that the tradition of depicting these stars, ceilings and other celestial objects is kind of a magical way of depicting the deceased to the final resting place. This specific question is rather problematic, and as Yossra specifies, it varies greatly throughout time and space (i.e. a specific tradition of depicting stars during the Ramesside period). As a whole, her exciting project awaits further results that will be determinant for the study of celestial diagrams in ancient Egypt. 

Figure 3. Discussion about Yossra’s studies.