For the Living and the Dead: The Funerary Laments of Upper Egypt, Ancient and Modern

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. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface Part I. The Ethnography of Lament: An Introduction to the cidid 1. 'They go down barefoot like us, the women scorned': The Laments of Kom Lolah 2. Strange Contexts: The Laments of Luxor and Edfu 3. Life in the Women's Domain 4. Contemporary Lament Performace: The Funeral and the Mourning Part II. How Laments Acquire Meaning 5. The Hermeneutics of Lament: Signs, Symbols and Referents 6. The Performance of Emotion: Rhetoric, Authenticity and the Boundaries of Grief 7. The Contemporary Laments: Concordance and Thematic Analysis Part III. The Cosmology of the Afterlife 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 Appendices Notes Bibliography Index