Iconography Of The New Kingdom Summary

The iconography of Egypt’s New Kingdom paints a distorted picture of the Nubian people. With a clear focus on demonstrating the power of the king, and by extension Egypt itself, the iconography of the period becomes propaganda for the military prowess of king and country alike. The foreign “enemies,” like the Nubians, become oversimplified to fit the role they are given in the iconography. Michele Buzon’s article, “A Bioarchaeological Perspective on Egyptian Colonialism in Nubia during the New Kingdom” aids the reader in seeing different facets of the Nubian people. Buzon’s work demonstrates the fact that the portrayal of Nubians in New Kingdom iconography is generalized with regards to race, culture, and their interactions with the Egyptian

In the previously mentioned reliefs of Egypt subduing foreign forces, the orderly Egyptian troops are illustrated as civilizing their chaotic opponents; in the Egyptian view prosperity would be brought to the foreigners as they became subject to Ma’at. It is evident in Buzon’s findings that prosperity did not always follow Egyptian rule. While those found at Tombos were under the rule of Siamun, the Egyptian Overseer of the Foreign Lands, they still had to face hardship. The population of Tombos shows that nutritional stress negatively impacted both the health of the children, who died without recovering from nutritional deficiency, and the adults, whose decreased stature indicates that their growth was adversely affected by lack of food, even with an Egyptian them to help them organize their supplies (Buzon 178). This demonstrates the fact that Egyptians did not always bring the organizational skills and order that they prided themselves on bringing to other cultures. The warlike nature displayed in much of the iconography of the New Kingdom also portrays the interactions between Egyptians and other cultures, such as the Nubians, as being mainly hostile. Depictions of this nature relate back to the idea of the Egyptian king as the destroyer of foreign enemies so prevalent in the New Kingdom. The skeletal evidence at Tombos shows that the two peoples did not always interact with aggression. Tombos was populated by a mixture of Nubians and Egyptians (Buzon 176) showing that the two peoples were able to live peacefully alongside each other. Further supporting this is the fact that the remains of Tombos had low rates of cranial damage and “parry” fractures, pieces of evidence, indicating a low level of interpersonal violence among the population (Buzon