11 Of Gods and Tombs – the Aegyptiaca in Dresden as a reflection of Ancient Egyptian culture Friederike Seyfried The enduring fascination of Ancient Egyptian culture is ultimately the reason why the Dresden Skulpturensammlung (Sculpture Collection) has owned a sumptuous collection of art objects and artefacts from this early advanced civilisation since the 18th century. The long and multifaceted history of the collection of Aegyptiaca and the phenomenon of Egyptomania are expertly addressed in the corresponding essays in this volume. In addition, the catalogue section provides a meticulously researched and Egyptologically sound survey of the Dresden collection, enabling readers to immerse themselves in the diverse array of ancient Egyptian objects in the Skulpturensammlung. Through their detailed descriptions and explanations, the catalogue contributions provide key insights into the cultural contexts of the objects; this not only situates them both historically and chronologically, it also helps us to understand their cultural purpose. The aim of the present contribution, therefore, is to supplement these essays by broadly outlining selected aspects of Ancient Egyptian culture and highlighting, as it were, which of its cultural facets are best reflected by the Dresden holdings. It should be emphasised, however, that a comprehensive survey cannot be presented in just a few pages, and interested readers are referred to the wide-ranging writings of expert colleagues in groundbreaking monographs on the history of Ancient Egyptian art, culture and religion.1 The material remains of Ancient Egyptian culture are much better preserved than those of other cultural regions, above all due to the arid climate in Egypt’s river oasis (fig. 1); these valuable resources provide a vast amount of information about a cultural history that spanned more than 4,000 years, beginning with the Early Dynastic Period and the formation of the Pharaonic state (c. 2900 BCE) and ending in Late Antiquity (5th century CE). An examination of the surviving cultural assets, however, reveals an imbalance in the state of preservation and the quantitative distribution of these artefacts across the different cultural realms: in the field of architecture, for example, monumental temples and tombs made of stone are extremely well preserved (fig. 2), whereas it is relatively rare for their likewise attested equivalent buildings made of mud bricks to have survived. The same applies for residential buildings and palaces, whose stone components have survived better than the bulk of the brick walls, which are also often buried beneath modern settlements or covered by fertile farmland. Therefore, by comparison, temples and tombs now have a greater presence than the Ancient Egyptian settlement structure. The asymmetry becomes even more apparent with regard to the respective original furnishings. In temples, it is almost exclusively the decorated walls and monumental stone sculptures that have been preserved or uncovered, with the exception of depot finds of numerous votive offerings and figurines (cf. cat. nos. 3, 6–9) or foundation deposits. The preservation of furnishings in settlements is also dependent upon the local geomorphological environment. It is a completely different situation, however, with the furnishings of tombs: here, the abundance of remains of Ancient Egyptian material culture that have been handed down to us is revealed and seems to compensate, as it were, for what has not survived in the temples and settlements. Because apart from the utensils that were produced specifically for the purposes of interment and mummification – such as the embalming materials, the coffins (fig. 3, cat. no. 21) and canopic jars (cat. no. 26), the shabtis (cat. no. 28) and the Books of the Dead written on papyrus (cat. no. 29) – most of the grave goods refer to earthly life, and can therefore be regarded as authentic evidence and a reflection of contemporary cultural life (cat. nos. 30 b, 31–34). This observation must be qualified, however, by the fact that the majority of the grave goods almost exclusively reflect the living environment of the social Fig. 1 Hervé Champollion, West bank of the Nile below Esna (Upper Egypt), 2006
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