2021, Olabarria, Kinship and Family in Ancient Egypt

204 ✦ Journal of Near Eastern Studies inheritance and wills, the lives of Dioskoros and his associates, and elite education. He carefully extracts hundreds of details to paint a vibrant picture of social and economic life that is fascinating and intriguing. A guiding principle of Ruffini’s argumentation, as mentioned, is that the absence of evidence is itself evidence of absence—that is, he repeatedly stresses that these documents record relatively uncommon events and insists that it is the absence of violence, law breaking, etc. that characterized most people’s lives most of the time (p. 58). One of the most obvious areas in which Ruffini pushes back against earlier scholarship is in his characterization of the late Roman peasantry. Reorienting the gaze away from a focus on the aristocracy and toward the countryside (p. 91), Ruffini de-emphasizes the oppression of the late Roman peasantry and attributes previous readings of the late Roman economy to an anachronistic class-based view that, perhaps inappropriately, focuses on excessive taxation practices that simply did not exist in Late Antique Aphrodito (p. 93). Here, Ruffini is critiquing a “generally accepted view” that has gained currency, he suggests, because we moderns live in an age of “growing concern about income inequality” (p. 93). One area that could have used a more theorized explanation is Ruffini’s characterization of religion. He expresses some surprise that religion should appear in the “day to day and brass tacks . . . the practical and the secular” and not at the top of a “stylite’s pillar” (p. 127). But religion as a product of lived reality is not at all surprising, nor is this a nuanced understanding of how religion relates to “the secular,” particularly for the period in question. Additionally, religion being a matter of brass tacks need not exclude a view of religion that could also include holy men and stylites, since the masses who may have visited those figures seeking guidance or succor often did so with concern for the mundane aspects of everyday life as well. Once again, here Ruffini seems to be over-swinging in an attempt to contrast his microhistorical study with other, broader ones. At other times, there is a similar all-or-nothing sense to his reading of the sources, as in the chapter on women (Chapter 9), where agency and oppression seem unable to co-exist in a world of women’s compromised power to control their own personal or financial circumstances (p. 154). Lastly, the book’s subtitle is something of a misnomer. It is only in the conclusion, a chapter of about fourteen pages, that we see the relevance of the Islamic period to Ruffini’s study. The preceding 199 pages cover evidence from the sixth century, while the conclusion is more of a coda on evidence from the end of the seventh and early eighth centuries (p. 200). Here we see the “dawn of Arab rule” and its effects on Aphrodito, which had become a “regional capital” that now came “under even greater scrutiny from the central authorities” (p. 203). Whereas in earlier periods Ruffini saw tropes of excessive taxation and pressure from the center as exaggerated and rhetorical, here he sees them as reflective of something literal and factual (p. 206). Ruffini struggles with this in a manner that is somewhat unconvincing, casting this inconsistency as an “interesting thought experiment” (p. 207). Life in An Egyptian Village in Late Antiquity is a well-organized exploration of a rich archival source—a corpus rendered less daunting, for the outsider, by Ruffini’s imaginative prose. Some readers will find Ruffini’s style of argumentation somewhat repetitive and too reliant on conjecture, while for others the reconstruction of daily life from such valuable primary documents will prove exciting enough to dispel any qualms about any historical overreach. Kinship and Family in Ancient Egypt: Archaeology and Anthropology in Dialogue. By Leire Olabarria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xv + 277 + 40 figures. $110 (cloth). REVIEWED BY RUNE NYORD, Emory University Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern recently noted that “[a]nyone writing about kinship today does so in the middle of a long anthropological conversation.”1 If this is something of a truism in the field of social anthropology, it even holds for now-classical Egyptological explo- rations of kinship terminology such as those by Detlef Franke2 and Harco Willems,3 which were clearly inspired by mid-twentieth-century anthropological models and 2 Franke, Altägyptische Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen (1983). Willems, “Description of Egyptian Kinship Terminology” (1983): 152–69. 3 1 Strathern, “Kinship as a Relation” (2014): 43. Book Reviews approaches. The book under review here differs primarily in bringing Egyptological discussions into contact with more recent anthropological approaches, and in so doing shifting the focus away from the emic classification by kinship terms to a more fluid and contextualized etic notion of kin groups as displayed first and foremost on First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom stelae. The first chapter introduces the theoretical framework that informs the work, taking its point of departure in the traditionally limited engagement between Egyptology and surrounding, more theoretical fields, especially social anthropology. A central idea is that of processual kinship, where kinship is not regarded as consisting of fixed, essential qualities, but rather as something continuously performed and (re)constructed. The approach to the dataset of the study, consisting predominantly of stelae from the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, is informed by studies of material agency. Chapter 2 takes a more traditional approach in examining stelae, especially those from the Middle Kingdom at Abydos and the First Intermediate Period at Naga ed-Deir, from a combination of Egyptological perspectives. Arguing in favor of a holistic approach, Leire Olabarria discusses such issues as archaeological contexts, interrelationships between objects, and the information obtained by iconography and inscriptions, all of which ideally feed into the interpretation. The overall argument of this chapter is that the differences in display of kinship between the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom need not reflect an increased importance of kin groups in the underlying social structure, but should rather be seen as a change in the stela discourse itself. In Chapter 3, some methodological considerations relating especially to terminology are presented. Problematizing traditional etic notions such as “family” and “household,” as well as more specific Egyptological categories such as “ANOC (Abydos North Offering Chapel) groups” and “workshops,” the book favors a deliberately vaguely defined concept of “kin groups,” arguing that the content of this category needs to be anchored in emic terminology. Apart from the relatively well studied terms for individual kin categories such as jt, sn, etc., considerations of designations of groups of people are suggested to be particularly important, although they are difficult to delineate clearly in extant sources. However, with the encompassing use of the notion of “kin group” used in the book, it is argued that such considerations are best sidestepped, opening the possibility that the Egyptians did not necessarily understand “kinship” as a category distinct from groupings on the basis of territory, politi- ✦ 205 cal organization, shared dwelling space, shared funerary duties, etc. Chapter 4 takes up the task of offering a formal definition of the central notion of “kin groups.” Preferring a polythetic definition to allow for flexibility, Olabarria suggests that kin groups exhibit clusters of some, but not necessarily all, of six different characteristics. This flexible approach allows a shift of focus from people who are relatives to people who behave as relatives within a given context. Having thus presented a working definition of kin groups, in Chapter 5 Olabarria aims to develop a practical methodology that allows this concept to be deployed in practice, including by engaging it with emic categories. To begin with, the limitations inherent in various traditional approaches from anthropology, archaeology, and Egyptology are discussed, and possible methods such as Social Network Analysis and prosopography are ultimately rejected. More specifically, an approach labeled “koinography” that focuses on tracing the group (koine)̂ and its diachronic developments is proposed as an alternative to traditional prosopography focused on the individual person. To achieve this, the notion of kin groups introduced in the preceding chapter is combined with anthropologist Meyer Fortes’ classical model of developmental cycles of domestic groups. The next three chapters are each devoted to a case study using the “koinographic” method, selected to illustrate the three main stages of Fortes’ cycle in the development of social groups. Chapter 6 focuses on the case of the draughtsman Iuefenersen, who forms a connecting point for a small group of inscribed blocks and stelae from Abydos (ANOC 12) and elsewhere. Especially based on the subordinate role played by Iuefenersen on stelae associated with groups of higher social standing as well as the development in his titles on different monuments as his career progressed, the draughtsman is argued to be a social climber heading a kin group in its initial, burgeoning phase. This analysis is followed by sections dealing with larger methodological issues tangentially related to the case study, including the display of filiation and the role of cognatic groups. The seventh chapter analyses a group of inscribed objects connected to a man called Wahka, who was included in William Kelly Simpson’s Abydos North Offering Chapel no. 28. In contrast to the case study of the previous chapter, Wahka’s monuments do not refer to members of kin groups other than his own. A fragmentary stela belonging to a different kin group may feature Wahka in the role of a patron, indicating a kin group at the height of its developmental cycle. As in the previous 206 ✦ Journal of Near Eastern Studies chapter, the case study is followed by discussions of more general issues loosely arising from it, in this case questions of how kin groups fit into the wider social hierarchy. The third and final case study presented in Chapter 8 is argued to illustrate a declining kin group. Focusing on a man named Sawadjet, this case study is based on two related Abydos stelae (ANOC IV). Olabarria uses the unusual occurrence of a doorkeeper of the vizier (understood to indicate a high status) on a monument belonging to a draughtsman as a result of a marriage between two families to argue that the doorkeeper’s kin group must have been on the decline, since this alliance with a lower-ranking family appears to have been desirable. The broader discussion following the case study deals with patterns of marriage and more general questions of the relationship between group and individual. The last, concluding Chapter 9 brings together some of the main points of the preceding discussions under the heading of “The Dynamism of the Social Fabric.” It provides a concise overview of the approach taken in the book and includes some pointers to directions for future studies. The main text is followed by an Appendix presenting an updated list of Abydos North Offering Chapels, which incorporates additions and adjustments to Simpson’s original list that have been published in the subsequent literature. Overall, the book thus offers a new approach to ancient Egyptian kinship capable of sidestepping some of the limitations that previous studies have encountered, notably the paucity of evidence that makes it difficult to address traditional kinship questions such as marriage rules or the exact delineations of different emic categories of kin groups. While the more vaguely defined and fluid categories suggested here do not necessarily help solve such problems, the book demonstrates that they allow headway to be made regarding questions of relatedness at a different level of abstraction. In particular, the stress on studying concretely attested groups and their diachronic development as at least a complementary perspective to the more traditional tendency to focus on the individual on the one hand and abstract principles of classification on the other seems a highly germane way forward for studies of ancient Egyptian kinship. In this sense, the book clearly accomplishes one of its main goals in drawing convincingly on recent developments in the field of anthropology to generate new insights into the examined ancient Egyptian dataset. At the same time, with its several sections introducing basic anthropological concepts and models relating to kinship, the book can serve as a useful introduction for Egyptologists inter- ested in carrying out future work in the directions suggested here. In methodological terms, the study has two main limitations arising directly from the research design. As such, they are no doubt deliberate, but nonetheless worth discussing. One of these stems from the casestudy based approach, which generally tends to sacrifice insights into overall patterns and generalities over the specifics of the cases. Various compromises can be made in practice, for example by examining parallels and discussing how the interpretations fit with broader patterns beyond the case studies. In this book, however, the case studies of the second part are quite strictly delineated, which sometimes leaves the reader wondering whether especially some of the more tentative interpretive suggestions could not have been corroborated or nuanced by engagement with similar cases in the wider corpus.4 Given the work that has gone into the updated corpus in the Appendix and the general cogency of the interpretations, there is no reason to doubt that the author would have been in an excellent position to further ground the case studies in this way. The second limitation comes from the choice to focus on the stelae primarily as sites of display, as opposed to a more contextually sensitive examination. In practice, the stelae are studied largely as presenting generic groupings of people, occasionally taking into consideration issues that can be understood in straightforwardly hierarchical ways such as different sizes and more or less privileged positions of depicted persons. However, many stelae offer considerably more nuance to the interrelationships between the group members, notably making it possible to distinguish between recipients and participants in the cult usually depicted to a much larger extent than is done in the book, which may also be used to hypothesize possible reasons for the inclusion or exclusion of particular persons. For example, the wellknown convention that “subordination is conveyed by means of relative size and scale, positioning and gestures” is discussed on pages 154f., but the context dependence of this phenomenon is not mentioned, giving the impression that it models actual social hierarchies in a straightforward way. It certainly may do so, for example in the case of servants, but often the monumental 4 See e.g., the unusual occurrence of an apparently unrelated man in the stela discussed in the next footnote, an interpretive issue dealt with in a mostly ad hoc manner rather than by searching for similar cases to inform the interpretation. Book Reviews discourse is equally important. Thus, Wahka is distinguished from his parents on his stela primarily by being depicted with an offering table, reasonably interpreted as a sign of greater prominence “on this particular monument” (p. 155). This wording implies the recognition that this might not be the case on the parents’ own stela (if they had one), but the potential problems for using stela conventions to “read” social hierarchies, including the importance of identifying a single man as head of any social group, are not explored further.5 A less general point related more to the concrete treatment of the material than to questions of methodology is that while the book ostensibly deals with kinship in the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, it is clear both from the choice of case studies in the second part of the book and the general orientation of the discussions that the main focus is squarely on the Middle Kingdom material from Abydos. This becomes particularly clear in the contrast between the meticulous updating of the list of Abydos stela groups in the Appendix on the one hand and the discussion of the Naga ed-Deir stelae on the other, which relies almost entirely on the seminal but aged discussion by Dows Dunham.6 In particular, while the new monograph by Edward Brovarski may have come out too late to have been used in this study,7 the 1989 doctoral dissertation on which it is based is mentioned in passing but hardly used in practice.8 Apart from leading de facto to a somewhat arbitrary limitation of the corpus, this choice means that a number of the stelae that Dunham knew only from photographs, now known to be located at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (University of California, Berkeley), are listed in the book as 5 A similar example is found when an (arguably) more prominent man—the father-in-law of the stela owner’s son— is found depicted at the bottom of the stela of Sawadjet (p. 171). Here, it is suggested that the reason may be a wish to depict him next to his daughter, but perhaps considerations of the commissioner’s wish to have himself and his closest relatives depicted prominently, regardless of more general issues of social status, might be a more pertinent explanation. Note also, in line with other contextual considerations presented here, that the facing of the father-in-law suggests that he is the recipient, rather than a participant, of the cult—possibly indicating that he is deceased. His position may thus also have to do with his daughter being the main person responsible for the cultic duties towards him. 6 Dunham, Naga ed-Der̂ Stelae (1937). 7 Brovarski, Naga ed-Der̂ in the First Intermediate Period (2018). 8 Mainly in an endnote relating the dating of a group of late Naga ed-Deir stelae, p. 225 n. 13. ✦ 207 having their current location unknown.9 This is true of the following pieces: P. 44: P. 50 P. 52 P. 53 P. 225 Dunham Dunham Dunham Dunham Dunham Dunham Dunham no. no. no. no. no. no. no. 69 70 67 73 75 70 73 N N N N N N N 3765 3774 3555 3900 3914 3774 3900 Hearst 6-282910 Hearst 6-184711 Hearst 6-1426512 Hearst 6-125313 Hearst 6-1989514 Hearst 6-184715 Hearst 6-125316 Additionally, the innovative suggestion of referring to the owner of a funerary monument as “ego” does not strike this reviewer as entirely felicitous.17 Its inspiration in anthropological kinship studies, where this term is used for the person in relation to whom kinship categories are used, is clear, and it is motivated by the wellestablished fact that stelae tend to have a single individual as the main dedicatee and that other persons depicted tend to be defined in relation to this person (e.g., “his brother,” “her son,” etc.). However, there are enough exceptions to this tendency where the “stela owner” and the kinship-terminological “ego” do not coincide straightforwardly to make it useful to keep these distinct, especially in the late Middle Kingdom stelae from Abydos that figure prominently in the analyses. For example, the stela of Itef-Iqer (BM EA 129)18 displays multiple cult recipients, with the ritualists being related 9 Dunham no. 65 (N 235), cited on p. 53, is yet to be located, cf. the most recent discussion in Brovarski, Naga ed-Der̂ in the First Intermediate Period, 186–87. 10 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060002829 (accessed 8 December 2020). 11 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060001847 (accessed 8 December 2020). 12 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060014265 (accessed 8 December 2020). 13 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060001253 (accessed 8 December 2020). 14 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060019895 (accessed 8 December 2020). 15 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060001847 (accessed 8 December 2020). 16 https://n2t.net/ark:/21549/hm21060001253 (accessed 8 December 2020). 17 The problems with the designation are also indicated by differing explanations given in different places in the book. Thus, on p. 29, it is glossed as “the person to whom the monument is dedicated” (i.e., the dedicatee or stela owner), while on p. 120 it is “the person around whom the rest of the relationships shown on the monument revolve.” 18 Budge, Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae (1912), pls. 41–43. 208 ✦ Journal of Near Eastern Studies terminologically not to the main owner of the stela but to the individual ancestor for whom they are depicted performing the cult; subsidiary ritualists may even be defined by their relation to the leader of the specific ritual procession, rather than either its recipient or the main stela owner.19 The stela thus offers a fairly large number of “egos” in the anthropological sense, whereas the main dedicatee of the stela is made clear through size and pride of place according to the usual conventions. In cases like this (and hence preferably as a general practice), it offers greater analytical acuity to keep the category of stela owner/main dedicatee distinct from the reference point of kinship terminology (“ego”). These minor issues one might have with the approach taken in the book mainly fall on the Egyptological side of the “dialogue” referred to in the subtitle. Despite the undoubted importance of the insights offered by the detailed and nuanced understanding of the material, this is probably not where the most important contribution of the book lies. Rather, it is in the introduction of an updated and conceptually nuanced interdisciplinary framework that allows fresh approaches to an area that has been slightly stagnant in spite of its indisputable importance for ancient Egyptian social structure. Whether in 19 For example, in the fourth central sub-register from the top, which shows the cult to Kemeni (most likely the brother of the wife of the main dedicatee), we see first “his sister,” followed by a number of people defined in relation to her, each carrying a label as “her son” or “her daughter.” the specific form of the “koinography” espoused here or not, future studies in this area will do well to adopt the focus on groups in perpetual development, and the focus on the “etic grid” of kin groups over the emic terminology (often not attested in enough detail to tease out their exact delineation) should prove highly useful, both in further studies of material of the kind explored here and in other times and places of Egyptian history. In this area in particular, but also in the general understanding of the social setting and importance of stelae of the periods examined here, the book represents an important step forward. Works Cited Brovarski, Edward, Naga ed-Der̂ in the First Intermediate Period (Atlanta, 2018). Budge, E. A. Wallis, Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae, &c., in the British Museum, Part II (London, 1912). Dunham, Dows, Naga ed-Der̂ Stelae of the First Intermediate Period (Oxford, 1937). Franke, Detlef, Altä gyptische Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen im Mittleren Reich (Hamburg, 1983). Strathern, Marilyn, “Kinship as a Relation,” L’Homme: Revue française d’anthropologie 210 (2014): 43–61. Willems, Harco, “A Description of Egyptian Kinship Terminology of the Middle Kingdom c. 2000–1650 BCE,” Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde 141/1 (1983): 152–69. Tel Beth-Shemesh: A Border Community in Judah. Renewed Excavations 1990–2000: The Iron Age. By Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman. 2 Vols. Tel Aviv University, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Monograph Series 34. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016. Pp. xiii + 774. $189.50 (cloth). REVIEWED BY MICHAEL G. HASEL, Southern Adventist University Tel Beth-Shemesh is strategically located on the southern side of the Sorek Valley in southern Israel, guarding the entrance from the coastal plain into the Judean hill country. It is one of many sites located along the Iron Age north-south border area between Philistia and Judah. Excavations at the site were conducted in four different phases: the Palestine Exploration Fund expedition directed by Duncan Mackenzie (1911–1912); the Haverford College expedition directed by Elihu Grant (and published by G. Ernest Wright) (1928–1933); the Renewed Excavations directed by Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman on behalf of Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Tel Aviv University (1990–present); and recent salvage excavations directed by Yehuda Govrin (2018–present). This twovolume set is the first final excavation report of the Renewed Excavations. They focus on the Iron Age remains uncovered during the first decade of work from 1990–2000, and represent the life work of Bunimovitz and Lederman, who have dedicated thirty years to excavate Tel Beth-Shemesh. The final reports have been long anticipated by archaeologists working in the Southern Levant and are particularly important for the on-going discussions and debates surrounding the emergence of