Gathering the collected documentation related to the “regionally specific sacerdotal” created a very dense and intricate picture, represented by many individuals with their families. In turn, analysis of the data created a social map which has allowed a deeper investigation of their social developments, their roles, and mainly the strong relationship with the religious landscape and territory of the Western Delta. Indeed, the analysis of the documentation shows that two areas had a powerful political role during that time and show a strong relationship with the officials: the Memphite area and the Saite region. The results have also highlighted a complex social setting, constituted by an intricate web of relationships between the religious landscape and politics.
Another research question of the project was to understand why the spread of the specific sacerdotal titles in the Delta of Egypt and of the sacred geography occurred in the Late Period. The results show that this increase was probably due to an administrative reorganisation and political strategy carried out by the pharaoh Psametik I after he restablished political unity in Egypt. During the reorganisation of the court, he used a specific political strategy, based on hiring high ranked priests, reliable people who were located in strategic economic and administrative places of Western Delta. He exalted the priesthood of each deity in their local role in order to gain more control of the territory, using the priests ideologically as a factor of cohesion and control of the population, exploiting the religious traditions as an element of social union in order to keep authority in the country.
The results of the MAP project have raised the public interest to understand how in ancient Egypt the environment was organised and how people, religion and politics were closely connected and could modify settings inside society.
MAP has been a pioneer research project, demonstrating direct scientific impact, as presented in the forthcoming proceeding of the international conference. The final results of the project combined archaeological and philological disciplines with also other fields of study, such as human geography, sociology and landscape archaeology.
The project has enabled the researcher to complete a high profile cutting-edge research project at the Department of Archaeology at Durham, and to acquire more practical skills in multidisciplinary areas, integrated with knowledge of theoretical problems deriving from social and modern disciplines. In addition, the mobility has been beneficial in multiple directions, for the candidate, the institution of provenance, and the host institution, by creating efficient integration between different approaches and methodologies to research topics. In addition, the project has constituted the basis for ongoing and future collaborations (e.g. Delta Survey -Egypt Exploration Society/Durham University-; EPHE, Louvre Museum).
The website presents the MAP project, the team, the host institution, the aims, the methodologies and the fieldwork carried out.
