Project description
Understanding the logistics of ancient Egyptian war plundering
During the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE), imperialism reached its peak, and Egypt gained control over the Levant and Nubia. However, the economic and logistical aspects of these wars and their social roles remain poorly understood. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PLUNDER project will explore the social roles of loot in ancient Egypt. It will analyse autobiographies of elite soldiers, historical records of kings, loot lists, and temples and tombs with visual representations of plunder. The project will reconstruct the logistics of state-monitored plundering, examine the structure of spoils of war, investigate the significance of loot across various contexts and uncover the social dynamics behind the depictions of plunder.
Objective
PLUNDER is an interdisciplinary study of agency (ability to affect) of ancient Egyptian spoils of war (humans,
animals, things) in the nexus of social relations and hierarchies (soldiers, kings, deities) during the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 BCE),
when imperialism climaxed and Egypt established control over the Levant and Nubia. I will ambitiously go beyond the economic
aspects of booty and stress its various social roles in ancient Egypt by analyzing 10 autobiographies of elite soldiers and “historical” records of kings, 30 lists of booty and 12 temples and tombs with visual representations of plunder. My research
objectives are to reconstruct the logistics of state-monitored plundering, understand the structure of the lists of spoils of war and
investigate the agency of booty in different contexts. To achieve this, I will combine well established
methods (philology, art history, archaeologies of Egypt, Levant and Nubia) and a novel agency-based approach to visual and textual
representations developed in anthropology. By analyzing the relations between primary agents (prototypes, patrons, artists and
recipients) and secondary agents (representations themselves) I will reconstruct the agent-patient social relations behind the
representations of spoils of war. The initial start-up and the return phases will be based at Ludwig-Maximilian’s University of Munich
(LMU) where I will be trained by Prof. Julia Budka, archaeologist and art historian, a leading expert on New Kingdom in Nubia. In the
outgoing phase at Barnard College (BC), Columbia University (CU), I will be trained by Prof. Ellen Morris, a leading expert on ancient
Egyptian imperialism and warfare, as well as Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Levant. My results will impact both Egyptology and
military history by stressing different uses of spoils of war. The MSCA will position me as a future research group leader in interdisciplinary ancient warfare studies.
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- social sciences sociology anthropology
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
- humanities arts art history
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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80539 Planegg
Germany
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