Through the Eras

DanceThe muu-dancers, for example, wore a hat that never appearedin other contexts. Female dancers sometimes worea ponytail weighted at the end with a ceramic disk or ball.Young male and female dancers often performed nude orwearing only a belt around the hips. Adult dancers worefewer clothes than most Egyptians, though in some casesdancers wore “street clothes.” In any case, Egyptians ingeneral felt comfortable with minimal clothing.IMPORTANCE. The Egyptians integrated dance intomany aspects of their religious observance. At times,dance, as ambiguous as its meaning might be to modernobservers, is the only evidence for certain religiousbeliefs in the earlier periods of Egyptian history. Scholarshave historically underrated dance’s importance inEgyptian culture.TOPICSin DanceTHE WISEMAN ANY ON DANCEINTRODUCTION: Egyptologists have given the name “wisdomtexts” to a genre of Egyptian texts that dispenseadvice and explain the nature of the world.The “Wisdom of Any” was written in the late NewKingdom and touches on many aspects of life. Inthis passage Any discusses man’s relationship to thegods, which includes a mention of the importanceof song and dance to the gods.Observe the feast of your god,And repeat its season,God is angry if it is neglected. …It will extol the might of the god.Song, dance, incense are his foods,Receiving prostrations is his wealth;The god does it to magnify his name.SOURCE: “Ani,” in The New Kingdom. Vol. 2 of AncientEgyptian Literature. Trans. Miriam Lichtheim (Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1976): 136.PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT DANCEEARLIER MISUNDERSTANDINGS. Nineteenth-centuryEgyptologists hindered accurate interpretations of ancientEgyptian dance by imposing their own value systems onthe evidence. The lack of clothing in Egyptian dance causedscholars to think of Egyptian dance as lewd, and thus theyturned to more seemly subjects for study. These scholarsalso mistranslated the word “khener”—an Egyptian wordmeaning “musical bureau”—as “harem.” They assumedthat there was a connection between the word for musicalbureau and the word for women’s quarters (harem) becauseof the similarity of the hieroglyphic writing of thetwo different words. This misconception added to scholars’difficulties in dealing with Egyptian dance. Moreover,Western scholars did not make an immediate connectionbetween dance and religious ritual because Western culturedoes not generally maintain the tradition of sacreddance that was common to biblical religion. The absenceof dance in the church, synagogue, or mosque traditionsfound in the West made scholars tentative in acceptingdance as integral to ancient Egyptian culture.RECENT SCHOLARSHIP. Recently scholars have recognizedthe important role dance played in Egyptian funeralsand cult ritual. They note, for example, that theancient text called “The Wisdom of Any” ranks dancealong with food, clothing, and incense as essential to divineworship. Some scholars have now studied differentwords for dance in ancient Egyptian and recorded dancescenes in tombs and temples. Additional data, along withless prudish attitudes toward dance, will eventually resultin a better understanding of this phenomenon.SOURCESJanice M. Cummings, “Temple Dance in Ancient Egypt.”Unpublished master’s thesis (New York: New YorkUniversity, 2000).Jonathan van Lepp, “The Dance Scene of Watetkhethor. “Unpublished master’s thesis (Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles, 1987).Magda Saleh, in International Encyclopedia of Dance (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1998): 482–483.DANCE IN VISUAL ARTDRAWN FIGURES. The great majority of the evidencefor dance in ancient Egypt comes from visual art. As earlyas the Nagada II Period (3500–3300 B.C.E.), sculpturesand paintings on pots represented dancers. In the Fifthand Sixth Dynasties (2500–2170 B.C.E.), relief sculpturein mastaba tombs included scenes of dance. The artistswho decorated many New Kingdom Theban tombs(1539–1075 B.C.E.) included dancers in banquet scenes.When artists represented dancers, the rules, or canon, ofEgyptian art used to depict the tomb owner and his or66 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)