Christine Hue-Arcé
In my PhD dissertation, I studied interpersonal violence in Egyptian documents during the New Kingdom and the Graeco-Roman period. Through a comparative approach, I was able to highlight the characteristics and similarities of each epoch in the mechanisms of expression and treatment of interpersonal violence, by analysing two consistent sets of texts: the documents from Deir el-Medina for the New Kingdom, and the Demotic documentary evidence for the Graeco-Roman period. These documents were completed with relevant literary texts from both epochs. This project aimed to question the relevance, for a social phenomenon such as interpersonal violence, of a separation between the so-called "Pharaonic times", and Egypt under foreign rule. For this purpose, a thorough analysis of the terminology of violence was carried out, as well as a study of the mechanisms of conflict regulation. Finally, the issue of specificities according to the gender, the social status and the age of both victim and assailant was raised. My research underlined that the mechanisms of treatment and expression of interpersonal violence were globally homogeneous in New Kingdom and in Graeco-Roman Egypt, in spite of changes in the vocabulary due to the development from Late Egyptian to Demotic. I was able to stress out convergence points, particularly the involvement of family in conflicts resolution: in the formal framework of the legal and divine justice, but also in informal settings, without recourse to the judicial apparatus.
This research has now led me to get interested in the place of kinship in the Egyptian society of the New Kingdom and the Graeco-Roman period, and more particularly its part in social and economic support, and conflict resolution. I place a strong focus on the place of women within their kinship networks.
Besides, my research interests also include erotic representations as vectors for fertility.
This research has now led me to get interested in the place of kinship in the Egyptian society of the New Kingdom and the Graeco-Roman period, and more particularly its part in social and economic support, and conflict resolution. I place a strong focus on the place of women within their kinship networks.
Besides, my research interests also include erotic representations as vectors for fertility.
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Monograph by Christine Hue-Arcé
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Violence is a social issue faced by modern societies, leading to question its roots and mechanisms. This subject naturally arises for the study of ancient societies: through which tools can violence be objectively studied looking far away in the past, how was it perceived and regulated? The everyday life documents from Deir el-Medina during the New Kingdom, and the Demotic documentary evidence from the Graeco-Roman period, augmented by Late Egyptian and Demotic literary texts, shed light on this social phenomenon in ancient Egypt during these periods. In a comparative approach, the author questions the most relevant way to define and study violence in the ancient Egyptian society, based on the Egyptian perception of this issue. Focusing on interpersonal physical violence occurring in the daily life of New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt, this book explores the mechanisms of expression and resolution of violence: the terminology used in the written evidence, the legal and extra-judicial instances through which violence was regulated, and how it was discouraged or punished. Case studies on the protagonists of violence are also provided, analysing and questioning the specific issues of gender-oriented violence, child abuse, and hierarchical violence.
The author, by the analysis of two consistent sets of documents from New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt, underlines the characteristics and similarities of the expression and regulation of interpersonal violence during each epoch, thus offering an approach that provides a focus on the continuities of sociology over the fluctuations of politics.
Papers by Christine Hue-Arcé
thorough study of the written evidence (mainly complaints to officials
and reports of the local court) allows us to discern the mechanisms of regulation of violent behaviour at Deir el-Medina. This study will focus on two principal axes: the authorities to which violent acts were reported and the reasons for this choice; and the punishment an aggressor would likely receive in answer to his misbehaviour.
Through the study of Egyptian documents from New Kingdom and Hellenistic Egypt, this article analyses the mechanisms of the treatment of interpersonal violence occurring in the framework of a social or professional hierarchy. The author questions the actual perception of violence inflicted by a superior to their inferior, and denounced in the texts: was this violence seen as reprehensible, or was it perceived as legitimate by the authors of the Egyptian texts? The study of bodies of documents from two separate periods enables highlighting the common patterns of this social phenomenon between the New Kingdom and the Hellenistic period.
Scholars usually describe the erotic graffiti from tomb 504 at Deir el-Bahari as a representation of Queen Hatshepsut and the official Senenmut. However, there is no basis in the iconography, nor any dating criterion, to support such an interpretation. Through the comparison with similar representations and figurines, and the examination of their context, the author suggests that the graffiti may bear a votive function associated with fertility.
Translations by Christine Hue-Arcé
Colloques & Conférences by Christine Hue-Arcé
JOURNÉE D’ÉTUDE
org. Sandra Boehringer & Claude Calame
Bien avant la sexualité
L’expérience érotique en Grèce ancienne
INHA, Centre AnHiMA, 6 rue des Petits-Champs, 75002 Paris, salle Walter Benjamin
samedi 25 mai 2019, 9h30 – 18h
Au moment où Michel Foucault distinguait les aphrodisia grecs de la chair chrétienne et de la « bonne sexualité » contemporaine, plusieurs spécialistes de l’Antiquité, aux États-Unis et en France, se réunissaient pour mettre au jour l’ampleur des relations, des espaces et des pratiques poétiques et iconographiques placées sous le signe d’erôs. En anthropologues du passé, les hellénistes de Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, publié en 1990 sous la direction de David Halperin, John Winkler et Froma Zeitlin, exploraient des domaines variés de la vie des femmes et des hommes grecs et tentaient d’appréhender ce que pouvaient être l’expérience et les rapports érotiques dans une société et une culture d’« avant la sexualité ».
Presque trente ans plus tard, en écho avec la publication posthume du quatrième volume de l’Histoire de la sexualité, la traduction de cet ouvrage « bilingue » nous offre la réédition du dialogue entre hellénistes américain-e-s et chercheur-e-s du Centre Louis Gernet sur l’érotisme grec. Publié dans la collection Les grands classiques de l’érotologie moderne (édition EPEL) avec le soutien de l’Institut Émilie du Châtelet, ce volume est le fruit d’un travail collectif qui a réuni hellénistes et psychanalystes pour une traduction linguistique et transculturelle. Les tables rondes de la journée du 25 mai accueilleront les auteur-e-s, les éditeurs, des psychanalystes et des chercheur-e-s qui ont trouvé dans cet ouvrage des pistes pour leurs propres travaux, maintenant.
Que nous réserve, au XXIe siècle, ce nouveau voyage en terre d’erôs ?
Talks by Christine Hue-Arcé
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Violence is a social issue faced by modern societies, leading to question its roots and mechanisms. This subject naturally arises for the study of ancient societies: through which tools can violence be objectively studied looking far away in the past, how was it perceived and regulated? The everyday life documents from Deir el-Medina during the New Kingdom, and the Demotic documentary evidence from the Graeco-Roman period, augmented by Late Egyptian and Demotic literary texts, shed light on this social phenomenon in ancient Egypt during these periods. In a comparative approach, the author questions the most relevant way to define and study violence in the ancient Egyptian society, based on the Egyptian perception of this issue. Focusing on interpersonal physical violence occurring in the daily life of New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt, this book explores the mechanisms of expression and resolution of violence: the terminology used in the written evidence, the legal and extra-judicial instances through which violence was regulated, and how it was discouraged or punished. Case studies on the protagonists of violence are also provided, analysing and questioning the specific issues of gender-oriented violence, child abuse, and hierarchical violence.
The author, by the analysis of two consistent sets of documents from New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt, underlines the characteristics and similarities of the expression and regulation of interpersonal violence during each epoch, thus offering an approach that provides a focus on the continuities of sociology over the fluctuations of politics.
thorough study of the written evidence (mainly complaints to officials
and reports of the local court) allows us to discern the mechanisms of regulation of violent behaviour at Deir el-Medina. This study will focus on two principal axes: the authorities to which violent acts were reported and the reasons for this choice; and the punishment an aggressor would likely receive in answer to his misbehaviour.
Through the study of Egyptian documents from New Kingdom and Hellenistic Egypt, this article analyses the mechanisms of the treatment of interpersonal violence occurring in the framework of a social or professional hierarchy. The author questions the actual perception of violence inflicted by a superior to their inferior, and denounced in the texts: was this violence seen as reprehensible, or was it perceived as legitimate by the authors of the Egyptian texts? The study of bodies of documents from two separate periods enables highlighting the common patterns of this social phenomenon between the New Kingdom and the Hellenistic period.
Scholars usually describe the erotic graffiti from tomb 504 at Deir el-Bahari as a representation of Queen Hatshepsut and the official Senenmut. However, there is no basis in the iconography, nor any dating criterion, to support such an interpretation. Through the comparison with similar representations and figurines, and the examination of their context, the author suggests that the graffiti may bear a votive function associated with fertility.
JOURNÉE D’ÉTUDE
org. Sandra Boehringer & Claude Calame
Bien avant la sexualité
L’expérience érotique en Grèce ancienne
INHA, Centre AnHiMA, 6 rue des Petits-Champs, 75002 Paris, salle Walter Benjamin
samedi 25 mai 2019, 9h30 – 18h
Au moment où Michel Foucault distinguait les aphrodisia grecs de la chair chrétienne et de la « bonne sexualité » contemporaine, plusieurs spécialistes de l’Antiquité, aux États-Unis et en France, se réunissaient pour mettre au jour l’ampleur des relations, des espaces et des pratiques poétiques et iconographiques placées sous le signe d’erôs. En anthropologues du passé, les hellénistes de Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, publié en 1990 sous la direction de David Halperin, John Winkler et Froma Zeitlin, exploraient des domaines variés de la vie des femmes et des hommes grecs et tentaient d’appréhender ce que pouvaient être l’expérience et les rapports érotiques dans une société et une culture d’« avant la sexualité ».
Presque trente ans plus tard, en écho avec la publication posthume du quatrième volume de l’Histoire de la sexualité, la traduction de cet ouvrage « bilingue » nous offre la réédition du dialogue entre hellénistes américain-e-s et chercheur-e-s du Centre Louis Gernet sur l’érotisme grec. Publié dans la collection Les grands classiques de l’érotologie moderne (édition EPEL) avec le soutien de l’Institut Émilie du Châtelet, ce volume est le fruit d’un travail collectif qui a réuni hellénistes et psychanalystes pour une traduction linguistique et transculturelle. Les tables rondes de la journée du 25 mai accueilleront les auteur-e-s, les éditeurs, des psychanalystes et des chercheur-e-s qui ont trouvé dans cet ouvrage des pistes pour leurs propres travaux, maintenant.
Que nous réserve, au XXIe siècle, ce nouveau voyage en terre d’erôs ?
In this paper, I propose to study these occurrences, and to question their actual nature: are they anecdotical appearances of relatives, or must they be understood as the indication of an involvement of kinship in a specific and legally institutionalised framework?
To study this subject, I will present and analyse Demotic documents, with a focus on the temple oaths from the Ptolemaic period.
In this paper, I want to present a study which is at its very beginning, on kinship in the society of New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt (16th – 10th c. BC/4th c. BC – 4th c. AD), particularly its place in networks of support and dispute resolution. This presentation will introduce the available source material on the subject, as well as the main lines of approach and the proposed methodology.
The intended comparison of documents from the New Kingdom and the Graeco-Roman period aims at underlining the characteristics of each period. It will be completed by the integration of relevant texts from the Third Intermediary Period and the Late Period, in order to stress the impact of the Graeco-Macedonian conquest on social practices, and to question the continuities of sociology over the fluctuations of politics. The interest of this approach will be illustrated with the example of the part of kinship in the regulation of interpersonal violence.
This paper endeavours to study the cases where interpersonal violence was regulated outside of the legal field, and to underline the weight of non-judicial instances – and more specifically social structures – in its resolution. Several recourses are attested in the Demotic documents to regulate, denounce and resolve violent conflicts: kinship, divinities, associations or clerical hierarchy. For which reasons did people turn towards a specific non-legal authority? Were these instances strictly compartmentalised from the legal justice? Eventually, a scheme for the process of denunciation of interpersonal violence will be proposed.
The texts that will be analysed are mainly Demotic documentary texts from the Hellenistic period. Yet, P. Rylands 9 from Persian Egypt and a literary text from the Roman period also document the involvement of non-legal bodies in the resolution of violent conflicts, and will be integrated in this presentation.
This paper will question the choice of writing a denunciation or judgement proceedings when a violent act occurred: was it the rule, and then, does the small amount of texts documenting violence reflect the place of this social phenomenon in the Egyptian society? Or was the use of papyri and ostraca the exception, which could imply that orality was the rule?
In order to bring answers to these questions, I will analyse the features of the resort to a written support to denounce and regulate violent conflicts.
Two specific corpora will be the focus of this discussion: first, the documents from Deir el-Medina, the village of the workmen of the Theban necropolis during the New Kingdom (14th – 10th c. B.C.); second, the Demotic texts from the Ptolemaic period (4th – 1st c. B.C.).
Through the study of these documents, this paper aims at enlightening the place of writing as a medium in violent conflicts regulation in New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Egypt.
The systematic study of these texts allows to highlight the settings of complaints against violence. Under which circumstances would the complaint be made to the local council of Deir el-Medina, or outside the village to the vizier? Desire for revenge and justice was not the only reason why the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina petitioned: when someone went to complain about violence, there was often an economic matter linked to it.
The legal documents bring evidence on the answer of legal authorities to violence: which were the punishments required or executed? A common chastisement is the threat of a corporal punishment; however hard labour is also encountered, and perhaps a forced unpaid leave. Other ways of regulating violent conflicts were used apart from the legal system, such as heading to the family.
The texts from Deir el-Medina will be compared with other documents from the New Kingdom – such as literary texts or royal edicts – for a better understanding of the ins and outs of this social phenomenon. This comparison will also enable to ascertain whether some characteristics are specific to Deir el-Medina, or whether they can be traced in other documents from the New Kingdom.
This last one has been well studied by papyrologists. Even so, they did not compare this documentation with the Demotic one. Some Demotic texts – documentary and literary – bear witness to violence towards women. The type of violence, the vocabulary and the context, must be taken in account to determine the potential specificity of violence perpetrated upon women, by comparing these data with those related to men. These comparisons will be enhanced by the consideration of a paleopathological study of cranial trauma in the Bahariya Oasis during the Greco-Roman period.
The confrontation of the papyrologists studies results, the Demotic documents and the paleopathological evidences will enable to ascertain whether there was or not a gendered violence against women in the Greco-Roman Egypt.
Christine Hue-Arcé has held a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Strasbourg since 2015, and is an associate member of UMR 7044 – Archimède. A teaching assistant at the Faculty of Historical Sciences in Strasbourg, her research centres on the social history of New Kingdom Egypt and the Greco-Roman era, with a particular focus on the family as the cornerstone of ancient Egyptian society, as well as the place of women in their kinship networks.