Abstract

The late Ramesside period is habitually envisioned as one of waning surface opulence that hardly masked an underlying political, social, and economic crises-induced decay. The awareness of these crises by the Twentieth Dynasty Theban elite headed by the high priestly family of Ramessesnakht, however is difficult to discern not only due to these being by their very nature of varying forms and intensities, but also because of the different perceptual position of contemporaries and posterity. Whether expressing individual or collective experience, elite response then should be sought for and recognized as a filtered set of elements conveyed by textual and pictorial carriers or media. One context of these are the mortuary monuments of said elite where the concern for elite self-perpetuation is most explicitly put on display. To establish some of the basic features involved the example provided by Theban Tomb 65, a tomb-temple situated on the hill of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna and studied by the Hungarian Archaeological Mission in Thebes since 1995 shall be utilized.

Moderated by

Camilla Persi, M.A.