Die Feldzugdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches: Eine Bildanalyse.

• Author: Spalinger, Anthony
• Position: Reviews of Books

Die Feldzugdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches: Eine Bildanalyse. By SUSANNA CONSTANZ HEINZ. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERREICHISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 2001. Pp. 327, illus. OS 2190 (paper).

This massive new book is an improvement on previous studies of pictorial narrative in ancient Egypt. As such, it succeeds the first-level works (e.g., W. Stevenson Smith, et al.) that have dominated Egyptology over the past century. Susanna Heinz has spent many years researching and preparing this crucial topic, mainly from the art-historical viewpoint, examining components of scenes, arrangements of registers, the use (and abuse) of the rigid canon of proportions, even the development of the theme of warfare. Her book provides handy charts, excellent diagrams, useful reproductions, and for the most part an impartial analysis of previous scholarship.

The initial situation of pictorial location (e.g., where is the scene located in a temple?) is presented in an easy-to-grasp overview, and this enables us to comprehend the gist of the book immediately. Similarly, I would like to commend the author's wide-ranging knowledge of the historical background to the war reliefs that are so effectively presented here. On some occasions she judiciously sidesteps the historical controversies: e.g., who was Mehy and why it was he rather than the future Ramesses II who looms so large on the exterior north wall of the hypostyle court at Karnak? Or, to take another conundrum from the same group of Seti I's war scenes: does the division into registers imply that all six extant narratives are separate? (I frankly cannot believe that the Shashu campaign is to be interpreted apart from Seti's more northern Palestinian foray.) Moreover, is it always the case that we are to read the lowest register before the next higher one? I have come to the position that this rule holds, at l east for the Ramesside Period; but it is incontrovertibly true everywhere?

Another serious point covered by Heinz but not, I feel, completely resolved, is the departure of the Kadesh reliefs from the presumed "norm" of battle scenes. Along with previous Egyptologists, she realizes that Ramesses II's commemorations of "victory" are at odds with the relatively staid ones of Seti I or Merenptah, or even with many of the Medinet Habu renderings of Ramesses III. (One must exclude, of course, the year 8 Sea Battle; and Heinz does not fail to evaluate that depiction.) I can think of only two obvious causes...