Negotiating identities: the Egyptian expansion and Nubia under the eighteenth dynasty (1550-1295 a.C.)

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the representation of the "other" and the reaffirmation of the Egyptian identity on discourses forged in the imperial context of the Eighteenth Dynasty. During the larger period of Egyptian expansion, known as New Kingdom (1550-1069 b.C.), the Egypt dominated, simultaneously, the Levant in the North and the Nubian territory in the South, especially the Kingdom of Kush. The representation apparatus revealed an inferiority discourse regarding the Kushite and the politics of domination and acculturation, those having characterized the relations between Kush and Egypt in the period. A analyzes under an exclusively ideological perspective becomes insufficient, while mechanisms of memory construction, represented here, enlighten a more complex background of the representation and reaffirmation of Egyptian identity's process. The documents are from the beginning of the Dynasty, with Ahmose (1550-1525 b.C.) until the mid of the Dynasty, Amenhotep II (1427-1400 b.C.), during which the expansion found its end and the Egyptian administration in Nubia were better structured. In order to analyze this documentation, it will be adopted a critical approach regarding memory and the model of discourse analyzes. The research follows the historiographical trend in which the cultural relationship between Egypt and Kush were based in mutual exchange and interconnections and not a total acculturation of Kush. Therefore, the main hypothesis is that the Nubian Elites, faced with the Egyptian expansion and domination narrated by the Egyptian discourse negotiated your identity and memory in order not to lose your native legitimacy and control over your own territory. (AU)