Representing War Booty in New Kingdom Egypt: Texts, Images and Contexts

Join us for a talk by Uroš Matić, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Barnard College, Columbia University, on how ancient Egypt portrayed the spoils of war.

Egyptian forces plundered foreign lands from the Early Dynastic Period onward, and the most evidence comes from the New Kingdom, when Egypt conquered large territories in the Levant and Nubia. Earlier studies focused mostly on the terms and numbers used for war booty, and often debated whether they reflect reality or ideology.

Matić's project, MSCA "Agency of Spoils of War," questions that divide. It looks at how plundering was shown in different settings, including private autobiographical inscriptions, royal stelae, and temple walls. The comparison shows clear differences. Private inscriptions stress personal achievements and rewards, while royal texts and temple scenes give longer lists of captured people, animals, body parts, and valuable objects.

Not everything in the texts shows up in the images, either. Women and children are missing from scenes of prisoners even though the texts record their capture, and the elderly and disabled are missing everywhere. Some objects listed as booty always appear as temple offerings, while others are left out.

Matić argues that these differences are not mainly about real versus ideological. Instead, they show how war booty was represented to suit the interests, audiences, and goals of different people and settings.