Digitally mapping the musical ensemble scenes from Old Kingdom Egypt with particular attention payed to the gestures represented by the singer-chironomists
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Austin Megier (primary investigator), MRes, Macquarie University Department of History and Archaeology.
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Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton (data scientist); https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4932-7912; Solutions Architect (Digital Humanities), Macquarie University Faculty of Arts.
The Old Kingdom musical ensemble scenes database is a digital and relational database, which was developed in order to fulfil the aims and facilitate the research of a Master of Research thesis submitted in December 2020. The database includes geographical, iconographical and textual data, which is derived from a total of 101 'musical ensemble scenes' from the Old Kingdom with a particular focus on the hand and arm gestures represented by the ensemble member referred to as 'singer-chironomist'. This project sought to establish a typology of gestures, the results of which can be found in the accompanying thesis '"One sings for you with the hand": gestures represented in Old Kingdom musical ensemble scenes'. Though the aims of this thesis were focused on the gestures of the 'singer-chironomist', the database was designed with the foresight to facilitate future research into all facets of this scene type, as well as to provide insight towards music in ancient Egypt and neighbouring civilisations more generally. It is hoped that this database will be used by researchers and updated as our knowledge and dataset expands.
Old Kingdom Egypt (c. 2686-2181 BC)
- Egypt,
- Egyptology,
- iconography,
- music archaeology.
- musicology,
- archaeology,
- chironomy/cheironomy
The Old Kingdom musical ensemble scenes database may be used by those wishing to investigate the iconographical, textual, and archaeo-musicological elements represented in this scene type from the period of the Old Kingdom. However, the database was designed with the foresight and hope that it would facilitate future research into music scenes across ancient Egypt's long and rich history. An expansion to the database, either by way of incorporating additional detail to the existing scenes or by way of adding similar scenes from later periods, is the ultimate goal.
Megier, A. (2020), ‘"One sings for you with the hand": gestures represented in Old Kingdom musical ensemble scenes’, MRes Thesis, Macquarie University. Accessible via: https://doi.org/10.25949/22321105.v1
Linacre College, Oxford (2006) Oxford Expedition to Egypt: Scene-details Database[data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000009
CC-BY-SA 4.0 International
(descriptions in parentheses where required)
/MRes_Thesis_Data/ to be renamed at a later point
csv_files/to be renamed at a later point (original data csvs)
work in progress
The Old Kingdom musical ensemble scenes database references and correlates with a 'scene type' defined in the Oxford Expedition to Egypt: Scene-details Database (see Related Publications above), namely 12.3 Musician(s), with or without singers (see here: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/oee_ahrc_2006/queryThemes.cfm?section=tombs&theme=12.3&CFID=aa6cc367-de02-48ba-a1b8-c016024517a6&CFTOKEN=0). The Oxford Expedition to Egypt: Scene-details Database is an Archaeology Data Service (ADS) ColdFusion (CFML) database.
Geographical data was from Pleiades (https://pleiades.stoa.org/) and Google Maps (https://www.google.com/maps).
For further methodological notes (including details on the iconographical and philological considerations employed), see Chapter 3 of Megier, A. (2020) (see Related Publications above).
work in progress, note: ask Brian about Ewan's second paragraph in his Methodological Notes
work in progress