Authors:	Gerhards, Simone
Title:	The visual perception of fatigue and sleep in bas-relief from the Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom
Online publication date:	4-Apr-2024
Year of first publication:	2023
Language:	english
Abstract:	Sleep is often viewed as one of the most intimate and private activities that we carry out. Therefore, it is not surprising that the motif of a fatigued or sleeping person is not common in Egyptian artwork. Compared to the written sources, the number of visual representations is considerably reduced. It is a challenge to identify sleeping or fatigued persons in art and to distinguish between these stages. A person lying in a bed does not necessarily have to be asleep, but the bed as a place can hint at other aspects such as procreation, birth, or death. There are several sign codes in modern perception, which can help to recognise whether a person is asleep or tired. In Western culture, yawning, for example, is a typical visual marker of tiredness, but in ancient Egypt, this does not seem to exist. This paper briefly examines the primary markers that visually indicate sleep or fatigue in bas-relief in ancient Egypt.
DDC:	930 Alte Geschichte 930 History of ancient world 960 Geschichte Afrikas 960 General history of Africa
Institution:	Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Department:	FB 07 Geschichts- u. Kulturwissensch.
Place:	Mainz
ROR:	https://ror.org/023b0x485
DOI:	http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-9641
Version:	Published version
Publication type:	Buchbeitrag
Document type specification:	Scientific article
License:	In Copyright
Information on rights of use:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Citation:	Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Egyptologists : ICE XII : 3rd-8th November 2019, Cairo, Egypt El-Aguizy, Ola Kasparian, Burt
Pages or article number:	1237 1243
Publisher:	Institut français d’archéologie orientale
Publisher place:	Cairo
Issue date:	2023
ISBN:	978-2-7247-0953-7
Appears in collections:	JGU-Publikationen