Yeah, it's pretty unknown what happened. There's a topic at having to do with the subject.
You'll have to register, log-in, etc. if you want to see what she actually posted, but ... Er... here's what it is ::
[quote=Nicole Hansen]
Many people have been asking for a summary of my talk at ARCE last weekend and so here it is:
In most societies, the three life events that involve the most ritual activity are birth, marriage and death. While Egyptian rituals associated with birth and death are well-known, Egyptologists hqave long contended that the ancient Egyptians did not perform any sort of wedding ceremony or ritual. Ancient Egyptian couples, they said (in a thouroughly modern way), simply moved in together.
In my paper, I argued that this was not the case. The main body of evidence I used to support my theory was a collection of songs, probably from Deir el-Medina, known by Egyptologists as "love songs." This misnomer has led Egyptologists to overlook their true function, and that is as wedding songs.
I used three lines of argument to support my case: 1-comparison between the ancient songs and modern Egyptian wedding songs in terms of themes, 2-references to rituals in the ancient songs that are performed at modern Egyptian weddings, and 3-internal evidence from the songs themselves and comparative material from ancient times dealing with marriage.
In short, I was able to reconstruct weddings at Deir el-Medina as follows:
The boy or girl makes a petition to Hathor at Deir el-Bahari, perhaps over a period of 3 days, for a specific spouse.
The boy approaches his beloved's mother to express an interest in her.
Once the parents agree on the match, seven days of possibly sex-segregated celebration with singing and feasting takes place, surrounded by flowers.
Guests at the festivities gives gifts, which are later repaid at similar events.
In preparation for the groom's arrival the bride has her hair braided, while songs extolling her physical beauty are sung.
Upon the groom's arrival at his bride's home, an animal is slaughtered on the doorstep, and the groom's hand is kissed 4 times.
To thank her for her help in obtaining the desired spouse, a feast is made for Hathor.
The paper was well-received by the conference attendees. I need to do further research before I publish it though, because I did not have a chance to review all of the relevant books and articles that I wanted to cover before the conference.[/quote]
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