Beyond the social and thematic limits of the written record, the broader totality of material culture and context could deliver more findings in the future. For such broader understanding, anthropology offers examples in comparison, where one human society might give standard views on the development of the body over its lifespan. Maurice Bloch has summarized how the Zafimaniry in Madagascar consider the body to calcify over time until it becomes coral-like, to be incorporated into the houses of wisdom as an ancestral bodily presence (Bloch 1998). Within the world of ancient Egyptian writings, such texture of life is captured for youth in the recurrence of the term wadj, “verdant,” “fresh” in writings; in hieroglyphic script, this is written with a flowering papyrus stem and is also the regular scepter held by goddesses in formal depictions of offerings. For the latest stages of the ageing process, another vegetal metaphor is used, isy, “brittle,” written with a triple-leaf branch, as if the person dries out over life like a plant, rather than becoming stone or mineral. This shift from fresh to dry may be the metaphor applied in script, but it is not clear whether it was the dominant concept of human living or how far it reached across different social groups and times. Future research might develop means of testing this plant metaphor across the rest of the material cultural evidence. In one pattern of burial during the period 1850-1700 BC (Chapter 7), the deceased was equipped with faience figurines, in forms also found deposited at temples, apparently as votive offerings. The best known of these faience figures include animals from the desert-to-marsh margins of settled life: wild cat, gerbil, lion, and hippopotamus. However, this burial equipment as often included plant forms, particularly gourds such as cucumbers. possibly, this attention to the plant world might relate to an underlying conception of life force. The importance of the lotus flower and bud in visual arts, including architecture throughout the three millennia, might also be considered in this light. However, depictions and descriptions of the lotus emphasize a human animal quality, the sense of smell. Other written evidence also points away from the fresh-dry plant analogy. The literary Teaching of Ptahhotep (perhaps 1950 Bc, copies known as late as 600 Bc) opens with a lament over physical decay with more focus on the human body, more animal than plant in our terms. The lament is then countered by praise of the wisdom and experience offered by the elderly: “no-one is born wise” (Chapter 5).
World History
