This Nile Scribes series allows our readers to learn more about Egyptologists from around the world. From questions about their life and their career, we also explore their research interests and their impact and perspectives on the field of Egyptology. We want to use this series to help strengthen the public’s awareness of the Egyptological community, and to illustrate the varied careers and on-going research projects within the discipline. This week we had the pleasure to speak with Dr. Ole Herslund about his career.

Who is Dr. Ole Herslund?

Dr. Ole Herslund received his Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Copenhagen, where he specialised in the classification of material culture in Egyptian texts. Dr. Herslund has taught at the University of Copenhagen and is also a member of the Tutankhamun Stick and Staves Project, where he acts as an Egyptologist. As an archaeologist, he is currently active on several field projects in Egypt and the Near East.

Nile Scribes: Where are you from and where did you go to school?

Ole Herslund: I’m from the north Copenhagen suburb called Kongens Lyngby. I was trained as an Egyptologist at the University of Copenhagen and as an Egyptian Archaeologist at University College London. I did my Ph.D. in Egyptology at University of Copenhagen and the Danish Ph.D. School in Archaeology.

NS: How did you become interested in Egyptology?

OH: As I child, I had a general passion for anything old, archaeological, or historical as well as fantasy and science fiction books, role-playing games and tabletop games. I just really like exploring alternative worlds, whether fictional or anthropological.

NS: Where have you worked in Egypt?

OH: I have worked as excavator on some of the main historical period sites in Egypt including Abydos, Deir al-Barsha, Gebel el-Silsila, Kom el-Ahmer/Kom Wasit, Medinet el Gurob, Tell el-Amarna, and the temple of Athribis. It has been great working on the all the sites but the temple of Athribis project was truly special. For years, we excavated a large Ptolemaic temple, which was later reused for settlement and industry in the Byzantine and Medieval Period. We have unearthed many secondary brick walls comprising several room units, countless artefacts in a wide range of material categories of the Roman, Coptic, and Early Islamic Periods as well as exposed and recorded a large number of Ptolemaic texts inscribed on the walls of the now excavated temple rooms. It is the only Pharaonic temple in which a complete archaeological record has been produced from foundations, to the temple itself, to the later reuse phases and finally the destruction phase.

NS: What changes have you noticed in the way archaeology is conducted in the Middle East since you started working there?

OH: The introduction in the field digital recording has been a great addition to analog drawings and it has become so much easier to produce a high amount of quality photographs. There has also been an increased tendency to conduct proper stratigraphical excavations with a full record, although there are still too many sites that would benefit from a better recording. This, however, is a global issue, which is not particular to Egypt.

NS: What are your primary areas of research?

OH: My Ph.D. thesis focuses on ancient Egyptian classification of material culture. Classification studies in Egyptian texts and language can be highly productive because of the feature in the writing system known as determinatives that function as classifiers more than reading aids. The determinative is a category sign written at the end of word from where it assigns the word to a category. By studying the relationships between words in writing and the classifier sign, one can begin to map how the category existed on the cognitive level in the minds of the ancient Egyptians. Again the record allows the study of how the categories changed over long stretches of time, how the classification system reacted to newly introduced inventions, technologies, flora and fauna, divinities, etc. In addition to the classification system in writing, the ancient Egyptian record includes lists, language, labels in tomb art and amalgamations of object groups and many other examples of explicit classification. Having been trained as both an Egyptologist and archaeologist, my research focuses on material culture in texts and writing. The rich textual source material and the parallel archaeological record make it possible to shed light on some of the meanings and categories the ancients related to their objects or vice versa. As such, we are getting partly into the minds of the ancients and partly how they experienced the world on the level of cognition. For example, a chariot was so intimately related to the otherwise abstract concept of “speed” on the deep rooted level of cognition, that the chariot could be used as source domain for speed metaphors in love poetry.

NS: What made you become interested in how material culture and language interrelate?

OH: I have always had an interest in metaphors and how humans express abstract notions as such expressions can unveil how my native or other cultures experience and understand the world. The textual record can add additional layers of meaning and information to the material culture, beyond the archaeological contexts and economics. For example, in writing, the branding iron made of copper can feature with a “sun”-classifier. The branding iron belongs to the “sun”-category, because like the sun, the branding iron is red hot and burns and scorches the skin. There is shared embodied experience between a severe sun burn and branding the skin of a cow. Choosing to focus on material culture in text, language and writing was simply a matter of combining my interest in philology and archaeology.

NS: How does materiality give us insight into cultural thinking?

OH: Many simply conceive material culture as being dead inanimate things that create a material scene around us. But they miss the possibility of decoding the very meanings and ideologies that make up this scene, which is often expressed through the material culture. One needs to look no further than to the distinctive architectural features of a rich neighbourhood versus a poor neighbourhood to detect a stratified society. In addition to buildings and monuments, humans express many meanings through their clothes, furniture arrangements, bodily ornaments, tools, weapons, pottery, etc. In addition to contextual meanings Egyptian art, texts, language, and the writing systems can add many layers in decoding these meanings and ideologies relating to material culture and vice versa. This can, for example, be in term of values, taxonomies, classification, and metaphors in both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

NS: If you had to study something else besides ancient Egypt, what would it be?

OH: Had I not become an Egyptologist, I would probably have become a Sinologist. China, like Egypt, has a very far stretching and parallel textual and archaeological record, and in Chinese the classifier is expressed in both writing and language, whereas in Egypt, the classifier is strictly graphemic and not part of the language.

NS: Have you worked in any other countries?

OH: I have worked as an archaeological excavator in the royal castle of Vordingborg, Denmark and also in Jordan working with Early Islamic Archaeology with the Danish missions to Jerash and Aqaba in the 2000s and early 2010s. Recently, I have been employed by Tübingen University’s new mission to the Iron Age site of Saruq al-Hadid in Dubai, UAE.

NS: Why do you think it is important to study the ancient world?

OH: That is a big question, but I think the ancient world record offers an unparalleled opportunity to study cultural developments and the human experience through time. In single events, social or remembered events or through long term events, whether in daily life, social and cultural codes, material culture, language, religion, classification systems, landscape and climate, etc. They are in themselves big questions that inform us on the human experience through times and places. Egypt is virtually unique for such topics, in that the ancient world record comprises 4,000 years of parallel text and archaeology, of which both source categories are extremely rich.

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The Nile Scribes are grateful for Dr. Herslund’s participation in this series. If you have any questions for Dr. Herslund, you may contact us via our Contact page.

Follow Ole Herslund

• On his Academia.edu profile

Readers – who would you like us to interview for this blog series? Leave your suggestions in the comments!