Dans i det forntida Egypten : En studie om kvinnor och män i dansscener

Previous research about dance has chiefly been focused on categorization of dance but no earlier study has specifically dealt with dance scenes where men and women occur in the same register, or over a longer time frame. This study concerns scenes where men and women dance in the same register and scenes included comes from the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. The study investigates in what contexts men and women occur in the same register, and why and the study grasps dance at its widest sense with movements that also could be related to acrobatics and play. The study is an iconographic investigation and analyses will be made according to culture-specific art-conventions. 12 scenes and one fragment are included and analyzed. The conclusion shows that in each time period the occurrence of scenes are concentrated to specific places, and sometimes they are located in close approximation geographically, had the same artist or have tomb-owners that are related to each other. This points to a local expression of dance scenes with mixed gender rather than it was usual nation-wide. The men and women occur in contexts that where usual for dance scenes to be in such as presentation, procession and funerary scenes. Physical contact between the two genders is rare, and is only seen once in the tomb of Baqet III of the Middle Kingdom. Even though the female and male dancers are in the same register they are likely to be seen separated by people clapping their hands or by empty spaces between them. If this separation reflects the reality is hard to tell but the Egyptians seemed to have preferred, esthetically, to depict the two genders separated in these ways in dance scenes.