Time and Meaning: The Use of the Fishing and Fowling Scene through Time in Ancient Egyptian Non-Royal Tombs

This thesis is an introductory investigation into the iconographic and compositional developments of the fishing and fowling scene in Egyptian private tomb through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Scenes are selected from a corpus created by the author and examined to understand how the scene is used in each period and what visual elements are included or omitted. The information gathered here is synthesized to establish trends in development and used to test existing theories on the meaning and purpose of the fishing and fowling scene in private tomb decoration. The results reveal an evolving meaning, originating in the royal motif of defeating chaotic forces and ultimately morphing into an expression of transfiguration into the afterlife