University of Pennsylvania

Graduate Student, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Other Affiliations: Loyola University Chicago, History

Thesis Title: ‘We Have Come to Serve Pharaoh’: A Study of the Medjay and Pangrave Culture as an Ethnic Group and as Mercenaries from c.2300 BCE until c. 1050 BCE

About

I am undertaking my doctoral dissertation through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.  It is preliminarily entitled: ‘We Have Come to Serve Pharaoh’: A Study of the Medjay and Pangrave Culture as an Ethnic Group and as Mercenaries from c. 2300 BCE until c. 1050 BCE.  This dissertation focuses on the interrelations between two ethnic groups, the Ancient Egyptians and the Medjay.  The Medjay were a group of nomadic peoples who lived in the Eastern Desert of Sudan and the southern part of Egypt in antiquity.  The extent of their homeland, Medja, is debated and primary evidence from this homeland is virtually non-existent.  The majority of evidence about the existence of these people came about because of their interactions with Ancient Egyptians.  Similar to many other nomadic cultures, the Medjay had a symbiotic relationship with the wealthier, sedentary societies of the Nile Valley, depending on them for food, luxuries, and employment.  Medjay frequently came to Egypt looking for work which was most often found as mercenary soldiers.  Afterwards, those Medjay may have returned to their homeland or acculturated into Egyptian society.

Although the Medjay appear extensively in Egyptian texts from the 6th dynasty through the Roman Period, the identity of the people called Medjay is often debatable.  A few of the textual sources clearly refer to the Medjay as the nomadic peoples of the Eastern Desert.  But many other sources, usually from the First through Second Intermediate Periods, identify the Medjay as mercenaries or do not make reference to their profession in Egypt.  In the Egyptian New Kingdom, textual references to the Medjay abound.  Oddly, references from this period no longer seem to indicate an ethnic people from the Eastern Desert.  Instead, many references from the Egyptian New Kingdom use the word ‘Medjay’ as an occupational title indicating some kind of specialized security force, the holders of which may have been ethnically Egyptian.  In addition to textual data, the Medjay have also been associated with a foreign archaeological assemblage found in Egypt, northern Sudan, and sometimes in the Eastern Desert known as the Pangrave Culture.  This archaeological tradition appears in Egypt suddenly around at the end of the Middle Kingdom and disappears just as quickly around at the beginning of the New Kingdom.

In short, the identity of the Medjay is unclear.  Egyptologists have traditionally identified the Medjay with mercenary soldiers, the Pangrave culture, and specialized security forces who acted as policemen or desert-patrols.  More generally, Egyptologists have interpreted the Medjay as either an ethnicity or an occupation, depending on the period of Egyptian history in question.  They often view the Medjay as bearers of Pangrave culture and mercenaries in the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period and policemen in the Egyptian New Kingdom.  This dissertation is designed to examine the transition from Pangrave to Policemen to see if this development is as valid and as comprehensive as Egyptologists often describe it to be.  For the most part, these interpretations developed over 60 years ago as theoretical interpretations of the textual references to the Medjay.  Nevertheless, these interpretations have been reified and perpetuated by later generations of scholars.  Nuances about who the Medjay were and how they interacted with the Egyptians are frequently overlooked in favor of a broad, generalized understanding of the Medjay as one unified people.  In the last 60 years, however, new evidence has come to light and a new understanding of the textual and archaeological material has allowed us to reinterpret who the Medjay were.

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