Andrea Deagon
PhD

Lecture

Devotees Of Hathor: The Lives Of The Ancient Egyptian Dancers

Ancient Egypt is known for the importance it placed on dance in both rituals and secular life.

But who exactly were the dancers of ancient Egypt? And what do their lives reveal about the nature of ancient Egyptian dance, woman’s dance in particular?

This lecture goes beyond generalities to focus on individual dancers whose names and stories appear in our sources, such as the courtier Neferesres, “Chief of the Dancers of the Great House,” Bendjet, daughter of the court of the official Idu, and several foreign women who danced for the temple at Ilahun.

Also included are the women of the villages of Deir el Medina and el-Amarna, whose homes and altars preserve a record of the role dance played in their lives.

These individual lives serve as focal points for a network of details that clarify key questions of status, training, and identity of dancers, as

well as the techniques of Egyptian dance – including the evidence of bellydance.

Through these lives, dance emerges as a key element in Egyptian beliefs about the nature of the universe, in which the pleasures of sex, music and dance are intricately entwined with the vital processes of birth and rebirth.