Zeit und Raum (und Licht)—Wahrnehmung und deren Konstruktion im pharaonischen Ägypten (Notizen zum Grab des Pennut Teil VI ½)

Perception of time and space is determined by human sense as well as by cultural conditions. The article explores differences between the ancient egyptian and contemporary (everyday) concepts of time and space. It is proposed that a central category of perception in Ancient Egypt was the dichotomy of a perfective, limited, illuminated, this-worldy matrix on the one hand and an imperfective, unlimited, unlit, other-worldly one on the other, characterized on the temporal level as realms of Djet-vs. Nekhekh-times and on a spacial level connected to the south-north direction of the river Nile vs. the more unspecific rotation of the sun respectively. Three examples are used to analyse the spacialisation of time concepts on the shrine of Tutankhamun, the entanglement of concepts of space on stela Louvre E 52 and finally a thick description of environment in the chapel of Pennut of Aniba. In the last example, a specific egyptian conceptualisation of space by the means of sacred entities (nṯr.w) can be observed.