The Senses & the Sacred: A Multisensory and Digital Approach to Examining an Ancient Egyptian Funerary Landscape

Abstract

What makes a space feel sacred? How did ancient people create a physical and emotional ‘sense’ of specialness or distinction in their ritual places? The ancient Egyptians created at least two major zones of ritualised space (demarcated from the secular parts of their cities and towns), the temple and the cemetery. While scholars have addressed the multisensory techniques utilised by kings and priests to craft the temple precinct into a sacred landscape, the sensory experience of the necropolis remains undertheorized. This gap results from the challenge of comprehending the vast funerary landscapes that have experienced dramatic change since ancient times, changes which have obscured ancient ground level and pathways as well as dramatically altered the appearance of monumental tomb architecture. In this chapter, I combine textual, art historical, and archaeological evidence for the sounds, smells, and visual experiences of ancient people at an Egyptian necropolis with 3D GIS technologies that attempt to virtually represent ancient ritual spaces in their form during the Pharaonic Period. The necropolis of Saqqara, bordering the administrative centre Memphis and one of Egypt’s oldest elite burial grounds, is used as a case study to explore the ancient Egyptian funerary landscape from a multisensory perspective.