Border stelae and false-doors as spatial and symbolic boundaries in Egypt

Abstract

The concept of “border” proves to be controversial due to its common use. We have naturalised the notion of an exclusive border, that is, one which divides an A territory from a non-A, according to the aristotelian law of the excluded third. When studying ancient societies we must necessarily abandon such preconceptions. In this paper we examine the pertinence of using the concept of “border” to understand (not only physical) divisions in Ancient Egypt. Minding the extensive use of stelae in the marking of spatial boundaries throughout egyptian history and based on the careful study of stelae, we aim to discern what is it that they separate and why they are used in that fashion. We will study the cases of both the boundary stelae of the city of Akhetaten and the so-called false-door stelae in order to illustrate our theses. The first ones, erected to be seen, mark a physical limit, while the second group, occult inside private tombs, signals the border between the world of the living and that of the dead. Aparently different, they have on the contrary the same function: to separate cosmic regions, keeping Chaos outside of the territory where Order rules