Professor Louise Steel | Viewing Egyptian Influences in Late Bronze Age Cyprus Through a Postcolonial Lens

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Professor Louise Steel | Viewing Egyptian Influences in Late Bronze Age Cyprus Through a Postcolonial Lens

Aug 14, 2024 | arts and humanities, behavioural sciences

About this episode

The role of Egyptian or Egyptian-inspired artefacts found in the East Mediterranean has long been considered by archaeologists. Some have highlighted how these objects may have conferred elite authority on their owners. More recently, analysis has been grounded in postcolonial thought, which emphasises the agency of the native population involved in the exchange of artefacts. In a recent paper, Professor Louise Steel explores the Egyptian influence in the Late Bronze Age town of Enkomi in Cyprus.

In the late 19^th century, the British Museum excavated several tombs in the area, finding many Egyptian or Egyptian-inspired objects. To date, most studies of these Egyptian objects found in Cyprus have focused on describing and classifying them, rather than exploring their social roles.

However, Steel analyses these artefacts through the lens of cultural hybridisation, specifically drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘third space’. In this context, third space is defined as ‘an in-between space where two or more cultural identities mix and become materially entangled’.

In the Late Bronze Age, Cyprus was beyond the reach of Egyptian colonial activity. However, it was integrated into multiple networks of contact, diplomacy, and exchange with the Egyptians. At the time, Enkomi was a thriving trading centre and cosmopolitan hub – a place where new materials and social practices were imported and shared between local Cypriots and other peoples. Pottery, jewellery and other objects were incorporated from Egyptian and other cultures into everyday life in Cyprus.

The idea of third space enables us to look at this intermingling of differences without an assumed hierarchy. It recognises people’s agency and how they actively rework new ideas and objects into their own identities and practices. Indeed, how Enkomi’s inhabitants assimilated Egyptian materials appears very different from how this occurred in the Egyptian Empire in Syro-Palestine.

For example, in one tomb, archaeologists found Egyptian royal objects dating to the 14^th Century BC. Notably, they found a gold and enamel broad collar which, in Egypt, would have been an indication of royal favour. However, this collar was likely incorporated within the Cypriot dress code alongside other jewellery, accruing meaning and social capital over time. This illustrates a unique cultural interaction in which a Cypriot urban elite was able to appropriate luxury items from Egypt on their own terms.

For Professor Steel, this illustrates how the presence of foreign objects might transform social spaces and material worlds. While other Egyptian influences in the East Mediterranean might be seen in a more colonial context, the cultural interactions documented at Enkomi are characteristic of Bhabha’s third space, as ‘innovative sites of collaboration and contestation’.