Sidestone Press Spaces and Meaning: Multimodal Communication in Ancient Egypt

Multimodality – the integration of different semiotic resources in communication – plays a key role in the way people convey meaning. While much of the research has focused on multimodal communication in modern European and Anglo-Saxon cultures, the diverse visual and textual compositions of ancient civilizations have been less explored. This book presents the findings of a working group on multimodal communication in Ancient Egypt and explores the multimodal nature of Egyptian artifacts decorated with texts, images or text-image compositions through a new interdisciplinary perspective on their semiotic properties. Applying approaches from semiotics, linguistics and visual studies to these ancient materials opens up new perspectives that deepen our understanding of how space and spatial relationships contribute to the interpretation of decorated artifacts. The spatial arrangement of these artifacts within and interactions with their physical surroundings – whether on walls, on statues or within architectural complexes – offer crucial insights into communicative practices in Ancient Egypt and reveal the sophisticated ways in which space was used to convey complex messages. By examining the spatiality of different objects and groups of objects, this volume demonstrates that the multimodal approach not only enriches the interpretation of individual artifacts, but also leads to a more comprehensive analysis of communicative strategies within Ancient Egyptian culture.