The Walking Dead at Saqqara. The Making of a Cultural Geography

Abstract

The ‘Walking Dead’ approach presented here provides a methodologically interesting lens into ancient religious agency. Inspired by theories by Andreas Reckwitz, Jörg Rüpke and others, this new praxeological methodology seeks to add historical depth to the question of the formation of religious traditions and how these are negotiated between individuals and groups in an ancient context. The claim of the Walking Dead approach is that these processes become tangible in ancient cultures by three vectors of religious agency which are looking into religious practices, transmission of text and images and the use-life of the landscape. Five case studies from (ancient) Egypt will demonstrate how the ‘Walking Dead’ approach is helpful to detect how traditions as well are shaped by these vectors and how this is visible in a site’s dynamic cultural geography.

Keywords

• Ancient Egypt
• Cultural Geography
• use-life
• lived ancient religion