« Adieu veau, vache, cochon, couvée… » La boucherie à l’Ancien Empire : croisement des données iconographiques, textuelles et archéologiques

Abstract

The theme of butchery was one of the main concerns of the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom: the many representations of it as a subject and the omnipresence of meat offerings as part of funerals and the piles of offerings copiously depicted on the walls of the mastabas bear witness to this. Meat comprised an important element of an individual’s diet, both physically, as it was high in calories, and theoretically, as the representations of the flesh, blood and the kill are laden with symbolism. It is these two facets of the subject that we set out to examine, focussing on a key moment in the sequence of actions transforming the animal into a simple foodstuff, the kill. This crucial moment concentrates various issues that may be broached during a broader study of the theme of butchery. It will thus be a question of analysing all the available data, be they textual, archaeological or iconographic, in order to better understand the actors, tools, places, techniques and symbolic scope of the slaughtering of an animal to be butchered in the Old Kingdom.