Textual Production in the Wadi Hammamat Quarries and the Pragmatics at Issue
Résumé
In the desert, rock engravings exist in various form, ranging from the nominative graffiti of simple expedition members to decrees and official texts ordered by the sovereign, some of which, by their very texture and sophisticated language, are even the fruit of veritable precise textual craftsmanship. However, usually examined via mere transcriptions, removed from the context in which they were created, these texts have but seldom been studied for themselves. Rather than using this epigraphic material for other purposes, especially to fill the gaps of historic documentation, my overall approach focuses on writing practices—both inscriptional and enunciative—in those liminal regions, drafting a new interpretive history of these texts.
As a glimpse to my ongoing doctoral research, my communication will be based on the analysis of several Middle Kingdom expedition texts, and it will point out the interest of studying them as part of the textual landscape in which they emerged, namely, the Wadi Hammamat quarries. Through a tripartite analysis (materiality, visuality and textuality), I will highlight the ways in which some texts were produced in the very locality, on the basis of the forerunners’ “already-said” (localized intertextuality). As a result, I will discuss the referential regime of these “travel narratives.” Far from considering them as simple, albeit monumental, expedition “reports”, the lecture will explore the difficult question of the pragmatics of expedition texts, in particular by examining how some of them are rooted in two fundamental, though different, modes of apprehension of the world: “symbolic” vs. “informative” rationalities.