The Knowledgeable as a Resource and Legitimation of Power during and after the Crisis. Egypt during the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (A03)

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This project deals with divination as an important discipline of the sciences of Mesopotamia. It focuses on the social group of literate experts, their “knowledge texts” and their cultural embedding. Looking into the future (divination) from a contemporary perspective constituted a rational activity. Ordinary people as well as political rulers attempted to obtain hints on future events and developments. Oracles and omens offered the possibility to avert future disaster. The project deals with the social group of those who commanded the divinatory knowledge as well as the ascriptions that they received in discourses of weakness. The strengths and weaknesses of this knowledge are dealt with from a contemporary and a retrospective perspective, always taking into account present day considerations of history of