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oa Beyond the interpreter hypothesis
Multifunctional frontier agents in Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom
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- 04 Sept 2025
- 15 Dec 2025
- 22 Jan 2026
Abstract
Abstract
This article revisits the commonly held assumption in the historiography of interpreting that interpreters existed
as a professional category in Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Focusing on individuals designated by titles compounded with
, this article reassesses the fragmentary textual and
iconographic evidence often cited in support of this claim. The author argues that these individuals should not be understood as
having been interpreters in the modern professional sense, but rather as multifunctional agents of frontier mediation. Their roles
— which ranged from linguistic and cross-cultural negotiation to administrative coordination, military supervision and the
management of mobility and resources in liminal zones — reflect flexible strategies of border management shaped by circumstance
rather than a stable occupational profile. By re-examining the available sources through the lens of function rather than
profession and highlighting the anachronistic projections, the tendency to retroactively professionalize the past is challenged.
The author proposes instead that the
titles designate the adaptable mediators embedded in Ancient
Egypt’s intercultural peripheries and offers a historically grounded model of premodern mediation that invites further dialogue
between Egyptology and Translation and Interpreting Studies.