OEB 43457 (AEB 1999.0787) : The author examines the ways in which head hair was worn in ancient Egypt by men, women, and children, in life and in death, which is the final transformation of social identity, in order to study how this may help to construct social identity. Restricting herself to the N.K. period of c. 1480-1350 B.C., she concludes that depicted hairstyles clearly divide between those appropriate to men and those appropriate to women, reinforcing the division of society by gender. The evidence shows that the hairstyles depicted were not freely selected by artists. Rather, they formed part of a visual system that contributed to the construction and display of social identities, and so had to be appropriate to the age, gender, and status of the wearers. |