Omar Nasser, from Fiep*
Curitiba – Highly ambitious people with a strong inclination towards exerting power were the ones responsible for the emergence of one of the most brilliant civilisations the world has ever witnessed: the Egyptian civilisation. The theory was created by professor Juan José Castillos, of the Uruguayan Institute of Egyptology, which tackled the issue during the 2nd National Summit for Egyptology Studies "Religion in Everyday Life," last Thursday (30th) in the evening, in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba. According to him, the roots of the Egyptian civilisation lie in the attitude of those individuals, who are called "aggrandisers" by some specialists – including anthropologists, social scientists, historians, and sociologists.
The "aggrandisers" appear in many different moments of the Human history and pre-history, according to Castillos. Among these characters, he names Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Stalin. In his opinion, those are people who had a great power thirst, probably due to a genetic predisposition, who were usually unhappy, and who sometimes caused tragedies. In many different periods, though, they have somehow contributed for the advancement of their societies.
With regard to Egypt, the professor explains, the "aggrandisers" appeared in Pre-Historic times, and for that reason, there are no written recordings of their names and actions. Nevertheless, excavations made recently in the country revealed the existence of graves with no inscriptions in which individuals were buried with great honours. The high-value objects found at those sites indicate that those were people who had important positions in society. They would have been the ones responsible for the advent of the advanced, complex, and stratified society of the dynastic periods in Ancient Egypt.
Professor Castillos explains that the studies and theories presented so far do not satisfactorily explain how Egypt evolved from a disunited society, comprised of hunters and collectors, to a stratified society. His theory will be presented in November in Toronto, Canada, at a conference on Egyptology. Next year, the results of his researches will be taken to a similar event at the British Museum, in London.
Castillos calls himself an "office archaeologist," because he studies the subject matter in books, conferences and symposia, different than the "field archaeologists," who make excavations. His studies are available to interested parties at the Web address www.geocities.com/jjcastillos/complexity.html.
In his opinion, Egyptology has a large field yet to be explored by Brazilian scientists. "It would be very important for Brazilian specialists to organise a mission to Egypt to make their own excavations," he claims.
*Federation of Industries of the State of Paraná. Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
