Statuen im öffentlichen Raum als Memory Box: Gedanken zu einem Interpretationsexperiment

The paper “Publicly accessible statues as Memory Box: thoughts on an interpretation experiment” addresses the statues and especially ensembles of statues of high officials of the 18th dynasty, which were erected in various Egyptian temples and to a lesser extent the Theban necropolis. Their long-term (semi-)public display closely connects the depicted person, the creator and the viewer of the image in their contemporary context of erection and beyond. This socio-cultural dimension of the statues and other primary monuments of self-presentation is still heavily understudied. The contribution at hand draws attention to the research approach “Memory Box”, which has been developed by a Finnish- German team in 2011–2013 (Aali, Perämäki & Sarti 2014) to focus on the syn- and diachronic interdependence of the materiality and the social context of items of collective cultural memory. In honour of her jubilee and in thanks for her support of my cross-cultural studies, I dedicate the following sketch of the potential of this research approach for interpreting 18th dynasty (private) statuary to Susanne Bickel.