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The ancient Egyptians were famous for their exotic and luxury perfumes in the ancient world, even having cities that specialised in perfume production in the Ptolemaic Period, when they exported these perfumes all over the Mediterranean. They produced these perfumes, and other scented preparations, from aromatic plants, fats and oils. The deities were fragrant beings, imbued with the divine essence, and perfume was considered by the Egyptians to be the sweat of the god Ra. Some deities were specially linked to perfume, one of the most important being Nefertem, god of perfume and of the primordial fragrant blue lotus flower. Incense was to the Egyptians the ‘eye of Horus’, burnt as an offering to the deities in temples. Aromatic plant material was stored in perfume/unguent ‘laboratories’, and perfumers’ workshops produced the precious perfumed oils and unguents, used in the funerary context, rituals, ceremonies, festivals and banquets. / History / M.A. (Ancient Near Eastern Studies)

The dissertation analyses the reliefs and paintings on thirty-one different tombs in Western Anatolia erected between 600 and 450 BC, in order to illuminate the ways in which non-Greek elites were identified on their memorials. The tombs from three areas are treated: Phrygia, Hellespontine Phrygia and Lydia, where the primary language groups were Phrygian, Mysian and Lydian. There is little literary evidence for these regions, and what there is tends to focus on political developments. Descriptions of people and society are few, and tend to represent them from an outside perspective, grouping them according to cultural characteristics which differentiate them from Greeks. It is clear, however, that the regions were important, prosperous places, controlled by illustrious grandees and land marked with a relatively high proportion of monumental tombs. Of these monumental tombs, there is a relatively high number decorated with striking and articulate images. There is much to be gained from examining the images on these tombs, as ‘indigenous’ sources for how elite Western Anatolians described themselves. Previous approaches to the tombs and their images have tended to look at them individually or in smaller groups, and to concentrate on the transmission and reception of Persian and Greek culture in the Achaemenid provinces. This dissertation contributes a broader comparative study of the decorated tombs, focussing on the kinds of statuses the images represent and the cultural forms these took. By comparing the various methods of self-representation, it clarifies patterns of identities in Western Anatolia and their relationship to historical circumstances. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. An introduction outlines the scope and sample, the historical background, previous studies of the monuments, the definition of ‘identity’ and the methods of analysis adopted here. Three case study chapters present the regions and the decorated monuments within them. A concluding chapter synthesises three aspects: social identities (roles and spheres of life represented); geographic and chronological patterns; and cultural affiliations and orientations. The dissertation concludes that a tension between Persian identities and local traditions is evident in some of the tomb images, which relates to the political upheavals in Western Anatolia and the Aegean at the time of the Persian Wars.