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Beyond the interpreter hypothesis

Multifunctional frontier agents in Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom

 | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Published online: 22 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00131.ola
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 iaA(w), 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 iaA(w) 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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historiographical review of the functions attributed to titles compounded with
    • 2.1Interlinguistic mediation
      • 2.1.1Early approaches: as interpreters
      • 2.1.2Semantic tensions: Interpreters, scholars or scholar-interpreters?
      • 2.1.3Complex proposals: Egyptian interpreters vs Egyptianized Nubians
    • 2.2Military functions
      • 2.2.1Overseers of mercenaries? New interpretative proposals
      • 2.2.2Structural role in the military hierarchy
      • 2.2.3Leadership, recruitment and supervision of foreign troops
    • 2.3Administrative functions
      • 2.3.1Presence in central and provincial administrative structures
      • 2.3.2Liaison with foreign regions: Diplomacy, trade and Egyptianization
      • 2.3.3Facilitators of mobility, surveillance and circulation in liminal zones
  • 3.Discussion
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (41)
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