This dissertation aims to describe and elucidate the nexus between the Egyptian administrative, religious and military elites of the New Kingdom (1550-1069 B.C.) and their territorial patterns. A special emphasis is laid on the territory this elite controlled and the topographical context of their records by which they inscribed themselves via different means into the natural, cultural and social environment.

As the term ‘territoriality’ and the relating ideas have recently been introduced in Egyptology, it is still necessary to reasses the theoretical background of this concept and to adapt it for the dissertation and its pivotal question. A part of the dissertation includes a review of the most influential sociological, ethnological and social-geographical implications of this term to establish a firm basis to build upon with the Egyptian material. A thorough definition of the term ‘elite’ is also required to understand the precise meaning of this idea. It is imperative to take up an emic perspective based on the inscriptional record of elite self-thematisation to overcome the relatively imprudent Egyptological usage of this term.

On a material basis, the dissertation focuses on some very particular Egyptian groups of the elite, namely the Viziers – the head of the egyptian administration, the Viceroys of Nubia – the administrators of the Nubian territory of New Kingdom Egypt, and the provincial gouvernours – the mayors of the rural towns.

The specific character of their relation with their respective area will be taken into account to describe the attachment between these elites and their individual social and geographic spheres. The dimensions and the distances which had to be covered by them are also of importance.

This research will result in a reconstruction of the ‘operating range’ and the space-related mindset of this group of people. This is done by a detailed reassessment of the available and published data, consisting of the inscriptional and archae­ological evidence they left in Egypt. In doing so, a clear picture of their territoriality emerges, whereby territoriality is understood as a fivefold semantic net of interrelations consisting of  its archeological-geographical, praxeological, sociological, cognitive and ideological dimensions.

The conlusions made are contrasted with other sections of the ancient Egyptian administration to compare the distributional pattern of the respective groups of people in order to show the differences in their spatial organisation, which also affected their social and ideological status.

Johannes Auenmüller, born in 1979, studied Classical Philology and Ancient History at the TU Dresden before studying Egyptology, Classical Archeology and Prehistory at the Freie Universität Berlin. 2008 he wrote his master thesis, which focused on a sociological and iconographic analysis of Ancient Egyptian tomb scenes of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2600 – 2180 B.C.), examinig the  representations of postures, actions, gender-related issues and body-related iconographic details of the depicted people under a strict sociological perspective. In July 2008 he recieved his Magister artium degree. At the moment he is writing his doctoral thesis on the territoriality of the Egyptian Elites of New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1550-1069 B.C.), which incorporates sociological, social-geographic, psychological and ethnological perspectives on space and knowledge.