Steven Roger William Gregory

I am engaged in research which focuses primarily upon the interpretation of literary, artistic, and architectural elements of the ritual landscape of New Kingdom Thebes to further evaluate the nature of pharaonic ideology, particularly the role of the king and his deputies in the elite hierarchy - officials who, in modern interpretation, have often been described as members of, or associated with, the ancient Egyptian priesthood. A further interest is the Egyptian understanding of metaphysics, and how that may have influenced Ancient Greek schools of thought - influences which remain evident in philosophical reasoning to recent times.

'Revealing the Nature of Pharaonic Ideology: Kingship, Governance, and a Duality of Ontological Conditions'

I focus my research upon the pair of terms often anglicised as ‘djet’ and ‘neheh’, terms which are generally accepted as synonyms expressing notions of infinite time or eternity. However, my analysis of primary source material demonstrates that those descriptors in fact refer to two quite distinct ontological states: a duality of existential conditions which together, in the minds of ancient Egyptian savants, defined the totality of universal reality. These conditions may be described as the initial metaphysical and atemporal state of universal perfection, ‘djet’; and the simulacrum of that condition, ‘neheh’: the physical universe moving in time as experienced by humankind.