A Transforming Ontology of Boundaries? What Is and What Is Not in the Early Middle Kingdom

Ancient Egyptian ontologies have been commonly approached as related to order and chaos. Associated with the latter are the concepts of existence and non-existence, which may be expressed by the verb wn 'to be' and its derivatives, as well as the substantive n.tyt 'what is' and its negation iw.tyt 'what is not'. The earliest attestations of n.tyt and iw.tyt are found in the Pyramid Texts, reflecting the importance of (non)existence in cosmic and funerary beliefs. By the Middle Kingdom, n.tyt and iw.tyt occur in titles and epithets of officials, some of whom were involved in boundary formation and traversal. This paper provides an overview of these developments and their insights on Middle Kingdom conceptions of the world. Exploring the role of transregional activities, it questions whether 'what is' and 'what is not' may reflect an ontology of boundaries connected with socio-political shifts of the early second millennium BCE.