This paper unpacks the cognitive processes potentially involved in comprehending funerary ‘models’ from ancient Egypt. These objects comprise small scenes, usually made of wood, which have been found in burial chambers of pharaonic-era tombs. After considering the fittingness of the term ‘model’, the paper illustrates how a cognitive approach might better help us understand the purported functionality of these objects than has hitherto been the case. This approach, grounded in distributed cognition, draws on semiotics, figurative thought and communication theory and considers the priorities of both the theoretical sender and the theoretical receiver. The perspective of the sender comprises what could actually be built, given the confines of material, size, space and budget. The perspective of the receiver is tied to the factors that guarantee intelligibility, such as cultural primaries, medial awareness and aesthetic priming. It is argued that many of the cognitive processes driving comprehension may be based on transfer processes transcending culture and aesthetics, such as metonymy and metaphor, which occur both in the linguistic and the visual modality. In this way, we can ground discussions of model production and use in more fine-grained theoretical and methodological frameworks and achieve new insights into the communicative power of these objects.

本文揭示了理解古埃及丧葬“模型”时可能涉及的认知过程。这些物品由小场景组成，通常由木头制成，在法老时代坟墓的墓室中发现。在考虑了“模型”一词的适用性之后，本文阐述了认知方法如何比迄今为止的情况更好地帮助我们理解这些对象所声称的功能。这种方法以分布式认知为基础，借鉴了符号学、比喻思想和传播理论，并考虑了理论发送者和理论接收者的优先级。发送者的观点包括考虑到材料、尺寸、空间和预算的限制，实际可以建造什么。接收者的视角与保证可理解性的因素有关，例如文化原色、媒体意识和审美启动。有人认为，许多推动理解的认知过程可能基于超越文化和美学的转移过程，例如转喻和隐喻，它们都发生在语言和视觉形态中。通过这种方式，我们可以在更细粒度的理论和方法论框架中对模型的产生和使用进行讨论，并对这些对象的交流能力获得新的见解。这同时发生在语言和视觉形态中。通过这种方式，我们可以在更细粒度的理论和方法论框架中对模型的产生和使用进行讨论，并对这些对象的交流能力获得新的见解。这同时发生在语言和视觉形态中。通过这种方式，我们可以在更细粒度的理论和方法论框架中对模型的产生和使用进行讨论，并对这些对象的交流能力获得新的见解。