Abstract
For a long time, Egyptology has argued for the existence of a system of appropriateness (decorum), mainly following John Baines. While the existence of this system has been deduced from the very form(s) of artistic representation itself, the scope of the Egyptological use of the concept has been widened specifically over the last decades.
The presentation does not only argue for the overall appropriateness of the Egyptological use of the concept as a tool of interpretation but also provides a genuine Egyptian term (tp-ḥsb) that has been constantly used from the Middle Kingdom down to the Ptolemaic Period to refer to a transmedial concept of appropriateness that guided the production of historically changing, but always adequate, forms in any type of media in any type of high-cultural context – Egyptian court culture included.
Examples will be given that will highlight the fact that forms produced by the concept of decorum in any medium will potentially blur modern standard distinctions as that of fact and fiction. Indeed, the concept of decorum may be considered the constructive black box which facilitates the transformation of accidental (historical) facts into acceptable versions of reality that would undermine such an oversimplistic opposition.
