Hi Sa Mut! I highly recommend the book Ancient Egyptian Dances by Irena Lexova. You can find my review of it here: www.shira.net/reviews.htm#History . It has replicas of drawings depicting dance from tombs and analyzes the available information. Lexova's research was done in the 1930's, and others have built on her work since then, but I haven't (yet) been able to get my hands on a copy of their work. One issue is that some of it was done in German, and although I can speak German, the academic writing is just as tedious as English-language academic writing, and hard for someone like me to wade through!

I have been to the tombs at Saqqara and looked at the pictures of dance appearing on the walls there. Those are the drawings that people usually talk about when they're discussing depictions of dance from tomb walls of ancient Egypt. Honestly, none of the pictures I could find there looked like belly dancing. Some seemed like gymnastics-oriented style of movement (ie, stuff like handsprings), while others seemed footwork-oriented. But I didn't see anything that looked like somebody captured in the middle of doing a hip circle or something. I don't think this means that belly dancing didn't exist in ancient Egypt, but I do think it means that belly dancing wasn't part of the entertainment viewed by rich people.

I have not yet seen any evidence that ancient Egyptians did *belly dance* in particular. I would like to find some, because I believe they did, but right now my belief is a theory, and not something I've been able to prove. My theory is that belly dancing was done by the normal, everyday people as a social dance, NOT something done to entertain the royalty/nobility in the palace, or the priesthood, or other rich people. I base this theory on the fact that other hip-oriented dances exist throughout northern Africa (the schikhatt in Morocco, the Ouled Nail dances of Algeria with their pelvic tilts, the hip-twisting dances of Tunisia, the hip-popping of Nubian dance, the shimmy-oriented movements of the hagallah which comes from Libya, the many hip-oriented dances from south of the Sahara, etc.) Because hip-oriented dancing is so widespread across northern Africa, it seems reasonable to believe that it has existed in Africa for a very long time. And if it has existed there for a long time, then it's reasonable to believe it was in Egypt as well as everywhere else.

However, I don't think that the existence of modern-day hip-oriented dances across the continent are sufficient to "prove" that ancient Egyptians belly danced. Theoretically, these dances could have been brought there more "recently", such as 1,000 years ago. I keep hoping to find evidence to support my theory of belly dance having indeed existed in ancient Egypt as a social dance, but so far I have not been successful. Although, if it was, as I believe, a social dance done by everyday people for fun, it's not something we would see on tomb walls. After all, only rich people could afford to have elaborate tombs.