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May 2018
A Romano-Egyptian Obelisk Beyond the Nile
Using a Romano-Egyptian obelisk from the collection of the Museo del Sannio in Benevento, Italy as a case study, this talk will overview the major themes of the current Getty exhibition “Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World.” This exhibition explores cross-cultural interactions between Egypt, Greece, and Rome from about 2000 BC until about AD 300. Part of a new Getty initiative called The Classical World in Context, the exhibition kicks off a series that will highlight the Classical…
Read MoreApril 2018
In the Workshop of an Ancient Egyptian Sculptor
In 1912, the excavation team of the Deutsch Orient-Gesellschaft under the direction of Ludwig Borchardt revealed the exceptional remains of the estate and workshop of an ancient Egyptian sculptor of the middle of the 15th century BCE, who worked for Pharaoh Akhenaten in the latter’s new royal residence of Akhet-Aten (modern Amarna), in Middle Egypt. Next to the world-famous bust of Nefertiti, the German excavators unearthed a collection of plaster portrait studies that allow reconstructing the creation procedure of ancient…
Read MoreARCE Practice Talks Round 2
The Compositional Design of Djedhor Cairo JE 46341 Michael Chen (Egyptology). This paper examines the layout of spells upon the statue surfaces of Djedhor to uncover the inherent planning behind the design of the statue. This strategic design reveals both a balanced spell arrangement and the inscribing order of the statue’s construction. The patterns observed in my analysis permit a greater intertextual study of magical healing spells and a better understanding of these spells’ relationships with materiality. Temple Rank and…
Read MoreJanuary 2017
Modelling Long-Distance Interaction in the Middle Bronze Age
The Old Assyrian trade network c. 1895-1865 BCE is by far the best documented example of how a long-distance commercial circuit was organized and run in the ancient world. But the Assyrian records show that the circuit to which they relate was not isolated. It formed part of a chain of comparable units and was kept intentionally separate from competing entities. This talk will explore some of those other linked and competing commercial networks of the Middle Bronze Age in…
Read MoreDivine Priestesses: The Ptolemaic Queens in the Egyptian and Hellenistic Cults
The Ptolemaic kings and queens were not only venerated as synnaoi theoi (‘temple-sharing gods’) in the Egyptian temples and received various cults of their own (including the Hellenistic and Egyptian ruler cults), but they also served as priests and priestesses themselves. In the ancient Egyptian understanding, the king was per definitionem the high priest. This lecture will focus on the queens serving as priestesses, both in the Hellenistic and the Egyptian contexts, and analyse how these two worlds were possibly…
Read MoreSea Peoples and Neo-Hittites in the ‘Land of Palistin’: Recent Discoveries at Tayinat on the Orontes
Recent archaeological discoveries have begun to challenge the prevailing view of the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 BCE) as an era of cultural devolution and ethnic strife, or a ‘Dark Age’, in the eastern Mediterranean, as depicted in the Homeric epics and the Hebrew Bible. This illustrated talk will highlight the exciting discoveries of the University of Toronto’s ongoing excavations at ancient Tayinat. TIMOTHY HARRISON (University of Toronto) Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures UCLA…
Read MoreOctober 2016
April 2016
Lucille Ball in Ancient Egypt? The Business Dealings of Lady Tsenhor in Persian Egypt
If Tsenhor were alive today, she would be wearing jeans, drive a pick-up and enjoy a beer with the boys. Instead she was born c. 2500 years ago, leaving behind an archive of Demotic papyri now kept in various European museums. These papyri allow us to reconstruct her life (in a way), showing that apart from being a housewife she worked as a funerary priest, bought her own slaves, owned land and did construction work with her second husband. A…
Read MoreMarch 2016
Lesser Syrtis (Tunisia) in Antiquity
The Lesser Syrtis, or Mediterranean littoral of southeastern Tunisia, is a pivotal region in North African history and archaeology. With the Gulf of Gabes as a natural harbor complex opposite the island of Jerba (associated with Calypso of the Lotus-Eaters), ancient populations of the area found themselves in an enviable strategic position with access to both the western Maghreb, as well as the major cities of the eastern Mediterranean. The region was deemed important enough to be mentioned in the…
Read MoreFebruary 2016
Tracing the Skill of Fresco Painting in Tell El-Dabca
Around 1500 B.C.E. a palatial district has been constructed at the site of Tell el-Dabca, directly above the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. There, below the ramps of the entrances of both main buildings about 20 000 fragments of wall paintings have been discovered since 1992. These paintings are rather unusual in context of the Egyptian material culture: they display a rather strangely appearing ‘minoanizing’ iconography, they are painted on lime plaster instead of the more widespread gypsum plaster and…
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