Near Eastern Archaeology
Settlement and Urban Development in the Bronze Age Southern Levant
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesScholarship describes both the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age in the southern Levant as “urban” eras, yet, beyond broad superficial similarities, the pattern of settlement and subsequent urban character of each period differs widely. Rather than assume that this precludes examining the two eras together, however, these differences instead raise questions about...
Tracing the Skill of Fresco Painting in Tell El-Dabca
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesAround 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...
Lesser Syrtis (Tunisia) in Antiquity
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesThe 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...
Lucille Ball in Ancient Egypt? The Business Dealings of Lady Tsenhor in Persian Egypt
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesIf 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...
I Can Hear The Barbarians
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities , Los Angeles, CA, United StatesSea Peoples and Neo-Hittites in the ‘Land of Palistin’: Recent Discoveries at Tayinat on the Orontes
Faculty CenterRecent 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...
Divine Priestesses: The Ptolemaic Queens in the Egyptian and Hellenistic Cults
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesThe 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...
Modelling Long-Distance Interaction in the Middle Bronze Age
NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365) 365 Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesThe 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...
ARCE Practice Talks Round 2
161 Dodd Hall 315 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesThe 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...
In the Workshop of an Ancient Egyptian Sculptor
Humanities Room 365 415 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesIn 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....