Lectures at UQAM – Nigel Strudwick

For the Egyptophiles among you, Dr. Nigel Strudwick from the University of Memphis has two upcoming talks!

Tomb Robbery in Ancient Thebes (modern Luxor): Textual and Archaeological Evidence for the Indiana Joneses of the Ancient Past. Friday, February 13th 2015, at 7 PM

Tomb robbery flourished in ancient Egypt from before the beginning of recorded time, as it was common knowledge that considerable wealth lay buried with the dead. In particular, many of the richest treasures were interred in elaborate burials in and around Thebes (modern Luxor) and the Valley of the Kings. Despite efforts to hide the locations, they did not usually escape the attention of robbers, and this pillage continued for the next three millenia. This talk will discuss the sources for our knowledge of tomb robbery, how widespread it was, who these thieves were, how they operated, and what they did with the gains. This information adds another dimension to what we know about the social-economic side of life on the Theban West Bank in the New Kingdom.

Egyptian Decrees, Biographies, Accounts and Formulae in the Age of the Pyramids: A Look at the people of the Old Kingdom through the written word. Monday, February 16th 2015, at 12:40 PM

While the first hieroglyphs may now go back to 3400 BC, it was in the Old Kingdom that the first continuous texts appeared. This lecture will have a look at the different types of text which exist from that time (except the Pyramid Texts). Old Kingdom kings left a number of decrees of special exemptions for temples, and these were well and truly set in stone and placed in the monuments they concern. Any Egyptian official who could afford it made an elaborate tomb with inscriptions, which range from the straightforward expressions of wishes for offerings to self-laudatory and probably not very objective biographies. Egypt is also seen as the home of bureaucracy, and the Old Kingdom has left us the earliest accounts papyri, from Gebelein and Abusir, which show more ordinary people at work, their job rotas, and give some clues about the rituals which took place in the Abusir temples.