We would like to invite you to our first Lecture of the Spring Semester on Sunday, February 7, to listen to Professor Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo about “Divine Protection: Ancient Egyptian Vernacular Shrines in the Eastern Sahara”.
The talk will be held on Zoom at 17:00 (UTC + 3)
Zoom Meeting
To request the event link, please contact to the department.
Abstract:
Travel is perilous.During the course of tracing ancient desert routes, the North Kharga Oasis Darb Ain Amur Survey (NKODAAS) has found a series of vernacular shrines along these tracks. This lecture will present some of these shrines, discuss issues of their identification and use, as well as their placement within the landscape of Kharga Oasis. The choice of image/shrine, and the form that it takes, as well as its situation, together with its potential meanings are explored, in the context of ‘author/artist’, ‘reader/interpreter’, ‘devotee/caretaker’.
Prof. Salima Ikram is Distinguished Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University, and has worked as an archaeologist in Egypt since 1986. She has co-directed the Predynastic Gallery project and the North Kharga Oasis Survey, and has directed the Animal Mummy Project, the North Kharga Oasis Darb Ain Amur Survey, and the Amenmesse Mission of KV10 and KV63 in the Valley of the Kings. She has also worked in Egypt, Sudan, and Turkey as an archaeozoologist. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, Dr. Ikram has published extensively in both scholarly and popular venues (for adults and children) on diverse subject matters, ranging from traditional Egyptological subjects to zooarchaeological topics. Currently her research focuses on the changing climate of Egypt as reflected in the fauna, relying on evidence derived from pictorial, textual, archaezoological, and climatalogical evidence; changing food sources and eating habits; rock art; funerary customs; and the protection, preservation, presentation, and interpretation of cultural heritage.