Generalforsamling og The Meketre models
Mødedato: Tirsdag d. 28/1 2025 kl. 18.00 – Lokale: 23.0.49
Først generalforsamling fulgt af foredrag ca. kl. 19.
A new view on the Meketre models v. Adela Oppenheim, Curator, Department of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The models from the tomb of Meketre in Thebes are among the most beloved items of the Egyptian collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The serdab of Meketre’s tomb as found
Meketre lived in the early Middle Kingdom during the reign of Mentuhotep Nehepetre and to the beginning of Amenemhat I. Herbert Winlock, head of the excavations for Metropolitan Museum and his team, discovered the tomb in 1920. It was situated high up on the cliff close to the Deir el Bahri Temple of Mentuhotep.
The burial chamber had been robbed in ancient times, and tomb models are normally found in the burial chamber on the coffin and next to it. In Meketre’s tomb they were luckily kept in a so-called serdab that had not been touched. Following the regulations of the time the finds were divided between the Metropolitan Museum and Egypt where they are now displayed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation.
Winlock published the models as ’Models of daily life in ancient Egypt’ and this is how they have generally been understood. Adela Oppenheim presents an alternative interpretation in connection with the burial and the burial rituals.
Mapping the Looting and Trafficking of Egypt’s Cultural Heritage
Mødedato: Torsdag d. 13. marts 2025, kl. 19 – Lokale meddeles senere
Mapping the Looting and Trafficking of Egypt’s Cultural Heritage, v. Marcel Marée, British Museum
Marcel Marée is Assistant Keeper at the Department of Egypt & Sudan in the British Museum. He is in charge of the Museum’s Egyptian Sculpture Gallery and oversaw its recent renewal with updated interpretation. He has done epigraphic fieldwork at Elkab, Edfu and Aswan. He specialises in provenance research, with a particular focus on tracing artefacts to specific workshops, sculptors and painters.
In 2018, he initiated a project called Circulating Artefacts – CircArt in short. The project is designed to monitor, record and analyse the trade in cultural artefacts, to clarify provenance, and to detect irregularities. This has enabled the identification and recovery of thousands of illegally sourced antiquities in the trade. CircArt twice received generous grants from the Cultural Protection Fund, a scheme run by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). The project is currently being prepared for adoption on a higher institutional level, under a new name. Marcel is a founding member of the Heritage Crime Task Force, created in 2022. It is being developed in partnership with the Organization for Security & Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). At venues across
Europe, the Task Force offers training to law enforcement and heritage professionals engaged in the fight against heritage crime. The Task Force also promotes and enables collaboration between OSCE member and partner states in tackling live criminal cases.
Marcel’s lecture looks more closely at how to map the looting and trafficking of Egypt’s cultural heritage.