Commemorating Amenhotep III’s sed-festivals
Amenhotep III in sed-festival attire, reused block in the Khonsu temple at Karnak.
(Photo A. Chéné, CFEETK)
Mødedato: Torsdag d. 10. april 2025, kl. 18 – Lokale 22.0.11
Commemorating Amenhotep III’s sed-festivals in Thebes and Soleb, v. Susanne Bickel, professor of Egyptology, University of Basel, Switzerland
In his thirtieth year of reign, and again in his year 33 and 37, pharaoh Amenhotep III from the 18th dynasty had a lavish jubilee festival organized. The celebrations lasted over several weeks and implied numerous high officials and priests. It was also a great economic endeavour with temples and palaces being built for the purpose and large quantities of food and wine prepared for the festivities.
The actual sequence of rituals and events can only be very partially reconstructed through the available documentation. The festivals were, however, also commemorated for eternity in temple reliefs that were taken over and adapted from Old Kingdom models. Two examples of this extended sed-festival relief cycle are preserved, albeit incompletely, one in Thebes and one in the Nubian temple of Soleb.
The Theban relief cycle is preserved partly within the remains of Amenhotep III’s funerary cult temple on the West Bank – presumably its original location – and partly in the form of reused blocs in the 21st Dynasty Khonsu temple at Karnak. Parts of the Nubian example at Soleb are still standing and therefore allow a better insight into the sequence of representations and the visual impression this remarkable composition must have made on people entering the temple.
The lecture will present some of this material, analyse the process of reactivating a very old model of scenes, and try to grasp some of the messages and impressions the sed-festival relief cycle would have conveyed upon contemporaneous viewers.
Queen Tiye and Nefertiti or not Nefertiti,
Lørdag d. 3. maj, kl. 14 – ekstra foredrag i København. Lokale 22.0.11.
Queen Tiye and Nefertiti or not Nefertiti, v. Christian Bayer, Kurator Roemer- und Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim
Queen Tiye
Nefertiti
During the middle of the second millennium BCE, significant developments occurred in Egyptian religion, society, and foreign policy. The rule of King Amenhotep III and his son Amenhotep IV, also known as Akhenaten, was a pivotal era in this period. Noteworthy is the fact that both kings were married to influential women: Queen Tiye and Nefertiti.
This lecture will examine the art and iconography associated with these royal women and its development over time. The study will focus on the evolution of the royal headdresses and crowns worn by the two queens, which served as a symbol of their shifting roles within the royal hierarchy and their representation of the empire. A particular focus of this examination will be the bust of Nefertiti, which is currently housed in Berlin. While the bust is widely regarded as a significant exemplar of ancient Egyptian sculpture, its role and function as a portrait remain subjects of ongoing debate.
The lecture will evaluate whether Nefertiti’s bust is an idealised depiction or a true likeness of the queen, utilising archaeological evidence and new three-dimensional scanning technologies to propose a resolution to this long-standing question.
Pyramider og soltempler i Gamle Rige – Lørdagsseminar
Mødedato: Lørdag d. 24. maj 2025 kl. 11.00-16.00
Lokale: 22.0.11
Kl. 11.00 – Kheopspyramiden helt fra bunden – nyt laserblik på ældgamle spørgsmål
v. Søren Sindbæk, professor i arkæologi, Aarhus Universitet
Et hold af danske arkæologer har i to år arbejdet sammen med ægyptiske og amerikanske kollegaer om at lave en ny opmåling af områderne omkring Kheopspyramiden i Giza. Her vrimler undergrunden med spor, der fortæller om det enestående byggearbejde. Som deltagere i forskningsorganisationen Ancient Egypt Research Associates’ projekt The Giza Plateau Mapping Project har Søren Sindbæk og hans team fra Aarhus Universitet og Museum Vest i Ribe bidraget med deres ekspertise i 3D-laserscanning for at afsløre, hvordan pyramidebyggerne arbejdede. I projektet er nogle områder for første gang blevet renset ned til klippeoverfladen, hvor nye spor er dukket op. Resultatet er den første moderne opmåling af pyramideområdet – færdiggjort 100 år efter den sidste komplette opmåling i 1925. Her skal vi høre om ekspeditionens oplevelser, og løfte sløret for nogle af deres resultater.
Kl. 12.15 – Frokostpause (tag selv mad med)
Kl. 13.00 – Pyramideteksterne: Verdens ældste længere religiøse tekster
v. Jørgen Podemann Sørensen, lektor emeritus, Københavns Universitet
I året 2323 f.v.t. begraves den ægyptiske kong Unas i sin pyramide i Sakkara. Som noget nyt er pyramidens indre kamre beskrevet med hieroglyftekster fra loft til gulv. Nogle af dem nævner ofre og salver, som den døde konge skulle have, men andre har et mytologisk eller kosmologisk indhold, som kongen på en eller anden måde inddrages i. Det er ofte dunkle tekster, og mange af dem fik et langt liv; de blev gengivet i sarkofager, på gravvægge og som dødebogskapitler på papyrus helt op til den romerske kejsertid. Derfor er det selvfølgelig religions- og kulturhistorisk vigtigt at forstå selve den oprindelige (4347 år gamle) ide i at forsyne kong Unas og hans efterfølgere med pyramidetekster. Og det er netop, hvad vi skal forsøge lørdag 24. maj 2024.
Kl. 14.15-14.45 – Pause
Kl. 14.45-16.00 – The Fifth Dynasty Sun Temples. A pyramid alter ego? v. Massimiliano Nuzzolo, Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Turin, Italy, Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission at the Sun Temple of Niuserra at Abu Ghurab and the multidisciplinary research project named “Sun Temples Project”
The Fifth Dynasty sun temples represent a unique and still largely unexplored category of monuments of ancient Egypt. Despite the fact of being the very first temples dedicated to the cult of the sun god Ra in pharaonic civilization, our knowledge of these monuments is still blurred and full of dark spots. This is clear when we consider that out of the six temples known from historical sources only two have been uncovered so far. By means of a comprehensive exploration of the temples, and the comparison with the contemporary pyramids, this lecture will guide us through the world of the Fifth Dynasty Kings of Egypt. Special focus of this lecture will be on the sun temple of Niuserra at Abu Ghurab, where an archaeological exploration led by the present author has been working over the last 10 years. It will give new insights into the architecture, decoration and symbolical meaning of the temples.
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 23.0.49
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.