ARCE Lecture: Sailing Seas of Rock and Sand

Sailing Seas of Rock and Sand: Protodynastic Imagery, Early Dynastic Inscriptions, and the Origins of the Royal Ritualist in the Egyptian Deserts

Rock inscriptions in the Egyptian and Nubian Deserts provide a rich corpus of Predynastic and Protodynastic iconography, complementing the oft discussed but comparatively more meager evidence from decorated ceramics, small objects, and the rare painted fabrics and plaster.  Recent discoveries in the Western Desert, in the hinterlands of Aswan, el-Hosh, and Thebes, provide additional royal tableaux that augment the known depictions of Dynasty 0 rulers. These Predynastic and Protodynastic nautical tableaux emphasize the importance of boats in early royal imagery and ritual, and the use of nautical scenes to create landscape-altering, place-making “theaters” in the desert.   The Early Hieroglyphic annotations accompanying two of these cycles of images bridge the worlds of Predynastic iconography and the royal imagery of the Archaic Period, and provide a final, textual commentary to the tradition of Iconographic Attraction and Iconographic Syntax in Predynastic Egyptian art, and a first glimpse into the ritual world of early Egyptian kingship.

Registration required, please email info@arceny.com

John Coleman Darnell, Professor of Egyptology at Yale University, is also director of the Yale Egyptological Institute. He has published monographs and articles on many aspects of pharaonic culture, history, and language, with particular focus on Egyptian religion, cryptography, and the archaeological and epigraphic remains of ancient activity in the Egyptian Western Desert. Among the discoveries of the two expeditions he directs (Theban Desert Road Survey and Yale Toshka Desert Survey) are the Scorpion tableau, perhaps the earliest historical record of ancient Egypt; the earliest alphabetic inscriptions (in the Wadi el-Hôl); a new Middle Egyptian literary text from the same site; important archaeological remains of the Tasian culture; Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, and New Kingdom outposts on the high plateau; and the earliest major occupation site thus far known for Kharga Oasis. His recent research includes the use of rock inscriptions in the creation of "ordered" space, the development of iconographic syntax in the Predynastic rock art of the Egyptian deserts, and the economic status of the oases and the desert regions, particularly from the late Old Kingdom through the Third Intermediate Period.

There will be a reception folowing the event.

To RSVP, please email info@arceny.com.