ARCE Lecture: The Origin of the "Terrace of the Great God?"

The site of Abydos was long closely associated with the god Osiris, ruler of the land of the dead and was, as such, a place of great religious importance in ancient Egypt.  Making a pilgrimage to Abydos to participate in the great annual festival of Osiris, in which episodes of the myth of the god were reenacted, was a frequently expressed cultural ideal.  In myth Osiris had been a king of Egypt at its beginning and was thought to have been buried at Abydos, where Egypt’s actual early kings built their funerary complexes.  This lecture will explore the nature of early royal activity at Abydos and how this may have shaped the later history and religious significance of the site.

Matthew Douglas Adams holds a dual Ph.D., in both Egyptology and Anthropology, from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Senior Research Scholar at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where he also is Associate Director and Field Director of the Institute’s archaeological field research program at Abydos. Dr. Adams’ research interests include Egyptian urbanism and social complexity, the relationship between the state and provincial society, the emergence of monumentality as an expression of early Egyptian kingship, and the nature and evolution of sacred landscapes. In addition to his ongoing research, he is actively engaged in a number of conservation and site protection and management initiatives at Abydos, including a large-scale program of architectural conservation at the monumental funerary cult enclosure of king Khasekhemwy.

To RSVP, please email info@arceny.com.