ARCE Lecture: The World of Egypt's Elephantine Island

The inhabitants of the first-cataract Nile Island Elephantine comprised a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious community, which has left behind large amounts of written material in addition to the archaeological remains. The first results of a larger project accessing these papyri from Elephantine Island will be presented in this lecture, using also up to date (virtual) unfolding techniques. No other settlement in Egypt has been so well documented over such a long period of time through its texts, which provide evidence of everyday life from the Old Kingdom right up to the era following the Arab conquest.

Verena Lepper is Director of the ERC-Grant-Project ELEPHANTINE and Tenured Curator for Egyptian and Oriental Papyri at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In addition she teaches as Honorary Professor for Egyptian and Oriental Papyri at the Humboldt University Berlin. Educated in Germany, England, and the US, she previously taught at Oxford and Harvard University. She has published widely (more than 10 books) in the fields of Egyptian and Oriental Papyri, Ancient Literature, Egyptian and Coptic Linguistics, History of Egyptology and the Relationship of Ancient Egypt to the Near East.

Admission to lecture closes 10 minutes after scheduled start time.  

Reception to follow. 

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Registration is required at isaw.nyu.edu/rsvp