https://isaw.nyu.edu https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/acts-of-remembering This lecture will take place in person at ISAW (15 East 84th Street). Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace was the home of a famous mystery cult of the ancient Greek world, and of the famous Victory statue. Even at its height (3rd-2nd centuries BCE), the cult referenced Archaic and Classical period (7th-5th century BCE) origins in ways both visible and invisible. This talk reconsiders the archaeological evidence of the central valley of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace. 2026-08-20T16:56:36Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/karjoo-ravary-arab-cosmography This talk introduces how the Arabic and Islamic manuscript tradition inherited and adapted images of the late antique cosmos, focusing on a series of cosmographical maps from the 12th century Andalusian Sufi thinker, Ibn al-ʾArabi (d. 1240) and considering the reception of these images in the visual history of the Islamic world. 2026-09-02T16:08:55Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/poetry-of-ancient-magic-workshop This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Rediscover your inner sense of magic in this hands-on workshop at the Galleries at ISAW! Guided by ISAW PhD candidate Leopoldo Fox-Zampiccoli, participants will learn how people in the past channeled their hopes and fears, loves and rivalries, and more by writing spells on amulets and talismans. 2026-08-26T20:46:28Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-primer-on-the-roman-army This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. This workshop explores the organization, equipment, and social life of the Roman army. Everyone knows the Roman army was a powerful military force, but did you know it did much more than fight wars? 2026-09-10T17:36:17Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/window-into-the-ptolemaic-mind This lecture is part of the ISAW Library events series and will take place in person at ISAW (15 East 84th Street). Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture explores a new source of evidence for the status and conceptualization of women in Ptolemaic Egypt through a pilot study of classifiers in the hieroglyphic system. From the Old Kingdom onwards, Egyptian hieroglyphic writing employed a highly organized system of category markers—classifiers or determinatives. These “mute” hieroglyphs, typically placed at the end of words, provide a unique window onto the emic organization of knowledge and the categories through which the ancient Egyptians conceptualized their world. 2026-09-02T16:07:36Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/gods-of-the-night This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The ancient Mesopotamian world was populated with a wide range of demonic and monstrous creatures, all of which intersected with daily life in a variety of mostly-malignant ways. Most often, demons, or the chaotic figure of the witch, could cause serious harm, being associated with disease and illness, or even death, particularly in infants and young children. 2026-08-26T21:47:35Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-slavery-in-the-roman-world This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The workshop invites teachers to further incorporate Roman slavery into ancient history curricula. From transactional papyri, to clever slaves on stage, to the tombstone of a child miner, we will examine slavery both as a ubiquitous legal phenomenon and as a varied spectrum of experience across the Roman world. 2026-09-10T16:39:39Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/isaw-lecture-talk-burial-betrayal This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The ancient Roman cemetery is often framed as the domain of the “well deserving,” as funerary monuments frequently formulaically assert. These dead were deserving of proper burial, of commemoration, and of the ongoing provision of offerings and other cult activities that both integrated them into the community of the dead and maintained their relationships with the living. But what might happen to the “badly deserving?” By examining select case studies of social betrayal documented in Roman cemeteries from the first three centuries CE, this talk will explore efforts at enforcing postmortem punishments against those perceived to have violated Roman social norms. It will argue that these stories of betrayal, while unique in their specifics, together illuminate the ways in which private individuals could seek to impose a form of afterlife exile upon those they deemed guilty of social transgressions. 2026-09-10T19:35:26Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-pratcial-magic This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. This online workshop delves into how ancient people harnessed the power of the supernatural – from invoking demons to appealing to ancestral spirits. Through a series of object-based learning activities, we will explore spells, charms, and rituals that were used by magicians and witches to navigate the often-dangerous forces and entities that occupied the material and immaterial worlds. 2026-09-14T19:28:02Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/20th-annual-leon-levy-lecture This lecture will take place in person at ISAW (15 East 84th Street). Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture examines how recent archaeological research has transformed the understanding of precolonial state formations in Eastern and Southern Africa. Drawing on excavations and analyses conducted over the past two decades at sites such as Kilwa Kisiwani, Songo Mnara, Mtwapa, Great Zimbabwe, Khami, and Mapungubwe, this study contends that a fundamental reconceptualization of African political complexity is underway. 2026-09-08T19:53:31Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/halloween-amulet-making This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Protect yourself with the eye of Horus or scare off all evil with the fierce face of the demon Pazuzu! At times calling on spooky spirits, at times relying on benevolent magical symbols, amulets were part of the lives of people across the ancient Mediterranean. 2026-08-27T00:08:41Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/culture-of-magic This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. For the ancient Egyptians, magic was not an illicit alternative to religion or a mysterious violation of the natural world. Heka—the force usually translated as “magic”—was woven into creation itself and provided gods and humans with the causative power to make things happen. Drawing on texts and objects featured in the ISAW exhibition Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World, this lecture explores how Egyptians used spoken spells, written words, images, amulets, ritual actions, and sacred substances to heal the sick, protect children, defeat enemies, communicate with the dead, and transform their spirits. Seen from an Egyptian perspective, cursing, curing, and creating were not separate domains but different expressions of a world in which magic was an expected part of everyday life. 2026-09-03T21:22:34Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/open-house-2026 ISAW's open house for prospective doctoral students will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. The event will include an opportunity to meet the ISAW faculty; an information session about our academic program; a Q&A session with current students; and sessions on archaeology, digital humanities, exhibitions, and the library at ISAW. 2026-09-10T20:14:04Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-gender-in-ancientgreek-vase-painting This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. In this workshop, we will examine gender through ancient Greek painted vases, with a focus on vases produced in Attica, first by discussing how and why decorated terracotta vases were produced and how they were used. 2026-09-10T17:01:58Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/cursed-exhibition-talk-with-karen-stern This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Conventional studies of ancient Jewish prayer and its evolution focus primarily on recitations or performances of precatory texts, liturgy, or poetry once conducted inside Jewish homes, synagogues, and study halls. This talk adopts a different focus: it considers inextricable connections between the minds, hearts, and bodies of Jewish supplicants and the portable things that they once attached to their bodies with strings and cords, including inscribed amulets and phylacteries of various sorts. 2026-09-08T19:50:45Z Event https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-bioarchaeology-and-how-to-teach-it This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. This workshop will provide educators with an understanding of what bones can tell us about the past. Participants will learn how parts of who we are get left behind on our skeletons – and how to read them! 2026-09-10T19:16:57Z Event