A 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 at THIS LINK.

The event is co-sponsored by the ISAW Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and Columbia University.

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. The Ptolemaic period witnessed a dramatic transformation of the hieroglyphic system: its repertoire expanded enormously, while established conventions were subjected to remarkably unconventional manipulations. Yet, against this backdrop, the classifier system remained strikingly stable, closely resembling that attested in earlier periods. There is, however, one intriguing exception: the classifiers associated with women undergo a significant change. What does this change reveal about the conceptualization of women in Ptolemaic Egypt, and how might it correspond to—or diverge from—the evidence preserved in contemporary textual sources?

Orly Goldwasser is Professor of Egyptology and Head of the ArchaeoMind Lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Göttingen and a member of Academia Europaea. She has held visiting professorships at Harvard University and the Collège de France. Her recent research focuses primarily on the invention of the alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphs and on the classifier system of the Egyptian script. Her work on classifiers forms part of a broader comparative research program conducted in collaboration with specialists in the classifier systems of Ancient Chinese, Sumerian, and other complex ancient scripts. This interdisciplinary research explores the cognitive and semiotic dimensions of writing systems and the ways in which classifier systems structure and reflect the conceptual organisation of the world

The lecture will be followed by a reception.

This event is the opening keynote lecture of a conference entitled "Signs in Motion: Hieroglyphic Transformation from Late Period Egypt to Rome" (October 2–4, 2026). This lecture is open to the public (registration required). However, the other parts of the conference are by invitation only.

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