Event Home

This lecture will take place online. In stratified and hierarchical societies, ancient and modern, accessibility to those in power – divine and human – was always a topic of explicit articulation, regulation, negotiation, and performance. The interaction with the human ruler in the palace, was each highly regulated: it was bound to a particular space and time, and it was an exclusive privilege to attend it. The right to access, as well as the possibility for personal interaction that issues forth from it, constitute an essential component in the visual and cultural representation of sacred and political power.