ARCE-PA Lecture Saturday, January 22 - "The Sacred District: Preliminary Results from my fieldwork in some 18th Dynasty Private Tombs"
Lisa Swart
Dear Friends of ARCE-PA,
The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt proudly presents:
"The Sacred District: Preliminary Results from my Field Work in some 18th Dynasty Private Tombs”
DR. KELLY ANNE DIAMOND
Villanova University
Saturday, January 22, 2011
3:30 PM
Classroom 2
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA
This event is sponsored by ARCE-PA. Entrance fees are $5 for the general public, $3 for University Museum members and PennCard holders, and free for ARCE-PA members.
www.arce-pa.org
www.museum.upenn.edu
About the
event:
Thanks to a generous post-doctoral
fellowship granted by the United States' Department of State, Bureau of
Educational & Cultural Affairs and administered through ARCE I was able to
pursue my research and enter several Eighteenth Dynasty private tombs on the
west bank of Thebes and at Elkab. The focus of my fieldwork was to examine the
Sacred District scene which appears among the funerary scenes in the tombs of
early Eighteenth Dynasty officials. The earliest example dates to the time of
Ahmose/Amenhotep I and the scene is most frequently found during the reign of
Thutmose III - after which there are few examples.
The term "rites in the garden," "holy place" and "sacred temenos" among others, are also employed in some more recent publications to describe this same scene. The origin of these modern terms is based on the ancient Egyptian word tA Dsr. This word appears in conjunction with several Sacred District scenes.
There is no consensus as to whether this depiction represents a mythical, legendary, or historical local. The most touted identification is the cemetery of the predynastic kings of Lower Egypt. However, there are obvious Osirian overtones, which may in fact outweigh the Butic elements. With this lecture I would like to recount the results of my field work in the private tombs and to illustrate how this scene functioned artistically as a transitional region, or buffer zone between the scenes of the world of the dead within individual compositions.
About our speaker
Dr. Kelly-Anne
Diamond graduated from Brown University in 2007 with a PhD in
Egyptology. She currently teaches for
the History Department at Villanova University.
Some of her publications include research on female titles, funerary
rituals, and Theban tomb art.
We look forward to seeing you on the 22nd!
Sincerely,
Lisa Swart, PhD
Vice President, ARCE-PA
v...@arce-pa.org
www.arce-pa.org
--
Lisa Swart, PhD
Vice President, Pennsylvania Chapter
American Research Center in Egypt
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 746-2071
www.arce-pa.org
v...@arce-pa.org