ABSTRACTS FOR THE SSEA'S 2026 SCHOLARS' COLLOQUIUM AND SYMPOSIUM
Abstracts are presented in the order of presentation
SSEA 2026 Scholars’ Colloquium Day 1 Abstracts
Friday, Nov. 6
The Blind Harpist and the Question of Eunuchism in Ancient Egypt
Kelly-Anne Diamond, Villanova University
This paper takes an art historical approach to re-examining the blind harpist and its possible connection to eunuchism in ancient Egypt. Past scholarship remains divided on whether eunuchs existed in ancient Egypt at all: Frans Jonckheere and Joachim Quack consider it likely, while Gerald Kadish disputes the possibility. Scholarly interest in this question dates back over a hundred years and persists to the present, as evidenced by Franciso Borrego Gallardo’s presentation on the topic at a 2025 gender symposium; the matter remains unresolved. Several features of the blind harpist blur the boundary between masculine and feminine — his plump, rotund figure, his yellow skin, and his isolation from certain figures within funerary art.
This paper reviews the existing scholarship on eunuchism in ancient Egypt and considers how certain representations of the blind harpist may corroborate earlier theories, a connection that few scholars have yet explored. This imagery first emerges during the Middle Kingdom and reaches its height in the funerary art of the New Kingdom. His likeness appears on ostraca and stelae, in statuette form, and within tomb and temple scenes. Existing scholarship has concerned itself chiefly with the nature of the harper's song, leaving the associated imagery comparatively unexamined.
What now seems clear is that ancient Egyptian artists were using the imagery of the harpist to identify a distinct category of person, one whose representation may push back on the binary assumed to structure how men and women were conceived of in art.
Masculinity at work at Deir el-Medîna
Deborah Sweeney, Tel Aviv University
The concept of masculinity – what a given social group regards as being a 'real man' or 'proper man' – has been known in Egyptology since the mid-2000s and gained new impetus in recent years. In many societies, masculinity is strongly connected to work, and ancient Egypt was no exception: men generally defined themselves and were defined by their title or their work. This presentation will examine what being a 'proper man' involved at the tomb-builders' community of Deir el-Medîna during the New Kingdom.
I will argue that although the concept of 'being a real man' was only articulated explicitly in terms of biology, of being able to father children, it was latent in many social expectations towards the different types of members of the tomb-building crew who worked in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, and that one can distinguish between the masculinities of the chief workmen, the scribes and draughtsmen, and the regular workmen. Although most of the material available to us records the successful performance of masculinities, the village also offers examples of failed masculinity, such as Merysekhmet (iii) whose rebellious behaviour was viewed in terms of the wild young man of Ramesside scribal literature, and the abusive foreman Paneb (i), whose misdeeds were compared not with a negative male image but with the unpredictable rage of the (female) wedjat eye.
Fashioning the Dead Across the Nile Valley: Shared Practices of Funerary Adornment of the 4th Millennium
Dr. Maryan Ragheb, UCLA
During the fourth millennium BCE, communities along the Nile Valley dressed the bodies of the deceased by placing carefully selected personal ornaments to create individualized eternal images that also reflected the community’s shared practices. Microscopic analysis of the manufacturing techniques and wear patterns of beads making up the personal ornaments shows that they originally came from other ornaments before being restrung to create an attire that both represents contributions from multiple members of the community and is unique to each individual. Through examining shared practices of ornamentation that extended beyond everyday appearance into funerary ritual, this paper examines Predynastic Egyptian and Nubian A-Group contexts from the 4th-millennium sites of Adaïma and Qustul to explore how bodies were materially assembled and dressed for burial.
This study approaches adornment as a communal practice that requires the coordinated selection, redesign, and placement of ornaments on the body. The recurrence of comparable forms of this practice across settled Egyptian communities and mobile Nubian pastoral groups suggests that these practices formed part of a broader repertoire of embodied traditions shared across the Nile Valley. By focusing on the materiality of body modification and the collective labor involved in fashioning the deceased, this paper argues that adornment practices constituted a shared social language through which communities negotiated personhood, mourning, and community belonging. These findings challenge rigid ethnic distinctions that have long structured interpretations of Predynastic Egypt and Nubia and instead emphasize the entangled nature of embodied practices across the Middle Nile during the fourth millennium BCE.
Topographic personifications in ancient Egypt as a religious and cultural Phenomenon
Illia Semenenko, Charles University, Prague
The issue of topographic personification is focused on depicting a certain topographic entity as a human being. These natural landforms and artificial features often played an important role in their local landscape. They included various natural forms, such as the river Nile, pHw-marshes, islands and swamps. All of them possessed distinct physical characteristics. Some of these features were iconographically represented on the figures of their personifications, making them symbolically recognisable. Analysing these often highly metaphorical details can yield novel insights for contemporary scholars.
Artificial landscape features represent a distinct group of personifications. Human figures representing real settlements, such as Avaris and Thebes, despite being often referred to as “goddesses”, are personifications in their essence.
A considerably larger group of artificial topographic features, frequently personified, consists of royal and non-royal estates dedicated to the maintenance of the tomb owners’ funerary cults. The study of these personifications can bring important data on the spatial distribution and hierarchical structure of settlements along the Nile, as well as their production links. Mortuary context of these personifications, as well as their names, can reveal client patron ties between the tomb owners, which can otherwise be difficult to establish. Thus, the presence of personified estates bearing identical or similarly composed names may suggest a potential connection between the respective tomb owners.
The focus of this presentation is to analyse the aforementioned types of personifications in ancient Egypt as a distinct religious and cultural phenomenon. Situated within a wider doctoral research project centred on the Old Kingdom, this paper will restrict its scope to this epoch, with necessary references to the Early Dynastic period and the Middle Kingdom. The main iconographic principles behind the complex process of personification will be analysed. Due to the topic limitations, the paper will mostly focus on the topographic personifications, leaving the personified religious entities and phenomena out of scope.
Incubation rituals in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt?
Salvatore Bellavia, Università di Messina
Incubation is a divinatory practice known from the Greek world and widespread throughout the Mediterranean. It consists of sleeping in a sacred space—most notably in the sanctuaries of Asclepius—in order to receive a divine manifestation through dreams, either for healing purposes or for more general oracular enquiries.
The practice is also well attested in Egypt, particularly from the Ptolemaic period onwards, and it has often been claimed that the Greeks learned it from earlier Egyptian oracular practices. Since Egyptian religion was frequently invoked by Greek authors—particularly in Herodotus’ ethnographic accounts and in Diodorus’ description of Isis appearing in dreams to heal her devotees—in order to provide practices or forms of knowledge with a sacred and ancient origin, and since no explicit references to incubation are found in Pharaonic Egyptian sources, such a claim must be approached with caution.
There is, however, at least one document that some scholars have interpreted as evidence for an incubation, or incubation-like, practice. In one of the so-called Letters to the Dead, the writer promises to sleep in the tomb of the deceased and to provide the appropriate offering in the morning, should he receive the answer he is requesting in the letter.
Sauneron, too, attempted to connect the evidence for sleeping in temples, attested from the New Kingdom onwards, with the broader domain of oracular dreams. His conclusion, however, was unequivocal: actual evidence for a ritual of incubation appears only in the Hellenistic period.
This paper proposes to reconsider this question by introducing a possible interpretation of the role of the priests involved in interpreting Tanutamun’s dream, as described in his stela. Such an approach may open the field to a broader investigation of Nubian epichoric practices and of the religious environment that may have provided the cultural background for the Greek claim of an Egyptian origin for Aesclepian dream rituals.
Visualizing Royal Space: Iconographic Evidence for Palatial Architecture in the Amarna Tombs
Lianna Sternklar, University of Toronto
This paper examines representations of royal palaces in the private tombs of Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) and argues that these images provide critical evidence for understanding the spatial organization and ideological functions of royal architecture during the reign of Akhenaten (1353–1336 BCE). While archaeological excavation and textual sources have significantly advanced our knowledge of Amarna’s palatial complexes, the visual depictions of these structures in elite tomb decoration remain comparatively understudied. Rather than serving as literal architectural plans, these images employ the aspective conventions of Egyptian art to communicate concepts of royal presence, ceremony, and controlled access.
Focusing on scenes from the tombs of Meryre I, Panehesy, Huya, Ahmose, Tutu, and Ay, this paper identifies a consistent visual grammar that privileges ideological meaning over architectural realism. Across these monuments, recurring elements include monumental gateways, forecourts, kiosks featuring the Window of Appearance, columned halls, storage areas, and private apartments. These architectural components are organized into conceptual zones that broadly correspond to public, semi-public, and private spheres. This tripartite hierarchy parallels the spatial progression documented in excavated remains of the Great Palace, North Palace, North Riverside Palace, and King's House, suggesting that tomb artists encoded meaningful understandings of palace organization.
The paper further explores how aspective conventions compress and reorder architectural space to create what may be understood as semantic maps rather than literal blueprints. Rooms are stacked vertically, columns are shown frontally, and movement through the palace is expressed through symbolic relationships rather than physical scale. Visual hierarchy is consistently reinforced through axial alignment and the prominence of ceremonial loci, particularly the kiosk. Comparison with textual terminology for palatial architecture reveals notable correspondences between visual motifs and conceptual categories such as rw.ty wr.ty (double gateway), wꜣḫy (reception hall), and ꜥ-ẖnwty (restricted inner zone).
By integrating iconographic, textual, and archaeological evidence, this paper demonstrates that Amarna tomb imagery offers a unique perspective on the conceptual architecture of royal space. These representations illuminate how palaces functioned as stages for visibility, ceremony, provisioning, and royal performance, revealing dimensions of lived experience and ideological meaning that are largely inaccessible through archaeological remains alone.
Text and Archaeology in Memphis during the Late Middle Kingdom Transition: Reassessing the Annals of Amenemhat II
Ruijie Yao, University of Missouri
During the first half of the second millennium BCE, the settlement at Kom el-Rabia (Memphis) in the Memphite region underwent significant changes in urban organization, administrative structures, and material culture from the late Middle Kingdom to the Second Intermediate Period (1750-1550 BCE). In contrast to the increasingly cosmopolitan settlements of the Eastern Delta, particularly Tell el-Dabʿa, Kom el-Rabia largely retained a regional material-culture profile, with comparatively limited evidence for West Asian influence. The Annals of Amenemhat II, preserved in the Mit Rahina inscription (SCHISM 3701), provide a complementary perspective on Memphis and its institutional engagement with West Asia during the early Twelfth Dynasty. While the archaeological record documents the material and depositional history of an urban community, the inscription offers a top-down representation of centralized institutions and their interaction with foreign populations, products, and resources.
This paper brings these sources into dialogue by comparing the archaeological sequence of Kom el-Rabia, particularly Levels VIII-VI, with a philological and contextual analysis of the Mit Rahina inscription. Rather than treating textual references to foreign populations and archaeological indicators of foreign material culture as directly equivalent, it examines the different social and institutional processes represented by each category of evidence.
Through a diachronic comparison of textual and archaeological records, the study considers how foreign communities, institutional interaction, and cultural change are represented differently in the Memphite region from the Middle Kingdom to the Second Intermediate Period. In doing so, this study seeks to refine our understanding of the relationship between royal-administrative discourse and the archaeological visibility of Egypt-West Asia interaction in Memphis.
Huddling “inside the arms of his father, inside the arms of Atum”: The Function and Meaning of a Recurring Phrase in the Pyramid Texts
Cloé Caron. (UQAM & U. Montpellier)
First inscribed inside the Pyramid of Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, the Pyramid Texts are in fact older than their monumental support. Indeed, it is nowadays accepted that this impressive collection of spells is the culmination of an earlier tradition of ritual performances and that its monumentalization is a secondary adaptation. Consequently, the Pyramid Texts appear to be oral-derived spells, eternalized through hieroglyphs.
Despite their textualization, these spells exhibit traces of their oral origin, perceptible in features of both their form and their content. Beside the incipit ḏd-mdw, “Words spoken”, which introduces the spells and places them in an artificially oral environment, one can think of their additive style and the regular use of sound effects. Based on postdoctoral research funded by the SSHRC (2023–2025), this presentation focuses on one of these oral-derived features, namely formulaic phraseology. These utterances, defined as “commonly repeated phrases developed for use in frequently occurring traditional contexts” (Jay 2016), abound in the Pyramid Texts. Our attention will turn to one of them – a recurring phrase attested seven times within the so-called “Grand Départ” sequence which leads the deceased to huddle “inside the arms of Atum” (m-ẖnw.wy Tm(w)).
Drawing inspiration from contemporary Oral Theory and the work of J.M. Foley in particular, this presentation will address the function of this phrase, and above all, its significance for those involved in the ritual performance. Furthermore, it will be shown that this phrase – and its transfigurative meaning – is not strictly tied to a funerary context, but is also found in other ritual settings.
From Sepulcher to Shrine: The Mastaba of Izi at Tell Edfu
Émilie Sarrazin, Yale University
During the late 5th and early 6th Dynasty, Tell Edfu emerged as an important provincial center, and its local elite began building monumental tombs close to the Upper Egyptian settlement. Among these late Old Kingdom constructions, the mastaba of Izi stands out not only as one of the earliest and richest tombs excavated at the site, but also as one having the most long-lasting impact on the funerary landscape. Indeed, this structure was the locus of prolonged cultic activities, as townspeople worshipped Izi as a “living god” after his death and visited his burial place until at least the Second Intermediate Period. These visitors, far from being passive agents, had an active role in adding to and reshaping this monument over time.
Considering that most studies of Izi and his cult have focused on textual evidence, this paper offers an architectural and archaeological reanalysis of his important tomb to recenter discussion on the place of worship itself and its evolution. After reviewing the history of excavation and subsequent studies of this monument, this presentation examines the mastaba’s characteristics and physical transformations as it became a more popular and complex shrine over time. This work draws on preliminary fieldwork by the Tell Edfu Project and on the recontextualization of the now-dispersed artifacts left by ancient visitors to reconstruct the emergence of this cultic space and the ways in which people moved through, used, and modified it over time.
Les vêtements des Judéennes d’Éléphantine d’après les contrats de mariage araméens
Lior Gautier, Université de Québec à Montreal
Au 5e siècle avant notre ère, des Judéens sont établis à Éléphantine. Ils forment une communauté structurée principalement composée de mercenaires au service du pouvoir achéménide. Si l’étude de leur culture matérielle domestique connait un regain d’intérêt, certaines de ses dimensions demeurent peu explorées. La vêture des Judéens n’a, jusqu’alors, fait l’objet d’aucuns travaux approfondis. Elle a longtemps été limitée à quelques pages (ou notes de bas de page). Pourtant, les vêtements sont des objets récurrents dans les correspondances privées et les actes juridiques issus de cette communauté. Cette communication propose de présenter mes premiers résultats sur la vêture des Judéennes en s’intéressant aux principales pièces de textile apparaissant dans leurs contrats de mariage.
L’étude de la vêture des Judéennes ne se limite pas à une analyse typologique des pièces de textile recensées dans les sources. Elle souhaite également les inscrire dans leur contexte égyptien et les analyser à travers une approche sociologique et anthropologique. En effet, les contextes d’apparition des vêtements, leurs typologies, leurs usages et les personnes les portant, nous renseignent sur les pratiques socioculturelles des Judéens d’Éléphantine. Plusieurs disciplines seront convoquées et les documents araméens seront lus à la lumière des documents égyptiens et grecs des époques perse et hellénistique, car ils sont essentiels pour comprendre à quoi renvoient les vêtements mentionnés dans les sources araméennes.
Dans le cadre de cette communication, les pièces de textile les plus récurrentes dans la documentation araméenne seront examinées : le lbš, le ktn, le šnṭˀ, le gmydh et le šbyṭ. Après une analyse terminologique et lexicographique des termes, les principales caractéristiques (taille, prix, motifs … etc.) de chaque pièce seront relevées et comparées. Ces deux étapes nous permettront de formuler nos premières observations sur les pratiques socioculturelles des Judéens d’Éléphantine quant à leurs habitudes vestimentaires.
From priestess to professor? Women and their roles in second millennium BCE Thebes
Robyn Gillam, York University
In the early to mid 12 th Dynasty, Priestesses of Hathor seem to vanish. This title of elite women, originally confined to relatives of the kings of the 4th Dynasty, had increased in frequency through the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period, climaxing in the reign of Mentuhotep Nebhetepre, when the king surrounded himself with wives and other women holding this title. However, after the beginning of the 12 th Dynasty, Priestesses of Hathor all but disappear from the royal court, although they can still be found in the households of provincial governors up to the reign of Senwosret III. What, if anything, replaced this position and what does this tell us about the evolving status of Egyptian upper class women in the mid second millennium BCE? What was their social function and professional expertise? This presentation will look at tombs and burials from this period in the Theban necropolis and their interpretation, with comparative material, including literary and artistic sources. The material considered will extend from the burials of the women in the Mentuhotep Nebhepetre complex at Deir el Bahari to the 17th Dynasty ‘Dancers’ tomb’ at Sheikh abd el-Qurna, with special consideration given to Ramesseum Tomb 5.
Reassessing Egypt’s Eastern, New Kingdom frontier
Gregory Mumford, The University of Alabama at Birmingham
Our understanding of Egypt’s eastern frontier has transformed significantly, particularly in the Sinai and Red Sea regions. This paper focuses on the New Kingdom, examining key sites, finds, and reassessing the changing nature and scope of Dynasty 18 through Ramesside activity across the Sinai, including Ramesside Egypt’s shifting needs and infrastructure to secure, exploit, and traverse Sinai and adjacent regions (e.g., Northwest Arabia).
The MoA’s recent excavations at Tell Abu Seifi (near Qantara) have yielded portions from a sandstone monument inscribed by Ramesses II, who mentions restoring “… a statue of Horus, Lord of the City of Mesn.” This reference to “Mesn” is significant regarding Griffith’s 1886 discovery at Qantara of the lower fragments from a pair of ex-situ, sandstone plinths that had originally held a hawk statue (Horus of Mesen): Sety I had erected them honoring Ramesses I, while Ramesses II had restored them. Griffith ascribed these pieces to Tell Abu Sefah (Seifi), which yielded matching fragments and other Ramesside monuments. In contrast, Oren’s preliminary, 1970s excavations at Tell Abu Sefah traced only late Saite period through Roman occupation, contesting Griffith’s identification of a Ramesside temple for Horus of Mesen. Although the recent excavations look promising for clarifying whether Tell Abu Seifi contains New Kingdom occupation, the MoA has cautioned that a final equation with Mesen is pending: This awaits the association of Ramesside pottery and stratigraphic evidence with the Ramesside architectural remains, particularly since pharaonic monuments are frequently reused at later sites (e.g., Tanis, Alexandria).
However, “Mesen” is also affiliated with finds from other locations in Sinai. For instance, Malkata has yielded jar sealings citing “Horus of Mesen, residing in Lower Egypt,” which accompanied many sealings citing “wine of Tjaru” (Tell Heboua). Mesen also appears in a text (“Behedet [Horus], Great God, Lord of Heaven, Lord of Mesen”) on limestone gate blocks of Ramesses II reused in a late Roman site at “Serapeum” (south of Lake Timsah). Bruyère’s 1928 investigations revealed extensive mudbrick walls beneath this site, including an opening in one wall that he argued matched the Ramesside gate’s dimensions, possibly reflecting a temple for Horus of Mesen. Hence, Mesen’s location remains open, possibly encompassing Tjaru, “Serapeum”(“?), Tell Abu Seifi(?), or a broader region at the beginning of the “Way of Horus.”
Drawing the Alabaster Vessels from the Tomb of Kha and Merit Housed in the Museo Egizio, Turin, for Publication
Lyla Pinch-Brock, Royal Ontario Museum
This brief presentation concerns the 20 alabaster vases from the tomb of Kha housed in the Museo Egizio, in Turin, Italy, and the author’s work of illustrating them for a new set of publications by the museum.
The intact Tomb of Kha and Merit was discovered intact in 1906 in Dier el Medina, near Luxor, Egypt, at the bottom of a shaft buried under 15 metres of debris. The discoverer was Ernesto Schiaparelli, excavating on behalf of the Italian Archaeological Mission. All the finds were subsequently taken to the newly-established museum in Turin and formed the core of their collection.
The Museo Egizio is currently undertaking a project to publish all the finds from the tomb in separate volumes. Barbara Aston, author of Egyptian Stone Vessels, was commissioned to publish the vessels, and Lyla Pinch-Brock offered her experience as an archaeological illustrator to record the finds.
During the month of April, Ms. Brock was given access to the vessels, and working with the curators in the museum, was able to produce a set of final drawings. The vessels were in their original condition, some with lids, linen wrappings, with contents intact and a few inscribed. This presentation will tell the back story of the discovery and describe the vessels and the method used to illustrate them for publication.
SSEA 2026 Symposium Abstracts: Feasts and Festivals in Ancient Egypt
Saturday, Nov. 7
The Earliest Feast Calendar of Ancient Egypt: The Fifth Dynasty Sun Temple of Nyuserra in Context
Massimiliano Nuzzolo, University of Turin
In 1901 Ludwig Borchardt found, in the area of the valley temple of the solar complex of king Nyuserra at Abu Ghurab, a considerable number of inscribed fragments. According to Wolfgang Helck, who first attempted a complete reconstruction of these fragments in 1977, they formed the earliest example of a feast calendar known so far in ancient Egypt, possibly located at the entrance gate of the valley temple. In the years 2024–25, the valley temple of Nyuserra’s solar complex has been extensively re-excavated by the Italian Archaeological Mission, and numerous new fragments of this calendar have been found. The excavation has also clarified the original architectural shape of the entrance area of the valley temple, which differs quite significantly from what has been so far assumed. This lecture will summarize all the available information on the matter, by showing how crucial is the information provided by this calendar—and its architectural setting—for the understanding of the religious, ideological and socio -economic landscape of Fifth Dynasty Egypt.
Sed festival and Kingship: The Relief Decoration at the Gateway of Osorkon II in the Temple of Bastet at Bubastis
Eva Lange-Athinodorou, University of Würzburg
The Sed-festival, a complex sequence of rituals performed in order to renew the legitimacy of the king’s rule over Egypt as the rightful heir of his divine predecessor, stood at the core of royal ideology over a period of around 3000 years, from the Early Dynastic Period until Roman times. Our knowledge of the Sed-festival comes from a multitude of pictorial, textual and archaeological sources, which offer a heterogenous variety of information. Most remarkable, however, are the Sed-festival reliefs on monuments of Niuserra at Abu Ghurob, Amenhotep III at Soleb, and Osorkon II at Bubastis, displaying numerous episodes of the ritual.
The lecture will present the episodes of the Sed-festival as displayed on the gateway of Osorkon II in the temple of Bastet at Bubastis, discussing the sequence of the rituals and their content. A specific focus will be on the question of what these rituals can teach us about the relation between the Sed-festival, kingship and royal ideology in the First Millennium BCE, hereby critically reviewing existing interpretations, which are mostly not based on actual evidence yet persist in the literature on the subject. A comparative contextualisation with the depictions on the temples of Niuserra and Amenhotep will further illustrate the nature of the Sed-festival and its changes over such a long time.
Work Hard, Play Hard: Scenes of the Military in Festive Contexts
Carla Mesa Guzzo, Toronto
In the Amarna and post-Amarna Periods (ca. 1352–1295 BCE), the military played a starring role in royal festivals and festive events. This paper will explore the reasons and significance behind their inclusion, as well as the specific role members of the army may have played. While some of these events have obvious links to the military, such as victory celebrations after campaigns or tribute ceremonies that showcased Egyptian imperial might, others do not. The army’s participation in the Sed Festival and the Opet must also be considered. Focusing on the iconographic evidence, supplemented with the material and textual records, important links to the presentation of royal power will be revealed. The more limited evidence for feasting practices among members of the army, perhaps independent of any occasion centering on royal activity, will also be discussed.
Feelings and Festivals: Happiness in Late New Kingdom Monumental Art
Tara Prakash, College of Charleston
Festivals tend to be highly emotional, sensorial events. When participating in them, people often experience intense psychological and physiological feelings. But the exact nature of these feelings can vary tremendously based on numerous factors, including the purpose of the festival and individual expectations. In order to illustrate some of these variables, this lecture will first discuss several contemporary festivals. Exploring the relationship between feelings and festivals today enables us to ask new questions concerning the ancient experience of festivals. Then, in the second half of my talk, I will consider some elements of this ancient experience, especially the role of happiness in it, and the representation of happiness in ancient Egyptian art using late New Kingdom festival scenes from Theban temples.
Observe the Feast of the Gods… Song, Dance and Incense Are His Foods
Suzanne Onstine, University of Memphis
The importance of any festival was made manifest through different kinds of ritual actions. Notably musicians and dancers were an integral part of any festival, where they created a ritual atmosphere and invited the gods to attend. The sounds of the festival were public as well as private. Not only did they perform for the gods, but they connected the gods and people through a shared experience. As ritual specialists, the musicians used their skills in a variety of festival settings, communicating with people and the divine in a language beyond words.
Beyond Bread and Beer: The Art and Archaeology of the Banquet in Ancient Egypt
Lyn Green, Toronto
In almost every culture, special occasions are celebrated by the consumption of special items of food and drink. Ancient Egypt was no different. When modern observers think about food in pharaonic Egypt, they will usually come up with an image of the deceased seated in front of a pile of mostly mysterious objects. Others may call to mind the offering formula of a thousand of bread and a thousand of beer, and then pause, unsure what comes next. This presentation will look beyond the mystery to investigate the complexities of pharaonic cuisine.
The Festivals of Drunkenness in the Temple of Mut: The Enactment and Intention of the Rituals
Betsy Bryan, Johns Hopkins University
This lecture is an overview of the several festivals of drunkenness that were celebrated in the Temple of the goddess Mut between the early New Kingdom (ca. 15th century B.C.) and the Roman era, with a primary focus on the New Kingdom period. Excavated remains of a columned hall introduce the festivals as known in the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1479–1459 B.C.) and which included both the annual Drunkenness Festival and the great Theban ritual, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. The lecture continues with a description of the festivals at Mut and elsewhere, their participants, as well as the intention of these unusual types of rites.
SSEA 2026 Scholars’ Colloquium Abstracts, Day 2
Sunday, Nov. 8
Unseen history: fragments of the Montuhotep Temple at Deir el Bahari at the Royal Ontario Museum
Gayle Gibson, Royal Ontario Museum
The first director of the Royal Ontario Museum, Charles Trick Currelly, spent several seasons working at Deir el Bahari, first with Edouard Naville and later for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Currelly was very good at collecting scraps and tatters, anything that might enhance the Museum he was building in Toronto. Among many bits and pieces is a collection of over a hundred fragments of decoration, chiefly from Akh Swt, the temple of Montuhotep the Unifier. In the light of new excavations and explorations at Akh Swt, the Museum has been reexamining this old collection. This talk will be a report on what has been discovered in the storeroom.
Reconstructing the troubled history of a cylinder seal from Beth Shean (IAA J.911): untangling the material impression of Egyptian-Levantine interactions
Yasmine Ayad, Université de Liège
How can we reconstruct the context of an artifact disturbed in antiquity? While this issue is well-defined for the strictly Egyptian corpus, it remains to be refined for objects from the periphery, as illustrated by a cylinder seal discovered at Beth Shean in 1925 during excavations directed by A. Rowe (The Israel Museum, J.911). This object depicts Pharaoh Ramses II (1279–1212 BCE) drawing his bow toward a target to which Levantine captives are bound, under the gaze of a deity brandishing a khepesh sword. Bearer of typically Egyptian iconography, this seal has been the subject of extensive discussion due to its unique staging and as evidence of exchanges between Egypt and the Levant in the Late Bronze Age. The identification of the Levantine deity, however, has been particularly contested, oscillating between Reshep, Mekal, and Baʿal(-Seth). Yet, its secondary context, within the south temple of Ramses III (1184–1153 BCE), has hardly sparked in-depth analysis. This gap complicates the reconstruction of the object’s history: its initial function, origin, the identity of its owner or recipient, and its cultic significance all remain uncertain. In this regard, this paper proposes a comprehensive study of the object structured around three lines of analysis.
The first aims to recontextualize the seal by exploiting excavation data and correlating it with contemporary artifacts. The second focuses on the support and materiality, mobilizing recent approaches to the study of cylinder seals in Egyptian-Levantine contexts to determine its place of production and usage. The third axis analyzes the iconography to trace the dissemination of this composition and to question the identity, Egyptian or Levantine, of its owner. Analysis of the context and style suggests in situ production and highlights the artisan’s creativity: he phy within a milieu where other Levantine deities already follow a similar scheme. This interdisciplinary approach allows for a better understanding of the complexity of Egyptian-Levantine interactions in the Late Bronze Age.
A Case Study in the Pseudoscientific and Pseudomedical Reinterpretation of Egyptology: Investigating “Egyptian Yoga”
Jean-Baptiste Poussard, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Sometimes, the reception of Ancient Egypt can take unexpected forms. During the 1980s, the yogis Babacar and Genevieve Khane developed a new method called “Egyptian Yoga” (or “Yoga des Pharaons” in French), which is now practiced in various schools around the world. This Egyptian Yoga, whose “real” name is supposedly “Sema Tawy”, is presented as an ancient form of medicine with therapeutic claims. The Khanes argue that this Yoga predates Hindu conceptions, schools and practices, has Sub-Saharan African roots, and was historically transmitted through certain texts from the Abrahamic religions, and Hippocratic medical tradition.
The Khanes base their claims on analyses of iconography, texts, traditions and Egyptological scholarship. Moreover, Genevieve Khane, who is presented by her husband as a French Egyptologist, published several articles with her husband in peer-reviewed journals concerning their analyses of “Sema Tawy” and, more broadly, about the supposed historical reality and historicity of Egyptian Yoga.
This paper proposes to investigate, with Egyptological analyses, the history of this “Egyptian Yoga”, the Khanes’ sources and methodologies, and their attempts to legitimise a modern form of “medicine” presented as ancient. It examines this phenomenon at the intersection of esotericisms, Afrocentrism and sciences, and explores how it fits into broader pseudoscientific discourses and strategies through which Egyptology may be reinterpreted in the public sphere.
The revival of the sd-festival in the Middle Kingdom: rethinking royal jubilee traditions
Marianne Pinon, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
The sd-festivals, or jubilees, were royal ceremonies attested from the Predynastic Period through the Ptolemaic Period. Traditionally held in the 30th year of a king’s reign, they were associated with the anniversary of the king’s coronation and served to commemorate the continuity and endurance of his governance.
Studies have primarily focused on major sequences of royal jubilees, such as those of Nyuserra-Iny, Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV, and Osorkon II. These examples date to the Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, and Third Intermediate Period. At present, no comparable sequence on such a scale has been identified for the Middle Kingdom. This apparent “lack of evidence” has contributed to the marginalisation of the sd-festival in Egyptological studies of the Middle Kingdom. E. Hornung and E. Staehelin, whose work remains fundamental to the study of jubilees, identified this period as one of significant innovation. Indeed, it represents a crucial transitional time, following the First Intermediate Period, for which there appears to be little or no evidence for these celebrations.
The revival of these celebrations appears in the monumental record as early as the reign of Mentuhotep II at Thebes to achieve a greater degree of expression during the reigns of his successors within the Temple of Karnak. It seems to have formed part of a broader dynastic strategy aimed at legitimising the monarchy thereby establishing connections with the Memphite kings of the Old Kingdom, under whom sd-festivals underwent considerable development.
This paper aims to reassess the evidence for sd-festivals dating to the Middle Kingdom, including evidence from the Thirteenth Dynasty — in order to shed light on their nature of their function. The apparent absence of large-scale sd-festival sequences should not be understood as evidence for the disappearance of the tradition, but rather as a sign of its transformation and reconfiguration within a new conception of kingship. By bringing together and re-examining the available evidence, this paper will also consider their possible influence on subsequent royal celebrations. It will argue that the re-emergence of the sd-festival formed part of the broader reconfiguration of royal ritual and ideology that accompanied the consolidation of kingship during the Middle Kingdom.
The Appearance of Lapis-Lazuli in Lower Nubia in the mid-Fourth Millennium BC and its Role in Contacts with Predynastic Egypt
Dr. Thomas H. Greiner, Toronto Metropolitan University
Originating in north-eastern Afghanistan over 4,000 km to the east of Egypt, lapis-lazuli first emerged in Upper Egypt in the early fourth millennium BC. There, scholars have noted an increase in the quantity of lapis-lazuli finds across both Upper and Lower Egypt in line with increased social complexity processes and an establishment of inter-regional trade networks in the fourth millennium BC. Further south in A-Groups Nubia, lapis-lazuli occurred first in tomb 15 at Khor Bahan in the Aswan area coeval with the Naqada IIC period before appearing further south as far as Gerf Hussein and Dakka.
The lapis-lazuli finds are part of a variety of commodities coming into Nubia via an inter-regional trade network with origins in Egypt including pottery vessels, stone vessels and palettes, to name some. In reviewing the contexts with lapis-lazuli finds, it is evident that the use of lapis-lazuli reflects increased contacts between Egypt and Nubia in the later fourth millennium BC. By the First Dynasty, there appears to be a hiatus in the lapis-lazuli supply reaching Egypt due to a lack of lapis-lazuli finds within, a development also observable in Lower Nubia.
Does this development form part of significant changes in Egypt’s foreign contacts? Scholars have observed a large-scale decrease in Egyptian finds in both Nubia and the southern Levant for this period and have connected this with Egyptian attempts to seize direct control over trade networks.
Settlement Patterns in Greco-Roman Fayyum: urbanism and entanglement theory in a colonial context
Lanka Hamelin, University of Toronto
The Ptolemaic Dynasty (305-30 BCE) allocated cleruchic lands to the first Greco-Macedonian settlers in the Fayyum. This region is considered the most Hellenized after Alexandria, with up to 22% of its inhabitants being of Hellenic origin and/or descent. This influx of migrants into the chôra led to cultural changes and entanglements that affected settlement planning and daily urban life of the villagers. Rather than being distinctly ‘Greek’ or ‘Egyptian,’ settlements in the Fayyum were created by a complex process of cultural entanglement in a colonial setting. Each settlement exhibits unique patterns, resulting in local variants of Greco-Egyptian urban forms. I draw on Michael Dietler’s 2010 theory of cultural entanglement in a colonial context: an active process, shifting the discussion of colonial encounters onto the agency of the parties involved. I use a comparative analysis of the settlements of Philadelphia (most Greek-influenced), Dionysias (mixed planning), and Tebtynis (typically Egyptian-planned).
To assess the cultural nature of the settlements, one must first assess what can be identified as “Aegean” and what can be considered as “Egyptian.” This distinction is examined through various aspects of urban life, including settlement planning (such as Hippodamian grid plan or alignment along the dromos), public buildings (bathhouses, gymnasia, and theatre), and private buildings (tower house and peristyle court oikos). In addition, the Greco-Roman period offers a vast selection of papyri that reveal interactions between villagers through petitions (euteuxeis). They present glimpses into village life, highlighting influences of Greek culture on Egyptians (for example, an argument between two Egyptian women in the baths) and ethnic tensions among diverse actors (such as a physical attack between a Hellene and an Egyptian.) The colonial encounters of Ptolemaic Egypt were transformative not only for the indigenous population but also for the Greco-Macedonian settlers. Influences from both cultural traditions are noticeable in the archaeological urban landscape. However, because these archaeological remains appear so culturally entangled that ethnic divisions are substantially obscured, examinations of the euteuxeis are vital for uncovering more direct insight into the everyday lives, particularly any interpersonal or cross-cultural tensions which cannot be seen in the archaeological evidence
On the Waters of Pharaoh: Fluvial Boundary Making in Middle and New Kingdom
Oren Siegel, University of Toronto
The fluid nature of rivers, marshes, lakes, and seas presented real challenges for political boundary-making in ancient Egypt, as elsewhere in the ancient world. Rivers, oases, and oceans lent themselves to claiming “natural” boundaries that inevitably break down into messier realities when the state intervened to manage their usage. Focusing primarily on evidence from the 2nd and 3rd millennia BCE, this paper will argue that the Egyptian royal house asserted itself in water management in instances that emphasized its ability to intercede decisively and ostentatiously. This might occur through the construction of canals or wells, the control of oases or aquifers in desert environments, or the development of water features at temple or palatial complexes. Often, Egyptian rulers demonstrated a degree of political acumen when distinguishing between arenas where more direct management of aquatic resources could accomplish strategic, symbolic, or fiscal goals, and other areas (like direct irrigation management) that would not repay such efforts. When the royal house or its highest agents were involved in the construction of canals, dykes, or dams, these acts were freighted with symbolic significance. The king or his agents intervened to resolve disputes over water rights between local communities or institutions, and biographical inscriptions as well as literary texts attest to the importance of water as a metaphor for territorial hegemony. In summary, water management was not just a functional necessity for asserting and maintaining territorial authority across the kingdom, but also integral to how Pharaonic officials imagined the territorial expanse of Egypt.
