Daring the Western Desert: Ancient Travelers and Their Rock Inscriptions
By Dr. Nikolaos Lazaridis
California State University, Sacramento
WHEN: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 13, 2016
WHERE: Barrows Hall, Room 20, Barrow Lane and Bancroft Way, UC Berkeley
There is no admission, but donations are welcomed.
About the Talk
Since 2001 the North Kharga Oasis-Darb Ain Amur Survey team has been exploring the sandy routes connecting Kharga oasis to Dakhla and beyond. In the course of this survey we have discovered and recorded numerous lonely rock sites which were used in antiquity as camping spots and stopovers for travelers. The rich epigraphic material from these sites provides us with valuable information about the uses of these desert routes, traveling practices, as well as the identity and background of the ancient travelers who chose to carve their marks on these rocks. In this lecture I will discuss some of these Egyptian rock graffiti, focusing on their connection to ancient Egypt’s historical narrative and their appropriation of Egyptian formal writing conventions.
About the Speaker
Dr. Nikolaos Lazaridis is the Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean History at California State University, Sacramento. He is one of the very few Greek Egyptologists. He left Greece in 1996 to study Egyptology at the American University in Cairo and Oxford University, and later became a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies at Radboud University of Nijmegen, Netherlands.
His doctoral dissertation, Wisdom in loose form: The language of proverbs in Egyptian and Greek collections of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, was published by Brill Publishers in 2007. In addition, Dr. Lazaridis has authored numerous articles on ancient Egyptian literature, epigraphy, and religion. He is currently preparing two monographs: “Let me have Your Majesty hear a marvel”: Aspects of narrative writing in ancient Egypt, and North Kharga Oasis Survey, vol. 2: The Darb Ayn Amur, co-authored with Dr. Salima Ikram and Dr. Leslie-Anne Warden Anderson.
In 2003, while still a doctoral student at Oxford, he joined the North Kharga Oasis Survey team, headed by Salima Ikram and Corinna Rossi, and since 2007 he has become the team’s chief epigrapher. Last year Dr. Lazaridis was one of the recipients of the prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities award for Scholarly Editions and Translations. This year he received Sacramento State University's award for research, scholarship, and creative activity.
MORE INFORMATION
Go to http://arce-nc.org/lectures.htm or send email to Chapter President Al Berens at arce-nc@comcast.net.
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