https://constructingthesacred.org/
The long-lived burial site of Saqqara, Egypt, has been studied for more than a century. But the site we visit today is a palimpsest, the result of thousands of years of change, both architectural and environmental. Elaine A. Sullivan uses 3D technologies to peel away the layers of history at the site, revealing how changes to sight lines, skylines, and vistas at different periods of Saqqara's millennia-long use influenced sacred ceremonies and ritual meaning at the necropolis.
The author considers not just individual buildings, but re-contextualizes built spaces within the larger ancient landscape, engaging in materially-focused investigations of how monuments shape community memories and a culturally-specific sense of place. Despite our modern impression of the permanent and enduring nature of the site, this publication instead highlights that the monuments and their meanings were fluid, as the Egyptians modified, abandoned, resurrected, forgot, or incorporated them into new contexts. Virtually placing the reader within a series of landscapes no longer possible to experience, the author flips the top-down view prevalent in archeology to a more human-centered perspective, focusing on the dynamic evolution of an ancient site that is typically viewed as static.
Elaine A. Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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-- Sent from my Linux system.
The excavations of the Egyptian New Kingdom fortress in Jaffa, on the southern side of Tel Aviv were undertaken from 1956 to 2014. It was the only Egyptian fortress excavated in Canaan. Its archaeological record, particularly the evidence from several dramatic destructions, provides a unique perspective on Egyptian rule and local resistance to it from ca. 1460 to 1125 B.C. The archaeological evidence, taken together with textual sources, yields a picture of Canaanite resistance to the Egyptian military presence in Jaffa. This originated in centers located throughout the coastal plain and persisted for several centuries. This talk is drawn from excavations directed by the author and undertaken by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project between 2011 and 2014. 
The Amasili Complex comprises the Amasili House, Hasiba Gazal House, and a granary. The houses were built sometime during the 18th century and contain some unique architectural features. The Amasili House is the largest of all Ottoman Houses still standing in Rosetta. Rosetta flourished during the medieval period becoming Egypt's most significant transit city. Commercial activities relocated to the city as it became the main access to the Mediterranean. During that time its collection of Mameluke and Ottoman mansions and citrus groves attracted many European and Arab travelers. But as Alexandria prospered, Rosetta was left behind and almost forgotten. Today the city's fame is mostly associated with the inscribed stone that allowed the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs (aka the Rosetta Stone). Rosetta is attracting an increasing number of visitors interested in its archaeological, cultural heritage, and atmospheric medieval souk.
Dr. Pope's lecture will seek to fill this historiographical void by reconstructing the history of the first African American visitors to Nubia. The sources will include their private correspondence, interviews with their descendants, and an unpublished essay on the African past that was penned by one of the travelers following his return to the United States. Since at least the middle of the 18th century, people of African descent in the Americas have invoked ancient Nubia. The "Ethiopia" and "Cush" of the Bible- as exemplar of African history and a signifier of a global racial identity. The prophecy in Psalm 68:31 that states, "Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God" became the shared slogan of political, religious, and literary movements on both sides of the Atlantic that are known collectively to historians as Ethiopianism. By 1902, Pauline Hopkin's serial novel, Of One Blood, would cast a fictional African American traveler to Nubia as the Harbinger of Pan-African liberation and mutual uplift of Africans and African Americans. Yet, no published study has ever analyzed- nor even documented- the experiences of the first African Americans who actually traveled to Nubia. This silence is all the more remarkable, this analysis has been performed for the first Europeans, white Americans, and Canadian Iroquois visitors to Nubia.