San Francisco Lecture Sunday May 5 by Peter Der Manuelian: How Egyptologist George Reisner Went Walking Among Pharaohs

The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Peter Der Manuelian, Harvard: How Egyptologist George Reisner Went Walking Among Pharaohs May 5, 2024 (2 pm Pacific Time, live at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco) Cosponsored by the Ancient Art Council of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Lecture is free and open to the public. It is also a hybrid program. IN PERSON: Gunn Theater, 100 - 34th Avenue, Lincoln Park, San Francisco, CA 94121. Seating is limited and unassigned. Doors open at 1:30 pm. LIVE STREAM: Please register here to receive a webinar link. (https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2WLpssqfRcGtmfdl02bLEQ) George Andrew Reisner (left) and Georg Steindorff (right) in front of the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre at Giza, 1935. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) About the Lecture: Based on his new biography of George Reisner (1867–1942), Walking Among Pharaohs, the speaker's lecture examines the life and work of America's greatest Egyptian archaeologist, and Reisner's legacy of 43 years of successful excavations at 23 archaeological sites in Egypt and the Sudan (ancient Nubia). Leading the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition, Reisner put American Egyptology on the world stage, despite British control of Egyptian politics, French control of Egyptian antiquities, and an Egypt yearning for independence. The lecture considers Reisner's life and impact within the context of Western colonialism, racism, and the soft power of early twentieth-century archaeology. It also explores new visualization technologies, particularly at the Giza Pyramids, that Reisner's work makes possible today. About the Speaker: Peter Der Manuelian is the Barbara Bell Professor of Egyptology and holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology Department and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard. He is also director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE). He came to Harvard in 2010, after serving on the curatorial staff of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), since 1987, and teaching for a decade at Tufts University. At the MFA he was Giza Archives Project Director from 2000 to 2011, and now directs the Giza Project at Harvard. In addition to Giza, his Egyptian archaeological and epigraphic site work includes New Kingdom temples at Luxor (Epigraphic Survey, University of Chicago), and the Predynastic site of Naqada. His primary research interests include ancient Egyptian history and historiography, archaeology, epigraphy, the development of mortuary architecture, and the (icono)graphic nature of Egyptian language and culture. He has published on diverse topics and periods in Egyptian history, but currently focuses on the third millennium BCE, and specifically on the famous Giza Necropolis, just west of modern Cairo. Interested in both ancient and modern graphic design—publishing in the broadest sense of the word—he believes in bringing new technologies into his research and into the classroom. Recent efforts have focused on photogrammetry, AR and VR visualizations, and other immersive technologies as an aid to archaeological research. He is directing the Arabic Diaries Project, focusing on 73 Arabic Expedition diary books from the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (1905–1947) that give voice to the historically voiceless Egyptians working on the dig.  (Photo and text from Harvard University website: https://anthropology.fas.harvard.edu/people/peter-der-manuelian) About ARCE-NC: For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org,  https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/join-arce/ and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.

The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones - review by Antony Spawforth

https://literaryreview.co.uk/eternity-was-in-their-lips

May 2024

Categories

Ancient World, Egypt

Eternity Was in Their Lips

The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt

By Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Wildfire 368pp £25

Review by Antony Spawforth

In 1983, the BBC broadcast an eight-part dramatisation called The Cleopatras. I dimly remember the actor Richard Griffiths commanding the small screen as a shaven-headed Ptolemy VIII ('Potbelly'). The series posed as a palace drama akin to the BBC's earlier I, Claudius. Despite focusing, like that series, on what has been labelled 'a tribe of fairly repellent people', it did not meet with the same critical acclaim and has not been reshown. If it were, muses the website televisionheaven.co.uk, would today's viewers see it as a 'historical, or hysterical drama'?

In his new book, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones seeks to tell the story of Ptolemaic Egypt (323–30 BC) through its run of queens named Cleopatra. The book reflects the current fashion for reassessing women at the centre of power in ancient times, many of them patronised ever since by the male writers telling their stories. Unlike the television series, his is a serious work of history, based on the latest evidence. This includes the recent find of the famous Cleopatra's 'signature' on a Greek administrative papyrus: ginesthoi ('so be it'), it reads, the equivalent of the Bon of French kings. 

The Ptolemaic dynasty took power in Egypt following Alexander the Great's conquest of the country in 332 BC. The dynasty's founder, Ptolemy I, was a Macedonian general and boyhood friend of Alexander the Great. There were seven Ptolemaic queens called Cleopatra. The name, of Greek origin, was introduced into the ruling lineage of the Ptolemies with the marriage of Ptolemy V in 193 BC to a distant cousin, the 'Syrian' Cleopatra, a Seleucid princess. By this date, Ptolemaic Egypt was already past its heyday as a Mediterranean power. Rome was casting an ever-lengthening shadow over the states that had succeeded Alexander the Great's empire in Greece, Asia and Egypt. The background to the queenship of the Cleopatras was one of Ptolemaic decline. 

Llewellyn-Jones makes a strong case for the achievement of the Cleopatras in securing their dynastic position – staying alive, in effect – in the face of murderous court politics and eruptions of mob rule among Alexandria's riot-prone population. As he shows, their latent power lay in their wombs and in the deployment of brother–sister marriages to promote the god-like uniqueness of the Ptolemaic lineage. This extreme practice secured for generations of royal daughters the prospect of a throne as the spouse – and active sexual partner – of a ruling brother or close kinsman. 

Real political influence depended on personality and family dynamics, though in the event of a minority a queen mother could rule openly as regent, her image sometimes appearing 'in complete and splendid isolation' from that of her son in Egyptian temple reliefs. Llewellyn-Jones discusses, perforce speculatively, what childhood might have been like for a Ptolemaic princess. As descendants of Ptolemy I, later Ptolemies were proud of their Macedonian heritage, and Macedonian royalty had a long tradition of forceful females, not least in the immediate family of Alexander himself. 

Religion reinforced Ptolemaic queenship. The influential Egyptian priesthood and the Ptolemaic court were politically co-dependent. In discussing this relationship, the author makes skilful use of the art and hieroglyphs found in Egypt's temples. These showcased favourably the role of the Ptolemaic queen, hedging it with a prestigious divinity. How much this 'propaganda' rubbed off on ordinary Egyptians is debatable. Llewellyn-Jones also highlights the colonialist and racist character of the Graeco-Macedonian occupation of Egypt and describes the so-called Great Revolt of around 199 BC. Setting southern Egypt alight, it was put down by Alexandria only after a real show of force. 

By the time he gets to her, in chapter fifteen, Llewellyn-Jones has established that the famous Cleopatra, the seventh of that name, certainly had family history on her side – not all of it edifying – in gauging how to play the part of Ptolemaic queen regnant. Since her ethnicity remains debated, it is helpful to have the author's position on Cleopatra VII's maternity: the temple evidence strongly intimates that she was the legitimate daughter of Ptolemy XII and his queen and first cousin, Cleopatra VI Tryphaina. Given the insistent endogamy of the Ptolemies, the last Cleopatra arguably had as much claim to Macedonian ancestry as Alexander the Great, half-Epirote on his mother's
side, himself. 

Llewellyn-Jones tells the familiar story of Cleopatra's affair with Caesar with verve. 'We should remember that Cleopatra would have appealed to Pompey in the same way if he had won the civil war instead of Caesar,' he writes. As to the manner of her suicide, he reminds us that the classical writers hedged their bets. Cassius Dio was certain only that 'slight pricks' had been found on her arm. These might have been caused by an asp or, according to Plutarch, an 'implement' of some sort (he suggests a comb). 

Llewellyn-Jones succeeds in demonstrating that the durability of the later Ptolemaic dynasty depended as much on its queens as on its kings. He ends by suggesting that the Cleopatras 'count among history's most significant ruling women'. Yet on the showing of this book, it must be conceded that none of the Cleopatras, not even the last, approached Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great as a ruler capable of setting a whole people on a different course. In mitigation, one might say much the same of the male Ptolemies, even the early ones. Their kingship was personal, not remotely 'national', and even their cultural achievements, such as the famous Alexandrian library, were arguably aimed at self-preservation: the need to make occupied Egypt attractive to the migrants from Greek-speaking lands on whom their dominion depended.

As well as the royal biographies it provides, the strengths of the book include its exploration of the underpinnings of Ptolemaic queenship, its panorama of Ptolemaic Egypt and the attention given to the dynasty's Seleucid cousins ruling in neighbouring Syria, with whom the Cleopatras intermarried. In all, The Cleopatras offers a fresh and vivid account of the decline and fall of what the ancients retrospectively labelled 'the Macedonian times' and what we know as the Hellenistic world. 

--   Sent from my Linux system.

3,400-year-old house used by a Pharaoh unearthed in Egypt | Miami Herald

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article288121995.html

3,400-year-old site — where the Pharaoh relaxed — unearthed in Egypt. See the ruins

By Aspen Pflughoeft

April 30, 2024 8:47 AM

Archaeologists in North Sinai found 3,400-year-old house ruins built for an ancient Pharaoh to rest in during military campaigns, officials said. Photo from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Excavations in northeastern Egypt recently unearthed the ruins of a 3,400-year-old building fit for a king — literally.

Archaeologists found the ruined house at the Tel Habwa site on the Sinai Peninsula during a development project, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in an April 25 Facebook post. The house had two central pillared halls with several rooms attached.

Based on the layout of the building and the artifacts found inside, archaeologists identified the structure as an ancient royal rest house built for King Thutmose III. They believe the Pharaoh used the building to rest and relax in between military campaigns.

Ruins of the 3,400-year-old rest house found in Tel Habwa. Photo from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Thutmose III ruled ancient Egypt from 1479 B.C. until his death in 1425 B.C., according to Britannica. During his reign, he led 17 military campaigns to expand Egypt's eastern and southern borders. As a result, he "brought the Egyptian empire to the zenith of its power."

The 3,400-year-old rest house in Tel Habwa sits at the start of an ancient route known as "Horus Road," according to Egypt's State Information Service. Stretching from Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula and into the Gaza Strip, this strategic road was dotted with fortifications and military installations.

Today, Tel Habwa, also known as Tharu, is an archaeological site along the Suez Canal in Qantara Sharq, officials said. This area is a roughly 100-mile drive northeast from Cairo.

One of the artifacts found at the 3,400-year-old rest house. Photo from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Photos show what's left of the 3,400-year-old rest house. Archaeologists said the building is significant because it provides more information about ancient Egyptian military history.

The building was later fortified and eventually turned into a cemetery, archaeologists said. Some of these ancient burials included children's graves.

Excavations at the Tel Habwa site are ongoing.

Google Translate was used to translate the news release from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

--   Sent from my Linux system.