This lecture will discuss two themes of my ongoing book project “Cult Practice in Ancient Egyptian Literature”. First, Egyptian literary texts (narratives, wisdom texts and discourses) often make reference to “secret knowledge.” What does this mean? Second, doubt is an important motif in several of these texts, that is, doubts about the claims of certain...
New archaeological discoveries from two sites in Israel’s Upper Galilee illuminate the territory and autonomy of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre from the early years of Achaemenid rule until c. 140 BCE – with implications for both the historicity of 1 Maccabees and the literary impetus of its author. The first site is Mizpe Yammim,...
The metaphor of adoption saturates biblical literature, yet there is no discrete adoption law in the Hebrew Bible. This metaphor did not draw upon one particular source or ancient Near Eastern legal tradition, but had a wide range of associations rooted in familial and political life. The performative and ritual nature of adoption in the...
Scholarship describes both the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age in the southern Levant as “urban” eras, yet, beyond broad superficial similarities, the pattern of settlement and subsequent urban character of each period differs widely. Rather than assume that this precludes examining the two eras together, however, these differences instead raise questions about...
Around 1500 B.C.E. a palatial district has been constructed at the site of Tell el-Dabca, directly above the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. There, below the ramps of the entrances of both main buildings about 20 000 fragments of wall paintings have been discovered since 1992. These paintings are rather unusual in context of the...
The Lesser Syrtis, or Mediterranean littoral of southeastern Tunisia, is a pivotal region in North African history and archaeology. With the Gulf of Gabes as a natural harbor complex opposite the island of Jerba (associated with Calypso of the Lotus-Eaters), ancient populations of the area found themselves in an enviable strategic position with access to...
The Cities That Built the Bible is a magnificent tour through fourteen cities: the cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, Ugarit, Nineveh, Babylon, Megiddo, Athens, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Qumran, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Rome. Along the way, Cargill includes photos of artifacts, dig sites, ruins, and relics, taking readers on a far-reaching journey from the Grotto of...
If Tsenhor were alive today, she would be wearing jeans, drive a pick-up and enjoy a beer with the boys. Instead she was born c. 2500 years ago, leaving behind an archive of Demotic papyri now kept in various European museums. These papyri allow us to reconstruct her life (in a way), showing that apart...
The lecture will outline some of the main results of a project funded by a Research Incentive Grant of the National Foundation for Scientific Research of Belgium (F.R.S. – FNRS) and devoted to the study of the painters responsible for the decoration of private tombs in the Theban Necropolis during the 18th dynasty, their techniques,...