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ARCE/NW Chapter Events

All lectures are FREE! Workshops have an admission fee as noted. Note: Times, dates and topics subject to change. All events are at the University of Washington Seattle campus unless otherwise noted.

Many of our events are on the University of Washington in Seattle. Campus directions.

Previous EventsPyramids and Sand 2002 ExhibitMummy Madness Day/Reverent Remembrance 2003

2008 LECTURES

Thursday, February 14, 2008, 6:30pm
The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy

Brian Curran, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Art History, Pennsylvania State University
Location: Art Building, Room 317, University of Washington, Seattle Campus

Admission: FREE

Fascination with ancient Egypt is a recurring theme in Western culture. In this lecture, art historian Brian Curran uncovers the roots of this fascination in the Italian Renaissance, when patrons, artists, and spectators were all drawn to Egyptian antiquity and its artifacts, many of which found their way to Italy in Roman times. This early wave of European Egyptomania stimulated the first serious efforts to decipher hieroglyphs and led to the erection of pyramids and other Egyptianizing marvels by Italian popes and princes.

Brian Curran teaches Italian Renaissance and Baroque art at Pennsylvania State University. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University. The winner of numerous fellowships and awards, Curran was most recently a fellow at the Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy. His much-anticipated book, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007.

Co-sponsored by ARCE/NW, the Program in Art History, and the Departments of History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington.

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Thursday, February 21, 2008, 6:30pm
Doom and Deliverance: Foreign Tales in Ramesside Egypt
Thomas Schneider, University of Wales, Swansea
Location: Thomson Hall, Room 101, Universityof Washington Campus, Seattle Campus
Admission: FREE

Although interest in Egyptian literature has intensified since the 1970s, basic issues like authorship, audience, and the purpose of literary texts are far from being settled. This lecture deals with two famous narrative texts of New Kingdom literature, the Tale of the Two Brothers and the so-called Astarte papyrus. The first text can be shown to have been modeled on an Ugaritic text and to have served specific political requirements of the 19th dynasty, similarly to the second text which, equally adapted to Egyptian needs from anancient Near Eastern precursor, seems to have functioned as a foundation text of Ramesside kingship. By presenting, in these texts, the Syro-Palestinian weather god as a new model of Egyptian kingship, the rulers of early Ramesside Egypt filled a gap in Egyptian mythology that did not account for the political landscape of the 13th century BCE.

Thomas Schneider is a Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington, He is on a leave of absence from his position as a Professor of Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales, which he assumed in 2005. Prior to the latter, Schneider was a Swiss National Science Foundation professor at the University of Basel. He did studies of Egyptology, Ancient History and the Old Testament at the universities of Zurich,Basel, and Paris (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes). He was a Visiting Professor at the universities of Heidelberg and Vienna.

Co-sponsored by ARCE/NW and the Departments of History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington.

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April 25-27, 2008
Annual Conference of the American Research Center in Egypt
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Seattle

Thursday, May 22, 2008, details TBA
Anxious Egyptians: Personal Oracles as Indices of Anxieties in the Later Periods

Terry Wilfong, University of Michigan
Admission: FREE

ARCE/NW is proud to be a partner with:

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
Seattle Art Museum
Children's Museum-Seattle — Read about Pyramids and Sand!

and these University of Washington programs and departments:

Department of History
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization
Comparative Religion Program
Jewish Studies Program

in bringing quality programs about Egypt to the Seattle area.

Last updated 1/12/08.