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Annual Brunner Lecture in Egyptology - Professor Andreas Dorn

The Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool is delighted to announce the third Annual Brunner lecture in Egyptology, 'Rethinking personal piety – from single events to personal religious profiles'.

Thursday 19 March 5pm (UK) | 502 Teaching Hub - Lecture Theatre 3 | Open to the public, and University of Liverpool staff and students

After the lecture, there will be a drinks reception open to all those attending: please sign up on Ticketsource in order that we can plan for catering. 

Abstract

The study of personal piety has traditionally been based on the analysis of one object, in general a stela with a text commemorating an extraordinary event as the cause combined with the depiction of a person’s interaction with a god or goddess or just of a god or goddess.

In this lecture, the author proposes to think about personal piety differently, not anymore as a single case-driven phenomenon:

All of a person’s religious objects and expressions are considered to define a person’s religious profile as part of their religious practices in the polytheistic belief system of ancient Egypt.

This system offers many options in the form of different gods with their special properties and abilities. The approach taken here attempts to benefit from the rich archaeological record. In the case of Deir el-Medina, these objects include the house with its decorated parts such as doorposts and architraves, wall decorations, house altars and objects found in rooms, places for worshiping gods in sanctuaries, and small temples containing statues of gods or kings, the tomb consisting of its upper parts with chapel, stela(e), offering table(s) and the pyramidion, and the subterranean part with the decoration of the walls and the entire burial equipment. . Further religious objects and expressions can be found in the form of stelae and ostraca-stelae in huts on the way to the workplace (station du col) and in huts next to the royal tombs under construction; Not to forget the religious graffiti left in the area of the Theban necropolis by the members of the community of workmen.

Those media illustrate that religion permeates all areas of daily life and, as expressions of religious practice, are relevant for the analysis of profiles of personal piety.

About the speaker

Andreas Dorn is a distinguished Professor of Egyptology at Uppsala University in Sweden. His academic research primarily focuses on the Cultural History, Material and Textual Culture of Ancient Egypt.

His extensive body of work includes the study of Graffiti in the Theban Region and various fieldwork projects at the site of Deir el-Medina and in the Valley of the Kings:

Deir el-Medina:

  • The tomb (P. 1340) of the scribe Amunnakht (20th Dynasty), completed
  • The tomb TT 211 of Paneb (19th Dynasty)
  • The tomb TT 356 of Amenemwiah (20th Dynasty)

Valley of the Kings:

  • The tomb of King Siptah in the Valley of the Kings (KV 47), completed (in print)
  • The funerary equipment of Seti I
  • The settlement on the „station du col“

Epigraphy, text editions

  • The Turin Gold Mine Papyrus (Egyptian Museum Turin)
  • Literary ostraca from Deir el-Medina (IFAO Cairo)
  • Graffiti from the western part of the Theban necropolis
  • Hieratic inscriptions, mainly jar labels, from the Egyptian excavations in Western Thebes from the time of Amenhotep III ("Golden City")

https://www.uu.se/en/contact-and-organisation/staff?query=N18-982