Great Cities of the Ancient Near East | Saturday Seminar Series

Lecture 1

Dr Anna Stevens | Monash University

Amarna: Urban life in Egypt’s city of the sun

Abstract | In this talk, we’ll take an armchair tour of Amarna – the ancient city of Akhetaten, founded by the so-called heretic king Akhenaten in the late second millennium BCE. Akhetaten was a city of open-air temples dedicated to the sun god Aten, the deity Akhenaten promoted to the exclusion of most others. Amarna is our best source of evidence for Akhenaten’s religious reforms, but is also the most extensively excavated city from ancient Egypt, offering a wealth of information on past urban life. We will visit the temples, palaces, houses and burial grounds of ancient Akhetaten to ask: how was the city structured to support the Aten cult, and what was it like to live there?

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Lecture 2

Dr Anna-Latifa Mourad | Macquarie University

Tell el-Dab’a: Becoming a City of the Hyksos

11am-12pm

Abstract | Among the few well-explored settlements of ancient Egypt is the site of Tell el-Dab’a in theEastern Delta. Over 50 years of excavation and research have revealed the intriguing history of an early Second Millennium BC district that developed into one of the largest cities of its time. Its inhabitants witnessed the rise and fall of a number of Egyptian dynasties, from the heights of the Middle Kingdom to the elusive Hyksos Period. This lecture introduces Tell el-Dab’a and its rich material culture, offering an overview of how it became a harbour city of the Eastern Mediterranean.

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These online lectures will be delivered via Zoom and will start at 10am and last for approximately two hours for each individual study day. A short 5-minute introduction will start each Saturday series, followed by a two-hour lecture by a single speaker, all except for Saturday 17 and 24 July, which will have two presentations broken into two 45-minute lectures. There will be a ten-minute coffee-break between the two sessions and there will be time for questions at the end of the presentations.

• The lectures will be held remotely via Zoom.
• The lecture will start at 10am with a break at 10.45, then the second lecture will begin at 11 am and finish at 11.45.
• The lecturer will be available to answer questions at the end of each session.
• The cost of the series is:
  • NEAF Members: $20 per session All 4 sessions: $60
  • Non-Members $30 per session All 4 sessions: $90
  • All students are free
  • A minimum of 20 is required for each lecture for this series to run – our upper limit is 300 per lecture.
• Once payment is received a receipt and Meeting ID and password will be sent to you.
• To avoid this being passed onto anyone who has not paid, participants will be matched against a list by their screen name to ensure they are a financial participant. Please ensure your zoom screen name correctly identifies you or telephone number if you are connecting via telephone and add this in the area provided when you book.

Booking

Please click here to book for this seminar

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Hosted by the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation (NEAF)

Enquiries and RSVP:
Click here to register
P | +61 2 9351 4151
F | +61 9114 0921
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