You are cordially invited to the seminar entitled Tales of the Otherworld from Egypt to the Classical World, which will be hosted by
Dr. Sylvia Zago from Liverpool University,
as part of the NextGenPhDs NAWA STER project
The workshop will take place on 4 November at 10.00 at The T. Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences, room 32 (Rynek Starego Miasta 31, Warsaw)
The belief in the existence of life after death is one of the most defining and fascinating aspects of the ancient Egyptian culture. Despite being the end of human life on earth, death was also thought to be the beginning of a transition to a new state of being and into a supernatural, invisible dimension called Duat. Despite being commonly translated as ‘underworld’ or ‘netherworld’ – words inherently pointing to its characterisation as a subterranean locale – this term refers broadly to the realm of the dead, which is multifaceted by nature. Ever since its earliest attestations in the funerary literature of the late 3rd millennium BC, the notion of Duat always possessed celestial and chthonic features at once, which were intertwined with further cosmological notions at all times. Exploring funerary texts from ancient Egypt, this lecture will look at how the otherworld was conceptualised and will explore the multi-millennial developments at the core of the many scenarios for post-mortem existence available to the ancient Egyptians. Furthermore, it will establish a connection with the notions surrounding life after death in the Classical world. Though seemingly quite distant from one another, we will see that ancient Mediterranean cultures, from ancient Egypt to the multicultural setting of the Greek and Roman worlds, shared more facets than we would think, including a versatile approach to afterlife beliefs.
Dr. Silvia Zago is a Lecturer in Egyptology in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology of the University of Liverpool, where she also holds the role of Coordinator of the Liverpool Schools Classics Project. She obtained a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (Egyptology) from the University of Toronto, where she taught courses on ancient Egyptian history, culture, and language for several years. She moreover holds an MA in Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East (Egyptology) from the University of Pisa (Italy) and a BA in Heritage Studies (Near Eastern Archaeology) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy).
Photo: https://egittologia.cfs.unipi.it/en/team/silvia-zago-2/
