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Wednesday, July 28, 2021, at 8 pm EST via Zoom
The House of the Sun-Disc
Susan Redford, Penn State University
Co-sponsored by the DC Chapter of ARCE
For reasons only dimly perceived, the Pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt in the 14th century B.C. carried Egypt unexpectedly into a stage of religious thought we can only call “monotheism”.
The lecture will present some of the most important evidence (hitherto only partly accessible) related to the Amarna revolution in Ancient Egypt. This involves new discoveries from Theban Tomb188, the only tomb in the Theban necropolis dated wholly and securely to the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. The tomb belonged to Parennefer, the tutor and erstwhile butler of the king.
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The rapid evolution in the realms of ideology, iconography and permissible artistic themes and motifs is well represented in Parennefer’s tomb, whose decoration kept pace with the momentous changes in the king’s thinking. When dovetailed with the pictorial evidence gleaned from the excavations of the great Gem-pa-aten temple at Karnak, it becomes possible to chronicle these rapid changes.
Susan Redford is Assistant Teaching Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State University
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