Lecture -Dealing with Decapitation in Ancient Egypt: Spare Heads for the Afterlife January 19, 2007

Ancient Egyptian mortuary literature (such as the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and Book of the Dead) indicates that decapitation was one of the biggest fears in the post-mortem journey from this life to the Afterlife. This talk traces this theme and asks whether similar views were active prior to the appearance of such religious texts. The result is a reconsideration of one type of Egyptian statuary and a re-evaluation of some basic assumptions about religious beliefs of the Old Kingdom, or Pyramid Age of Egyptian History. Our speaker, Nicholas Picardo is an advanced Ph.D. student in Penn's Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Dept. He has excavated at several sites in Egypt, and his focal areas of study include ancient Egyptian households & settlements, funerary religion, magic, and society.

The lecture will be held in Rainey Auditorium and is $5 for the general public, $3 for University Museum members, and free to ARCE-PA members.

Official Website: http://www.arce-pa.org/19january2007