Lecture by Debora Heard on "Divine Eldership: Toward the Development of Age as a Social Construct in Meroitic Kush"

Divine Eldership:  Toward the Development of Age as a Social Construct in Meroitic Kush

Debora Heard
Ph.D. Candidate in the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Chicago

When:
Saturday, October 3, 2015, 5:00 PM

Where:
Oriental Institute
LaSalle Banks Room
1155 E 58th St
Chicago, IL 60637

The Meroitic Period is known for revealing indigenous forms of Kushite culture.  The iconographic and textual remains of this period demonstrate the distinctive nature of Kushite culture in spite of the Egyptian elements through which it was expressed. In the iconographic representations at Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa, we can begin to distinguish a Kushite social ideology around the biological fact of advanced age.

With few exceptions, Egypt’s rulers and deities were depicted as eternally young.  Through rites of regeneration and youthful representations, the king, at least ideologically, was able to stave off the degeneration associated with old age.  The stylistic conventions adopted by the Napatan 25th Dynasty rulers and their successors continued this tradition of youthful representation.  However, during the Meroitic period, we have at least two instances of the depiction of mature age without the suggestion of physical or mental decline.  Through the depiction of “neck-lines” found on the exterior of the Lion Temple at Musawwarat and on the stela of Amanishakheto from the Amun Temple at Naqa, there is evidence of the development of a social ideology that recognized and venerated eldership.

Debora Heard is an Archaeology Ph.D. Candidate in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.  Her dissertation research analyzes the inscriptions and iconography of the Kushite temples of Amun and Apedemak during Nubia’s Napatan and Meroitic periods.  She has studied ancient Egyptian languages and history extensively in the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.  She served as Curatorial Assistant for the planning and installation of the Oriental Institute’s Robert F. Picken Family Nubian Gallery.  In 2007 and 2008, she excavated at sites along the Nile River’s 4th Cataract in Sudan as a member of the Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition.

These lectures are sponsored by the Illinois chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.