ANE Today, 20 Feb 2025
When Is It Ok to Recycle a Coffin?, Why is Alexander on the Alexander Sarcophagus?, our Object of the Week, plus the usual round-up of news, books, and other media.
When Is It Ok to Recycle a Coffin? The Rules of the Reuse Game in Ancient Egypt
By Kara Cooney
Why devote so much time and attention to the study of coffins? Funerary materials — like coffins, tombs, and papyri — are social documents. Each object is a product of craft specialization that occurs within a vibrant and changing social system. To study coffins is to resurrect a materialized social system. The purpose is to use a mass of data to reverse engineer some of the social processes that went into not only coffin production but also coffin reuse. The idea that Egyptians reused coffins may be unsettling to us, but the evidence of coffin reuse during the Twentieth to Twenty-second Dynasties — which experienced overlapping social, security, and economic crises — is overwhelming. This reuse represents the absolute refusal on the part of elite Egyptians to abandon the body container even in the context of extraordinary scarcity.
Friends of ASOR Webinar: Jessica Nitschke on March 5
Mark your calendars for the upcoming FOA Webinar: "Why is Alexander on the Alexander Sarcophagus? Rethinking a Funerary Monument from Sidon," presented by Dr. Jessica Nitschke on Wednesday, March 5th at 2:00pm ET. With its dazzling sculpted decoration, the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus from Sidon is one of the most celebrated works of art from antiquity. This talk will explore the sarcophagus and its relief decoration to better understand Alexander’s depiction, taking into consideration the monument’s archaeological context, contemporary historical events, and Phoenician funerary beliefs. Especially, it will examine the sarcophagus in light of the seven-month siege of Tyre — a conflict provoked by Alexander’s claims of kinship to Herakles/Melqart — and attempt to explain why the patron might have wanted to depict Alexander on his tomb in such a way that draws attention to this devastating event.
Read more about Dr. Nitschke's talk and register here.
In the News:
First pharaoh's tomb found in Egypt since Tutankhamun's (BBC)
How AI imagery could be used to develop fake archaeology (The Conversation)
Ancient Egyptian mummies still smell nice, study finds (BBC)
2,500-year-old caravan tombs discovered in the Negev (Heritage Daily)
An Egyptian Temple Reborn (Archaeology Magazine)
80% of Ancient Wonder Palmyra Destroyed In Wake of Assad Ouster (Science Blog)
Object of the Week:
New Books to Explore:
The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon, by Avraham Faust and Zev I. Farber
Between Two Rivers: Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, by Moudhy Al-Rashid
Five Innovations That Changed Human History: Transitions and Impacts, by Robin Derricourt
Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife by Rune Nyord
Final Report of Excavations on the Hill of The Ophel by R.A.S. Macalister and J. Garrow Duncan, 1923-1925: Catalogue and Examination of the Finds in the Collections in the Palestine Exploration Fund, by Garth Gilmour
[Book Review] Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity, edited by Catherine Hezser
Museum News & Exhibitions:
Watch: New Exhibition at Ben Gurion Airport
Splenders of the Atlas: A Voyage through Morocco’s Heritage (Museum of Islamic Art, Doha)
Latest Podcasts:
Best Archaeological Finds of 2024 – Part 1 (OnScript Biblical World)
Seth and the Mystery of the Was Scepter (Ancient / Now)
The Kingdom of Kush with Loretta Kiroe (The Ancients, History Hit)
Latest YouTube:
Recovering a Gospel Written BEFORE our Gospels (James Tabor)
Opening a Sealed Egyptian Tomb (Nova, PBS)
The Temple Mount Sifting Project (Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology)
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In Case You Missed It:
“Lift the mountain on your hands,” or How to Cross a Netherworld Border
By Shane M. Thompson
West Asian texts depict the netherworld asa land which is bounded,keepingoutsiders from entering and inhabitants from leaving.Yet, borders are seldomentirely unable to be crossed. Read more here.
Sponsored: BAF Lecture Greek Myth and History: The Oresteia of Aeschylus
Wednesday, February 26, 8pm ET: Lillian Doherty, Emerita Professor of Classics, University of Maryland
Friends of ASOR is pleased to share information on BAF lectures. Greek myths look timeless to today’s audiences, but in ancient Greece they were constantly being retold in new ways to please, inspire, or even unsettle their contemporary audiences. As the Greeks had no canon of scripture, their poets had considerable freedom to adapt their myths and explore their meanings. This presentation is focused on one especially significant example of this dynamic: the historical, cultural, and religious context of the fifth century BCE, in which the dramatist Aeschylus produced his Oresteia trilogy about the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, and; the foundation of the Areopagus, the law court that tried cases of homicide in Athens.
This lecture will take place at the Bender JCC located at 6125 Montrose Road, Rockville, MD 20852. General admission: $10. For more info, click here. Questions? Email baf.jccgw@gmail.com.
Hansberry Society Roundtable: Engaging Ethiopia
ASOR is pleased to share information about the upcoming William Leo Hansberry Africa Roundtable: "Engaging Ethiopia." For Prof. Hansberry, Ethiopia was a marvelous ancient African kingdom with many archaeological wonders waiting to be uncovered and a noble modern African state with which African-Americans needed to connect and protect. This roundtable will examine Prof. Hansberry's approaches to ancient, medieval, and modern Ethiopia, and the work of Hansberry Society members who continue his vision of conducting primary research into the Ethiopian past including that of the recent ancestor, Rev. Dr. Gay Byron. The event will take place this Saturday, February 22, 2025 from 12:30-2:30pm ET via Zoom and also streaming on YouTube Live @hansberrysociety. Click here to register.
Apply for the Herbert Warren Mason Fellowship
ASOR is now accepting applications for the Herbert Warren Mason Fellowship. This research fellowship will be awarded to a scholar/poet/writer/artist whose project proposal comes closest in scope to Herbert Mason’s oeuvre. It carries a monetary value of $5,000, and the project manuscript must be transmitted into English. The monetary award may be used to support travel expenditures to special collections, acquire access to rare or hard to find research materials, art illustrations of a proposal or to further scholarly studies. The deadline for applications is March 3, 2025. Learn more about how to apply.
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Published with the assistance of The Lanier Theological Library and Stevan Dana