Talk: Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu — High Official — Architect — Demigod with Professor Aidan Dodson
Date: Sunday 6 September 15.00
Location: In person at Spring Lodge Community Centre, Powers Hall End, Witham, CM8 2HE
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Event information
As a living person, Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu was an official of the 14th century BC pharaoh Amenhotep III. He was of exceptional prominence, with a vast array of titles, and responsibility for the management of the king’s principal works. These were adorned with numerous colossal statues of quartzite, the hardest stone worked by ancient man, and among Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu’s responsibilities was the management of the principal quarry from which they derived. He was also honoured with numerous statues, which were placed in key locations in major temples, and which claimed to be able to act as intermediaries with the gods. In addition to a large rock-cut tomb-chapel of the normal kind, he was also granted a unique mortuary temple of a type more normally associated with a king.
Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu’s posthumous cult would endure long after his death, culminating is his elevation to divine status. As such, he would take over the ancient temple of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, later joined there by an even more ancient deified royal builder, Imhotep of the 26th century BC. The divine duo also popped up in various temples in the Theban area, functioning as healing gods into Roman times.
Speaker information
Professor Aidan Dodson has taught at Bristol University since 1996, and was appointed Honorary Professor of Egyptology in 2018. He studied at Durham, Liverpool and Cambridge Universities, received his PhD from the latter in 1994, and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003. He was Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo for the Spring of 2013, and was Chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society from 2011 to 2016. He is the author of some thirty books, the most recent being Duke Alexander and his Sarcophagi: the 10th Duke of Hamilton and the Egyptian stone anthropoid sarcophagi of Pabasa and Irtyeru, published by BAR at the end of 2025. Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu — High Official — Architect — Demigod, written with Ken Griffin of Swansea University, is due to be published by AUC Press at the beginning of 2027.