Talk: All the King’s Men and Women: putting the people into Sais with Dr Penny Wilson
Date: Sunday 11 January, 15.00
Location: Online on Zoom
Tickets
Members: Free for full and online members. No booking necessary.
Guests: £6. Please book in advance via Eventbrite (link available shortly)
Event information
The site of Sais at Sa el-Hagar bustles with modern life – building work, people going to their fields with their animals, millers, iron grinders, bakers, children, cats, the call to prayer from the mosques – but how was it in ancient times? Is it possible to repopulate ancient Sais; a bustling, cosmopolitan Royal city in Dynasty 26 and substantial administrative centre earlier?
Using the words of Saite people and their statues, votive gifts, pottery and precious objects, this talk will attempt to put some people into ancient Sais and recreate their lives in the city and countryside.
Professor Penny Wilson is a specialist in Egyptology with a particular focus in areas of both hieroglyphic texts as well as field archaeology. After reading Oriental Studies (Egyptian with Coptic) at Liverpool University (BA 1985), she continued to develop her interest in the Egyptian language. Her specialist research for her PhD was a lexicographical study of the hieroglyphic texts in the Ptolemaic period Temple of Edfu (1991). Evolving out of that study, she continued to research the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system, temple ritual practice and the interweaving of mythical stories into Egyptian religious practice as a whole. Since 1999 she has been employed as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University.
Penny is currently the Field Director of the joint Durham University/Egypt Exploration Society/Supreme Council of Antiquities project at Sais (Sa el-Hagar), which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK (2002-2007). The work at Sais is looking at settlement changes in relation to wider landscape dynamics and change, as well as specific sharp changes in settlement structure. The rebuilding of the late New Kingdom-Third Intermediate Period city after a collapse-event is of particular interest as it provides a sealed context for the late Ramesside city and a change in building decisions in the next phase.