The Earliest Monumental Hieroglyphs and Early Royal Presence in the Egyptian Deserts
Dr. John Darnell, Professor of Egyptology, Yale University, USA
23 January 2018
01:00 PM
Afterlife Section, Antiquities Museum
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum is holding a lecture entitled The Earliest Monumental Hieroglyphs and Early Royal Presence in the Egyptian Deserts. The lecture will be held on Tuesday, 23 January 2018, at Afterlife Section, Antiquities Museum, Bibliotheca Alexandrina Main Building (B1 level), at 1:00 pm; and will be given by Dr. John Darnell, Professor of Egyptology, Yale University, USA; and Director of the Yale Egyptological Institute in Egypt. The research will discuss the Elkab Desert Survey Project discovery of a large early hieroglyphic tableau at the site of El-Khawy, north of the ancient city of Elkab, on the East Bank of the Nile, in May 2017. The paleography of the inscription suggests a date in Dynasty Zero, with the closest parallels deriving from Tomb U-j at Abydos. The inscription, read from right to left, contains a bull's head on a pole, a rearing serpent, two saddle-billed storks back-to-back, and an ibis between them. While such early inscriptions can be difficult to decipher with certainty, the inscription appears to make a statement about royal control over the cosmos, demonstrating the remarkable flexibility of the hieroglyphic writing system at the time of its invention.