“The Cenotaph of Harwa. From the Renaissance of the 25th Dynasty to the 3rd Century AD Plague of Cyprian” and “Isis, the Egyptian goddess who conquered Rome”
Dr. Francesco Tiradritti, Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission at the Cenotaph of Harwa.
21 January 2018
01:00 PM
BA Floating Room on level F3
The BA Antiquities Museum is organizing two lectures titled “The Cenotaph of Harwa. From the Renaissance of the 25th Dynasty to the 3rd Century AD Plague of Cyprian” and “Isis, the Egyptian goddess who conquered Rome” to be held on Sunday, 21 January 2018 at 1:00 pm, the BA Floating Room on level F3. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Francesco Tiradritti, Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission at the Cenotaph of Harwa. First, he will discuss the Cenotaph of the Great Majordomo of the God’s wife Harwa (7th Century BCE) is one of the largest monuments ever built by an official. The wonderful and fine decoration is inspired to an archaizing style with innovative tendencies that make the cenotaph a masterpiece of the cultural movement known as “25th Dynasty Renaissance”. Furthermore texts and images are disposed to trace a virtual journey through the monument that describes the human existence from life to death until the ultimate experience of Resurrection. The field research led also to the discovery of a 3rd century CE phase with unique archaeological traces of the so-called “Plague of Cyprian”. The results are at the center of a multi-disciplinary and international project. Secondly the research will talk about Isis who was first mentioned in the Texts of the Pyramids at the end of the 3rd Millennium BCE. Her cult started to acquire a real prominence only at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE after the association with Hathor, the quintessential goddess of women. When Egypt started to be visited by Greeks and then Romans; Isis and other Egyptian deities started to be worshipped in several areas of the Mediterranean basin.
When Christianity became the major faith of the Roman Empire, the cult of Isis was so rooted in the popular worship that the goddess had to be integrated in the new cult. By the 4th Century the assimilation was completely achieved and most of the characteristics of Isis converged in the Virgin whose importance came to be enormously increased by the absorption of the Isis essence.