Aegyptiaca. Journal of the History of Reception of Ancient Egypt, 2024
Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofu... more Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofuturism whose music and live performances with his Arkestra are nowadays consid ered classics of African-American jazz music, theater and poetry. Egypt has been a central source of inspiration for this polyhedric artist; this essay analyzes how Sun Ra used and re-interpreted elements of the ancient Egyptian religious culture and its deities in his work and how such contents relate to the development of the Afrofuturistic philosophy within the American climate of political unrest during which he lived and performed.
Palladino C. & Bodard G (eds.), Can’t Touch This. London: Ubiquity Press., 2023
3D digital and printed replicas of various ancient Egyptian antiquities, from statues and busts t... more 3D digital and printed replicas of various ancient Egyptian antiquities, from statues and busts to coffins, stelas and other magical objects, are becoming increasingly popular on the web as well as in museums, but some issues and challenges related to replicas and copies in the study and fruition of the ancient Egyptian heritage remain, which include difficult questions of intellectual property rights and accessibility of the virtual platforms where the replicas are shared. The 3D models of the ancient Egyptian coffins produced for the "Book of the Dead in 3D" project housed at the University of California, Berkeley, will be taken as a case-study to analyze and discuss those issues. Given the importance of annotations on 3D models of an inscribed artifact such as an ancient Egyptian coffin, this article will also discuss the materiality of the text and its
Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 25, 2020
BABOONS IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND CULTS The significant role that baboons and monkeys play... more BABOONS IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND CULTS The significant role that baboons and monkeys play in ancient Egyptian everyday life and religion is well known, thanks to the numerous illustrations and textual mentions that we have of these animals as household pets or as divine incarnations. 1 Many deities, all of them male, could manifest in particular as baboons, and, since the earliest times, they played an especially central role in the royal cult. A baboon god called HD wr, the "Great White One," is identified with the king already in the Pyramid Texts, while there are various religious depictions that let us think that baboons were also involved in the cult of the living king. 2 On the ivory tablet of Serkhemet (1st Dynasty) from his tomb in Abydos, a baboon sits on some kind of stool, while on a limestone slab from the Saqqara tomb 3507 (3rd Dynasty) a baboon sits on the throne of Maat before two kings dressed in short heb sed cloaks, wearing red crowns on their heads, and holding wAz staves in their left hands and htz staves in their right hands. Baboons were also widely recognized as worshippers of the sun and as a manifestation of the sun god Re himself. 3 Many baboon entities are an integral part of funerary scenes decorating papyri and tomb walls. They belong to that variegated series of netherwordly inhabitants and guardian gods and demons, to which, for instance, belong the four baboons squatting around the Lake of Fire with flaming braziers in spell 126 of the Book of the Dead as a symbol of purification through fire: their bwt "disgust" is izft and they are invoked to chase away Dw, namely, two concepts related to the sphere of cosmic and social evil. 4 Finally, the god Thoth is often depicted as a squatting baboon, and baboons were also a manifestation
Ancient Egypt, New Technology The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and Other Digital Humanities in Egyptology, 2023
3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for gen... more 3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for general and specialistic studies if they also provide annotations. This paper presents the system of annotations developed for the "Book of the Dead in 3D Project," which applies photogrammetry and digital annotations to coffins and sarcophagi produced in the 1st millennium bce. The annotated models of the project include the transcription, translation and transliteration of the magical texts inscribed on the coffins, which can be interactively read by the user while navigating the 3D model.
El contenido de este libro no podrá ser reproducido, ni total ni parcialmente, sin el previo perm... more El contenido de este libro no podrá ser reproducido, ni total ni parcialmente, sin el previo permiso escrito del editor. Todos los derechos reservados.
The archaeological exploration of Old Kingdom cemeteries provides us with a considerable amount o... more The archaeological exploration of Old Kingdom cemeteries provides us with a considerable amount of vessels containing inside traces or, in some cases, even thick layers of white substance, whether mortar, plaster or gypsum, coming from diverse contexts. While these vessels are undoubtedly part of what can be dubbed as repurposed and secondarily reused pottery, they should not be simply overlooked or ignored, as they often provide indirect evidence of rituals or activities closely connected to performing rituals. Their presence in the burial chambers, shafts and cultic areas can often signify either sealing or purifying rites that were executed during the burial or in the course of later ritual activities.
Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures. Although they are generally described as h... more Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures. Although they are generally described as human, they can reach and share supernatural powers thanks to their secret, restricted knowledge of the written spells and for their skills in performing rituals. Magicians can be priests, wise men, local ritual experts, tricksters, outsiders or shamanic personalities, depending from the audience they address and their cultural and religious context. This paper will discuss the multifaceted role of magician in the ancient Egyptian society through the evidence given mainly by literary sources as well as by a number of non-literary spells and materia magica. Questions of definition and terminology employed in the sources to describe a magician will be taken into consideration, as well as the issue of gender and of the almost total lack of evidence for "witches" as a complementary literary figure in ancient Egypt.
Aegyptiaca. Journal of the History of Reception of Ancient Egypt, 2024
Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofu... more Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofuturism whose music and live performances with his Arkestra are nowadays consid ered classics of African-American jazz music, theater and poetry. Egypt has been a central source of inspiration for this polyhedric artist; this essay analyzes how Sun Ra used and re-interpreted elements of the ancient Egyptian religious culture and its deities in his work and how such contents relate to the development of the Afrofuturistic philosophy within the American climate of political unrest during which he lived and performed.
Palladino C. & Bodard G (eds.), Can’t Touch This. London: Ubiquity Press., 2023
3D digital and printed replicas of various ancient Egyptian antiquities, from statues and busts t... more 3D digital and printed replicas of various ancient Egyptian antiquities, from statues and busts to coffins, stelas and other magical objects, are becoming increasingly popular on the web as well as in museums, but some issues and challenges related to replicas and copies in the study and fruition of the ancient Egyptian heritage remain, which include difficult questions of intellectual property rights and accessibility of the virtual platforms where the replicas are shared. The 3D models of the ancient Egyptian coffins produced for the "Book of the Dead in 3D" project housed at the University of California, Berkeley, will be taken as a case-study to analyze and discuss those issues. Given the importance of annotations on 3D models of an inscribed artifact such as an ancient Egyptian coffin, this article will also discuss the materiality of the text and its
Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 25, 2020
BABOONS IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND CULTS The significant role that baboons and monkeys play... more BABOONS IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND CULTS The significant role that baboons and monkeys play in ancient Egyptian everyday life and religion is well known, thanks to the numerous illustrations and textual mentions that we have of these animals as household pets or as divine incarnations. 1 Many deities, all of them male, could manifest in particular as baboons, and, since the earliest times, they played an especially central role in the royal cult. A baboon god called HD wr, the "Great White One," is identified with the king already in the Pyramid Texts, while there are various religious depictions that let us think that baboons were also involved in the cult of the living king. 2 On the ivory tablet of Serkhemet (1st Dynasty) from his tomb in Abydos, a baboon sits on some kind of stool, while on a limestone slab from the Saqqara tomb 3507 (3rd Dynasty) a baboon sits on the throne of Maat before two kings dressed in short heb sed cloaks, wearing red crowns on their heads, and holding wAz staves in their left hands and htz staves in their right hands. Baboons were also widely recognized as worshippers of the sun and as a manifestation of the sun god Re himself. 3 Many baboon entities are an integral part of funerary scenes decorating papyri and tomb walls. They belong to that variegated series of netherwordly inhabitants and guardian gods and demons, to which, for instance, belong the four baboons squatting around the Lake of Fire with flaming braziers in spell 126 of the Book of the Dead as a symbol of purification through fire: their bwt "disgust" is izft and they are invoked to chase away Dw, namely, two concepts related to the sphere of cosmic and social evil. 4 Finally, the god Thoth is often depicted as a squatting baboon, and baboons were also a manifestation
Ancient Egypt, New Technology The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and Other Digital Humanities in Egyptology, 2023
3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for gen... more 3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for general and specialistic studies if they also provide annotations. This paper presents the system of annotations developed for the "Book of the Dead in 3D Project," which applies photogrammetry and digital annotations to coffins and sarcophagi produced in the 1st millennium bce. The annotated models of the project include the transcription, translation and transliteration of the magical texts inscribed on the coffins, which can be interactively read by the user while navigating the 3D model.
El contenido de este libro no podrá ser reproducido, ni total ni parcialmente, sin el previo perm... more El contenido de este libro no podrá ser reproducido, ni total ni parcialmente, sin el previo permiso escrito del editor. Todos los derechos reservados.
The archaeological exploration of Old Kingdom cemeteries provides us with a considerable amount o... more The archaeological exploration of Old Kingdom cemeteries provides us with a considerable amount of vessels containing inside traces or, in some cases, even thick layers of white substance, whether mortar, plaster or gypsum, coming from diverse contexts. While these vessels are undoubtedly part of what can be dubbed as repurposed and secondarily reused pottery, they should not be simply overlooked or ignored, as they often provide indirect evidence of rituals or activities closely connected to performing rituals. Their presence in the burial chambers, shafts and cultic areas can often signify either sealing or purifying rites that were executed during the burial or in the course of later ritual activities.
Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures. Although they are generally described as h... more Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures. Although they are generally described as human, they can reach and share supernatural powers thanks to their secret, restricted knowledge of the written spells and for their skills in performing rituals. Magicians can be priests, wise men, local ritual experts, tricksters, outsiders or shamanic personalities, depending from the audience they address and their cultural and religious context. This paper will discuss the multifaceted role of magician in the ancient Egyptian society through the evidence given mainly by literary sources as well as by a number of non-literary spells and materia magica. Questions of definition and terminology employed in the sources to describe a magician will be taken into consideration, as well as the issue of gender and of the almost total lack of evidence for "witches" as a complementary literary figure in ancient Egypt.
Reviews campbell price, roger forshaw, andrew chamberlain, and paul nicholson, eds., with robert ... more Reviews campbell price, roger forshaw, andrew chamberlain, and paul nicholson, eds., with robert morkot and joyce tyldesley. Mummies, Magic and Medicine in Ancient Egypt: Multidisciplinary Essays for Rosalie David. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Pp. 520.
Modern Western societies regard reason as the ultimate source and test of knowledge and look upon... more Modern Western societies regard reason as the ultimate source and test of knowledge and look upon science as the primary arbiter of rationality. This is the result of an intellectual attitude that became mainstream during the age of the Enlightenment (late seventeenth-late eighteenth centuries). Towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars discussed the relationship between science, religion, and magic. For example, for Sir James George Frazer, one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, human belief evolved from primitive magic to religion to science.
This course will explore magic as an experimental science within the learned traditions of civilizations that we consider as fundamental for a modern Western identity: from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome to the medieval and early modern Middle East, Byzantium, and Europe. The primary sources used for this exploration will be texts on demons, magic, divination, and the sophisticated philosophical background to such beliefs. In addition, archeological remains pertinent to these practices such as talismans, amulets, and other magical objects will be discussed.
Zoom Lecture. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may ... more Zoom Lecture. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may request a registration link by sending email with your name and email address to [email protected]. Attendance is limited, so nonmembers, please send any registration requests no later than April 16.
An international collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and the University ... more An international collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Catania.
dipartimento di scienze dell'antichità e del tardoantico Programma MESSAGGERI DELLA CONOSCENZA Pr... more dipartimento di scienze dell'antichità e del tardoantico Programma MESSAGGERI DELLA CONOSCENZA Progetto "L'Egitto faraonico e greco-romano: interazioni e contatti con il mondo classico" (ID 370) PRESENTAZIONE DEI RISULTATI Mercoledì 11 giugno ore 10.30, Auditorium "Quacquarelli", Città Vecchia A conclusione del Progetto, gli studenti che hanno svolto le attività progettuali presso la Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität di Bonn organizzano una giornata di presentazione dei risultati dell'esperienza, con proiezione di un video. Saranno illustrate, inoltre, le ricerche avviate: Andrea Esposito, Mummie e culti di animali nell'Egitto grecoromano Martina Filosa, Beset, Baubo e la Gorgone: donne a confronto Chiara Palladino, Muovere i primi passi: una nuova terracotta nel Museo Egizio di Bonn Alle ore 12.00 seguirà una lezione della docente esperta responsabile del Progetto, prof.ssa Rita Lucarelli (Università di Bonn), su La tradizione papiracea del Libro dei Morti e i suoi falsi
New Website for a project on the 3D visualizations of coffins. Under construction - coffin editio... more New Website for a project on the 3D visualizations of coffins. Under construction - coffin editions, annotations and more technical documentation to be added soon. Downloadable 3D models in pdf.
International workshop, LMU Munich, 3 – 5 July 2018
A workshop of the Graduate School Distant Wor... more International workshop, LMU Munich, 3 – 5 July 2018 A workshop of the Graduate School Distant Worlds (GSDW) and the program “LMU - UCB Research in the Humanities”.
All events take place at 4pm in the Maude Fife Room (315 Wheeler Hall) All events are open to the... more All events take place at 4pm in the Maude Fife Room (315 Wheeler Hall) All events are open to the public and will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/@UCBMELC
The conference is hosted by the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) and the Department of Middle Easte... more The conference is hosted by the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) and the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (UC Berkeley).
With special thanks to the conference team: Rachel Barnas (University of California, Berkeley), Beatrice De Faveri (University of California, Berkeley), Walid Elsayed (Sohag University), Maysa Kassem (Fayum University), Jason Silvestri (University of California, Berkeley).
The conference will be live-streamed on Thursday18, Friday 19 and Saturday 20, November 2021
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Papers by Rita Lucarelli
This course will explore magic as an experimental science within the learned traditions of civilizations that we consider as fundamental for a modern Western identity: from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome to the medieval and early modern Middle East, Byzantium, and Europe. The primary sources used for this exploration will be texts on demons, magic, divination, and the sophisticated philosophical background to such beliefs. In addition, archeological remains pertinent to these practices such as talismans, amulets, and other magical objects will be discussed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmIZ4nLaRc
Contexts, Contacts, Continuities and Comparisons
A Collaborative International Conference in Ancient Magic
Bonn University, 5-9 July
http://www.ejma.uni-bonn.de/program-and-speakers
A workshop of the Graduate School Distant Worlds (GSDW) and the program “LMU - UCB Research in the Humanities”.
With special thanks to the conference team: Rachel Barnas (University of California, Berkeley), Beatrice De Faveri (University of California, Berkeley), Walid Elsayed (Sohag University), Maysa Kassem (Fayum University), Jason Silvestri (University of California, Berkeley).
The conference will be live-streamed on Thursday18, Friday 19 and Saturday 20, November 2021