Lecture Archives - Page 6 of 8

Lecture: Ramesses II and the 19th Dynasty

Posted in 2013 - 2014, Event, Lecture

Date: 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 04-Apr-2014

Cost: Meetings are Free to members, Guests $5 – Students with ID $2

Description:

The 19th Dynasty in ancient Egypt was a period of great strength. During the foundation of this dynasty, Egypt would extend its influence to its greatest extent into the Levant. With large reserves of wealth, large architectural projects would be constructed that come to rival the pyramids in their size and splendor. Through this lecture, we will discuss the general political developments and take a close look at the artistic works that characterize the period.

About the speaker:

Julius Szekrenyes is the Calgary Chapter’s SSEA president. He has had a life-long interest in Ancient Egypt and has taught Ancient Egyptian history at U. of C. Continuing Education for 15 years.

Location:

Room EDC 287 in the Education Block at the University of Calgary.

Lecture: Ancient Egyptian Religion – An Overview

Posted in 2013 - 2014, Event, Featured, Lecture

Date: 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 07-Mar-2014

Cost: Meetings are Free to members, Guests $5 – Students with ID $2

Description:

The worship of the gods and goddesses had an impact on the royal and private lives of those living in pharaonic Egypt. Have you ever wished to know a little bit more about these religious aspects?

This lecture is intended for a general audience who want to know the functions of ancient Egyptian religion during the pharaonic period. We will discuss how royal rule was intertwined with the concept of cosmic order (ma’at) and how this impacted daily ritual at temples. Also, this lecture will consider the roles of the gods and goddesses of pharaonic Egypt and how these ‘spheres of influence’ are sometimes blurred in literature. To gain a familiarity of the divine, attendees will be presented with the attributes and artistic forms of the most popular deities. To conclude, there will also be an analysis of the creation myths of the Egyptians.

Through this lecture, audience members will gain a better understanding of how religion managed to permeate many aspects of pharaonic culture and provide a resource for further inquiry into topics of ancient Egypt.

About the speaker:

Nicholas Wernick is a Calgarian completing his PhD in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. The topic of his thesis is ancient Egyptian militarism in the Late Bronze Age and what the nature of ancient Egyptian imperialism in the Levant was like during the New Kingdom. In addition to his PhD work, he has been published in academic journals and Ancient Egypt Magazine.

Location:

Room EDC 287 in the Education Block at the University of Calgary.

Lecture: The Amarna Period

Posted in 2013 - 2014, Featured, Lecture

Date: 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 07-Feb-2014

Cost: Meetings are Free to members, Guests $5 – Students with ID $2

Description:

Continuing the History of Ancient Egypt brings us to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, to Amenhotep III, his heretic Aten-worshipping son Akhenaten, and the Amarna Period. The Amarna Era was a time of dramatic changes in religion, culture and Egyptian art, and was followed by an equally wrenching reversion to the traditional Amon worship.

About the speaker:

Julius Szekrenyes is the Calgary Chapter’s SSEA president. He has had a life-long interest in Ancient Egypt and has taught Ancient Egyptian history at U. of C. Continuing Education for 15 years.

Location:

Room EDC 287 in the Education Block at the University of Calgary.

Lecture: Hero of Alexandria and the Roman Technological Revolution

Posted in 2013 - 2014, Featured, Guest Speaker, Lecture

Date: 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 01-Nov-2013

Cost: Meetings are Free to members, Guests $5 – Students with ID $2

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Description:

Hero was a 1st-century-CE engineer and inventor who worked at the Library and Museum of Alexandria, established by the Ptolemaic dynasty three centuries earlier. Following in the footsteps of other notable technicians like Ktesibios, his inventive mind created a remarkable series of revolutionary machines using all the mechanical devices in the Hellenistic tool-kit (complex gears, compound pulleys, screws, and the like) and introduced a revolutionary power source—steam—all of which foreshadow the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. But this lecture is not a review of high-school physics. We’ll look at Hero’s creation of the first vending machine, the differential axle, a bottomless wine cup, a pipe organ, and a “miraculous” system that opened doors to a temple whenever a fire was lit on the sacrificial altar. With all this technology, and a railway to boot, why did the ancients not have an industrial revolution?

About the speaker:

John Humphrey is a professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary. He is a Roman archaeologist and historian who has excavated in Greece and Turkey and has written two books on the development of technology on the Greek and Roman worlds. Some SSEA members might know him as a scholar of Roman public toilets.

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Location:

Room EDC 287 in the Education Block at the University of Calgary.

Lecture: A virtual Geological Field trip to the Valley of the Kings with a detailed look at the trails of Ancient Egyptian geologists and engineers

Posted in 2013 - 2014, Event, Featured, Guest Speaker, Lecture

Date: 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 04-Oct-2013

Cost: Meetings are Free to members, Guests $5 – Students with ID $2

Wust1

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Thebes West area showing

the geological units (shale and limestone) into which the temples and tombs were built.

Description:

The Valley of the Kings and its tombs and artifacts are known around the world and most people are familiar with at least some Ancient Egyptian History. As such, the Valley at the foot of Gebel Gurn (Mt. Gurna) was the burial center for kings and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom from the 16th to 11th century BC (the Eighteenth through Twentieth Dynasties of Ancient). This presentation will provide a different view of Ancient Egypt and what happened to the landscape including its original tombs over the last 3000 years. In fact, the journey of the presentation starts ~50 Mio years ago when the northern part of Egypt was part of a shallow sea where the limestone and shale units were deposited into which the Ancient Egyptian Tombs were built. An overview of the geological features of Gebel Gurn is presented and its development discussed. A close look will be given to the ancient and modern landscape features in and around the Valley of the Kinds and the Queens. Moreover, tomb constructions will be dissected in a geological manner in order to better understand the knowledge of the Ancient Egyptian geologists and engineers.

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Valley of the Kings looking north at the cliffs behind the tombs. The cliffs have several listric faults (displacements) due to the origin (uplift) of the mountains some 35 million years ago. The main valley is also the pathway for runoff water during flashfloods.

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Valley of the Queens looking southwest. The main rock type into which the tombs are built is part of a large blockslide from Gebel Gurn that occurred during the Proto-Nile development about 3-5 million years ago.

About the speaker:

Raphael Wust received his MSc in Geology in 1995 from the University of Bern, Switzerland and his PhD in Geology in 2001 from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 2002 to 2009 he was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. End of 2009, Raphael Wust joined Trican Geological Solutions Ltd. as a Technical Advisor in Calgary. He remains an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at James Cook University.

Raphael Wust is author and co-author of over 40 scientific papers and numerous field-guides and technical reports. His MSc. thesis focused on the Quaternary of the area around the Gebal Qurn including the Valley of the Queens and Kings and was initiated by Prof E. Hornung and C. Schluchter. Between 1995-1999 he was involved with the Valley of the Kings Research Group around John Rutherford and Garniss Curtis to investigate the flash flood damages in the Valley of the Kings. Between 2006-2008 he was working with the Getty Conservation Institute and the SCA (Supreme Council of Antiquities) on the geological mapping and analysis of the Valley of the Queens.

Selected References:

Wüst, R.A.J. (1995): Geological and geotechnical investigations in the Thebes area, Part South, Thebes West, Luxor, Egypt. MSc thesis, Geology Department, University of Bern, Switzerland, 254 pp.

Wüst, R. and J. McLane (2000)Rock Deterioration in the Royal Tomb of Seti I, Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. Engineering Geology 58: 163-190.

Wüst, R. and C. Schluechter (2000) The Origin of Soluble Salts in Rocks of the Theban Mountains, Egypt: The Damage Potential to Ancient Egyptian Wall Art. Journal of Archaeological Sciences 27: 11620-1172.

McLane, J, Wüst, RAJ, Porter, B, Rutherford, J, 2003. Flash-Flood Impacts and Protection Measures in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt Association for Preservation Technology International Bulletin 34, Pp. 37-45.

Wüst, R.A.J. (2008), Geological assessment of the Hatshepsut cliff tomb excavation, report for SCA (Supreme Council of Antiquity, Luxor, Egypt, 8 pp.

Wüst, R.A.J. (2008), Valley of the Queens –Report of the geological investigations 2008 (Feb 11-18), 97 pp.

Wüst, R.A.J. and G. Curtis (2010): Valley of the Kings; Geomorphology and Hydrology. Final report for the California Academy of Science and the Valley of the Kings Research Group.

Wüst, R.A.J., Curtis, G., Rutherford, J. and B. Porter (2010): History of Flood Protection: Description and Recommendation of Current Tomb Flood Protection Measures. Final report for the California Academy of Science and the Valley of the Kings Research Group.

Location:

Room EDC 287 in the Education Block at the University of Calgary.

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