Deified Dead in the Pyramid Age
Sunday, December 9, 3 pm
Room 20 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley Campus
Holiday Souk, before and after the lecture, begins at 2 p.m.
(Near the intersection
of Bancroft Way
and Barrow Lane)
- Louvre Statue of the deified Imhotep, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
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The Egyptian Pyramid Texts inform us that the dead in ancient Egypt “did not go away dead, but went away alive.” That is, despite the demise of their bodies, the dead lived on as (perceived) active members of social systems. These transfigured dead (known as akh) could cross realms to engage the living, the gods, and the supernatural entities of the Egyptian divine Hereafter. It is against this backdrop of “normal” mortuary practices that the speaker has searched for abnormal and exceptional instances in which the dead were venerated, and in some cases worshipped as gods. These exceptional, and often enigmatic, cases of deified dead are the focus of her current book project, and the topic of this talk.
- Dr. Julia Troche, Missouri State University
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Dr. Julia Troche grew up in San Diego and studied Egyptology at UCLA as an undergraduate. She went on to receive her Ph.D. from Brown University’s Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Missouri State University. Her primary areas of interest include ancient Egyptian social history and religion, but she also conducts research on the histories of the ancient Near East and the Classical world. She has worked as an excavator, field surveyor, and epigrapher at Abydos and Luxor in Egypt, and at Petra, Jordan. Before coming to Missouri State, Dr. Troche taught undergraduate and graduate courses on ancient Egyptian art, history, religion, and hieroglyphs at UCLA. Additionally, she has helped develop education outreach materials and programming: she co-curated the exhibition Uncovering Ancient Egypt: Ancient Crafts, Modern Technologies in 2014, worked with PublicVR to help build an exemplar of a virtual ancient Egyptian temple, and writes articles for the young adult history and archaeology magazines Calliope and Dig. -- Faculty profile, Missouri State University website.
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