Date: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 6:30pm

Chapter: Pennsylvania

Presenter: Dr. Rita Freed, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

Location: Classroom 2, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Entrance fees are $5 for the general public, $3 for University Museum members, and free for ARCE-PA members.

Description: In April, 1915 the Harvard-Boston Expedition blasted its way into a tomb shaft at the Middle Egyptian site of Bersha, and what greeted them was a burial chamber filled with a helter-skelter mass of material. Its contents included some of the Middle Kingdom’s finest painted coffins and sculptures ever found, as well as some of its worst. The fascinating objects from the tomb of the Nomarch Djehutynakht and the questions they raise form the topic of this lecture and a forthcoming exhibition.

Dr. Rita Freed is the Norma-Jean Calderwood Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art and Joint Head of the Department of Art of the Ancient World at the Museum of Fine Arts as well as Adjunct Professor of Art at Wellesley College. She has excavated in Egypt, Israel, and Cyprus.