Presenter: Dr. H. Catharine Roehrig, Curator in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan

Location: Alston & Bird LLP, 90 Park Avenue, (between 39th and 40th Streets), N.Y., N.Y., 15th Floor Lecture Room (Phot I.D. required to enter building)

This lecture is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required at info.arceny.com.  

Description: Of the eleven excavated foundation deposits that are connected with the Eighteenth Dynasty temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, one was discovered by Naville in 1894-95, two were discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in 1910 and 1911, and nine were discovered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1922 and 1927. Largely based on the positions of these foundation deposits, Herbert Winlock postulated an original, unrealized plan for the temple that was very similar to the neighboring Eleventh Dynasty temple of Nebhepetr. A careful examination of the notes and photographs taken by the Metropolitan Museum excavation team does indicate that there are two sets of foundation deposits laying out an earlier and a later building phase. However, the first layout appears to be influenced by the existence of an early Eighteenth Dynasty structure, not by the plan of Mentuhotep’s temple.

About the Speaker: Dr. Catharine H. Roehrig received her PhD in Egyptian Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley. While studying at Berkeley, she became assistant director of the Theban Mapping Project. As a result, one of her principal areas of study has been the architecture of the early New Kingdom royal tombs on which she has given lectures and written extensively. After leaving Berkeley, she worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she helped organize the exhibition Mummies and Magic: the Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt. Since 1979, Dr. Roehrig has been a curator in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. While at the Met she has worked on a number of gallery installations and exhibitions, including Egyptian Art at Eton College: Selections from the Myers Museum, The Pharaoh’s Photographer: Harry Burton, Tutankhamun, and the Metropolitan’s Egyptian Expedition, and Hatshsepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. She is currently studying the foundation deposits for Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri and working on a publication of the tomb of Wah, whose burial equipment has been on display in the Museum since its discovery in 1920. She also works with the Museum’s expedition to the site of Malqata at the southern end of the Theban necropolis.