Date: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 1:30pm

Presenter: Dr. David Silverman, Professor of Egyptology, University of Pennsylvania, and Curator, Penn Museum

Chapter: Orange County, California

Location: Bowers Museum, Norma Kershaw Auditorium, 2002 N. Main, Santa Ana, California

This lecture is free and open to the public.

Desscription: Dr. Silverman will present an illustrated talk about the exhibitions centering on Tutankhamun that have traveled throughout the world during the 20th and 21st centuries. The boy king's fame was established in 1922 when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb. Since that fateful day, Tutankhamun has become legendary, and these immensely popular exhibitions have contributed to keeping the name and memory of the young king alive.

About the Speaker: David P. Silverman is the curator of the international exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Gold of the Pharaohs," which opened in Los Angeles in 2005, toured the country for several years, went to London, and is now in Melbourne, Australia. More than seven million people have visited the show. Dr. Silverman also curated "The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," which is presently touring the U.S., as well as the earlier exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Gold of the Pharaohs." His connection with the king goes back even further to the late 1970s, when he also curated "The Treasures of Tutankhamun," the first of the blockbuster exhibitions.

Dr. Silverman has curated, consulted and organized several other major exhibitions, such as "Cleopatra, Searching for the Last Queen of Egypt" (now in Cincinnati), "Ramesses the Great," "Searching for Ancient Egypt," "Women in Ancient Egypt," "Archaeological Treasures of Ancient Egypt" and the recently completed "Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun."

At the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Silverman is the Eckley Brinton Coxe, Jr. Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Curator-in-Charge of the Egyptian Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. For seven and a half years, he was Chair of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Penn. In 1999, he was a visiting professor at the Ecole Pratique at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in 1993, he was a visitng Willcombe Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Dr. Silverman received his Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago and his B.A. with honors from Rutgers University. Dr. Silverman has published more than twelve books dealing with subjects such as grammar, art, religion, kingship, Middle Kingdom studies and epigraphy.

His two latest books are "Akhenaten and Tutankhamun: Revolution, Reformation and Archaism" and "Innovation: Studies in the Culture of Middle Kingdom in Egypt." His more than 75 scholarly articles, reports and reviews appear in major international journals. A frequent recipient of grants, Dr. Silverman has also received an award for nonfiction from the Philadelphia Athenaeum Society. Dr. Silverman has directed fieldwork projects throughout Egypt and has run the expedition at Saqqara since 1990.