Date: Saturday, September 24, 2011

Presenter: Dr. Colleen Manassa, Yale University

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.

Description: Five hundred years before Homer immortalized the Trojan Horse, the Ancient Egyptians had already composed a tale of soldiers hiding Ali Baba-like in baskets to capture a besieged city. Shortly after the death of Tutankhamun and the rise to power of such famous warrior pharaohs as Ramesses II ("the Great"), Egyptian authors began to write stories about battles and conquest. However, these stories were not set in the present, but in the past--they were the world's first works of historical fiction. These literary recreations of past events, which preserve fascinating mixtures of fact and fiction, provide new information about topics as diverse as Ancient Egyptian historiography, religion and notions of humor and wit. Dr. Manassa's lecture will summarize the Ancient Egyptian works of historical fiction, including all background information necessary to appreciate the stories, such as their original audience. Puzzle along with the Theban pharaoh Seqenenre when the Hyksos king complains about hippopotami over a thousand miles away, and feel the drama of a Libyan invasion of Egypt, from the perspective a foreign mercenary. Feel a bond with the ancient Egyptians--although four thousand years have passed, we still enjoy reading fiction set in the past!

About the Speaker: Dr. Manassa joined the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations as the Marilyn M. and William K. Simpson Assistant Professor of Egyptology in 2006. Her research interests include Egyptian grammar, New Kingdom literary texts, military history, funerary religion, and social history.