Lanny Bell
Brown University

A visiting scholar in Egyptology at Brown University, Lanny Bell is an acknowledged leader in the documentation of the monuments of ancient Egypt and the interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture. He received his BA in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 1963; in 1976 he received his PhD in Egyptology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has been teaching since 1965. Professor Bell specializes in ancient Egyptian divine kingship, the temples of Thebes, and Egyptian epigraphy. No armchair scholar, he has been active in Egypt since 1967, conducting fieldwork in Luxor for the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He has been lecturing for the Archaeological Institute of America (or: AIA) since 1971, and has accompanied numerous tours to Egypt since 1973.

Lecture Abstracts

Human Nature, Individuality, and Self-Identity: Ancient Egyptian ‘Anthropology’ or ‘Psychology’
From the mystery of birth to the mystery of death, and through all the transformations which occur in between, the ancient Egyptians sought to answer the fundamental question “Who am I?” During the New Kingdom, 1570-1070 BCE, a complex of somewhat vaguely defined and partially overlapping components both natural and supernatural were thought to make up the whole human being. These consisted of the body, the name, the heart, the shade or shadow, the akh, the ba, and the ka. The body, one’s physical appearance, was naturally recognized as a key to individual identity, as was the name: names were recycled within the family—with eldest sons assigned the name of their paternal grandfather and eldest daughters named after their mothers. The heart was credited with most of the functions we normally associate with the brain. The abstract shade—seemingly permanently bound to the body in sunny Egypt—symbolized the possibility of divine incarnation, as a reflection of God. The last three hieroglyphic terms present the greatest difficulties, since it is necessary not only to define each one separately, but also to determine the relationships which existed among them. The akh ‘effective’ designates the short term personal awareness or consciousness of the recently deceased before his or her successful transition to the Afterlife; “transfigured spirit” or “ghost” is an appropriate translation in many contexts. The ba ‘mystical power’, a sort of “spiritual body”—with the same appetites and needs as the physical body—was the spiritual element marking the potential for an individual’s eternal existence; essentially an alter ego, bound to the body during life, it was released at death but had to reunite periodically with the mummy in order to sustain both. The ka ‘generative power’, symbol of the fertility of the Ancestors, was the expression of a person’s identity and position as a member of a family group, lineage, or clan; at death, it left the body and remerged with the divine Ancestors. These concepts help clarify how the short-lived individual envisioned his or her chances for survival in the Afterworld; but they also offer an explanation for the inequities so readily apparent in the highly stratified social organization of ancient Egypt, and provide a basis for understanding Egyptian ideas of Destiny or Fate.

Mythology and Iconography of Divine Kingship in Ancient Egypt
Divine kingship was one of the fundamental tenets of ancient Egyptian religion. But how could the ancient Egyptian people really have believed their kings were living gods? Nevertheless, they must have; for the king, the priests, and the privileged ruling elite—who would seem to us to have benefited most from this idea—could not possibly have been successful in cynically deceiving their people for more than three millennia! In fact, few of us realize the extent that religion and politics have been inextricably intertwined in the person of the King throughout human history; the king either was a god or functioned as a divinely appointed agent of God. Anthropologists and historians of religion have documented such phenomena in many cultures from different time periods all over the world. In order to begin to appreciate the doctrine of the king’s divinity, we must project ourselves into the world of the ancient Egyptians and examine their beliefs from within their own cultural perspective. A solar incarnation, the Egyptian king ruled as the Sun, manifesting its powers; and when he died, his divine spirit rejoined the Sun, while his transfigured body was buried in a tomb where the drama of the sun’s nightly rebirth was reenacted. By the time of the New Kingdom, 1570-1070 BCE, the dogma of divine kingship exhibited a high degree of sophistication. The King was the physical offspring of the Creator by a human woman—the Mother of God. The lecture investigates several symbolic representations of the king’s divinity. The Hellenistic and Roman empires adopted many features of Egyptian iconography, and bequeathed them to the West—particularly through the efforts of the Church Fathers of Alexandria, as they struggled to explain the nature of Jesus the Christ as both Son of Man and Son of God. Essentially, there were always two kings on the Throne of Horus at the same time. First there was the mortal king, who had gained control of the throne and ruled from it on behalf of humankind; as High Priest, he made offerings to the gods for his subjects’ sake. Then there was the abstract King, a theological conception and political symbol, who was regarded as the living incarnation of immortal Kingship; as heir and successor to the gods on earth, he was the recipient of his own offerings. Normally, these two aspects of divine kingship were represented in a single god-man, a hybrid being with two natures—uniquely and ideally suited to be the Intermediary between the human and divine worlds.

Napoleon and the European Discovery of Ancient Egypt
The most enduring accomplishment of the ill-fated Napoleonic Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801 was the publication of the great 19-volume Description de l’Egypte, 1809-28. The French expeditionary forces included a large contingent of skilled artists and able scholars whose assignment was the documentation of the surviving ancient and medieval monuments, as well as the flora and fauna of the country and every aspect of modern life. The resulting excitement caught the popular imagination, producing the first major wave of Egyptomania since Roman times. The international academic interest which was generated led to the establishment of many great Egyptological collections, museums, and research institutions around the world and the birth of modern Egyptology. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone, of course, provided the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphs in 1822. But the extensive records made of the condition of the pharaonic monuments have also proved invaluable in the long term for reconstructing the architecture and decoration of temples and tombs that have since been seriously damaged or even largely destroyed.

Popular and Profane Experiences with the Sublime: The Temple as a Social and Cultural Focus in Egypt
One’s first impression of an Egyptian temple is that it was the exclusive domain of the gods, the king, and the priests. The distinguishing characteristic of the temple precinct is that it circumscribed and limited architecturally a site that was regarded as fundamentally unlike the mundane space into which it was set; for the temple was constructed precisely at the interface between the sacred and the profane. This boundary was described symbolically in the consecration of the very ground on which the temple was erected, and concretely by a series of imposing, progressively more restrictive enclosure walls which surrounded and protected it. The sanctuary was located mythologically at the exact center of the Universe, where the Primordial Event of Creation had occurred; here the earthly or temporal world and the divine celestial and infernal worlds met and were linked via a miraculous portal. In such a cosmic setting, what role could the ordinary population possibly play? And yet temples were formally designated as “places of supplication and hearing the petitions of gods and humans.” The temple was not irrelevant to daily life; in fact, it was fully integrated into the life of the surrounding community. The lecture examines human aspects of the New Kingdom temple (1570-1070 BCE). Because of the focus that the temple provided in their lives, the people of Egypt have always been active on its peripheries. In antiquity they even participated in public processions during annual festivals, when they were introduced into the less restricted courtyards and ceremonial halls of the temple. In the role of “congregation,” they took part as both adorers and witnesses to the dramatic success of the important rites conducted there. In political terms, these festivals constituted symbolic display, staged to reinforce the king’s power and position as head of society. Finally, it will be noted that ancient Egypt is still an important component of modern Egypt, and there has been considerable cultural continuity in the past 3500 years, particularly in the realm of folklore and popular belief.

Pyramids, Mummies, and Magic: An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Funerary Beliefs and Practices
An examination of the way the ancient Egyptians faced the all-too-familiar problem of death reveals that, rather than being obsessed with death, they were obsessed with life. They were reconciled to death as a natural process: life is a terminal condition. They enjoyed their earthly existence, comfortable with being both in and of the world—there was no body/soul dichotomy of the sort that decrees everything involving the physical is evil, while everything associated with the spirit is good. They were complete beings only when body and soul were united in them. At the same time they looked forward to an eternal existence based on this model; death was the portal to rebirth into a new kind of life. The lecture presents the Egyptians’ preparations for death—revealing their attitudes toward death and the dead—in terms of the association of three fundamental characteristics of ancient Egyptian culture: pyramids, mummies, and works of art deposited as grave goods. The material presented ranges primarily from the time before the Old Kingdom (2675-2175 BCE) through the New Kingdom (1570-1070 BCE, an era of highly developed theological speculation).

The Magic of Art and Writing in Ancient Egypt
Writing literally was an art in ancient Egypt; on the other hand, art was also, strictly speaking, hieroglyphic—in that images were employed not merely as decoration, but as symbols intended to convey ideas. Writing (text) and art (iconography) were intimately related: they were complementary, each explaining, illustrating, or generally elaborating the other. Hieroglyphs are among the symbols used in works of art, and we need to study the grammar and vocabulary of this art to learn to “read” the iconography of scenes as surely as we would read a text. The magical power of representations, as well as the spoken or written word, consisted in the fact that the outer form or appearance of an item determined its true being or reality; and the whole essence or nature of a thing was revealed in its name. Control over an object or being might be achieved through the recitation of its name, as surely as by the imitation of its shape; conversely, the absolute destruction of the person or thing resulted from doing away with the name or image. The most abstract cosmogony describes the Creation by Ptah through the Word or Utterance, expressed in the assigning and speaking of names. The possession of a secret or hidden name was a means of preserving one’s identity and independence, as in the myth of Isis and the Secret Name of Re. The power of representations, as well as the word explains the phenomenon of defacements and replacements on monuments. In historical contexts, the Egyptians observed that things change, but they always remain essentially the same. They seem to have been particularly interested in the repetition of events, those that conformed to mythological prototypes, as established at the Beginning of Time—these were real. Other occurrences that were random (i.e., unpredictable or unique)—those unusual, distinctive, or specific events with which we are particularly concerned on the 6:00 news or in our morning newspaper—these were unreal and were normally not worth recording or commemorating. The Egyptians saw the course of history against a mythological background dominated by certain fundamental themes; actual events were particular instances of great movements or tendencies. So the victor gets to write the history, and we must be extremely cautious about taking any report or representation too literally.

The Reunion of Body and Soul: Sacred Sexuality and Resurrection in the Netherworld
The resurrection of the dead is depicted in the subterranean corridors of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings (1570-1070 BCE). The decoration of these tombs tells the story of the sun’s nightly journey through the caverns of the Netherworld, as it overcomes the many obstacles and dangers which beset its course on the way from its death in the west to its triumphant reappearance on the eastern horizon at dawn. As the night sun’s barque proceeds, the god’s life force increases progressively. The special ram-headed form of the resurgent god represents his ba. The ultimate mystery of this drama is accomplished when the ba of the Sun God unites, rather reunites, with the lifeless body of his alter ego, the vegetation god Osiris. The fusion of these two divine beings, complementary aspects of the Universal Creator, releases tremendous amounts of cosmic energy which has been tied up in maintaining their separate existence. The king is next incorporated into this composite being, now called, for example, Amun-Re-Osiris-Menma’atre (Sety I). In this process, the justified dead are also regenerated by the light of the recharged sun—while the enemies of the gods and king reawake only to be consigned again to perpetual torment in the fiery Egyptian Hell. The return to life is symbolized in the graphic display of sexual vigor. The particular form of Osiris found here, definitely a fertility figure, is identified as He Who Awakes Intact—recalling the episode of the Osiris myth in which the grieving Isis fails to find the severed phallus of her dismembered husband; nevertheless, she magically enables him to engender their son Horus posthumously. This miracle is represented in the Sety Temple at Abydos, with its associated Osireion (burial place of Osiris). The promise of eternal existence is signified in the reversal of time (everything is upside down and backwards in the underworld), as represented in the Book of Amduat in the 12th (last) Hour of the Night. Re and Osiris separate once more as the sun rises to enliven the earth another day, while the inert corpse of Osiris—confined to his underworld domain—slumps down to await the return of the sun for a new cycle of rebirth. This complex speculative New Kingdom theology clearly expresses the Egyptians’ consummate faith in the power of life over death.

The Romance of Archaeology—NOT!: The University of Pennsylvania Museum’s Theban Tomb Project
The unpublished Ramesside tombs at Dira Abu el-Naga South lie just across the escarpment from the Valley of the Kings. This site has been investigated by two expeditions from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. There, in enormous rock-cut tombs with commanding views of the whole Theban plain, were buried some of the most powerful officials of the realm under Ramesses II (1270-1212 BC) and his immediate successors; these include three High Priests of Amun-Re of Karnak (Nebwenenef, Bekenkhons I, and Roma-Roy), a Third Prophet of Amun-Re (Tjaneger), two Viceroys of Kush (Setau and Anhotep), and two Commandants of the Troops of Kush (Pennesuttaui and Nakhtmin). A teir of much smaller tombs of lesser officials, mostly priests, is located on a lower terrace. This lecture will concentrate on excavation techniques, the architecture and decoration of the tombs in this complex, and conservation efforts undertaken on behalf of their restoration and preservation. Some of the most significant artifacts associated with the use and reuse of the tombs will also be featured.

Tutankhamun: The Life and Death of a God King
The Son of the Sun, Tutankhamun, 1334-1325 BCE, was a god in his own time; but he was also a mortal on earth. While the contents of his tomb tell us a great deal about his divine status, what do they tell us about his life and death—his human side? What did he really look like? Who were his parents? How did he die, and how old was he? Who controlled him while he was on the throne? Did he have any children? What role did his widow Ankhesenamun attempt to play in the selection of the next king? What was his relationship with his successor, the aged Aye. Did Aye switch tombs with him? Why was his tomb equipment so richly provided, including personal gifts donated by important officials and courtiers; and where did it all come from? The new traveling Tutankhamun exhibition presents an occasion to reexamine some of these issues, even though many of them are not yet completely resolved.

Return to previous page