Archaeological Institute of America

Escape from Pompeii: Tracing survivors from the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius
2026-03-14 11:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum at Miami University, 801 S. Patterson Ave, Oxford, Ohio, 45056
Escape from Pompeii: Tracing survivors from the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius
Dr. Steven Tuck, Archaeologist and Professor in the History Department at Miami University
Dr. Tuck will change the story of Pompeii from one of death and destruction to one of survival and hope. Through his research, he has traced those Romans who escaped the eruption of Vesuvius and discovered how and where they rebuilt lives, families, and businesses, while carrying with them reminders of their former lives.
About the Speaker:
Steven L. Tuck is Professor of History and Classics at Miami University. He has been recognized eight times for his undergraduate teaching and is the author of A History of Roman Art and many articles and chapters on Roman art, especially the art of gladiators and spectacle. He has also published extensively on disasters and disaster response in the Roman world. He has also created five courses for The Great Courses and some of his work has been featured in the recent PBS documentary “Pompeii: The New Dig” and in a recent episode of NPR’s Radiolab. His current research involves tracing those who escaped Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which appears in his new book Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and its Survivors Oxford University Press, 2025.

Prof. Debby Sneed, Assistant Professor of Classics, California State University, Long Beach, "Disability and the Greek Ideal: A Case Study in Marble"
2026-03-12 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | College of the Holy Cross, Hogan Campus Center, Room 401 (an accessible space), 1 College Street, Worcester, MA, 01610, United States
The study of Greek art is heavily influenced by the notion of the ideal and idealized human body, which has long been assumed to exclude aspects of bodily difference and disability. In this talk, I consider a collection of 6th century BCE sculptures of maidens (korai) that were found on the Athenian Acropolis. As traditionally interpreted, these statues all stood together as representations of the feminine ideal in Greek art, but scholars tend to separate one maiden from her sisters because her body does not fit into modern definitions of beauty. By returning her to her rightful place in this collection, I present a reassessment of Greek sculptural ideals and, with it, of our understandings of Greek art, display, and dedication in late 6th century BCE Athens.

Climate Change and Resilience in Medieval Anatolia
2026-03-12 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Edmonton) | Business Building 2-09, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
AIA’s George H. Forsyth, Jr. Memorial Lecture (Link: https://www.archaeological.org/endowment/george-h-forsyth-jr-memorial-lectures/)
Dr. Marica Cassis, Department of History, University of Calgary
What does climate resilience mean in the context of the Late Roman and Medieval World of Anatolia? Current excavations at the site of Çadır Höyük in Yozgat province, central Türkiye provide insight into how communities adapted and changed in response to a variety of climate and social changes over the course of these periods. In examining this evolution, we gain a greater sense of how medieval society made sense of their changing environmental conditions through changes to their physical environments and their use of natural resources.

Re-Encountering Egypt: Museums and the Human Experience in the Age of AI
2026-03-07 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Penn Museum, 3260 South St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Saturday, March 7
3:30 pm EST
In-person only at the Penn Museum, Classroom L2
No registration required
Special Event: Annual Korsyn Lecture in honor of Felix J. Korsyn
Speaker: Prof. Rita Lucarelli, Associate Professor of Egyptology, Faculty Curator of Egyptology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley
Title: Re-Encountering Egypt: Museums and the Human Experience in the Age of AI
Abstract:
In an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, where images, texts, and even ancient cultures can be generated instantly, what role do museums still play in helping us understand the past? This lecture revisits Egypt as a case study to explore the enduring human value of museum experiences in a digital and AI-driven world.
Drawing on examples from Egyptian collections and exhibitions, the speaker’s own 3D and VR projects and student engagement with the ancient Egyptian collection of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology of UC Berkeley, the talk examines how museums create forms of knowledge and emotional connection that cannot be reduced to data or algorithms alone. While AI offers powerful new tools for access, reconstruction, and interpretation, it also raises important questions about authenticity, presence, and the meaning of cultural encounter.
By re-encountering Egypt through the physical, sensory, and social space of the museum, this lecture argues that museums remain vital sites where history is not only learned, but felt, questioned, and shared.
Speaker Bio:
Prof. Rita Lucarelli studied at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy, where she received her MA degree in Egyptology. She holds her Ph.D. from Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her Ph.D. thesis was published as The Book of the Dead of Gatseshen: Ancient Egyptian Funerary Religion in the 10th Century BC. She worked as a Research Scholar and a Lecturer at the Department of Egyptology of Bonn University, where she was part of the team of the “Book of the Dead Project”. She is currently an Associate Professor of Egyptology at UC Berkeley and Faculty Curator of Egyptology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology of the University of California, Berkeley and Fellow of the Digital Humanities in Berkeley. Her specialty is the study of the ancient Egyptian magic and religion, and the reception history of ancient Egypt, in particular in Black Visual Arts and music.
She is presently working at a project aiming at realizing 3D models of ancient Egyptian coffins, the “Book of the Dead in 3D” and a VR App, “Return to the Tomb”, which recreate the tomb space where an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus is brought back, from the museum to the tomb. She is also completing a monograph on demonology in ancient Egypt entitled “Agents of punishment and protection: ancient Egyptian Demonology in the First Millenium BCE”. Rita Lucarelli is also involved in a teaching Higher Education in the San Quentin State Prison, in California.
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Lectures are FREE to ARCE Members, $7 for University of Pennsylvania Museum Members and UPenn Staff and Faculty, $5 for Students with ID, and $10 for the general public.
Light refreshments served starting at 3pm.
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The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1948 by a consortium of educational and cultural institutions to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties. The ARCE Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) is the local branch of the national institution. We host monthly events including scholarly lectures, Egyptian-themed workshops, social events, and guided tours of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries. For more information or to learn about the perks of membership, please send an e-mail to info@arce-pa.org, or visit our website at www.arce-pa.org.

Baptism in Early Christianity and Baptismal Inscriptions in Asia Minor
2026-03-06 - 2026-03-07 | Orthodox Academy of Crete, Kolymvari, 73006, Greece
Water has been the central element of Christian baptism since the very beginnings of Christianity. Baptism has been part of Christianity from the start, as shown by the many mentions in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles. Baptism with water, whether by immersion or sprinkling, has always been the primary initiation ritual for Christians. But where did this ritual come from? And what did it mean? Although the term “baptism” is not today used to describe Jewish rituals(in contrast to New Testament times, when the Greek word βαπτισμός did indicate Jewish ablutions or rites of purification), the purification rites (or ֶוה ְק ִמ / מקווה; mikvah—ritual immersion) in Jewish law and tradition are similar to baptism, and the two have been linked. This e-meeting will focus on the following questions related to baptism in Early Christianity: how did people practice and understand baptism in Early Christian Minor, what kind of connotations did the baptismal use of water evoke in the Asian context, and what significance did baptism gain during the first centuries A.D.? Baptism seems to have been developed in the early years in close contact with the local religious context and the construction of baptisteries in the sixth century A.D. adapted local pagan elements of architecture. The Early Christian baptisteries featured water as the central element of baptism in an architecturally, ritually, and theologically reflected way.
In the study of baptism in Early Christian Asia Minor, we will especially focus on epigraphic evidence, which has been overlooked, whereas there is still a huge amount of material from excavations and museums in Turkey. Our aim is also to analyze the subject with literary sources and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the liturgy and the actions of early Christians, especially in ancient Anatolia. In this e-meeting, we only focus on baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. and attempt to set out a comprehensive model for the study of Early Christian baptism in Asia Minor. It is also our intention to create a complete bibliography of previous publications on Early Christian baptism and baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor.
We warmly invite contributions by scholars and graduate students from a variety of disciplines related to this subject. Intended to bring together scholars of Early Christian theology, Roman history, and Greek epigraphy to discuss a range of issues concerning this ritual’s characteristics, this video conference should be an excellent opportunity to increase our knowledge about this subject. The following theme groups are the main questions of the symposium, which are prescriptive:
-The origins and development of baptism in Asia Minor,
-Relevance and performance of baptism in Early Christian contexts in Asia Minor,
-Early Christian baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor from archaeological field projects and museums,
-Etymology of Early Christian baptism,
-Ancient Greek and Latin textual sources on Early Christian baptism in Asia Minor,
-Hellenistic and Roman gravestones and other iconographic media depicting Early Christian baptism and baptismal inscriptions in Asia Minor,
-Miscellanea.
On these themes and questions, all approaches and methods susceptible to bringing some progress to our current knowledge are, of course, welcome: theology, ancient history, epigraphy, archaeology, history of art, cultural anthropology, etc. All the readings and discussions in our conference will be in English, and recorded for later viewing as a podcast on YouTube. The proceedings of the symposium will be published in 2028-29.
We would be delighted if you could consider contributing to our symposium and contact us with the required information below before October 1, 2025. Our e-mail addresses are: ztsiami@oac.gr and/or terracottas@deu.edu.tr
For all your queries concerning the symposium, our phone number is: +90.544.938 54 64. The organizers seek to widen participation at this symposium and would like to encourage colleagues from all parts of the world to attend. We kindly request that you alert any interested researchers, colleagues, and students within your research community who would be interested in participating in this conference, either by forwarding our first circular and poster through Academia, Researchgate, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other similar social media, or by printing them and displaying in your institution. Please share them also on your ListServs. We hope that you will be able to join us at the Orthodox Academy, and we look forward to seeing you!

TBA (New Orleans)
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (New Orleans 1), New Orleans, LA, United States
Time TBA

TBA (Hawaii (Honolulu))
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Honolulu), Honolulu, HI

Petra's Forgotten Past: Uncovering the Iron Age Foundations of Nabataean Society 2
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Baltimore), Baltimore, MD, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship Time TBA

Archaeology-Hour Screening: Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire
2026-03-05 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Please join us for an in-person screening and informal discussion of the Archaeology Hour talk by Akin Ogundiran (Northwestern University).
Enclosures and perimeter walls, built of lateritic clay and stones, are the most visible monuments and evidence of public works in the archaeological landscape of the Ọyọ Empire (West Africa). What purposes did these walls serve as markers of separation and connection? Join us to find out!
This event is free and open to the public.

Decorating for Death
2026-03-03 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (Eugene), Eugene, OR

"Across Jordan in the Footsteps of Alois Musil: Archaeology and Discovery" with Sylva Pavlasová
2026-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Join a fascinating online lecture about Alois Musil with Sylva Pavlasová, head of the Mashrek unit of the Middle East Department at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who recently returned from Jordan, a nation rich with traces from Neolithic, Nabataean, Roman, Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic times to the establishment of the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Musil, a theologian, orientalist, and explorer, was nicknamed Sheikh Mousa by local Bedouin tribes. A major Czech scholar of the 19th and 20th Century, fluent in 35 dialects of Arabic, leader of two Bedouin tribes with friends amongst local Arabs — Musil amassed important knowledge related to Jordan´s history. In 1898, he rediscovered the Islamic desert castle of Qusayr ‘Amra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Highland, Lowland: Chlorite Landscapes of the Iranian Plateau in the Third Millennium BCE (Lecture by Breton Langendorfer)
2026-03-02 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Princeton University Art Museum – Tuttle Lecture Hall (Room 134), 45 Elm Drive, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
In 2001, flooding near the city of Jiroft in southeastern Iran exposed a vast Bronze Age cemetery. Large quantities of vessels made from a dark soft stone known as chlorite or steatite began to appear on antiquities markets, the majority of which were successfully repatriated by Iranian authorities. These events spurred new archaeological exploration in the Jiroft area, leading to the discovery of a previously unknown urban polity located just south of the modern city in the valley of the Halil Rud river. The discovery also prompted scholars to recontextualize these distinct objects, found across the Middle East in the later 3rd millennium BCE and formerly referred to by the appellation “Intercultural Style,” as grave goods of the so-called Jiroft Civilization. This project explores the aesthetic values expressed within this class of artifacts, using an example now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a window into evocations of sensory experience, funerary otherworlds, and an extremely early tradition of landscape depiction I argue they present.
This Robert J. Braidwood Lecture is presented by Breton Langendorfer.

Mayan writing Workshop: Learning the Mayan Calendar
2026-03-01 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York)
Speaker: Paul Caetano
Further details to come

Recreating Urban Biographies in Roman Italy: Recent Research at Gabii
2026-02-28 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | historic Longview Farm House located at 13525 Clayton Road in Town and Counry, MO., 13525 Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO, 63141, United States
Dr. Marcello Mogetta (Chair of the Dept. of Classics, Archaeology & Religion at the University of Missouri – Columbia) will lecture on “Recreating Urban Biographies in Roman Italy: Recent Research at Gabii”. A Roman themed reception will be held afterwards, but 21st century clothing is totally cool.

Spectacles of Cultural Heritage Destruction in Global Media
2026-02-28 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Minneapolis), Minneapolis, MN, United States
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship

Soldier Burials, Landscapes, and Memory in Early Iron Age Greece
2026-02-26 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Denver)

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | UMass Amherst, Herter Hall 301, 161 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA, 01003, United States
Dr. Megan Perry, “Life, Death, and Disease: Insights from Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries”
Thursday, February 26 at 5:00pm Eastern
UMass Amherst, Herter Hall 301
For Zoom attendance, register here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/GD44nDLmTwKs_QZUh44AFw
ABSTRACT
Ensconced within the sandstone hills of southern Jordan, evidence from mortuary structures in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra tells powerful stories about life, illness, death, and commemoration of its residents. This talk will focus on their experiences across the life course through bioarchaeological evidence of disease, diet, and immigration from the skeletal remains recovered from tombs within the city. In addition, evidence of mortuary behaviors within these tombs will reveal the rich and varied forms of remembrance after their deaths. This integrated approach, shifting away from Petra’s temples and monuments, offers new perspectives on resilience, identity, and memory in a dynamic ancient city.
SPEAKER BIO
Dr. Perry is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at East Carolina University. She teaches courses on human osteology, death and disease in Classical antiquity, and human diseases and ancient environments. Most of her research focuses on 1st century B.C. – 7th century A.D. Jordan, but she supervises graduate students interested in numerous aspects of bioarchaeology. She has been working on archaeological projects in Jordan for 30 years and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan. She is currently Director of the Petra North Ridge Project, which focuses on the excavation of 1st century A.D. tombs and 1st – 4th century domestic structures.
This year’s AIA National Lecture (Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology) is co-sponsored by the AIA–Western Massachusetts Society and the UMass Amherst Department of Classics.

New Approaches to Roman Urbanism: The Excavations of the Falerii Novi Project (Lazio, Italy) 2
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | TBA (Central Missouri), MO, United States

Life, Death, and Disease: Insights form Petra’s Tombs and Cemeteries 3
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Western Massachusetts), Northampton, MA, United States
Kershaw Lectures in Near East Archaeology Time TBA

The Making of Myth & Marble: Bringing the Torlonia Sculptures to the U.S.
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Whitman College Maxey Hall 207, 173 Stanton St., Walla Walla, WA, 99362, United States
Martha Sharp Joukowsky Lectureship

Monumental Ritual Texts in Ancient Egyptian Pyramids
2026-02-25 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Hybrid Lecture
Monumental Ritual Texts in Ancient Egyptian Pyramids
Wednesday, February 25, 6:00–7:00 pm ET, Advance registration recommended for online and in-person attendance
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Speaker: Christelle Alvarez, Assistant Professor of Egyptology, Brown University
The earliest large-scale records of ancient Egyptian religious literature come from Saqqara, an important royal cemetery from Egypt’s Old Kingdom period. For nearly two centuries, the subterranean chambers beneath some of Saqqara’s pyramids were inscribed with hundreds of ritual texts carved in hieroglyphs. In this lecture, Christelle Alvarez will discuss the final Old Kingdom pyramid to bear such inscriptions: the tomb of King Qakare Ibi. Smaller than its predecessors, badly damaged, and marked by architectural and textual idiosyncrasies, this monument has often been dismissed as marginal to the main Pyramid Text tradition. Alvarez argues that Qakare Ibi’s pyramid actually provides a rare glimpse into the process of monumentalizing ritual texts, revealing how this tradition was composed, transmitted, and continually reshaped over time.
Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage starting at 5:00 pm. Presented by the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.
Fragment photo by Christelle Alvarez

AIA Archaeology Hour February 2026: Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire
2026-02-25 17:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Join the AIA for a virtual trip to West Africa as Akin Ogundiran delivers the February AIA Archaeology Hour talk “Metropolitan Walls of the Ọyọ Empire.”
This presentation will be given at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/6pm Mountain/5pm Pacific.

Register here!

The Elk Ridge Community in the Mimbres Pueblo World
2026-02-25 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | TBA (Gainesville 1), Gainesville, FL, United States

Petra's Forgotten Past
2026-02-24 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | TBA (Vancouver), Vancouver, British Columbia

Bone by Bone: The Commingled Remains from the Tomb at Tell Abraq, UAE (2200-2000 BC)
2026-02-22 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | TBA (North Coast)
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship Time TBA

The Origins of the Alphabet and How It Spread Across the World
2026-02-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Knight Auditorium, The Spurlock Museum(UIUC), 600 S.Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801, Illinois, 61801, United States
Public Lecture by Professor Wayne T. Pitard
Abstract:
Essentially all of the alphabetic scripts in the world descend from a single script invented probably during the 20th century BCE by a Canaanite in the southern Levant. This lecture will provide a tour of the extraordinary development of the alphabet from its beginnings to its eventual spread across the Mediterranean and the world. We will examine the script’s origin and how the signs were conceptualized by their creator(s). We will look at the alphabet’s extension, first across the eastern Mediterranean where it developed into the distinctive Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic scripts, and then moved southward into the Arabian Peninsula, where it evolved into the Arabic system. Then we will examine how the early alphabet, which only expressed consonants, was revolutionized by the Greeks, who began using some of the letters as vowels. We will follow the development of the Greek alphabet into both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets that exist throughout Europe and much of northern Asia. Finally, we will touch upon the spread of the Arabic alphabet across northern Africa and eastward into India, and the Latin alphabet’s movement to the Americas and parts of southern Africa during the European colonial period of the 15th-20th centuries. All of this has made the alphabetic writing system the most widespread method of writing in the world.

Society Sunday 2026 Public Lecture
2026-02-22 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/4517701567776/WN_MQkKm7LIQWO2cF5hY_QMLA
Marketing the Etruscans—From Mystery to Modern Media
Join us as the AIA Societies Committee presents a virtual presentation and Q&A with Jessica Tilley. This presentation will also be available in American Sign Language.
Often deemed the ‘mysterious’ Etruscans, this pre-Roman civilization of early Italy has fought a hard-won battle in finding its place in the field of Classical Archaeology. Various titans of American Etruscology, including this year’s AIA Gold Medalist Nancy de Grummond, have dedicated decades of research to highlighting the value of Etruscan material in answering larger questions related to ritual practice, cross-cultural interaction, and Mediterranean trade networks. In recent years, Etruscan material has been at the foreground of widely publicized repatriation cases and cultural heritage protection conversations. This buzz culminated in the globally acclaimed 2023 film La chimera about a band of Etruscan tomb robbers. Looking ahead, Etruscology is primed for engaging in the development of current archaeological theory, with ongoing research relevant to our multi-cultural, interconnected world. In this lecture, Dr. Jessica Tilley outlines the dynamic history of the Etruscan civilization’s modern reception and highlights the ways in which it is uniquely positioned to contribute to ongoing dialogue around decolonialism, queer theory, globalization, and network theory in Mediterranean archaeology.
Dr. Jessica Tilley is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Centre College and the Assistant Director of Excavations of the Montereggi Project, an Etruscan hilltop site near Florence, Italy. Her research explores questions of postcolonialism and globalization theory in the ancient Mediterranean world through examination of cross-cultural funerary practices. She has excavated at sites across Italy, Greece, and the southeastern U.S. and is actively involved in cultural heritage public outreach.
The lecture will also be available in American Sign Language and we will also enable auto captioning on Zoom. Due to Zoom limitations on mobile devices and tablets, participants interested in accessing ASL interpretation should log in using the desktop version of Zoom.

A Tour of the Ancient Mediterranean Galleries of the Princeton University Art Museum
2026-02-22 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Princeton University Art Museum, 45 Elm Drive, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for a tour of the ancient Mediterranean galleries of the newly re-opened and highly anticipated Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM). The Museum’s collection of ancient Mediterranean and Byzantine art numbers more than 7,000 objects that were made and used throughout the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Ancient Mediterranean art is foundational to the Museum. Participants on this tour will learn about some of the collection’s highlights from the PUAM’s Associate Curator of Ancient Mediterranean Art, Carolyn M. Laferrière. The tour will begin in the Grand Hall of the PUAM. You do not have to be a member of the AIA to attend, and there is no charge to attend this event, but participants are asked to RSVP in advance.
This event has been graciously supported by the Rodney S. Young Memorial Lecture fund.

Piramesse – from the City of Wonders to Terra Incognita
2026-02-21 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Online via Zoom, PA, United States
Saturday, February 21
3:30 pm EST
Virtual on ZOOM
FREE lecture; RSVP required for Zoom link
Speaker: Dr. Henning Franzmeier, Senior Research Associate, The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia
Title: Piramesse – from the City of Wonders to Terra Incognita
Abstract:
Where today just a typical Egyptian village is located, surrounded by fertile, green fields, 3300 years ago, Ramesses II founded his capital Piramesse. In contrast to Akhenaton’s Akhetaton, Piramesse was not founded at a virgin site but instead Ramesses II chose a site with a lot of tradition to which he could connect. During his long reign, the city became the one of the largest settlements not only of Egypt but the whole koiné spanning the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. Texts portray Piramesse as a place where food is abundant, where temples and colossal statues were erected, and where the king would receive the envoys bringing the silver tablet with the famous peace treaty with the Hittite Empire. A few years later, the king received his Hittite wife after the god Seth had made winter become summer so that the long journey could be finished safely. Moreover, it was a military headquarters and center of trade between Egypt and the outside world. When entering Egypt, Piramesse was the first city the traveler would have seen, serving as a showcase and a stage of pharaoh’s power.
But what does remain of the city and what can we say after nearly a century of excavations? And what happened so that the memory of Piramesse only survived via its mention in the bible as Ramses, while the location remained disputed and was only identified by Mahmoud Hamza in 1930?
This lecture will tell the biography of Piramesse from its beginnings before Ramesses II through its heydays in the 19th Dynasty until its decline when it finally vanished almost completely from the surface after the end of the New Kingdom. Using the results of the excavations since 1928, the major features of the city will be shown and finds will be used to illustrate the long and rich history of the city.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Henning Franzmeier has been working at Qantir-Piramesse for the past 20 years and directed the excavations since 2015. Over the past ten years, he has taught at UCL Qatar in Doha, the University of Innsbruck, and the University of Bologna, and also worked for the Humboldt-University in Berlin and The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia. In 2014, he received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on the New Kingdom cemeteries at the Middle Egyptian site of Sedment – a reassessment of the 1920/21 excavations of William Matthew Flinders Petrie. His MA thesis at the University of Göttingen dealt with a well of Ramesses II at Samana near Qantir-Piramesse. His interests range from settlement archaeology to the history of Egyptology and the analysis of funerary assemblages.
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The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1948 by a consortium of educational and cultural institutions to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture, foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties. The ARCE Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) is the local branch of the national institution. We host monthly events including scholarly lectures, Egyptian-themed workshops, social events, and guided tours of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries. For more information or to learn about the perks of membership, please send an e-mail to info@arce-pa.org, or visit our website at www.arce-pa.org.

Digging in Circles: Miami's Prehistoric Legacy
2026-02-21 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, the Mall at Wellington Green, 10300 Forest Hill Blvd., Wellington, FL, 33414, United States
