We are pleased to announce that our next two lectures will be offered by Uroš Matić!

To expand our reach across the New England area, we will be offering one lecture in Cambridge and another in Providence. Uroš has generously agreed to present two separate lectures at these locations. The details for the second of these talks is listed below:

Lecture Details: Looting in armed conflicts is attested in ancient Egypt at least since the Early Dynastic Period, which is also when the earliest lists of spoils of war appear. The number of known lists increases in subsequent periods (Old to Middle Kingdom), forming a considerable corpus in the New Kingdom, when Egyptian imperialism reached its peak. An analysis of the content and structure of these lists reveals a long tradition of organizing plunder into categories such as humans, animals, and objects. Furthermore, several lists clearly indicate the classification of plundered humans and animals according to status and gender. In the New Kingdom, this is further confirmed by visual representations of the registration of spoils of war in tribute scenes from the tombs of state officials, many of whom held military positions. Additionally, such representations appear on temple walls. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence can be used to reconstruct actual practices following the aftermath of war.
This paper examines New Kingdom Egyptian lists of spoils of war to reconstruct ancient Egyptian plundering practices, with a particular focus on the logistics and administration of looting, as well as the impact of plunder on the economies and demographics of both Egyptians and their neighbors. Furthermore, so-called “autobiographical” accounts from the tombs of state officials and visual depictions of spoils of war will be analyzed to explore the role of booty in shaping the status and agency of the New Kingdom Egyptian elite.

Speaker Details: Uroš Matić is an assistant professor at the Institute for Ancient History and the Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Innsbruck in Austria and a lecturer at the Institute for Classics, University of Graz in Austria. His main expertise is in war and violence in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian interrelations, settlement archaeology and gender studies in archaeology. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Münster in 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Angelika Lohwasser and Prof. Anthony J. Spalinger and received two prizes for this work (Philippika prize of Harrassowitz in 2018 and Best Publication Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2020). He held the P.R.I.M.E fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) from 2018 to 2019 and received the grants of the Foundation for Postgraduates of Egyptology in Vienna in 2016 and 2022. From 2019 to 2023 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. During this period he specialized in Early Dynastic to First Intermediate Period Upper Egyptian pottery. In 2024 he was a scholar in residence at the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology. Starting in March 2025 he will join the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Ruhr University Alliance based in Essen Germany as a visiting Senior Fellow. He was co-chair of the Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) community of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) from 2016 to 2019. He has over 100 publications, the most recent being the monograph Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2021) and the edited volumes Beautiful Bodies. Gender and Corporeal Aesthetics in the Past (Oxbow Books, 2022) and Bodies that Mattered. Ancient Egyptian Corporealities (Sidestone Press, forthcoming in 2025, with Dina Serova).

This lecture will be held in-person and on Zoom
Emerson Hall, Room 108
(29 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138, Harvard University)
Online registration is Required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/xm8XA7hkRSCCYRZfHKJ6Lw?fbclid=IwY2xjawJTdN1leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHdV7r76DLQfqG6hgVHPsOiL0KXfolYByfuCR6uXryvZWXaLRa2zatHXxYA_aem_LU_ndxLYFjt6dsU030sfjw#/registration