An ARCE-New England Online Lecture

Tales of the Otherworld: Death and the Duat in ancient Egypt

A Lecture by Dr. Silvia Zago

Registration is required for this online event.
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Direct registration link: CLICK HERE

Abstract:
The belief in the existence of life after death is one of the most defining aspects of the ancient Egyptian culture. Rather than being an absolute end, death was thought to be the beginning of a transition to a new state of being and into another, metaphysical dimension: the Duat. This term refers broadly to the realm of the dead and is commonly translated as ‘underworld’ or ‘netherworld’ – words inherently pointing to a certain meaning, namely the otherworld as a subterranean dimension. Yet, this was only one of many alternative scenarios for post-mortem existence available to the ancient Egyptians, and indeed encoded in the word Duat. Since the earliest attestations of this concept in the funerary literature, the Duat always possessed celestial and chthonic features at once, which were intertwined at all times with further cosmological notions. Moreover, new ideas were introduced over time, adding layer upon layer to the core ideological framework established in earlier periods. Based on the analysis of funerary texts and images from the late Old Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom, this lecture will look at what the Duat encompassed and where it was thought to be located, exploring the multimillennial development of this central notion of the Egyptian afterlife beliefs system.

For more information about this exhibition, click HERE to go to the Worcester Museum of Art website.

Speaker:

DR. SILVIA ZAGO is Lecturer in Egyptology in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology of the University of Liverpool. She holds a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (Egyptology) from the University of Toronto, where she taught courses on ancient Egyptian history, culture, and language for several years. She moreover holds an MA in Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East (Egyptology) from the University of Pisa (Italy) and a BA in Heritage Studies (Near Eastern Archaeology) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). She was appointed Member of the Royal Historical Society in 2021, and as of 2022 she is Visiting Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Civilisation and Knowledge of the University of Pisa (Italy).

Her research focuses on ancient Egyptian religion and afterlife texts, and in particular the evolution of notions of the otherworld over time, on which she has published extensively, including the monograph A Journey through the Beyond: The Development of the Concept of Duat and Related Cosmological Notions in Egyptian Funerary Literature (Lockwood Press, 2022). Her work encompasses magic and ritual practices and the conceptualisation and use of sacred landscapes in ancient Egypt. She is moreover interested in exploring cross-cultural interconnections and transmission of knowledge between the Egyptian world and contemporary societies of the ancient Mediterranean basin, in particular during the Graeco-Roman period.