Hear Cynthia May Sheikholeslam Online in NHMU’s fall series: Stories from Egypt.
Collections of love songs are known from several New Kingdom papyri discovered in the village of Deir el-Medina at Thebes (Luxor). Probably connected to festivals for the goddess of love, Hathor, the songs employ imagery drawn from the environment (such as the sycamore fig tree) and reveal emotions that would be familiar to lovers everywhere today.
The love songs also show the importance of fertility and renewal in this world and the next, associated with the annual inundation of the Nile as well as funerary rituals.
This talk will be available on YouTube October 13. The link will be added prior to October 13.
About the Speaker:
Cynthia May Sheikholeslami is an American Egyptologist who has lived and worked in Egypt for many years. Her research focuses on the history and culture of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1550-650 BC), particularly the 25th (Kushite) Dynasty.
She studied Egyptology at New York University, the University of Chicago, and UCLA. She has excavated in both Egypt and Iran, and co-authored a guidebook to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and to the collections of ancient art at the Seattle Art Museum, and published many academic papers.
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