“O Lord”: Religious Evidence on Elephantine Island in Egypt

Verena Lepper is currently the 2019/2020 Stewart Fellow in the Humanities Council and in the Department of Religion. She is curator for Egyptian and Oriental Papyri and Manuscripts at the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, National Museums Berlin, and Honorary Professor at the Humboldt University Berlin. She has published widely on different aspects of Egyptology, including ancient Egyptian language, literature and papyri. Her current research focuses on the project “Localizing 4000 Years of Cultural History: Texts and Scripts from Elephantine Island in Egypt,” supported by a grant from the European Research Council.

In her talk she will discuss the special challenges when accessing texts from Elephantine Island in Egypt, which are spread throughout more than 60 collections in 24 different countries worldwide. Particularly the religious evidence on Elephantine Island will be in focus here, including polytheistic views, the Aramaeo-Jewish community, evidence of Christianity, and even Islam. The texts are written in various languages and scripts; Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic and Arabic.

RSVP to Mary Kay Bodnar mbodnar@princeton.edu