SSEA Public Lecture: Ian Moyer

An Open Place at the Gates of the Temple:

Re-imagining “Public” Space in first millennium BCE Egypt

Abstract
The gates, forecourts, and processional ways of ancient Egyptian temples were impressive and highly visible sites where splendid rites and ceremonies took place. These were the places where ordinary people could approach the temple and greet images of the divine that were normally hidden within. During the first millennium BCE, however, these places – often at the center of urban settlements – underwent a gradual but profound transformation as they took on new functions in the changing conditions of the Late Period and under the Ptolemaic dynasty. The people who frequented these places, both priestly elites and commoners, gradually re-shaped them into sites of politics, jurisdiction, and other social encounters that extended their functions well beyond those of ritual performance. In this talk, I will draw on a wide range of inscriptions, literary texts, and documentary papyri to re-imagine the changing life of this “open” place in ancient Egypt.