01

May

ARCE-NE: Duke Alexander’s Sarcophagi by Dr. Aidan Dodson

This lectures are open to the public and will be available on Zoom as well

  • 5:00 PMNew England
  • In-Person/OnlineEmerson Hall, Room 108 (29 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138, Harvard University)
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Lecture Information

(Left): Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton
(Right): Sarcophagus of Pabasa at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767–1852), was one of the great collectors of his day, whose pretensions (including a distant claim to the throne of Scotland), wealth and collections of art led to his being dubbed ‘Il Magnifico’. Among his possessions were two anthropoid stone sarcophagi– the only Egyptian antiquities he ever owned. One belonged to Pabasa, a late 7th century BC Steward of the God’s Wife of Amun at Thebes. The other had been made for a 3rd/2nd century BC lady named Irtyiru, and had been acquired by accident, as the culmination of a series of mutual misunderstandings between the duke and the British Museum, of which he was a Trustee. The sarcophagus of Pabasa is now in the Kelvingrove Museum & Art Gallery in Glasgow, but that of Irtyiru has rested since 1921 under the soil of a cemetery in the duke’s eponymous home town, southeast of Glasgow– containing the mummified body of Duke Alexander! Tonight we will explore this convoluted story, which will take us from the tombs of Memphis and Thebes to Scottish high society of the early 19th century AD.

Speaker Bio

Aidan Dodson honorary full professor of Egyptology in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol, UK. He was also Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo in 2013, and Chair of the Egypt Exploration Society during 2011–16. Awarded his PhD by the University of Cambridge in 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003. He is the author of some thirty books.