ARCE Chicago: Non-Royal Tombs of the Post Amarna Period in Western Thebes

Lecture Information:

The lecture presents the development of non-royal funerary monuments at Thebes from the reign of Tutankhamun to Horemheb in terms of social stratum of owners, the location in the necropolis, and the architecture of the cult chapels. The changes in tomb decoration will be illustrated by some selected chapels, which were built shortly after the Amarna period such as Parennefer/Wennenfer, Amenhotep Huy, or Neferhotep. These tombs exhibit iconographic programs which rely on traditional images on the one hand but also integrate new concepts and even Amarna motifs. Particularly the concept and composition of some of these chapels appear to be strongly influenced by the Amarna period, while at the same time explicit image quotations link the tombs to their pre-Amarna neighbours. Funerary sculpture likewise attests traditional Theban forms but also certain shifts.
 

Speaker Bio:

Gabi Pieke is the Head of the Egyptian Department at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum in Mannheim Germany. She received her PhD from the University of Vienna with a two-volume study of the mastaba of Mereruka at Saqqara. She has a very distinguished museum career, having served as Curator at the Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim, the Egyptian Museum, University Bonn, and the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Since 2009, she has also been a member of the Mission Archéologique dans la Nécropole Thébaine of the Universities of Brussels and Liège, working in the tombs of Amenemope (TT29) and Sennefer (YY96), and since 2013, she has also been member of the archaeological missions of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, at Charles University Prague, working at Abu Sir South and South Saqqara. She has many publications dealing with objects and tomb decoration. She serves as editor of the series Müncher Ägyptologische Studien, and she is on the editorial board of several other journals. Gabi is very involved in museums and museum policy, and she has served as the past President of CIPEG, the professional organization for curators of Egyptian collections, and she has for many years been on their board.