More Papers at the ARCE Annual Meeting

     Even after hearing all of the papers mentioned in my previous two posts, the second day of the ARCE annual meeting was not nearly over. The next group of papers started with Dr. Rosa Erika Feleg speaking on the topic of "Re-Used Blocks in the Triple Shrine Inside Ramesses III's Forecourt at the Luxor Temple". Some scholars have argued that the shrines to Nut, Amun-Re and Khonshu that has been credited to Ramesses III was actually built by Hatshepsut. Dr. Feleg however seemed to be of the opinion that Ramesses re-used blocks from the reign of Hatshepsut and Amenhotep II, as well as some talatat blocks from the reign of Akhenaten, to build these shrines.

     Dr. Karen Bryson of Johns Hopkins deliver a lecture entitled "Fashion Forward: Dress and Decoding the Queenly Images of the Early 19th Dynasty". One interesting point that she made is that the iconography of the few statues of Horemheb's wife, Mutnodjmet was very similar to the statue found at Akhmim and thought to be of Meritamun, who was a wife of Ramesses II. Was this statue actually of Mutnodjmet?

     Then Dr. Nazomu Kawai of Kanazawa University described his recent excavations at North Saqqara. His team was trying to find the New Kingdom cemetery of Saqqara. They conducted a survey south of the Abu Sir lake, west to the Serapeum and east to the pyramid of Teti. Finds were precisely located using a GPS system and infra-red satellite images were used locate mud-brick structures under the sand. Work will continue in this area.