“Champollion 1822 - Carter 1922: deux figures et deux découvertes inégalables“, keynote lecture [Friday 17 June 2022, 6:00 PM, IN FRENCH]

Beyond the quirk of the calendar, one can but welcome the idea of ​​associating the bicentenary of the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in one single symposium. Both are indeed unrivalled discoveries, but of very different natures: the first one marked the birth of Egyptology by allowing ancient Egypt to speak; the second one turned the world upside down by revealing an archaeological treasure of confusing beauty and questioning.

These two events were also incomparable human adventures. Their authors had very different personalities and yet followed similar paths. They were both dreamers, obstinate and solitary, before they found success, and their respective ends were marked by bitterness.

This lecture will evoke these two men and these two discoveries that will never be equaled. Indeed, can one imagine similar events occurring in 2022?

The speaker will focus on the common aspects marking these two famous figures and their discoveries. He has indeed “rubbed shoulders” with Champollion since his birth and his childhood in Grenoble. He got the chance to meet some direct and indirect descendants of the family, and was associated in several ways with the commemoration of their pioneering father, in Paris, Figeac and Turin. He has also discovered, with his team in Saqqara, tombs from the Amarna period and particularly that of a woman who played a central role during the early childhood of Tutankhamun, which brings us back to Carter.

“Introducing Tutankhamun (in Colour): negotiations and transformations” [Friday 17 June 2022, 7:15 PM]

The stories of the discovery and excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter and his team have been, and will be, told in countless ways. Most of these accounts draw on Carter’s records ­— notebooks, drawings, photographs — housed in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. This presentation will briefly introduce the discovery and this archive, which also includes now iconic photographs taken by Harry Burton. These materials were at the heart of the BBC documentary Tutankhamun in Colour. Some aims of the documentary, as well as negotiations and compromises necessary to its creation, will be discussed, together with the challenges and opportunities it poses for such storytelling.

“Tutankhamun in Colour” [Projection of the documentary on Friday 17 June 2022, 7:45 PM]

There has never been a discovery quite like that of Tutankhamun, not before, nor since. On the 26^th November 1922, after five long years of scouring Egypt’s legendary Valley of the Kings, British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his aristocratic backer Lord Carnarvon, broke into the tomb of Tutankhamun. The wonders they discovered captivated the world, a coffin made of solid gold, and the famous gold mask were just two of over five thousand precious objects. Not to mention the fact it provided the world with some much needed good news following the events of the Great War and Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what it felt like when the discovery was first made, for the archeologists, the spectators, and for people around the world? The discovery itself was captured using amateur films and early newsreel for the cinema along with thousands of high quality black and white photographs, but these images can seem to consign the story to history and make it difficult to capture the true intensity of this extraordinary event.

In this film we see Oxford University Egyptologist, Elizabeth Frood on a mission to relive the discovery of Tutankhamun, just as people did at the time. Using cutting edge technology we can now witness these events for the first time in a century almost as they were in colour. By transforming old images Frood rediscovers these stunning objects just as they were found and in incredible detail.

We start off in 1891 witnessing an old black and white being brought back to life with colourisation, it’s a family photo of the young Carter. When he was 17 years old he met the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who inspired him to become an archaeologist, and Lord Carnarvon who hired him as help. In December 1917, we see how Carter divided the valley up into a grid and began excavating each sector, right down to the bedrock. This film reveals the sheer scale of the operation. However, in 1923, Carter and Carnarvon finally managed to break through into Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.

“L’égyptologie à Montréal: les études universitaires et la recherche” [Saturday 18 June 2022, 1:30 PM, IN FRENCH]

In our aim to promote 200 years of Egyptology in Montreal, it seemed important to let the general public know of the growing opportunities that the presence of two full Egyptology professors in Quebec offers to students, in terms of university courses and research. With this presentation, I will introduce the courses given in Egyptology at UQAM, as well as the current Egyptological research projects, while sharing with the audience my own experience, academic background, research, and the future prospects of this discipline in la Belle Province.

“L’égyptologie à Montréal: les collections et projets muséaux“ [Saturday 18 June 2022, 1:30 PM, IN FRENCH]

Quebec does not possess a large collection of Egyptian art like Ontario does, for example, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. However, some Quebec museums own Egyptian artefacts in their collections, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Redpath Museum at McGill University and the Museum of Civilization in Quebec. Despite that modest presence of Egypt in Quebec, things are moving in Montreal: the Museum of Fine Arts has recently revamped its Egyptian collection by taking pieces out of the storage rooms for their display in the new “Arts of One World” wing. In 2019-2020, it also hosted the British Museum's Egyptian Mummies exhibition. As concerns Pointe-à-Callière Museum, it presented the Queens of Egypt exhibition in 2018, and it is still working on other Egyptological projects for 2023. A partnership between UQAM and the MMFA will finally make it possible to complement the museum's Egyptian collection with a life-size facsimile of a Theban tomb in 2023-2024.

“'Je tiens l’affaire!': Jean-François Champollion et le déchiffrement des hiéroglyphes égyptiens” [Saturday 18 June 2022, 2:30 PM, IN FRENCH]

On the 14^th of September 1822, Jean-François Champollion is said to have rushed to his brother, Jacques-Joseph, to tell him, out of breath: "I've got it!", thus referring to the Egyptian hieroglyphics that the young prodigy had just deciphered.

What was the state of knowledge of Egyptian writing at the time of Champollion? And what were the great scientific breakthroughs achieved by the brilliant scholar? Behind the eminent philologist, who was Champollion, the man? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this lecture, which aims to highlight the bicentenary of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

“Champollion inconnu: enquête chez les biographes et dans les manuscrits du savant“ [Saturday 18 June 2022, 3:45 PM, IN FRENCH]

Champollion has remained famous for having deciphered the hieroglyphs. His name is forever linked to the Rosetta Stone, and has almost become a common name qualifying any discoverer unravelling some mystery. Beyond the legend built with his first biographies, recent studies have attempted to recontextualize the scholar's approach, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration – a period of intellectual fervour, heir to the spirit of the Lumières. At the death of Jean-François in 1832, a large part of his scientific correspondence, his publication projects, his travel notes, and his facsimiles were acquired by the French State for its Royal Library, today Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

The preparatory work carried out for the exhibition of the BnF – dealing with the analysis and identification of these notes – made it possible to rediscover hitherto unknown facets of the scholar's research, revealing an unknown Champollion.

“Salvolini revisited: from Champollion’s pupil to independent scholar” [Saturday 18 June 2022, 4:45 PM]

Not long after Casper Reuvens’ (the first director of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden) unexpected death in 1835, Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, professor of history in Leiden, wrote to Karl Otfried Müller, then in charge of the library and collection of antiquities in Göttingen. Earlier, in 1820, Thorbecke, later to become one of the outstanding statemen of the Netherlands, author of the Dutch constitution and founder of Dutch parliamentary democracy, had obtained his PhD under Reuvens. In his letter to Müller, he said that he could imagine no one more suited as successor to the late Reuvens than Salvolini, who evidently required no further introduction.

Francesco Salvolini (1809-1838) was an Egyptologist and pupil of Champollion’s. In 1834 Salvolini visited Leiden for four months, studying the Egyptian collection of the archaeological cabinet there. Afterwards he remained in contact with Conrad Leemans, the eventual successor to Reuvens. In 1837 Salvolini, with confirmed appointments as one of the directors of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, was waiting for his application to be naturalized by the Kingdom of Sardinia, when death overtook him. The important notes and papers preserved in the State archive in Turin, shed light on the visit of Salvolini in Leiden, and testifies to his knowledge as Egyptologist. For in Reuvens’s own country, no successor of comparable stature could be found.

“Tutankhamun, King of Argos, the Pharaoh who Changed Sex and Other Stories” [Sunday 19 June 2022, 10:30 AM]

This lecture will explore the historiography of Akhenaten’s coregents and immediate successors, from the first identification of Tutankhamun in the 1820s, through to the modern debates over the few years that preceded his accession to the throne. The topics covered include the nearly 200 years’ work at Amarna and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun a century ago, querying how much this really added to our knowledge of the king. They also include the evolving ideas about the placement, identity and life of Tutankhamun, and the identity(s)/gender(s) of his direct predecessors, Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten, all explored against the background of the two centuries of archaeological work.

“Les voyages extraordinaires de quelques objets provenant de la tombe de Toutankhamon“ [Sunday 19 June 2022, 11:30 AM, IN FRENCH]

Of the thousands of archaeological pieces extracted from the tomb of Tutankhamun between 1923 and 1932, a few dozen never arrived at the Cairo Museum at that time. A number of objects only reached the museum in the 1950s and 1960s. Others even waited until 2010-2011 to join the collections. But there are still a few handfuls of artefacts that remain outside Egypt, which come – probably for some, certainly for others – from the tomb of the young king. This is the result of a long-term investigation into their turbulent history that will be presented to you during this lecture.

“Rendre à Neferneferouaton ce qui appartient à Neferneferouaton: le matériel usurpé de la tombe de Toutankhamon“ [Sunday 19 June 2022, 2:00 PM, IN FRENCH]

When the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922, and the 5,400 pieces it contained dutifully excavated by archaeologist Howard Carter, the whole world was amazed to discover the incredible wealth of a funerary treasure more than 3,200 years old. In recent years, elements of the treasure, displaying resolutely feminine characteristics, have led researchers to get a closer look at them. This is how the names of a little-known queen-pharaoh, Neferneferuaten, and that of an ancient princess, Meritaten, were discovered as palimpsests on different artefacts from the tomb. This material, from a previous burial, had been appropriated and transformed for the funeral of the young king. It is estimated today that the artefacts usurped for the funeral of Tutankhamun represent about 80% of the famous treasure. By reviewing the altered material, we will try to understand how and why this queen-pharaoh was denied her right to eternity in Antiquity, and how her rights can be rehabilitated today.

“Who was the queen-pharaoh who preceded Tutankhamun on the throne: Nefertiti, Meritaten or Neferneferuaten-Tasherit?” [Sunday 19 June 2022, 3:00 pm]

Presentation of arguments by Aidan Dodson (Nefertiti), Marc Gabolde (Meritaten), Valérie Angenot (Neferneferuaten-Tasherit)

Since the discovery of her name a century ago and her acknowledgement as a female ruler about 50 years ago, the question around the true identity of Queen-Pharaoh Ankh(et)kheperure Neferneferuaten has caused much ink to flow. Egyptology is mostly divided into three camps, when it comes to this question: those who believe she actually was Nefertiti, who ruled as king after the death of her husband Akhenaten; those who believe she was the eldest princess Meritaten, who came to power after the reign of her father; while a more recently developed theory proposes to identify her to princess Neferneferuaten-Tasherit, who would have succeeded her father Akhenaten and preceded her brother Tutankhamun on the throne.

Our panel of speakers gathers the proponents of each one of the three theories. An international debate will be held on site and online around this fundamental question, exploring the pros and cons of the different options.

"Why still study Egyptology in the 21^st Century?" [Saturday and Sunday]

This presentation will take the form of a poster session. The session will be divided into four posters articulated around the theme “Why still study Egyptology in the 21st century?”. Based on my personal experience as a Master's student at UQAM and my academic background, I will explain how doing research on pharaonic Egypt opens the doors to a different understanding of the world. It could be through the discovery of a different vision of the world from ours, during archaeological missions on site, or through learning a dead language (the ancient Egyptian language and its hieroglyphic writing). These allow to better grasp the daily reality of a lost civilization, which still has an unsuspected and lasting impact on our current culture. I will also address the challenges that Egyptology will have to face in the coming years, in terms of ethics, decoloniality, but also in terms of inclusion of modern technologies and the digital humanities, which are increasingly important in the domain.

Poster 1: The academic curriculum in Egyptology

Poster 2: Research and fieldwork

Poster 3: Learning the ancient Egyptian language

Poster 4: Future challenges

Calligraphy workshop for children: “Initiation to hieroglyphic writing” [Saturday 18 June 2022, from 2 to 6 PM]

During an animated presentation with explanatory panels and exercises, the children will be introduced to the main principles of hieroglyphic writing and the different types of signs composing it. Thereafter, they will be invited to write their first names according to pharaonic usage, on papyrus sheets provided by the Society for the Study of Ancient Egypt.

Experimental teaching workshop for children: “The tomb and the mummification of Tutankhamun” [Sunday, 19 June 2022, from 10 AM to 12:30 PM]

A small exhibition presenting replicas of funerary objects (canopic jars, etc.), as well as a model of the tomb of Tutankhamun, will serve as an introduction to the question of mummification in ancient Egypt, to which the child will be introduced. This initiation will be followed by a mummification experiment carried out on fruits, which can be reproduced at home, thanks to the small booklet which will be distributed to each child during the workshop.

Reading and theater workshop for children: “Egyptian legends, tales and myths” [Sunday 19 June 2022, from 2 to 5 PM, IN FRENCH]

During this workshop, the child will dive into the fascinating world of Egyptian myths and legends. For the occasion, some famous stories from ancient Egypt will be told and theatrically acted out for the pleasure of young and old. Children are invited to dress up in pharaonic fashion for this workshop. Costumes and masks will be available for those who would not have any.