Spotlight Lecture: Imagining Ancient Egyptian Faces

Watch our first Tuesday Spotlight lecture - a new programme of monthly lectures which you can choose to attend live, or catch up later on our YouTube channel! Egyptian art invokes a false sense of familiarity for a modern viewer. The Pharaonic focus on the human form, and in particular the face, has convinced many that what is depicted is what was really there. In fact, 'portraiture' in the sense of a mimetic likeness from life was never a target, although it is difficult for us - saturated as we are with images of ourselves and others - to accept this. This lecture reviews modern reactions to the face, via the opinions of Flinders Petrie and Amelia Edwards, and considers the more recent popularity of facial reconstruction as a means of bringing an imagined past to life. Dr Campbell Price has been Curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum, one of the UK’s largest Egyptology collections, since 2011. He completed his BA, MA, and PhD in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, where he is now an Honorary Research Fellow. Campbell has undertaken fieldwork at Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, Saqqara and the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Campbell has published widely on ancient Egyptian material culture with a focus on sculpture and the (re)construction of ‘Ancient Egypt’. His most recent book is 'Golden Mummies of Egypt. Interpreting Identities from the Graeco-Roman Period' (2020), to accompany Manchester Museum's first international touring exhibition. He has lectured extensively throughout the UK, and internationally. Campbell is currently Chair of the EES' Board of Trustees. Browse upcoming EES Tuesday Spotlights via our website: https://www.ees.ac.uk/Pages/Events/Ca...