This lecture will examine the underlying mythology, symbolism, and festival rituals for Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead, focusing on the rites of reanimation celebrated at the now sunken city of Canopus on the Mediterranean coast.
Speaker Bio
Robert K. Ritner is the inaugural Rowe Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and was from 1991 to 1996 the first Marilyn M. Simpson Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. Dr. Ritner is the author of the books The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (2011), The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period (2009), and The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (1993), and contributing editor for the anthologies The Literature of Ancient Egypt (2003), and The Context of Scripture (1997–2002). He is currently publishing a Roman era Demotic curse employing a ghost and Anubis to compel a man to have sex with a woman.
Ritner has authored over one hundred publications on Egyptian religion, magic, medicine, language, and literature, as well as social and political history. He has lectured extensively on each of these topics throughout the United States, Europe, and Egypt. He has served as visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris in 2009 and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2003. In association with The Field Museum of Chicago, Dr. Ritner was the academic advisor for its current Egypt installation and for two British Museum exhibits Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth and Eternal Egypt. In addition, he served as consultant and lecturer for the traveling Cairo Museum exhibit Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. Ritner led Oriental Institute tours of Egypt for thirty years.
This program is presented in partnership with VCUarts and is co-sponsored by the Richmond Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.