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Fifteenth Annual "Legacy of Egypt" Lecture

"All the King's Horses: Cemetery 200 at el-Kurru, Sudan."

Denise Doxey

Thursday, March 15, 2018
Reception: 6:30 pm | Lecture: 7:15 pm
University Center, Fountain View Suite, UofM Campus
Admission: Complimentary to the public

Dr. Denise Doxey is Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her wide-ranging interests include various aspects of the art, archaeology and civilizations of ancient Nubia and Egypt.

Doxey Drawing

In March of 1919 the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition made a surprising discovery in the royal necropolis of el-Kurru in the Sudan – a cemetery for horses belonging to the Nubian kings who ruled Egypt and Nubia as Dynasty 25. In his account of his conquest of Egypt, Piankhy, the founder of the dynasty, placed a great deal of emphasis on horses, making it clear that they were highly valued. Elaborate funerary trappings, such as the decorative horse trapping below (MFA 21.10560) from the reign of king Shabaka, corroborates his account. The horses had been buried standing upright in groups of four or eight, possibly reflecting their status as teams of royal chariot horses.

Dr. Doxey will present the evidence from cemetery 200 - the horse cemetery - in the broader context of the role of horses in ancient Nubia, exploring their breeds, origins, and role in Nubian royal ideology.

Doxey Horse CollarDr. Doxey completed her B.A. at the State University of New York at Albany, her M.Phil at Oxford University and her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the staff of the MFA, she was Keeper of the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  She has excavated in Greece and Egypt and has taught Egyptology courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

She is the author or co-author of four books and numerous articles on various aspects of Egyptian and Nubian art, archaeology and civilization. At the MFA, she was the co-curator of The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC and Gold and the Gods: Jewels of Ancient Nubia. She currently serves on the board of ICOM's International Committee for Egyptology and is president of the New England Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.

Map of Egypt and Nubia

This event is co-sponsored with the Tennessee Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.

Click here for a printable pdf of the event poster (4.3 MB PDF file).

Pay parking is available in the adjacent Zach Curlin Garage on Fogelman Drive for $3/hr.