Elizabeth Minor, Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology, Wellesley College
The Kerma Kingdom was an ancient Nubian civilization located in present-day Sudan. Its capital, the city of Kerma, had monumental architecture and religious art depicting deities in the form of lions, scorpions, and hybrid figures such as winged giraffes and hippopotamus goddesses. During the Classic Kerma Period (1700–1550 BCE), funerary monuments of Kerman kings could be up to one hundred meters long and included hundreds of sacrificed individuals. Elizabeth Minor will...
Harmit Malik, Principal Investigator, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Human genomes are ancient battlegrounds of arms races waged between viruses and their hosts for millions of years. Just as historians reconstruct battlefields to better understand historical battles, evolutionary biologists and virologists can reconstruct how ancient viruses affected their hosts by analyzing their “fossil” remains in our genomes. Paleovirology is the study of such extinct viruses. Harmit Malik will discuss what...
Nubian women appear in Egyptian tomb and temple paintings as dancers for the goddess Hathor from the Middle Kingdom (2100-1900 BCE) through the Roman period (30 BCE-395 CE). These women performed wearing brightly colored leather skirts, cowrie shell belts, and displaying tattoos on their breasts, abdomens, and thighs. Recently, several tattooed, mummified female bodies have been excavated from the C-Group Nubian...
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue
Family Event
Live music and festive decorations help to make this a joyful event designed to remember and welcome back the spirits of loved ones. Decorate a sugar skull (additional $6 fee); sip spicy chocolate; make papel picado (cut paper banners),...