Lecture: Life Away from the Nile: Exploring Kharga Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert
By Dr. Salima Ikram
Given on April 4, 2010 at the American University of Cairo
As part of the Provost’s Lecture series, Salima Ikram, AUC Egyptology professor and leading scholar in Egyptian funerary archaeology, delivered a lecture titled, “Life Away from the Nile: Exploring Kharga Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert,” in Moataz Al Alfi Hall, AUC New Cairo. Ikram provides an overview of archeological remains discovered as part of AUC’s North Kharga Oasis Survey (NKOS).
NKOS is an archaeological project co-directed by Ikram and Corinna Rossi, lecturer in Egyptology for the Circolo Filologico Milanese, Milano. The aim of NKOS is to investigate the evident archaeological remains in the northern area of the Kharga Oasis that lies 175 km west of Luxor in Egypt’s Western desert. The northern area of Kharga contains archaeological sites dating from the prehistoric period to the 19th century. The most unexpected and startling of the remains in Kharga are the forts of the Roman period, mentioned in passing by early travelers and geologists, and never properly investigated. In addition to the forts, the prehistoric sites are numerous and significant, but the millennia that separate the prehistoric sites from the Roman forts are scarcely documented.
Ikram has been teaching Egyptology at AUC since 2001. Ikram double majored at Bryn Mawr College in classical and Near Eastern archaeology, as well as in history, and spent a year at AUC as a study-abroad student. She received her MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University, England, in archaeological method and practice, as well as in museology. Ikram has published widely on a variety of topics and has also written a series of children’s books.
Her areas of specialty are Egyptian archaeology, mummification, both human and animal, cultural resource management with a focus on museums, experimental archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology and aspects of daily life in ancient Egypt. She has directed the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum, and co-directed the Predynastic Project in the Egyptian Museum. In addition to working all over Egypt since 1986, Ikram has also worked in Greece, Turkey and Sudan.
Click here to go to the North Khorga Oasis Survey website
