Context brings the brightest minds to your living room with perspective-shifting online lectures.
The Origins of Egypt: Before the Pharaohs with Dr. Jade Bajeot
No events are scheduled at this time. Want to be notified when it’s back? Click the blue button to the right and we’ll notify you.
Egypt always exerts a great fascination on anyone, but have you ever wondered what was there before the pharaohs? What was the path that led to the birth of the Egyptian civilization? Join a local expert specialized in the Egyptian Predynastic Period to discover the origins of the Egyptian civilization as we journey to the prehistoric period.
We will discover that once the Sahara was green and that for millennia people relayed on hunting and gathering before agriculture and animal breeding were introduced, probably from the Near East. We will discuss the close link between human groups with the rhythm of the Nile floods and the climate. We will get to know the Badari Culture, based on agriculture and pastoral activity, and its wonderful craftsmanship.
We will then retrace the main features of the later Lower Egyptian Culture and the Naqada Culture, characterizing respectively the Delta and the Nile Valley. The interaction between these two cultures and the expansion to the north of the Naqadan one ultimately led in 3100 BC to the birth of the state with the first pharaohs. In particular, the material culture and the funerary habits of these groups will help us to follow the growing complexity of society and to track the dynamics that lead to the formation of the Egyptian civilization. We will finally see how some predynastic iconographic elements will characterize it for three millennia.
Led by an expert on Egyptology, Jade Bajeot, this interactive seminar will help participants to better understand the origins of the Egyptian Civilization from 10.000 to 3100 BC., and to get to know the different cultures that characterized Egypt before it was unified under the power of only one ruler, the pharaoh. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased understanding of the Egyptian prehistoric period.
Jade Bajeot has an MA in Egyptology, where her dissertation focus was on the ancient Egyptian fortification system. For her PhD in Archaeology she specialized in the prehistory of Egypt, in particular the unpublished data of the Italian excavations carried out in the predynastic site of Maadi (Cairo). During her PhD she spent six months in Cairo, at the French Institute of Archaeology (Ifao) where she had the opportunity to visit several archaeological sites. In 2014 she started to collaborate with the French mission that digs at Tell el-Iswid, a predynastic site located in the Nile Delta. She still works at Tell el-Iswid as a specialist in ceramic technology. She also had the opportunity to work at Tell el-Fara'in/Buto and Tell el-Samara (Nile Delta). She has published several papers on the subject and her PhD thesis has been published as a monograph.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
Dr Bajeot starts the story of Egypt earlier than what we get from history books. And she covered not just archaeology, but also landscape, climate, and other factors that gave a wider context.
Fascinating talk about a period in Egypt that is lesser known to most of us. Very thorough and detailed, good visuals.
Fascinating subject which Dr Bajeot explains in an excellent manner.
This presentation provided a real insight into what Egypt was like before the pharaonic dynasty's. Egyptian civilization had always seemed to me as springing up fully formed from out of nowhere. This excellent overview provided by an archaeologist actually doing the research filled in the missing pieces of the story.
This was a really interesting presentation on a subject I had long wondered about.