Saturday, October 15

Dr. Luigi Prada
Asst. Professor of Egyptology, 
Uppsala University (Sweden)

“If a crocodile has sex with her, she will die swiftly”:
 Dreams and Divination in Ancient Egypt”

3:30pm
Classroom L2

, Penn Museum

Abstract

In the ancient world, the Egyptians had a reputation for excelling in divination, the practice of gaining knowledge about the future via occult channels. Many types of divination were known and habitually practiced in ancient Egypt, primarily by temple priests who employed specific handbooks for this purpose. Such arts included astrology, the study of the behavior of animals (so-called animal omina), oil divination (aka lecanomancy), and more. But one particularly popular branch of divination was oneiromancy, that is, dream interpretation.

This talk will introduce the audience to new research on ancient Egyptian oneiromancy, discussing in detail the workings of dream interpretation manuals and what light they shed on our knowledge of the ancient Egyptian mind.

Biography:
Dr. Luigi Prada is Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Formerly, he was a member of the Egyptology departments of Oxford, Heidelberg, and Copenhagen University. Within Egyptology, he specializes in textual, religious, and social studies, with particular focus on the Late and Graeco-Roman Periods. He is passionate about fieldwork, and is the Assistant Director of the Oxford/Uppsala epigraphic team working with Egyptian colleagues in Elkab in southern Egypt; he has also participated in fieldwork in Sudan. He is currently President of the Society of Friends and Collaborators of the Museo Egizio in Turin (ACME).