Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
Solange Ashby received her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Ashby’s expertise in ancient languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Meroitic, underpins her research into the history of religious transformation in Northeast Africa. Her book, Calling Out to Isis: The Enduring Nubian Presence at Philae, explores the Egyptian temple of Philae as a Nubian sacred site. Her second book explores the lives of five Nubian women from history including queens, priestesses, and mothers.
Dr. Ashby is an Assistant Professor in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA where she teaches Egyptology and Nubian Studies.
This lecture will focus on the many sole-ruling kandakas (‘queens’) of the ancient kingdom of Meroë (Kush/Nubia), including those who ruled contemporaneously with Cleopatra and with Roman aggressions and occupation along the Nile valley. We will learn about the Nubian warrior queens who led troops in battle (and to victory) against Rome, and deconstruct the reductive stereotypes often peddled about the powerful female rulers of the Nile. We will contrast the queens’ self-presentation with the ways in which Roman-imperial authors attempted to re-inscribe them.
This lecture will focus on two queens of the ancient kingdom of Meroe (Kush/Nubia) who ruled contemporaneously with Roman control of Egypt and the authors of the New Testament gospels in the 1st century of the Common Era (AD). Dr. Ashby will contrast the queens’ self presentation with the ways in which New Testament authors and contemporary Greek historians such as Strabo describe the sole-ruling Meroitic queens.
