Global Antiquity Faculty Lunch Series

Solange Ashby (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)

Nubian Rites, Linguistics, and Gold: An Unusual Demotic Term Explored

Friday, November 8, 2024 | Royce 306 | 12:00 pm

This talk explores the sole appearance of the Demotic term w-r-k in a first century CE prayer inscription from the small temple of Dakka, located about 60 miles south of the southern Egyptian temple of Philae. Nubian worshipers describe their pilgrimage procession from Dakka to Philae, temple of Isis, to present this cultic object at the gates of the temple. I will discuss the classifiers used in the script that may allude to the type of object called wrk and relate this term to the word warq found in many South Semitic languages of Ethiopia, including the ancient liturgical language of Ge’ez/ Ethiopic. I hope to provide a more precise and culturally contextualized interpretation than that currently found in scholarship.

About the Speaker

Dr. Solange Ashby is currently Assistant Professor in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA, where she teaches Egyptology and Nubian Studies. Dr. Ashby’s expertise in ancient languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, Ge’ez/Ethiopic, 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, an edited volume, New Perspectives on Ancient Nubia, was published in August of 2024.