Monday, March 25, 2024
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Via Zoom

Global Antiquity, the Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology are pleased to invite you to a workshop titled The Berenike Buddha: Early Buddhism and Indian Trade Diaspora in the Red Sea. The workshop will focus on a group of Indian finds from Berenike, Egypt that include a marble Buddha as well as two sculpture fragments of Buddha statuettes, a stele with images of three Hindu deities, and a Sanskrit inscription with laconic Greek paraphrasing. Their presence at a port along the coast of the Red Sea is a testament to the vast, interregional networks that existed in antiquity and the cultural exchange they facilitated.

Schedule of Speakers:
-Steven Sidebotham (University of Delaware) “Indians at Berenike: A Ptolemaic Roman Emporium on Egypt’s Red Sea Shore”
-Rodney Ast (University of Heidelberg) “Reflections on the Broader Context and Significance of the Berenike Indian Finds”
-Roderick Geerts (Leiden University) “Stupa or A Lighthouse? Interpretation of a Berenike Graffito in the Context of Indian-Roman Interactions”
-Willeke Wendrich (Politecnico di Torino and UCLA) “World Citizens, Inconspicuous Evidence of Embodied Cultural Memory”

For access to the Zoom link, please register using the QR code in the image above or by clicking here.