Seminars

The Centre hosts the following lecture:

Dr Elizabeth Frood (Oxford), ‘An unexpected script for an unexpected text: the tomb autobiography of the Egyptian Royal Secretary Tjay’

Abstract: Sometime between 1213 and 1204 BC, Tjay, a high official responsible for royal correspondence, commissioned an autobiographical text as part of the decoration of his monumental tomb cut into the desert escarpment on the west bank of Thebes (modern Luxor). This alone would have been a surprising choice: autobiography, which been a central monumental genre since the third millennium BC, was not popular for elite self-presentation at this time. Even more extraordinary was the decision to carve the text in hieratic, the cursive, ‘documentary’ form of the Egyptian script, rather than hieroglyphs, the monumental script par excellence. This seminar presents some of the work in progress of Fredrik Hagen (Copenhagen University) and myself to reconstruct and analyse what remains of this damaged text, drawing especially on epigraphic drawings held in the Griffith Institute archive in Oxford. I consider features of this script in the tomb context and in relation to the few other known monumental uses of hieratic, exploring themes relating to materiality of script, display of artistic and scribal creativity and virtuosity, and implications for Tjay’s self-display. 

Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – Hilary Term 2025

Fridays 5 pm (unless otherwise stated)

Week 1, 24 January, 15:00            

Balliol Historic Collections Centre Visit

Previous experience of handling medieval manuscripts is desirable

Limited places, write to the email below by 22/01/2025

Week 3, 7 February, 17:15            

The Queen’s College Library Visit

Limited places, write to the email below by 1/02/2025

Week 4, 14 February, ONLINE     

Reading Group: Interpretation and Meaning

Beatrice Kitzinger, ‘Working with Images in Manuscripts’ (2020)

Paula Mae Carns, ‘Making and Unmaking Love in the Macclesfield Psalter’ (2023)

Michael Camille, ‘Introduction’, in The Medieval Art of Love (1998)

Write to the email below to join         

Week 5, 21 February, Merton College, Hawkins Room          

Work-in-Progress Session

Emma Nelson | University of Manchester           

Book Owners and Donors in Twelfth-Century Lincoln

Blanche Darbord | University of Cambridge

Alexander the Great and Chivalry in Plantagenet England

Week 7, 7 March, Merton College, Mure Room   

Nancy Thebaut | Art History Department and St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Learning to Look: (Mis)reading the Visitatio sepulchri, ca. 900-1050

Organisers: Irina Boeru, Fergus Bovill, Ana Dias, Charly Driscoll, Antonia Delle Fratte, Elena Lichmanova, Mathilde Mioche, Celeste Pan, Klara Zhao.

For all enquiries, please write to: elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk