3 - 4 pm (CET)

Venue:

Einstein Center Chronoi

Otto-von-Simson-Straße 7, 14195 Berlin

Dr. Chiori Kitagawa

The ancient Egyptians organised time within a tripartite calendrical system: the civil calendar (comprising 365 days without leap-year adjustments), the natural calendar (structured around environmental phenomena such as the visibility of the stars, inundation, crop emergence and harvesting) and the lunar calendar. The civil calendar, predominantly employed for administrative purposes, diverged from the natural seasonal cycles over time. While officials adhered to the civil calendar for bureaucratic functions, subsistence practitioners, likely oriented themselves according to the natural calendar, governed by seasonal rhythms including Nile flooding, animal reproductive cycles and migratory patterns of birds.

This talk examines the relationship between temporal awareness and unawareness by analysing avian iconography in Old and Middle Kingdom tomb decorations that depict natural environments and subsistence activities. By investigating whether the portrayed bird species could have seasonally coexisted and comparing these representations with the depicted human activities, this study evaluates how accurately natural temporality was represented in funerary contexts across different periods. The research questions whether tomb decorations reflected awareness of natural seasonality or primarily presented idealised scenes. It explores how tomb owners and artisans, despite their distance from subsistence practices, conceptualised and incorporated temporal patterns of nature into their commemorative spaces.

Participants can join the online Chronoi Talk by clicking on the following link:

https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=mca42f2f0a1e64a69c17fa1a7cca3b9c6

The conference room can be accessed using the following methods:

• Joining directly in your browser; simply click the link above, and look for a button with this option near the bottom of the webpage.

• Downloading the program to your computer (instructions can be found by following the meeting link)

• Using the smartphone app called "Cisco Webex Meetings."

You are welcome to enter the online conference room up to 15 minutes in advance of the start time.