Ritual Landscape and Performance

Landscape and Performance held at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern

Civilizations of Yale University on September 23–24, 2016. It brought together scholars

from Yale, the USA, and Canada, as well as Europe and Egypt to discuss the topic in different

ancient and modern cultures, namely ancient and Coptic Egypt, ancient and modern

Mesopotamia, the Hittite Kingdom, the Hellenistic Near East, Meso-America, and ancient

China. A talk on digital archaeology and its resources for the reconstruction of ancient

landscapes complemented the conference. The idea for the conference arose from my

dissertation on the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus, which features a ritual that was held in

commemoration of the deceased king Senwosret I. The results of the study led to further

research questions, one of them being how and where this ritual was celebrated and how

its performance was carried out within the sacred landscape of the site.