A Hero Among Cowards Egyptian Lecture

A Hero Among Cowards Lecture
by Dr. Tara Prakash

Thursday, November 21, 2019
Time: 6-8 p.m.

During the Nineteenth Dynasty (ca. 1292-1191), King Ramses II tried to reestablish Egyptian control over the Syrian city of Kadesh, which the Hittites of Anatolia had conquered in the late Eighteenth Dynasty. He recorded the epic battle that he fought at Kadesh against the Hittite Empire and its allies in a series of reliefs, which he had carved onto temple walls throughout Egypt. These reliefs preserve multiple textual and pictorial accounts of Ramses’ struggle. In this lecture, Prakash will consider how the Egyptians portrayed the Hittite king and his coalition in the Kadesh texts and images in order to shed light on both the Egyptian conception of foreigners and the purpose of these reliefs inside the Egyptian temple. 

Dr. Prakash received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and after holding postdoctoral fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Johns Hopkins University, she joined CSUSB. Her research focuses on issues of ethnicity and identity, foreign interactions, artistic agency, and the visualization of pain and emotion in ancient Egypt. Her current book project is the first comprehensive study on the prisoner statues, a unique series of Egyptian statues that depict kneeling bound foreigners.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Parking at Cal State San Bernardino is $6 per vehicle and available for purchase at the Museum front desk.