Solange Ashby | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Africanist, archaeologist |
Academic background | |
Education | University of Chicago Bard College |
Thesis | Calling Out to Isis: The Enduring Nubian Presence at Philae (2016) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | UCLA Barnard College American University |
Solange Ashby is an Africanist and archaeologist whose expertise focuses on language,religion and the role of women in ancient Egypt and Nubia. [1] [2] She is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California,Los Angeles. [2] [3]
Ashby studied for a B.A. in Intercultural Studies at Bard College at Simon's Rock. [4] She graduated with a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. [4] [5] Her doctoral research took place at the temple of Philae in Egypt,as well as excavating at the Kushite cemetery of El-Kurru in Sudan. [6] Her research examined the inscriptions,including graffiti,made by Kushite visitors,who traveled to the Egyptian temples in Lower Nubia. [6] [7]
In January 2021 she took up a position in the Department of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard College,New York,as an adjunct professor. [8] In 2023 she went on to become an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California,Los Angeles. [2] [3] She has held fellowships at the Catholic University's Institute of Christian Oriental Research and the American Research Centre in Egypt and has taught at the American University in Washington. [9]
She is also a co-founder of the William Leo Hansberry Society,which seeks to educate people of African descent about African antiquity. [2]
In 2018,Ashby featured in a documentary directed by Taaqiy Grant,which looked at many aspects of Ancient Egyptian civilization,including its barter-based economic system. [10] In 2020,she featured in the film series Hapi,which focused on the role of economics in civilization. [11]
Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth,in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband,the divine king Osiris,and produces and protects his heir,Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris,and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh,who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people. Originally,she played a limited role in royal rituals and temple rites,although she was more prominent in funerary practices and magical texts. She was usually portrayed in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head. During the New Kingdom,as she took on traits that originally belonged to Hathor,the preeminent goddess of earlier times,Isis was portrayed wearing Hathor's headdress:a sun disk between the horns of a cow.
Nephthys or Nebet-Het in ancient Egyptian was a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. A member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in Egyptian mythology,she was a daughter of Nut and Geb. Nephthys was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites because of their role as protectors of the mummy and the god Osiris and as the sister-wife of Set.
Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity,she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra,both of whom were connected with kingship,and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives,the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra,Ra's feminine counterpart,and in this form,she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music,dance,joy,love,sexuality,and maternal care,and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds,helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley,believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt,Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians,although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups,especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue,part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages,and Arabic as a second language.
The Philae temple complex is an island-based temple complex in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam,downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser,Egypt.
Apedemak or Apademak was a major deity in the ancient Nubian and Kushite pantheon. Often depicted as a figure with a male human torso and a lion head,Apedemak was a war god worshiped by the Meroitic peoples inhabiting Kush. He has no Egyptian counterpart. As a war god,Apedemak came to symbolize martial power,military conquest,and empire. Apedemak is also closely associated with Amun,the state-sponsored Egyptian deity during the preceding Napatan period,and is assumed to hold an equal level of importance.
Nobatia or Nobadia was a late antique kingdom in Lower Nubia. Together with the two other Nubian kingdoms,Makuria and Alodia,it succeeded the kingdom of Kush. After its establishment in around 400,Nobadia gradually expanded by defeating the Blemmyes in the north and incorporating the territory between the second and third Nile cataract in the south. In 543,it converted to Coptic Christianity. It would then be annexed by Makuria,under unknown circumstances,during the 7th century.
The Blemmyes were an Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources from the 7th century BC until the 8th century AD. By the late 4th century,they had occupied Lower Nubia and established a kingdom. From inscriptions in the temple of Isis at Philae,a considerable amount is known about the structure of the Blemmyan state.
Amanirenas,was queen regnant of the Kingdom of Kush from the end of the 1st century BCE to beginning of the 1st century CE. She is known for rising against the Roman Empire.
The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom,also known by its designation Philae 436 or GPH 436,is the last known ancient Egyptian inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs,carved on 24 August 394 AD. The inscription,carved in the temple of Philae in southern Egypt,was created by a priest named Nesmeterakhem and consists of a carved figure of the god Mandulis as well an accompanying text wherein Nesmeterakhem hopes his inscription will last "for all time and eternity". The inscription also contains a text in the demotic script,with similar content.
Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles,or more strictly,Al Dabbah. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa,the Kerma culture,which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC,whose heirs ruled most of Nubia for the next 400 years. Nubia was home to several empires,most prominently the Kingdom of Kush,which conquered Egypt in the eighth century BC during the reign of Piye and ruled the country as its 25th Dynasty.
The Kingdom of Kush,also known as the Kushite Empire,or simply Kush,was an ancient kingdom in Nubia,centered along the Nile Valley in what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
Agilkia Island is an island in the reservoir of the Old Aswan Dam along the Nile River in southern Egypt;it is the present site of the relocated ancient Egyptian temple complex of Philae. Partially to completely flooded by the old dam's construction in 1902,the Philae complex was dismantled and relocated to Agilkia island,as part of a wider UNESCO project related to the 1960s construction of the Aswan High Dam and the eventual flooding of many sites posed by its large reservoir upstream.
Ta-Seti was the first nome of Upper Egypt,one of 42 nomoi in Ancient Egypt. Ta-Seti marked the border area towards Nubia,and the name was also used to refer to Nubia itself.
The Triakontaschoinos,Latinized as Triacontaschoenus,was a geographical and administrative term used in the Greco-Roman world for the part of Lower Nubia between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile,which formed a buffer zone between Egypt and later Rome on the one hand and Meroëon the other hand. The northern part of this area,stretching from the First Cataract south to Maharraqa,was known as the Dodekaschoinos or Dodecaschoenus. In the Ptolemaic and Roman periods the Dodekaschoinos was often annexed to Egypt or controlled from it,and the rest of the Triakontaschoinos sometimes was as well.
Yesebokheamani was the king (qore) of Kush in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. He seems to have been the king who took control of the Dodecaschoenus after the Roman withdrawal in 298. This enabled him to make a personal visit to the temple of Isis at Philae.
The Wayekiye family was a Nubian priestly family that was influential in the Dodekaschoinos between Upper Egypt and Nubia in the second and third centuries CE,named after two of its members. They are attested by mostly Demotic temple inscriptions. Although the Roman government directed the taxes of the Dodekaschoinos to the Egyptian temple cults of Isis of Philae and Thoth of Dakka,most of the population was not ethnically Egyptian but Nubian,as were local elites like the Wayekiye. The family eventually came to serve the Nubian Kushite court of Meroëand may have acted as a "vehicle for the penetration of Meroitic royal authority" into the area,culminating in Kush's annexation of the area in the third century.
The reign of Amanitore was considered one of the most prosperous times of the Meroitic period. She ruled alongside Natakamani,who was either her husband or her son. The success of the two rulers is evident through their work towards the building,restoration,and expansion of many temples throughout Nubia. The temples that can be accredited to the work of the two include:the Temple of Apedemak,the Amun temple B500 at Napata,the Amun temple at Meroe,the Amun Temples of Naqa and Amara,the Isis temple at Wad ben Naqa,and the Meroitic palace B1500 at Napata.
Talakhidamani was the king of Kush in the mid or late 3rd century AD,perhaps into the 4th century. He is known from two Meroitic inscriptions,one of which commemorates a diplomatic mission he sent to the Roman Empire.
Kushite religion is the traditional belief system and pantheon of deities associated with the Ancient Nubians,who founded the Kingdom of Kush in the land of Nubia in present-day Sudan.
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: CS1 maint: others (link)Ashby, Solange (2018) "Dancing for Hathor: Nubian Women in Egyptian Cultic Life," Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies: Vol. 5, Article 2.