Funerary art in the Eastern Mediterranean: 4th-1st c. BCE

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF FUNERARY ART
(Paphos, Summer 2025)

Even though at death the social persona may undergo major changes, by studying funerary customs we can greatly gain in the understanding of a community’s social structure, distribution of wealth and property, degree of flexibility or divisiveness in the apportionment of power. With its great regional diversity and variety of community forms and networks, the eastern Mediterranean offers a unique context for exploring, through funerary art, how communities developed and commemorated their members. The international Workshop will bring together scholars on funerary art in the eastern Mediterranean of the 4th to the 1st c. BCE, to present thematic and interdisciplinary ways of analysis (e.g. temporal, regional, intra- or inter-regional, local, structural) in which funerary art may or may not provide insights on individuals, social groups and communities. The aim is to discuss themes such as, but not limited to: the placement of the dead bodies in the landscape and the extent to which this is indicative of issues of territoriality; the social role of particular groups of people (e.g. children, women, the elderly, elite or non-elite individuals, priests/-esses, expats, etc) and the ways this can be reconstructed from the fashion in which these roles are expressed or negotiated in funerary art; the impact that major historical phenomena (e.g. war, famine, earthquakes, urbanization, synoecism) may have had on funerary art; and more.

The Program’s 2nd Workshop was held, as planned, in Paphos between June 10 and 19, 2025 under the title “The Social Value of Funerary Art”. The final list of Junior Participants included scholars affiliated with Egyptian and Greek Universities.

In addition to Professors Haggag, Plantzos, and Dimakis, the Paphos Workshop also featured lectures and on-site classes by Cypriot archaeologists such as Emeritus Professor Dimitris Michaelides, former Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus Dr Sophocles Hadjisavvas, prof. em. Maria Iacovou, NKUA Professor Kostas Kopanias, and archaeological officers of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, Stathis Raptou, Yiannis Violaris, and Margarita Kouali. Seminars were also offered by Prof. Joan Connelly (NYU), Prof. Ewdoksia Papuci-Władyka (Jagiellonian University), and Dr Thanasis Koutoupas (Cyprus Institute).

https://alex.arch.uoa.gr/workshops/ii_the_social_value_of_funerary_art

at UoA's HUB:

https://hub.uoa.gr/en/new-research-program-at-nkua-funerary-art-in-the-eastern-mediterranean/

With https://www.facebook.com/GettyFoundation/

A new research program at NKUA: Funerary art in the Eastern Mediterranean (4th-1st century BCE) Professor Dimitris Plantzos Since last March, and for the next three years, the Department of History and Archaeology of NKUA will host an international research program entitled “Funerary art in the Eastern Mediterranean (4th c. - 1st c. BCE): old connections and new beginnings”, under the dire...

Open Call: The Necropolis as Memoryscape (Alexandria, Egypt; 15-24 September 2024).

An on-site Workshop in the framework of the international research program “Funerary art in the Eastern Mediterranean (4th c. - 1st c. BCE): old connections and new beginnings”

Who may apply
We invite applications from post-graduate and doctoral archaeology and art-history students, recent PhDs and young faculty members (within eight years from obtaining their degree) registered at or having graduated from a university based in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Applicants (who must be fluent in English) should submit a personal statement of up to 1000 words detailing their research, as well as their reasons for wishing to attend (we expect their research to be related to the theme of the Workshop); a recent cv (single page); a copy of their most recent degree in archaeology, art history or a related discipline; and an abstract of up to 500 words of the specific paper they wish to present at the colloquium (last day of the Workshop). Applicants must be able to demonstrate an academic and/or professional engagement with archaeology of the Hellenistic period, as well as an active interest in the archaeological theory and practice of at least parts of the Eastern Mediterranean basin. Successful applicants will be expected to attend all lectures, seminars, group discussions, on-site classes, and any other Workshop meeting or event, as well as present a 20’-paper of their own at the junior scholars’ colloquium. It is hoped that these papers will eventually lead to publishable academic articles or significant portions of the participants’ PhD theses.

FURTHER DETAILS AND APPLICATIONS: https://alex.arch.uoa.gr/el/funerary_art_in_the_eastern_mediterranean_4th_c_1st_c_bce/news_calls/

Funded by the Getty Foundation as part of the Connecting Art Histories initiative.
Managed by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in collaboration with the Archaeological Society of Alexandria.

Hellenistic culture flourished across the Eastern Mediterranean basin from the 4th to the 1st c. BCE, and produced innovative, long-lived, and deeply influential forms of art, in architecture, painting, and sculpture, as well as the minor arts. Burial practices in particular, widely re-invented in the beginning of the period, betray fundamental changes in society, religion, and cult.

Divided between multiple nation-states in our times the area that once formed – loosely or not – what we still understand as the “Hellenistic East” created and bequeathed to the modern world significant artforms which are yet to be fully studied. Once dominated by Western scholars and centers of learning, the study of funerary art in the Eastern Mediterranean has now more or less been passed to universities, research centers, and state archaeological services based on the host countries themselves, still in active collaboration with the old leaders in the West.

Since the end of Antiquity, and all the way to the Modern Era, the different cultures active in the Eastern Mediterranean have continued to re-invent and commemorate themselves through mortuary habits and the funerary art that was used to frame them. These often borrow from the area’s multi-faceted past, or import artforms from western cultural centers. Today, funerary art from the 18th and the 19th c., continues to grace cemeteries across the Eastern Mediterranean, turning its cities into memoryscapes dedicated to its cultures and its peoples. Feeding off a shared Greek / Macedonian / Egyptian heritage, enhanced by tradition, folklore, archaeology, and – not least – 20th c. pop culture, Ptolemaic culture and art remains in the 21st c. an important component of a common Mediterranean identity, as well as cultural ancestry, in and out of Academia.

The Program is funded by the Getty Foundation as part of the Connecting Art Histories initiative.

It is run by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in collaboration with the Archaeological Society of Alexandria.