Papers by Melinda G Nelson-Hurst
Proceedings of the First Vatican Coffin Conference, 2014
Keywords: Egyptian history; religious history
Keywords: archaeology; Egyptian history; religious history
Keywords: cultural history; Egyptian history; social history
Keywords: cultural history; Egyptian history; religious history
Keywords: archaeology; Egyptian history
Keywords: Egyptian history; religion; religious history
Keywords: development; Egyptian history; political history
Keywords: Egyptian history; religious history
Keywords: Egyptian history; religious history
Recent Invited Talks by Melinda G Nelson-Hurst
Did you know that Tulane University has had two ancient Egyptian mummies for over 160 years? How... more Did you know that Tulane University has had two ancient Egyptian mummies for over 160 years? How did they end up here in New Orleans? Who were these ancient Egyptians and how did they live and die? Do any of the artifacts in Tulane’s collection belong to these two mummies? Join us for an illustrated talk by Egyptologist Dr. Melinda Nelson-Hurst that will answer these questions and discuss future plans for Tulane’s Ancient Egyptian Collection.
To preserve this collection for generations to come, the Middle American Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) is raising funds to bring a conservator of ancient Egyptian artifacts to New Orleans to work on preserving the collection. If you would like to help support this effort to preserve the collection for future generations, please bring a personal check or credit card to the lecture. Donation forms will be available.
Cannot attend the lecture? Donate through M.A.R.I.'s website: https://tulaneuniversity.ejoinme.org/mari (please specify that the donation is for the Egyptian Collection in the box marked “This donation is in honor/memory of”).
Donations to the Middle American Research Institute are tax deductible! Talk with your tax adviser for details.
This lecture is sponsored by M.A.R.I. and is free and open to the public.
To solve mysteries, Egyptologists not only search for clues about artifacts buried in the ground.... more To solve mysteries, Egyptologists not only search for clues about artifacts buried in the ground. They also explore those hidden from view in museum storage. For the past two years, Egyptologist Dr. Melinda Nelson-Hurst with Tulane University has been studying Tulane’s collection, including two mummies that were publicly unwrapped in the 1850s. Despite their sensational past – including having resided in a football stadium – and some relatively recent anthropological research, little was known about these artifacts until Dr. Nelson-Hurst and a physical anthropologist colleague at Tulane began to study them.
During the 1840s and 1850s, George R. Gliddon traveled the United States, bringing with him a gli... more During the 1840s and 1850s, George R. Gliddon traveled the United States, bringing with him a glimpse into the world of ancient Egypt. Although the current locations of some of the artifacts that Gliddon used for his tour remain unknown, a number of these objects and two of the four mummies that he unwrapped have resided at Tulane University since the 1850s. This collection has remained relatively unknown to the public and scholars alike, especially since it was removed from public display in the middle of the twentieth century. Despite their sensational past – including having resided in a football stadium – and some relatively recent anthropological research, little has been known about the mummies, coffins, cartonnages, and papyrus in the collection. Utilizing Egyptological approaches, paleopathological examination of the human remains, and information from archives and nineteenth-century printed materials, a new research project aims to solve some of the many questions surrounding the collection. Some of these questions address the items’ date and provenience and to whom they belonged in ancient times, how the collection came to America and found a home in New Orleans, and where related items from Gliddon’s collection reside today. This talk will include an overview of the collection’s history and future plans, as well as reveal the project’s latest research findings.
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Papers by Melinda G Nelson-Hurst
Recent Invited Talks by Melinda G Nelson-Hurst
To preserve this collection for generations to come, the Middle American Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) is raising funds to bring a conservator of ancient Egyptian artifacts to New Orleans to work on preserving the collection. If you would like to help support this effort to preserve the collection for future generations, please bring a personal check or credit card to the lecture. Donation forms will be available.
Cannot attend the lecture? Donate through M.A.R.I.'s website: https://tulaneuniversity.ejoinme.org/mari (please specify that the donation is for the Egyptian Collection in the box marked “This donation is in honor/memory of”).
Donations to the Middle American Research Institute are tax deductible! Talk with your tax adviser for details.
This lecture is sponsored by M.A.R.I. and is free and open to the public.
To preserve this collection for generations to come, the Middle American Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) is raising funds to bring a conservator of ancient Egyptian artifacts to New Orleans to work on preserving the collection. If you would like to help support this effort to preserve the collection for future generations, please bring a personal check or credit card to the lecture. Donation forms will be available.
Cannot attend the lecture? Donate through M.A.R.I.'s website: https://tulaneuniversity.ejoinme.org/mari (please specify that the donation is for the Egyptian Collection in the box marked “This donation is in honor/memory of”).
Donations to the Middle American Research Institute are tax deductible! Talk with your tax adviser for details.
This lecture is sponsored by M.A.R.I. and is free and open to the public.
The Broken Stem of the Lily of the Nile: The Great Gliddon Unwrappings of 1850–52
S. J. Wolfe, American Antiquarian Society
Revisiting the Past: New Insights into the Ancient and Modern History of Egyptian Artifacts
Melinda Nelson-Hurst, Tulane University
Visual Metaphors: The Changing Face of Ancient Egypt in American Films
Tasha Dobbin-Bennett, Yale University
Ancient Artifacts, Modern Power: W.K. Simpson, the Yale Peabody Museum, and the Use of Archaeology as Foreign Relations, 1950–75
Alicia Cunningham-Bryant, Temple University
Session Abstract:
From as early as the first half of the nineteenth century until today, ancient Egyptian artifacts have helped to shape not only the popular view of Egypt in the United States, but also United States foreign policy. This panel will use a variety of approaches to explore the diversity of interactions between Americans and Ancient Egypt during the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries. Through examining Victorian views and uses of mummies, how scholars of today work with the (often poorly documented) collections that nineteenth-century scientists and collectors left behind, the portrayal of Ancient Egypt in film, and the link between twentieth-century archaeology and foreign policy, the speakers will show how Americans of various backgrounds – politicians, scholars, and the public – have approached, and were influenced by, Ancient Egypt. This panel seeks to engage anyone with an interest in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, science in Victorian America, how foreign and ancient cultures are portrayed through various media, and the history and influence of scholarship on the popular perception of Ancient Egypt.
Although the syntax and translation (e.g., “It is his son who causes his name to live, so-and-so”) of the vivification formula are easily discerned, the means by which vivifying a name is accomplished remains open for debate. The current study examines the placement and context of examples of the sanx rn.f formula and the vivifiers, or actors, within the formula in order to determine which acts were considered to vivify a name. This paper finds that the act of perpetuating a name falls, as one might expect, into the category of funerary cult practices and the perpetuation of the deceased. In particular, it concludes that the sanx rn.f formula is most commonly associated with the act of speech and reciting offering prayers, such as the Htp-di-nsw formula.
The classification of the act of causing a name to live as a funerary cult practice creates the expectation that the actor in the phrase will be the deceased person’s son (as the ideal heir) or other common mortuary cult officiate. While we do find the son as the benefactor in more than thirty five percent of examples within our corpus, there is a distinct variation in actors chosen during different time periods. This change is gradual, starting in the Twelfth Dynasty, reaching its zenith during the Seventeenth Dynasty, and changing most distinctly at the points in time where changes in burial practices, access to sacred space, administrative structure, and practices of royal succession took place. The transformation in royal succession methods during the late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period correlates with the change of sanx rn.f actors, perhaps indicating even greater cultural changes than have been noted before, including new practices in choosing one’s heir in multiple levels of society.
This talk will discuss the results of an examination of numerous family case studies dating to the Middle Kingdom period to identify whether officials from this time were often able to achieve the ideal of following in their fathers’ offices and, when they did not, which other types of career paths they frequently followed."