On the Literacy and Education of Ancient Egyptian Artists (Free Virtual Lecture)

In this virtual lecture on Thursday, Feb. 24, Dimitri Laboury will address the level(s) of literacy and scholarly education among the makers of the countless hieroglyphic monuments that help make ancient Egypt so famous. Dimitri Laboury is an associate professor of ancient Egyptian art history, archaeology, history and history of religions; research director at Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research in ancient Egyptian art history and archaeology; and director of the Ancient Egyptian Art Historical Research Unit at the University of Liège in Belgium. The free event is presented by Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and Harvard Museums of Science & Culture.

One of the salient characteristics of ancient Egypt undoubtedly is its hieroglyphic script. The “code” to decipher this writing system was cracked precisely two hundred years ago, in 1822, by the brilliant French linguist Jean-François Champollion—the founding father of Egyptology. The complexity of Egyptian hieroglyphs resulted in a low literacy rate among the Pharaonic population. Was every ancient Egyptian artist capable of reading and writing hieroglyphs? And in that society, who were the real experts in hieroglyphic writing?