Symposium

Borderscapes of Ancient Egypt
28th February 2024, Warsaw

The Symposium Borderscapes of Ancient Egypt explores various aspects of the ancient Egyptian borders, from their early forms at the rise of the state to their later developments during Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, and Late Antique/Medieval times. Their complexity is approached through the concept of 'borderscape': the political, cultural, physical, mental, intellectual, and/or spiritual geography where boundaries are located and where the tangible and intangible practices of boundary-making and boundary-maintenance occur.
The Symposium marks the end of the BORDERSCAPE Project https://www.borderscapeproject.org/, the aims of which were to detect the timing and nature of changes in settlement pattern, land use and community structure at the ancient Egyptian southern border during the period of state formation, identify what power performances were set in place by the bordering process, and more broadly explore how the processes of state formation and border-making impacted and transformed Nubia, Egypt southern neighbour.
Special attention is devoted to the period of interest to the BORDERSCAPE Project, that is the state formation along the Nile, with a key-note lecture by Prof. Krzysztof Ciałowicz (Jagiellonian University), addressing the early border between Egypt and the Levant through the ongoing investigation of the site of Tell el-Farkha in the Nile Delta.
The BORDERSCAPE Project received funding from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 through the Norway Grants https://eeagrants.org/countries/poland and the National Science Centre of Poland https://www.ncn.gov.pl/en (grant n. POLS 2020/37/K/HS3/04097). The project was hosted by the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw http://www.iksiopan.pl/index.php/pl/.