Your ancient Egypt, their living: centering Egyptian communities in Egypt’s dispersed heritage

Museums are full of fascinating yet frozen in time & place Egypt. This Egypt is exclusive & imagined. It’s more of a concept rather than a country that you only encounter behind display cases’ glass or digital screens. This talk traces the journey of the Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project & its attempt to capture the living multivocal and multilayered Egypt by centering Egyptian views & voices in museums.

Speaker

Egyptologist Heba Abd el Gawad is the project researcher for the AHRC funded project: ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Views from Egypt’ at the Institute of Archaeology, University College of London aimed at amplifying the voice, visibility, and validity of modern Egyptian communities in UK museums. She has previously led various curatorial roles in the UK including co-curating Two Temple Place’s 2016 Beyond Beauty: Transforming the Body in Ancient Egypt exhibition, project curator of the British Museum’s Asyut Project, and more recently has guest curated Listen to her! Turning up the Volume on Egypt’s Ordinary Women exhibition at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. She specialises in the history of Egyptian archaeology focusing on the past and present Egyptian perceptions and representations of the collection and distribution of archaeological finds from Egypt to the world.

Feature image: Detail of a comic created with research from the Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project.