IFAO

The 15^th session of the seminar series 'Exploring Egypt: Histories and Historiographies', a joint initiative of the Ifao, DAIK, CAI, PCMA, NVIC, & ARCE , will be hosted at the PCMA, Heliopolis. This session features Tomomi Fushiya, and it is entitled "Negociating local and Egyptological Histories at Abkansia and Amara West". The lecture is open to the public in the limit of available places.

ABSTRACT

This presentation explores the social significance of an archaeological site for local communities through a case study from Amara West/Abkanisa. While the site is located in modern-day Sudan, Amara West has been known to Egyptologists as a New Kingdom administrative centre, established during the pharaonic control of Upper Nubia (1300-1100 BCE). The site has long drawn the attention of Egyptological interests, and was first systematically excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1930s and 40s, with the involvement of Quftis.

As part of the British Museum Amara West Research Project, which resumed research at the site in 2008, the speaker conducted interviews to understand the community’s perceptions of the site and its social values. Along the way, it turned out that among today’s local community, the place is better known as Abkanisa or Birbe.

This talk presents the local community’s perspectives and the significance of the place-name, Abkanisa, as an alternative narrative to Egyptological/archaeological interpretations of Amara West.

Exploring Egypt Seminar: Histories and Historiographies

A joint collaboration between the Ifao (Institut français d’archéologie orientale) & the DAIK (German Archaeological Institute in Cairo), joined in 2025 by the CAI (Centro Archeologico Italiano), PCMA (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology Cairo), NVIC (Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo) and ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt).

This seminar series aims, broadly speaking, to discuss different aspects related to the production of historical knowledge on Egypt. Speakers are invited to reflect on the different ways of writing, narrating and thinking about Egypt’s history at different periods, as well as on the actors, contexts, and power relations involved in the production of historical narratives. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the seminar series seeks to bring into conversation fields which have traditionally been examined separately, such as the history of Egyptology, the study of modern Egyptian historiography, and the history of heritage and preservation.

In addition, while the seminar series seeks to shed a critical light on the formation of specific disciplinary fields and traditions, it also moves beyond an exclusive focus on professional history writing, in order to explore the various institutions, genres, and channels, through which historical narratives have been produced and disseminated.  Among the themes that will be discussed, for instance, are the different “histories” of Egyptology, archaeology or Arabic and Islamic studies, academic versus “popular” representations of history, and heritage preservation as a site of production of historical narratives.

Exploring Egypt: Histories and Historiographies Seminar is organised by Fatma Keshk, Postdoctoral fellow at DAIK & Ifao and Malak Labib, scientific member of the Ifao.