Lecturer Fatma Ismail Explores Foreign Influences on the Art of Ancient Egypt

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Visiting lecturer Fatma Ismail will talk about how ancient Egyptian art affected the rest of the world and was, in turn, affected by other cultures when she presents “Continuity and Transformation: Late Period Egypt,” on Wednesday, April 18 at Washington College. Her talk will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, John S. Toll Science Center, on the College campus.

During the time period from about 712 to 332 B.C., Egyptian artistic influences, Egyptian gods and their sanctuaries were widely attested to over the whole range of the Mediterranean world. Through a succession of conquests by Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks, the Egyptians and their art were, in turn, changed by close contact with foreign cultures. Examining this rich period of ancient Egyptian history, Ismail will illustrate how Egyptian art exhibited both unique qualities and evidence of cross-cultural influences.

Ismail received her Ph.D. from the Near Eastern Department of the Johns Hopkins University in 2009 after completing her undergraduate studies and a preliminary master’s degree in Egyptology at Helwan University in Egypt. She shares her broad knowledge of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world up to medieval Islam as a visiting lecturer in Art and Art History at Washington College. She curated the exhibition “For Now and Forever: Funerary Artifacts from Ancient Egypt” in the Kohl Gallery last fall.

The April 18 lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the William James Forum, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Department of Philosophy and Religion. For more information, visit http://art.washcoll.edu/.