The PCMA Research Centre in Cairo has the pleasure of inviting to a lecture by Dr Grzegorz Ochała:
Monks, Archangels, and a king’s son: Recent epigraphic work at the monastery of Ghazali (Sudan)
It will presented on Wednesday, 27th January, 2016 at 6:00 pm in the PCMA Research Centre in Cairo, 11, Mahallah St., Heliopolis, Cairo
Lecture abstract: After what seemed to have been an almost complete exploitation of the site’s epigraphic potential, mainly by Karl Richard Lepsius in the nineteenth century and Peter Shinnie and Neville Chittick in the 1950s, the number of inscriptions discovered already during the second season of Polish excavations in the monastery of Ghazali in 2013 was a pleasant surprise. A few dozen wall inscriptions, a few dozen fragments of funerary stelae, a few hundred inscriptions on pottery vessels, they all constitute an important addition to the corpus of Christian Nubian written sources. While the excavations are ongoing and some more epigraphic discoveries are still to be expected, during the lecture I will focus on presenting the most interesting specimens in all categories of finds.
Dr Grzegorz Ochała, graduated from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw, where he also defended his doctoral dissertation in 2010. His main field of interest is the history and culture of the Nile Valley, especially the Middle Nile Valley, in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, and his main specialisation is Greek and Coptic epigraphy of Christian Nubia. He was a member of Polish archaeological missions in Egypt (Deir el-Naqlun and Sheikh Abd el-Gurna) and Sudan (Dongola). Currently he takes part in Polish excavations in Deir el-Gahzali (Sudan) as the head epigraphist.