From daily life to mortuary rituals, there is so much we know about ancient Egypt through the millennia. But what about the intimate psychology of the ancient Egyptians, what traces did it leave behind? This talk will address an unusual aspect of Egyptology, that is, the study of the sexuality of its ancient inhabitants. One of our sources are the papyri in which the ancient Egyptians recorded and interpreted their own dreams, including their sex dreams. Remarkably, they include erotic dreams that, by today’s standards, we would qualify as queer, which reveal surprisingly modern aspects of ancient life along the Nile.
Luigi Prada is associate professor of Egyptology at Uppsala University. He is a specialist in the texts, languages, and script of ancient Egypt, and he regularly carries out fieldwork in Egypt and Sudan. As an LGBTQ+ rights advocate, he is keenly interested in the study of queer identities in the ancient world.
Please note! The language of the lecture is English.