A Lost Queen of the Sun? Tel Beth Shemesh, the Age of Amarna, and the Mysterious "Mistress of the Lions"
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Classroom 2
Historians have long puzzled over a mysterious female ruler in prebiblical Canaan known only from two clay letters from Telel-Amarna in Egypt—the capital of the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. In this lecture, Dr. Zvi Lederman, director of the Tel Beth Shemesh expedition in Israel, will share newly discovered evidence that may reveal who this queen was and her possible connection to the court of Akhenaten and its embrace of a revolutionary monotheistic cult of the sun.
Cosponsors
Center for Ancient Studies
Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
Jewish Studies Program
Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Graduate Program
Department of Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
