REPORT ON THE XIII JORNADAS OF

STUDIES AND LECTURES ON ANCIENT

HISTORY AT PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL:

AFRICAN AVANT-GARDE AND

TRADITION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

by   JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLOS

Between 24 and 26 May 2007 the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul organized this international event in which scholars from several Brazilian universities as well as from Uruguay and the United States of America, took part in lectures and debates on a number of subjects related to ancient Egypt as well as to ancient Africa.

I was invited by the organizer and alma mater of these meetings, Prof. Dr. Margaret Bakos, to take part in this event as an honoured guest, with all expenses paid, in order to deliver the inaugural lecture on Egyptomania in the world and another on my current research on class stratification in early Egypt, both of which were apparently well received by the public and by my colleagues.

More than three hundred students and scholars attended these Jornadas and actively participated in the event by asking questions and engaging in short exchanges and debates with the speakers, which showed to what an extent their interest had been aroused as well as their wish to have many issues explained and clarified.

The academic level of the presentations was high and although all the lectures were interesting, some of them put forward ideas that are worthy of special mention in this report for the benefit of those who could not take part in this event.

Before I provide my usual comments on the conferences I attend, I would like first of all, to thank the PUCRS and Prof. Bakos for their kind invitation and especially the latter and all her assistants for all the kind gestures and help they provided so that I and all the other scholars could work in a comfortable and pleasant environment.

I was greatly impressed by the city of Porto Alegre, which I had never visited before, the choice of hotel by the organizers which was well beyond the comfort one could normally expect, the university building, facilities and technological equipment which together with the efficiency of all those providing assistance made the meeting a brilliant success. I must say that of all the congresses I have attended over the years, these Jornadas were among the best organized events I have seen.

Prof. Ricardo Fitz dealt with the problem of time in ancient Africa and showed how they had a sacred and a lay time, the former of a cyclical, repetitive nature and the latter which lacked those traits. The people of ancient Africa had no problems in accepting those two concepts of time but considered the former as the dominant one. Ancient African societies considered the past and the future as forms of the present. This may appear as odd to the western mind which mainly conceives a chronological or productive or straightforward time (past, present, future) which rules our everyday lives. He underlined the need for further and more thorough studies of time in ancient Egypt in order to determine to what an extent it agreed with ancient African conceptions.

Prof. Zilá Bernd analyzed the process of cultural transference and how what some considered acculturation of peoples should not really be assumed as such since in many cases a two-way process took place in which elements of the apparently dominated or replaced culture in fact modified to a certain extent the dominating one. She emphasized the need not to confuse this situation with that of multiculturalism which implies a different kind of social and cultural relationship.

Prof. Regina Bustamante gave examples of mosaics in Roman Africa to show that they provide messages on how people viewed the contemporary political and social situation, but that require a proper and sophisticated methodological approach in order to obtain more accurate interpretations of the ideas contained therein. Those scholars who attempt to deal with these images without a thorough consideration of how the ancients depicted their views on many subjects risk achieving nothing more than superficial results or misinterpretations. In fact, most scholars are image illiterates, as the speaker so aptly put it, and this hampers their efforts to understand the ideas conveyed by ancient peoples.

A discussion panel by several Brazilian scholars dealt with the shortcomings in the teaching of ancient Africa in local schools. There is a law that establishes that in view of the large proportion of people with African ancestors in Brazil, such a subject is mandatory for all schools, but unfortunately the actual time spent teaching it is very short and becomes lost in comparison with the time spent on studying ancient and modern European or local history and at most, ancient Egypt receives some attention in class. Some of the scholars suggested that the government should be made to obey the law and create a space for ancient Africa in the schools, perhaps taking some time from other studies that are covered by many courses over the curricular years. Others thought instead that the more correct and fruitful decision should be to improve the training of people at the university level on such a subject, so that the knowledge and expertise can then filter down to school teacher levels and then transmit to the children and teenagers more accurate views on the past of a continent that the current news present as inhabited by diseased, lazy, corrupt people, as if it truly reflected a contemporary reality and that had been its nature in the past as well, thus partially and perhaps unwittingly justifying slavery and the colonization by Europeans.

Many other interesting subjects were also discussed such as some of the manifestations of egyptomania in Brazil, for instance, an undergoing postgraduate project under the direction of Prof. Bakos, that studies the number of obelisks in the country and the purposes which led to their erection, their special characteristics and meaning in each case. To their surprise (and my own as well) they have already found almost 200 obelisks in Brazil and they anticipate that more will most likely be added to this already long list in the near future.

Another paper discussed the many ancient Egyptian obelisks to be found in the city of Rome in Italy, their characteristics and sometimes unexpected nature and their history in their new home.

Other scholars dealt with the practice of animal mummification in ancient Egypt and some of the surprising revelations that modern archaeology has brought which throw light on little known characteristics of such practices. The papers covered as well attempts made in Brazil to reproduce in the laboratory the mummification process applied so far to some species of fish and the conclusions that could be drawn from such studies.

The subject of ancient African civilizations that flourished before the arrival of Europeans was also well covered with examples mainly from the Sudan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

Many more aspects of ancient Africa and the modern world were also addressed in these Jornadas, as papers and poster displays, most of them very well illustrated by abundant graphic material that made it easier to grasp the significance of the many points made by the speakers.

Even the subject of ancient and modern African gastronomy was covered by a scholar from Senegal who teaches at a Brazilian university and who refrained from the demands from some of those attending to give recipes, perhaps in order to emphasize other more scholarly aspects of how food was and is considered and prepared by Africans.

Although the success of these Jornadas is due to the efforts of many, one has to admire the mostly invisible hand of the organizer, Prof. Margaret Bakos, who knew how to combine and control a number of contributions so as to ensure the success of an event that brings together local and foreign scholars and allows very fertile exchanges among scholars and with the very inquisitive and outspoken students of the Brazilian universities.

No wonder then that after the very moving closing ceremony, Prof. Bakos looked exhausted although perhaps satisfied that everything had gone as planned and another step in the growth and consolidation of Brazilian egyptology had been taken.

I flew back to Montevideo full of interesting new ideas to transmit to people back home and elsewhere and happy to have attended such a worthwhile event.

Histórico das Jornadas: http://www.pucrs.br/ffch/historia/egiptomania/