teaching statuary

In the last week or so, we have started to have some serious and long overdue conversations. As a teacher, I never shy away from these conversations. But now the audience is wider - it’s global - and my students are staying connected and experimenting with their listening and debating skills. Its raw and it’s fraught with danger, but it is exactly what needs to happen so that we can start addressing the past and building a future.

As an ancient history teacher, there are so many links that we can make and so many questions that we can raise. But we also need to look at the purpose of statuary - what was it about for the ancients? What is it about now? What’s changed and why?

I’d like to draw your attention to a fantastic article written by Dr Campbell Price at Manchester University: The Power of Images: Statures and Society. Here, Price is looking at the links between attitudes to ancient statuary and what is happening now as an extension of Black Lives Matter. He makes this very important comment: “Sculptures are endowed with different meanings as time goes on, making them dynamic, active agents in the social landscape - not simply passive observers as some might imagine.” As part of his broader discussion about statuary in ancient Egypt, he says: “…they [statues] were also routinely adapted, destroyed - and the reactivated all over again. They offer an abject lesson in the dynamism of sculpture…” He goes on to detail the destruction of Hatshepsut’s statuary (our very lesson last week) and why that occurred within the cultural and political rules of ancient Egypt. He points out that statues were also renamed by other pharaohs (Ramesses II being a big fan of this cost saving measure). For the Egyptians, this was not necessarily borne from ill-will to former rulers , but “it was a way if not of honouring that king then of harnessing some of his divine power.”

Also this week, Dr Kara Cooney has been looking at Jim Crow era statuary and Egyptian statuary and asking the question: Are they the same thing? She is also asking some hard hitting questions about the nature of racism within the study of Egyptology itself and this was an eye opener to me - as someone who flirts of the edges of the acadmic circles of Egyptology. It has given me pause to think and wonder what I need to do as a teacher of ancient history.

So where does all this leave us in the ancient history classroom? As history teachers, it is critical that we are able to show parallels in events and discuss the role of human agency and how it informs our understanding of the now and the past. I have had some very good discussions with my class this week and it has been an opportunity for them to hone their understanding of statuary but also to refine their sills of listening, debating and being ok with disagreeing. I thought I share with you some resources that I have drawn upon this week.

article: The Power of Images: Statues and Society

Video blog by Dr Kara Cooney, UCLA: Jim Crow and Egyptian statuary: Are they the same thing?

Video blog by Dr Kara Cooney: Is Egyptology racist? The short answer is yes.

History of colonialism in The Egypt Exploration Society

Julia Dhar: How to disagree productively and find common ground (Ted X talk good for students)

Good luck with your units of work and let me know how you are going.