As we ponder the ‘rebirth’ of our own society and economy after the Covid ‘apocalypse’, it is worth bearing in mind that the theme of apocalypse and rebirth has fascinated humans for millennia. In this talk, we will be exploring some of the earliest documented beliefs in this area, brought to us from Ancient Egypt.
Using a range of prophetic texts dating from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (2055-1650BCE) all the way through to Roman Egypt (30BCE-641CE), we will reconstruct the basic tenets of Egyptian apocalyptic thought, with a particular emphasis on the perceived cyclical nature of time and the notion of the ‘saviour King’. In so doing, we will discover how the idea of apocalypse could be used by unhappy Egyptians to understand the world around them, and ultimately generate new hope for a brighter future. This talk is exclusively presented for Christ’s College prior to the upcoming publication of the latest research in this area, including Dr. Loktionov’s contribution to the volume Eschatology in Antiquity (Routledge, 2021).
Alex Loktionov is an Egyptologist, with a particular interest in ancient Egyptian justice of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. Dr Loktionov is currently the Wallis-Budge Fellow at Christ’s College. He has a BA in Archaeology & Anthropology from Selwyn College, Cambridge, and an MPhil in Egyptology from St. John's College, Cambridge. His PhD was undertaken at Robinson College, Cambridge, where he investigated methods of reconstructing the legal system of Ancient Egypt from the Old to the Middle Kingdom through a mixture of textual, ethnographic and wider theoretical approaches. He currently co-ordinates two University modules in Egyptian and Akkadian language, and is a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Before coming to Christ’s in October 2019, Alex was a Teaching Associate in Egyptian language at the Department of Archaeology, a bye-fellow of Selwyn College, and an AHRC Fellow at the Library of Congress.
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