Spotlight Lecture: Egypt’s Identity in her Islamic Arts

This Tuesday Spotlight lecture within our wider theme of ‘Visualising Egypt’ explores the diversity and complexity of Egyptian art and how it has inspired contemporary artists.

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Egypt is believed to have always ascertained her identity through all periods of her history, including those under foreign rule. My talk deals with two different aspects of Egyptian artistic identity under Islam: the survival of pre-Islamic motifs in Egyptian Islamic art and material culture, and on a more abstract level: the memory of her pre-Islamic past in Arabic texts.

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From 2000-2014, Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif was the Nasser D Khalili Chair of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has published widely on the subjects of the history of Islamic architecture and decorative arts, urbanism,  waqf (pious endowments), Islamic cultural history, concepts of aesthetics and Orientalism and is regarded around the world as the authority on Mamluk Egyptian history. Her work has also considered the role of ancient Egyptian architecture and its incorporation into Islamic monuments as well as Medieval accounts of Egypt’s ancient past. Her grandfather was the Egyptian Egyptologist Hakim Abouseif (1889-1951), and she continues to explore her personal history through her research. She was elected President of the Egypt Exploration Society on 26 November 2022.