Decolonizing Meresankh at Giza

Peter Der Manuelian, Director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East
In 1927, on the final days of the excavation season, the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (HU-MFA) Expedition came upon the magnificently painted subterranean chapel of Queen Meresankh III in the Eastern Cemetery at Giza. Although justly famous for its polychrome decoration, the tomb chapel (G 7530-sub) also contributed to George Reisner’s reconstruction of Fourth Dynasty history. This experimental talk will briefly focus on the unusual hair/wig colors on the west wall of Room A, and how they were used and “abused” in twentieth-century Egyptology along racial lines. Popular media seems to have taken its cue from the HU-MFA Expedition’s interpretations.