Afterlives of Ancient Egypt with Kara Cooney

In this episode of Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, Kara, Jordan, and guest Jason Silvestri delve into the enigmatic history of the Libyans during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Jason shares his academic journey into Egyptology, discusses the discovery of ancient Libyan words in the Qeheq papyrus, and highlights his exciting archeological work at El Hibeh.
About our Guest: Jason Silvestri
Jason Silvestri (BA ’19, Univ. of Toronto; MA ’21 UC Berkeley) is the Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and PhD Candidate in Egyptian Archaeology at UC Berkeley’s Dept. of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC), where he is writing a dissertation on the social and political history of the Libyan Period (Dyns. XXI-XXIV). He has also worked extensively on Libyan-Egyptian interconnections, and has published the earliest known evidence of an Ancient Libyan language, the Qeheq Papyrus. In addition to his textual work, he is also an archaeologist, and has worked for several projects in Italy, Greece, and Egypt.
Academia
https://elhibehproject.org/
Show Notes
* Check out Jason’s article on oldest extant text that possibly preserve the Berber language
* Third Intermediate Period
* Libyan Period
* Egyptian glyph rendering of the term “Libyans”- 𓍿𓅓𓎛𓌙𓀀 or 𓍿𓎛𓈖𓏌𓇋𓇋𓅱
* Candelora, Danielle 2019. The eastern Delta as a middle ground for Hyksos identity negotiation. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 75, 77-94.
* Hubschmann, C., (2010) “Who Inhabited Dakhleh Oasis? Searching for an Oasis Identity in Pharaonic Egypt”, Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 20(1), 51-66. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/pia.341
* Code Shifting
* Use of the term “tribe” within anthropological studies
* Banishment Stela
* The Amazigh Language Family
* Afroasiatic Language Family
* Cooper, Julien Charles 2021. Beja and Cushitic languages in Middle Egyptian texts: the etymologies of queen Aashayet and her retainers. Lingua Aegyptia 29, 13-36. DOI: 10.37011/lingaeg.29.02.
* Cooper, J. (2020). Egyptian Among Neighboring African Languages. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 1(1). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fb8t2pz
* El Hibeh
Want to learn more about the Libyan Period? Suggested Readings:
* Ritner, R. K. (2009) The Libyan anarchy : inscriptions from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period / translated with an introduction and notes by Robert K. Ritner ; edited by Edward Wente. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
* Moreno García, J. C. (2014) Invaders or just herders? Libyans in Egypt in the third and second millennia bce. World archaeology. [Online] 46 (4), 610–623.
* Broekman, G. (2011) Theban Priestly and Governmental Offices and Titles in the Libyan Period. Zeitschrift für ägyptische sprache und altertumskunde. [Online] 138 (2), 93–115.

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In our latest live Q&A with podcast supporters, we discuss Kara’s progress on her latest book (about Nefertiti!!!!), the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, the challenges of pronouncing ancient Egyptian words (vocalization is hard and a task we try to avoid), whether or not Cleopatra really committed suicide (short answer: NO), our top-three favorite tombs (Sennefer, Ramose, etc etc and why is Osirisnet down!?), and more.
Read more about Kara’s perspective on the death of Cleopatra in her book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt.
Explore tombs in the Valley of the Kings via the Theban Mapping Project website!
Learn more about the Grand Egyptian Museum here. Someday we will visit, but not this day….



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Kara and Amber return to the royal caches for Part II of their deep dive into the coffins reused for the re-Osirification (!!) of Thutmose III and Ramses II. Building on her new open-access article in Arts, Kara lays out how 20th–21st Dynasty priests “withdrew” value from royal burials during crisis and then ritually “paid it back,” stripping sheet gold but restoring a solar substitute (thin gilding or even just yellow washes of paint), covering coffin interiors with Osirian black resins, adding protective iconography and red paint as apotropaic force fields, and re-adding elements of kingship and human agency.
Along the way, Kara and Amber map the politics of reuse within the royal caches of KV35 (the tomb of Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings) and TT320 (a reused 18th Dynasty queens tomb at Deir el Bahari used to rebury “preferred” kings and queens and the final resting place of many of the Amen Priesthood). They discuss whether or not the coffin reused for Thutmose III was originally made for him, and consider the material record through feminist and new-materialist lenses, looking at how ritual tries to reconcile scarcity, power, and piety. It’s a practical guide to what Egyptians thought were the essential ritual elements for a king to transform—gold/solar, earth/Osiris, iconography/protection, kingship, and human agency—and why they were significant.
Show notes
For a discussion of the ritual repair of mummies from the Deir el Bahri 320 cache, check out Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, Episode #88.
For more about Thutmose III and the veneration of royal ancestors, check out Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, Episode #83.
Sources
Brown, Nicholas. 2020. “Raise Me Up and Repel My Weariness! A study of the coffin of Thutmose III (CG 61014).” MDAIK 76/77: 11-35.
Cooney, Kathlyn. “Surviving New Kingdom Kings’ Coffins: Restoring the Art That Was.” Arts 2025, 14(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14030057.
Cooney, Kara. 2024. Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press. [Buy it on Amazon or on the AUCP website.]


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CW// self-harm and suicide
Kara and Amber take on the most famous death in all of antiquity—Cleopatra VII’s—and ask what “honor” really means when the sources are Roman, i.e. biased AF, and the stakes are imperial, that is Octavian is using Cleopatra’s fall to condense all power into the hands of one person, his own.
Starting with a timeline of events, Kara and Amber unpack Octavian’s propaganda about Cleopatra’s death by suicide, and Kara argues that the suicide story serves Rome far more than it serves Egypt’s last queen. Using David Graeber’s Debt as a lens, they consider the ways in which honor, debt, and violence travel together in patriarchal systems—and how those rules are gendered. Antony’s suicide reads as “honorable,” while Cleopatra’s is framed as hysterical and selfish and maternal abandonment—all the worst things a woman within patriarchy could do. They probe the politics of narratives about “honor” that trap women who rule (with nods to Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Zenobia). The result is a sharp, feminist read of Cleopatra’s end.
Or, as Kara likes to say: Suicide my ass… he straight up killed her and lied about it.
Fight me. :)
Show notes
David Graeber’s Debt
Check out our other episodes on Cleopatra:
Episode #57 – Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”
Episode #60 – Part II: Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”
Episode #82 – The Death of Cleopatra: Murder or Suicide?


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