The report of the Forum on the 28th February 2014, chaired by Kelee Siat, is available to read on the ‘Last Session’ section of this website (under the Forum tab) for a week or so. Thereafter it will move to the ‘Previous Sessions’ section. We do not normally post on the homepage when new Forum report are available, but this week Kelee has provided a fantastic summary of both the report and the topic in general, which might be of interest to many.
Kelee presented her MRes/proposed PhD research on Queen Tiye, and the ensuing discussion covered not only the facts relating to this well-known but still mysterious woman, but also the theoretical approaches to writing ‘biographies’ of figures from antiquity.
This tied in extremely well with a talk by Dr Roberto Gozzoli the previous day. Dr Gozzoli, an alumnus of the University of Birmingham, spoke about writing ‘history’ and the concepts of writing ‘history’ in both ancient and modern times – ancient ‘histories’ involving cultural ideals and records governed by strict iconographical/ideological rules VS. modern ‘histories’ involving chronological detailing of events and individuals, but still influenced by personal and politico-cultural backgrounds.
Similarly, when attempting to write a ‘biography’ of an individual, particularly one from antiquity, we must be aware that our idea of a biography may not be fully compatible with the methods of recording and representation from their own culture and time. In other words, the evidence from which we work may not be sufficient to create our personal idea of a ‘biography’; it may be more a route by which we can better understand the culture of which that individual was a part, rather than the individual himself/herself.
Similar thoughts regarding the feasibility of writing accurate, true histories or biographies were aired in the Forum session. Please read Kelee’s report (and reports from previous sessions) which summarises some of these ideas. If you have any thoughts on the subject, please comment here!
