The Egyptian Mind: Cosmos, Myth, and Meaning
begins August 16
The one thing the ancient Egyptians priests hated most about foreigners visiting their temples was empty periergia: simple, surface-level curiosity that fixated on the strange and the exotic, while ignoring the underlying principles, the cultural significance of their language, and the importance of myth and ritual as their foundational belief system. Ancient Egypt was always more than its odd customs, its monuments, and its mummies; yet approaching it from the outside often yields an image of Egypt as a civilization of curiosities rather than one of thought. This course begins from the opposite premise: that ancient Egyptian culture must be approached through its own categories, its own language, its own sacred architecture, and its own literary imagination. The goal of this course is to explore the Mind and Metaphysics of Egypt through their writing system, their myths, mortuary texts, and philosophical concepts of meaning and purpose.
Your Teacher: Carla Berenice Groh
Carla Berenice Groh is an archaeologist, writer, and founder of EVEY Gallery & Art Foundation. She trained in Classical Archaeology and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Freiburg and studied Egyptology at the University of Basel. She also spent four years as part of an interdisciplinary research team while working on her PhD thesis on intercultural transfer and hero narratives in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Through her Substack, Pyramids and Hieroglyphs, she writes and speaks about ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs, mythology, ritual, and the deeper cultural imagination behind the ancient world, making complex historical material vivid and accessible to a broader audience. She is also an accredited member of the Appraisers Association of America, specializing in ancient art, and works across contemporary art, cultural philanthropy, and public humanities programming.