Ramesside Poetry & Love Songs of Ancient Egypt

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Recommended age: 18+ years

Explore the rare and remarkable body of ancient Egyptian love poetry that offers insight into the personal lives, relationships, and cultural values of ordinary Ramesside Period Egyptians, and how these ancient poems continue to resonate with us today. These are the original Love Song Dedications…

Following the chat, you’ll be guided to Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs where you’ll receive our exclusive object spotlight tour presented by Egypt specialist Madeline Jenkins.

Your ticket includes:

• A drink on arrival and a chef’s selection of Egyptian-inspired canapés
• 45-minute talk + Q&A with a leading expert
• Ticket to Ramses & The Gold of the Pharaohs (valued at $52) and skip the queue for express entry
• Within the exhibition, enjoy an exclusive in-person spotlight tour by an expert as they share the stories behind their favourite objects
• Following your tour, enjoy access to Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs until the Museum closes at 9pm

Note: Ticket price does NOT include VR experience or exhibition audio guide.

Duration: Approximately 2 hours

Dr. Julia Hamilton is a Lecturer in Egyptology at Macquarie University and completed her PhD in 2020 as a Clarendon Scholar at The Queen's College, University of Oxford. Before moving to Australia, she was the first NINO Postdoctoral Fellow in Egyptology at Leiden University (2020–22). Julia is originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, where she completed her undergraduate studies in ancient History at Waipapa Taumata Ra University of Auckland.

Her research sits at the intersection of philology, art history, and archaeological and anthropological theory. She is particularly interested in the visuality and multi-modality of ancient Egyptian language, especially graffiti and onomastics (the study of names). Julia’s current monograph project with Bloomsbury is entitled The Lives and Afterlives of Ancient Egyptian Names.

Sara M Saleh is a multidisciplinary writer, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published widely and she is co-editor of the ground-breaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. Her first novel is Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press, 2023). Her first poetry collection is The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat (UQP, 2023).

Sara is the first and only poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, a Neilma Sidney travel grant, Varuna writers residency, and Amant writers residency in Brooklyn, New York, amongst other honours.

Madeline Jenkins is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University. Madeline’s PhD research explores the meanings of words denoting emotion in ancient Egyptian texts, and what this tells us about ancient Egyptian conceptions of emotion.

More broadly, Madeline’s research interests include the ancient Egyptian language (Hieroglyphic Egyptian and Coptic Egyptian), linguistics, cognition, and emotion. Madeline also teaches Hieroglyphic Egyptian and Coptic Egyptian in the Department of History and Archaeology and at the Macquarie Ancient Languages School.

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