Date: Monday, August 29th
Time: 7pm
Admission: $8
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn, NY

Tickets Here

For the ancient Egyptians, the journey to the afterlife was like a video game, full of different levels, riddles and risks their soul needed to traverse in order to be reborn into the afterlife. Integral to this were the many different funerary books, like cheat guides, that the Egyptians created to hold all of the spells required for the dead to overcome the dangers they would face along the way. While the ‘Book of Coming Forth By Day’ (now called the ‘The Book of the Dead’) is the most well known example, it is only one funerary text in a group of many lively, ghastly, and just plain weird examples, including “The Cannibal Hymns,” “The Book of Gates” and “The Book of the Heavenly Cow.” Join Egyptologist Ava Forte Vitali as she explains each texts nuances and takes us on a number of journeys to the afterworld, both there and back again.

Ava Forte Vitali completed her Masters Degree in Art History and Archaeology, with a specialization in the Egyptian and Classical World, at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her research interests include the interaction of the physical and spirit world in Ancient Egypt, archaeology of the household, and Ancient Egyptian domestic and ancestor cults, on which her Masters focused. She has excavated at sites in Egypt and Turkey, and is a Collections Manager for Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum. She is currently writing a contribution on the Arts and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, for an upcoming text book on the introduction to Art History.