Interview with President of ARCE, Orange County, U.S.

OC Arts and Culture (William Dean)

You may have read recently about the fascinating new archaeological discoveries in Egypt: Cleopatra’s tomb, a new cache of mummies in the Valley of the Kings, ancient gold jewelry in Luxor. Equally wondrous findings, however, are being carried on every day, not in the sands of ancient Egypt but in the dusty storage bins of museums around the world: ancient papyrus documents that record the words and deeds of millenia ago.

The ancient Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs, pictographic representations of the sounds of their language. It is these hieroglyphs which bring us back to Orange County. Saturday, May 16, the Orange County Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE-OC) will present for the first time a workshop on the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs at the Heritage Park Library in Irvine. The workshop will be presented by Dr. Elizabeth Waraksa, whose impressive credentials include a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies (Egyptian Art and Archaeology) from Johns Hopkins University, a fellowship at UCLA’s Young Research Library for a Web portal of resources relating to the ancient Near East and Egypt. She is also assisting with collection development, providing reference and instruction, and together with the Digital Library Program, working on the all-digital UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology.

OCAC spoke with Robin Young, President of ARCE-Orange County Chapter, about the Chapter and also with Dr. Waraksa about the upcoming workshop.