On Wednesday, October 9, Julie Stauder-Porchet, from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Université de Genève, will speak on the verbal and visual rhetoric of inscriptions on the façade of an Egyptian tomb dating to the third millennium BCE. At Qubbet el-Hawa, the elite necropolis associated with the trading town of Elephantine (near Aswan), a series of inscribed tombs were dug during the reign of Pepi II for the officials who led Egyptian expeditions far to the south and the west into present-day Sudan. Among these inscribed tombs, three were extensively inscribed on their façade: Harkhuf, Pepinakht-Heqaib I, and Sabni son of Mekhu (c.2250-2200 BCE). The façades address the passerby, not only through the hieroglyphically inscribed words (which would have been legible only by the very few), but also through their overall visual and monumental quality, as well as through elements in their inscriptional layout. Co-sponsored by UMMAA. 4 to 6 p.m. in the Lecture Room at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Free and open to the public.