Current Projects:
Beyond “the elite”: Investigating the accessibility to sacred spaces in ancient Egypt.
This project aims to examine the degree of accessibility to temples in ancient Egypt, with a focus on Thebes during the New Kingdom. It will investigate how local Theban people interact and experience their state religious buildings and if social hierarchy ever played a role in temple accessibility. It will offer a detailed understanding of people’s practices and activities in sacred spaces to revisit one of the long-accepted narratives in Egyptological scholarship that ancient Egyptian temples were only accessible to the elite.
Biography:
I have a diverse career background in museums, research, teaching, and excavations. I worked as a Research Assistant in the ‘Contested Collections’ project at King’s College London, Departments of Classics and Digital Humanities. At UCL – Institute of Archaeology, I took part in teaching Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Language, Introduction to World Archaeology, Archaeological Theories, and the Archaeology of Religion and Rituals.
Museum experience:
I have worked and volunteered in several museums including:
The British Museum, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, the Horniman Museum in London.
The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.
The Egyptian Museum, and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.
Fieldwork experience:
2024 – present: The Franco-Egyptian archaeological mission at the Ramesseum in Luxor.
2022: The archaeological mission of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures at Niuserre’s Sun Temple in Abu Ghurab.
2016 & 2017: The French Archaeological Institute in Cairo (IFAO) mission at Deir el-Medina in Luxor.
Educational Background:
PhD in Archaeology at University College London, Institute of Archaeology.
Research Interests:
- The ancient Egyptian religion: the archaeology of religion and rituals, the role of geographical and spatial factors in shaping deities' identities, the mechanism of polytheism and syncretism, the social aspects and social theories of religion, the religious expressions in royal and private monuments.
- The history of Egyptian archaeology: the history of past excavations, the history of collections, the provenance of artefacts.
- The interpretation and ethics of displaying the ancient Egyptian culture to the public in museums today.
Recent Publications:
Published
I. Ghabriel, ‘Maat and the Cosmic Balance’. In M. Vandenbeusch (ed.), Pharaoh: King of Egypt Exhibition Catalogue, The British Museum Press (2024), 44-47.
I. Ghabriel, ‘Ptah of the Place of Beauty’, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 109 (2023), 245-259.
I. Ghabriel and S. Quirke, ‘Finding the Village: Qurna in 1810s between Antiquities Collectors and Local Working Practice’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 58 (2022), 83-99.
I. Ghabriel, ‘The So-called Oratory of Ptah and Mertseger Re-examined’. In S. Töpfer, P. Del Vesco, F. Poole (eds.), Deir El-Medina Through the Kaleidoscope: Proceedings of the International Workshop Turin 8th-10th October 2018, (Modena, 2022), 760-782.
