Peter Der Manuelian, Director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

In 1927, on the final days of the excavation season, the Harvard University–Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (HU-MFA) Expedition came upon the magnificently painted subterranean chapel of Queen Meresankh III in the Eastern Cemetery at Giza. Although justly famous for its polychrome decoration, the tomb chapel (G 7530-sub) also contributed to George Reisner’s reconstruction of Fourth Dynasty history. This experimental talk will briefly focus on the unusual hair/wig colors on the west wall of Room A, and how they were used and “abused” in twentieth-century Egyptology along racial lines. Popular media seems to have taken its cue from the HU–MFA Expedition’s interpretations.