Kathryn E. Piquette was a Senior Fellow in 2011 within the research group Space & Collective Identities (E-CSG-V), working with Dr Cornelia Kleinitz on this theme from the perspective of scribal/artistic space. The title of her Topoi project is: Graphical Space and the Construction of Past Identities. This project explores script and image from the perspective of the material object — the physical space which precedes yet also informs textual expression and meaning. Focussing on early Egyptian evidence (3200–2700 BCE), study is directed to the material and technical features of compositional spaces in order to address questions of individual and collective scribal identity.

Currently she pursues “A Comparative Study of Scribal and Artistic Spaces in Early Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Integrating micro- and macro-scale analyses” as a COFOUND Fellow at the Dahlem Research School. A description of her project can be found here.

Research Group C-I-1 is dedicated to language and text and is to investigate linguistically how spaces are constituted within various systems of language on the lexical and grammatical level. The group will use a comparative approach to assess how spatiality is represented in ancient languages (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian and Coptic, Ancient Greek, and Latin). Basic parameters of linguistic coding and denominating of spatiality, such as terms describing space in general, orientation in space, spatial dimensions, and spatial relations are to be analyzed. This will be compared with non-linguistic representations of space.