In his keynote lecture, “Allegory and Commentary as ‘Second Order Thinking’ in Ancient Egypt”, Jan Assmann will tackle the problem of whether or not forms of Second Order Thinking can be found as early as in ancient Egypt. The Lecture will take place as part of the Think²-Conference. All are welcome!

Jan Assmann is one of the world’s leading Egyptologists, and his studies on collective memory and monotheism are well known in all fields of the humanities. He studied Egyptology, as well as Classical Archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. During 1976-2003, he was Professor of Egyptology at Heidelberg University. Since 2005, he acts as Honorary Professor of Cultural Studies at Konstanz University. He was awarded several prizes, among them the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis, Deutscher Historikerpreis, Alfried-Krupp-Wissenschaftspreis, and the Thomas-Mann-Preis der Hansestadt Lübeck und der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste. His books are widely known around the world, and several have been translated into English, amongst them The Mind of Egypt, Moses the Egyptian, Religion and Cultural Memory, and The Mosaic Distinction or The Price of Monotheism.