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“Seeking Senenmut: Statues, Status and Scandal” Campbell Price (EEG Meeting Talk)

At the beginning of June Campbell Price, the curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, came to talk to the Essex Egyptology Group about one of the senior officials in Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s court: Senenmut. Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from 1473-1458 BCE, and she generally seemed to do things differently to her predecessors & successors. Technically she was ruling first as regent for then alongside Tutmosis III – but in reality she was the sole ruler of Egypt, surrounded by a small group of male advisors. Price made the comparison a couple of times in his talk to Elizabeth I (of England) – single woman as the ruler taking a traditionally male role, with a small collection of highly trusted male courtiers none of whom mention their wives terribly often when in the presence of their ruler. In autobiographical texts Senenmut claims to be a rags-to-riches story, but Price pointed out… Read More »“Seeking Senenmut: Statues, Status and Scandal” Campbell Price (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Historical Egypt in Photographs” Marcel Maessen (EEG Meeting Talk)

For the May meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group Marcel Maessen, one of the founders of the t3.wy Foundation, came to talk to us about the history of photography as it relates to Egypt & Egyptology. The t3.wy Foundation is an organisation that is researching the history of Egyptology. They are particularly keen to open up the various Egyptological archives and make the contents available to a wider audience of both academic researchers and other interested people. These archives include things like original documents from excavations, correspondence between Egyptologists, and photographs. Maessen said they meet with quite a lot of resistance to this idea from both Egypt and from academia in general – in part because the members of the t3.wy Foundation are mostly not professional Egyptologists so are seen as “outsiders”. Maessen’s talk fell into two parts (with a convenient break for coffee and cake!). Firstly he talked to… Read More »“Historical Egypt in Photographs” Marcel Maessen (EEG Meeting Talk)

“The Mechanisms and Practice of Egyptian Tomb Robbery: A View from Ancient Thebes” Nigel Strudwick (EEG Meeting Talk)

At the beginning of April Nigel Strudwick came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about tomb robbers. He said that the origins of this particular talk were in trying to understand why most of the Egyptian tombs are in such a chaotic mess when they’re first excavated. He started by showing us pictures of tombs that were discovered intact and tombs that had been robbed before they were discovered. There are actually very few tombs that made it to modern times without having been robbed – the two examples he showed us were the tomb of Kha and Merit in Deir el Medina, and the tomb of Sennenmut’s parents (Ramose and Hatnefer). Kha & Merit’s tomb was fairly neatly organised, with the funerary goods and meal laid out in front of the two large shroud-covered coffins. Ramose & Hatnefer’s tomb was more untidy, and had some extra… Read More »“The Mechanisms and Practice of Egyptian Tomb Robbery: A View from Ancient Thebes” Nigel Strudwick (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Living in a Liminal Zone: The ‘Town’ of Queen Khentkawes at Giza” Ana Tavares (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Ana Tavares co-Field Director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) came to talk to us at the Essex Egyptology Group about her work on two 4th Dynasty towns on the Giza Plateau near the Pyramids which she’s currently writing up as her PhD thesis. Her talk focussed on the town near Queen Khentkawes’s monument, with some comparisons to the other town at Heit el Ghurab (also called the Lost City of the Pyramids, which is where the builders of the Pyramids lived). Below you can see a plan of the Giza Plateau (that I found on wikipedia last year when I was writing about my visit there in November 2014). Heit el Ghurab isn’t marked – but it lies southeast of Khafre & Menkaure’s pyramid complexes (so the bottom right hand corner). The tomb of Queen Khentkawes is labelled towards the bottom right, and the pink L shape… Read More »“Living in a Liminal Zone: The ‘Town’ of Queen Khentkawes at Giza” Ana Tavares (EEG Meeting Talk)

In Our Time: Akhenaten

Back in the summer while In Our Time wasn’t airing new episodes we dug back through the archives and found a (rare) Egyptian related one that we didn’t think we’d listened to before – about Akhenaten, which aired in 2009. The experts on the programme were Richard Parkinson (British Museum), Elizabeth Frood (University of Oxford) and Kate Spence (University of Cambridge). (As it’s so old affiliations of the experts have probably changed.) They started with a little bit of scene setting and overview of Akhenaten’s reign, placing him in context. He was one of the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty in the New Kingdom period. This was a particularly prosperous time in Egypt’s history, Akhenaten’s father Amenhotep III in particular can be considered as ruling over a Golden Age. When Akhenaten came to the throne he seemed much like a conventional Pharaoh. He initially used the more traditional name Amenhotep… Read More »In Our Time: Akhenaten

“The Sacred Site of ‘Quesna’: Multi-disciplinary Investigations and Analyses in the Cemetery and Falcon Necropolis” Joanne Rowland (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Joanne Rowland came to talk to us at the Essex Egyptology Group about her work on two sites in the Nile Delta. Her talk was split into two parts – the first was about her work at Quesna (with the title that I’ve used on this blog post) on Old Kingdom and Ptolemaic era structures. After our coffee break she moved on to telling us about work she’s done at the nearby Wadi Gamal looking at much older prehistoric sites. “The Sacred Site of ‘Quesna’: Multi-disciplinary Investigations and Analyses in the Cemetery and Falcon Necropolis” Quesna is situated towards the southern edge of the Nile Delta, between two sites known to have been Nome capitals: Athribis and Busiris. It sits on a sand formation called a Gezira (I think) or turtleback, which sticks out above the silt deposited by the Nile floods. The site was discovered in 1989,… Read More »“The Sacred Site of ‘Quesna’: Multi-disciplinary Investigations and Analyses in the Cemetery and Falcon Necropolis” Joanne Rowland (EEG Meeting Talk)

“At the Gate of the Ancestors: Saint Cults and the Politics of the Past at Abydos” Janet Richards (Sackler Lecture at the British Museum)

The 2015 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation Distinguished Lecture in Egyptology was given by Janet Richards, on the subject of saint cults in general and specifically the one of Idy at Abydos and how that fits into the wider sacred landscape there. The lecture was part of a colloquium about Abydos in general, which I didn’t go to (although J did) and I remember the lecture as including a lot of references back to things they’d discussed in the colloquium. I’m rather more reliant on my notes than usual when writing this up – as it’s nearly half a year since I went to the talk at the time of writing (and you’re reading this at least 2 months after that). Richards is interested in saint cults in ancient Egypt, but in the introductory part of her talk she contextualised them for us in more modern terms (which was very… Read More »“At the Gate of the Ancestors: Saint Cults and the Politics of the Past at Abydos” Janet Richards (Sackler Lecture at the British Museum)

“Reflections on the Dendara Zodiac: Addressing the What, When and Why” Rosalind Park (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Rosalind Park talked to the Essex Egyptology Group about the Dendara Zodiac ceiling, and astrology in Ancient Egypt. The Dendara Zodiac was originally in one of the chapels on the roof of the Hathor Temple at Dendara. When discovered by Napoleon’s expedition in 1799 it was removed from the temple (with gunpowder!) and brought back to France. It’s now on display in the Louvre (see the picture below that I took when I visited in 2011). And in its place in Dendara is a plaster cast (which has been painted black to mimic the original). It’s a pretty big visitor attraction in the Louvre but it has been largely ignored by Egyptologists. When the ceiling was discovered hieroglyphs hadn’t been deciphered, but some of the astronomical/astrological symbols on the ceiling were recognisable as ones that have been passed down to Western culture via the Greeks (like a crab,… Read More »“Reflections on the Dendara Zodiac: Addressing the What, When and Why” Rosalind Park (EEG Meeting Talk)

Egypt Holiday 2014: el Tod

The last site we visited in Egypt last November was a temple dedicated to Montu, which is in the modern village of el Tod. I don’t think it gets many tourists – our bus had a bit of trouble getting through the winding streets of the village and we had to walk the last little bit. My main memory of the place is that it was very peaceful, despite being in the middle of the village. There were palm trees throughout the site and it was a little oasis of calm. Even the guardians here were pretty laid back! My photos from this site are on flickr: click here for the full set, or on any photo in this post for the larger version on flickr. When you go into the site the first thing you come to is a block storage area with loose bits of the temple that… Read More »Egypt Holiday 2014: el Tod

“New Light on the Narmer Palette with Advanced Digital Imaging” Kathryn E. Piquette (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Kathryn Piquette came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about the work she’s been doing using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to examine the Narmer Palette (and some other ancient Egyptian objects). She started her talk by giving us context for the Narmer Palette, and then explained the imaging technique she is using. She then showed us several examples of objects she’s studied before returning to the Narmer Palette to tell us about her findings so far. The Narmer Palette was discovered in 1898 by Quibell & Green at Hierakonopolis, near the “Main Deposit”. This was a cache of sacred objects that had been buried around the time of the 5th Dynasty when they were no longer being used. The palette dates to around 3100BC, and is a larger version of the type of palette that was used by the ancient Egyptians to grind eye makeup… Read More »“New Light on the Narmer Palette with Advanced Digital Imaging” Kathryn E. Piquette (EEG Meeting Talk)