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abydos

“Walking in Ancient Footsteps: The High Priest of Osiris Wenennefer and Ancient Abydos.” Dr Stephen Harvey

At the beginning of June Dr Stephen Harvey talked to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about his work at Abydos. He’s been working there since the late 1980s, and this talk covered aspects of his research since 1993 in particular. Abydos is best known as the cult centre for the god Osiris and Harvey told us that today he was going to focus on a High Priest of Osiris called Wenennefer. He explained that this individual provides us with a chance to walk in ancient footsteps and explore the site as it was in the late reign of Ramesses II, c. 1225 BCE. It will also cast some light on over 300 years of the cultic activity at this site. There is a lot of statuary and other monuments associated with Wennenefer, and Harvey sees him as a kind of visionary who shaped what we can see at Abydos at… Read More »“Walking in Ancient Footsteps: The High Priest of Osiris Wenennefer and Ancient Abydos.” Dr Stephen Harvey

“The Recently Discovered Naqada III Settlement at South Abydos” Yaser Mahmoud Hussein (EEG Meeting Talk)

At the beginning of August Yaser Mahmoud Hussein visited the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about his work on very early sites at Abydos. He is an Antiquities Inspector and archaeologist, and has been Field Director of the excavations at the Early Dynastic Cemetery at Abydos since 2008. The site is to the south of the New Kingdom temples at Abydos – the ones of Seti I and Ramesses II that are what you go to see if you visit Abydos as a tourist. It’s very close to the modern village, and so the first purpose of Hussein’s team’s excavations was to find out if there was anything interesting there before it was built over. Even now that it’s known to be an archaeologically interesting site it’s still not safe from destruction as when the archaeologists are not actually working there the villagers walk across it the way… Read More »“The Recently Discovered Naqada III Settlement at South Abydos” Yaser Mahmoud Hussein (EEG Meeting Talk)