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archaeology

“Flinders Petrie – from Stonehenge to Jerusalem” Lorna Oakes

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In the middle of January we began the 2023 programme of talks at the Essex Egyptology Group with a Zoom lecture given by Lorna Oakes. Her subject for the talk was William Matthew Flinders Petrie – she began by noting that she wasn’t going to be able to cover all aspects of his career in a single talk, so she was going to concentrate on some of the main archaeological sites that he investigated. Flinders Petrie was the pioneer of modern archaeological methods in Egypt, and this was a great contrast to the work of his contemporaries. His main interest was to halt the destruction of the remains of Egyptian monuments, he’d been horrified by what he saw while he was working at Giza – at the same time Mariette was working at the Valley Temple of Khafre and Oakes quoted us something that Petrie later wrote about that excavation.… Read More »“Flinders Petrie – from Stonehenge to Jerusalem” Lorna Oakes

“Literacy in Deir el-Medina: Signs, Marks and Tallies” Daniel Soliman

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At the beginning of December Dr Daniel Soliman spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about his work on literacy at Deir el-Medina, a topic which he told us was very dear to him. He has mostly been using ostraca to investigate the topic – there are many that are marked with signs and tally marks rather than the hieroglyphs and other scripts that we are more familiar with. Soliman began by giving us a brief introduction to the site of Deir el-Medina, which is situated in the western Theban mountains (and he had a lovely photo of the village from an angle I’ve not seen much, clearly showing it nestled in the hills). The name, Deir el-Medina, is a modern name but the village is ancient. It was an extraordinary settlement which was founded by the state to house the workmen who worked on the royal tombs for… Read More »“Literacy in Deir el-Medina: Signs, Marks and Tallies” Daniel Soliman

“Harry Burton: Tutankhamun’s Photographer” Ian Taylor

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At the beginning of November Dr Ian Taylor, who is a member of the Essex Egyptology Group, spoke to us about Harry Burton and his photographic skills. He began by setting the scene and introducing Harry Burton – he was an Egyptologist and photographer working in the first half of the 20th Century CE. Whilst he’s pretty much unknown outside the field of Egyptology he took some of the most instantly recognisable photographs in modern culture. His photographs of Tutankhamun’s tomb are well known, and are used extensively in publications (for instance “The Complete Tutankhamun” by Nicholas Reeves uses 100 of Burton’s photographs). Taylor said that his talk was intended to be more about Burton’s photography in general, and not so much about Tutankhamun’s tomb. Although given that was a part of Burton’s work, and given that this is the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, he was, of… Read More »“Harry Burton: Tutankhamun’s Photographer” Ian Taylor

“The Narmer Palette [Again]: Early Egyptian Stone Carving in Practice” Dr Kathryn E. Piquette

The second in person meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group in 2022 was in May, and the talk was given by Dr Kathryn E. Piquette. She had visited us at the EEG before back in 2015 (see my write up here: https://writeups.talesfromthetwolands.org/2015/11/06/new-light-on-the-narmer-palette-with-advanced-digital-imaging-kathryn-e-piquette-eeg-meeting-talk/). Her talk then was about the preliminary results of her research on the Narmer Palette – and this talk is an update on what she’s done since. In 2018 she had the chance to do further imaging of the palette, and this talk was about the analysis she’s done on the more detailed imagery. Piquette said she wanted to present the talk seminar-style with people asking their questions during the presentation, so we went off on some interesting tangents during the meeting. Piquette began by giving us a bit of context for the project and for the Narmer Palette. The work she’d done in 2015 was a pilot… Read More »“The Narmer Palette [Again]: Early Egyptian Stone Carving in Practice” Dr Kathryn E. Piquette

“The chaîne opératoire of Ancient Egyptian glass manufacture: raw materials, production and use” Dr Anna Hodgkinson

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At the beginning of December Dr Anna Hodgkinson gave a talk to the Essex Egyptology Group about her work on glassworking in Ancient Egypt (working with a team of Egyptian and international workers and archaeologists, under the auspices of the Amarna Project and Freie Universität Berlin). She began by setting the scene for use of glass in Egypt and nearby areas like Mesopotamia and the Levant in ancient history. The earliest occurrence of glass in this region is of natural glass, and there are two types of this. The first is natural glass, which is a result of natural events like meteoric impact in the desert. This was used throughout Pharaonic Egypt and was mainly sourced from the western (or Libyan) desert. The other type is obsidian, which is a volcanic glass and was rarely used in Egypt – mostly for tools. The first regular occurrence of artificial glass in… Read More »“The chaîne opératoire of Ancient Egyptian glass manufacture: raw materials, production and use” Dr Anna Hodgkinson

“The Rise of the Theban Necropolis. Current research in the early Middle Kingdom tombs of North Asasif” Dr Patryk Chudzik

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At the beginning of October 2021 Dr Patryk Chudzik, director of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (University of Warsaw) expedition to North Asasif, spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group about the work of the project. He began by reminding us of the context of the site, first geographically (briefly) and then historically. As he said, there was no need to spend much time on the geographical introduction – the Theban Necropolis is one of the biggest archaeological sites in the world and the biggest necropolis in Egypt. The specific part of this enormous site that his Polish team are working on is called the North Asasif, it consists of the slope on the northern side of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. The tombs at the North Asasif are of people who were contemporary with Montuhotep II who had moved his necropolis to the north and the west… Read More »“The Rise of the Theban Necropolis. Current research in the early Middle Kingdom tombs of North Asasif” Dr Patryk Chudzik

“Life on The Edge: Updates from Hierakonpolis’ Elite Cemetery” Renée Friedman

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The talk at the September 2021 meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group was given by Renée Friedman about the latest work at Hierakonpolis. Of course as with everything else in life their work at the site has been disrupted by the pandemic, but they got a full season in early 2020 before the disruption began and hope to get back in November of this year for another season. And she said that the time during lockdown when they weren’t generating new finds gave them a chance both to re-examine some of their older finds and to think about what unprovenanced material in museums might have originally come from the site. Friedman began by noting that she was going to assume that we were familiar with the site itself and with previous excavations that have taken place. I think in general we all were, but if you need a bit more… Read More »“Life on The Edge: Updates from Hierakonpolis’ Elite Cemetery” Renée Friedman

“The Ancient Egyptian Harem: Drudgery or Debauchery?” Dylan Bickerstaffe

Our July 2021 talk at the Essex Egyptology Group was given by Dylan Bickerstaffe – postponed from April 2020 due to the pandemic. This talk complements the “Royal Ladies of the New Kingdom” study day that he presented for us back in April 2019, providing an extra lecture which there wasn’t time to fit in on that day, but also standing alone as its own subject. Bickerstaffe began by talking a bit about the site of Gurob – this is the type site for harems, the one that Egyptologists use to determine what they think is “usual” for an Ancient Egyptian harem. The name of the harem at Gurob is Per-Khener n Mi-Wer in Ancient Egyptian. Per-Khener is the word that we’re translating as harem, and Mi-Wer is the name of the place. The site is now underneath lots of Egyptian army structures that they use for conducting exercises, but… Read More »“The Ancient Egyptian Harem: Drudgery or Debauchery?” Dylan Bickerstaffe

“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

“Wadi el Jarf: The Harbour of King Khufu on the Red Sea Shore and its Papyrological Archive” Professor Pierre Tallet

At the beginning of April Pierre Tallet talked to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about his team’s work at the harbour of Wadi el Jarf including the papyrus archive that they have found at the site. He talked to us live from Cairo – the team are currently on site at Wadi el Jarf in their 11th season of excavations, but he had returned from Cairo for the day to make sure he had a stable enough internet connection for the talk. He began by setting the scene – there are three Ancient Egyptian harbours known on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. As well as Wadi el Jarf there is another harbour to the north at Ayn Soukhna (where he has also excavated), and one to the south called Mersa Gawasis which has been known since 1976. These harbours let us know how the Egyptians got to the… Read More »“Wadi el Jarf: The Harbour of King Khufu on the Red Sea Shore and its Papyrological Archive” Professor Pierre Tallet