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“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 Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu: Birth Place and Burial Place of the Primordial Deities” Lucia Gahlin

At the beginning of July 2022 Lucia Gahlin spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group about the Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu. She began by telling us that as our talk length is normally 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes she was going to be able to augment the lecture that she usually gives with even more information on the cult of Amun, which is so important for understanding the Small Temple. So the first half of the talk before our coffee & cake break was to be primarily about Amun and the second half would move on to the history of the temple itself in more detail. But first Gahlin began with some orientation – even tho, as she said, most people in the room probably already knew the basics about where Medinet Habu is etc she still likes to make sure any newcomers are not left adrift. The… Read More »“The Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu: Birth Place and Burial Place of the Primordial Deities” Lucia Gahlin

“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

“Vessels of Innocence: Child Pot Burials in Predynastic Egypt” Sara Ahmed Abdelaziz Mostafa

At the beginning of April Sara Ahmed Abdelaziz Mostafa gave a talk to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about her research on Predynastic pot burials of children. She opened with a photo from a completely different culture – of buddha statues dressed up in infants’ clothes, which are intended to guide the souls of babies to nirvana. She told us that she’s interested in how societies think about the souls of children, and this struck her as an example from a culture different to the one she’s studying and the one she lives in yet still showing concern and care for little children after their deaths. Pot burials are a feature of many different periods of Egyptian history – Mostafa showed us an image of the Petrie Museum pot burial (which is on display in the museum) which was found at a predynastic site but it is a later… Read More »“Vessels of Innocence: Child Pot Burials in Predynastic Egypt” Sara Ahmed Abdelaziz Mostafa

“Understanding ‘Composite’ Forms of Egyptian Divine Beings”, Jordan Miller

At the beginning of March 2022 the first in person meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic took place! Our speaker was Jordan Miller who is doing his DPhil at Oxford University (he was in the gap between submitting his thesis and doing his viva when he spoke to us). He opened by telling us that one of his hooks into Egyptology when he was younger was the amazing imagery – both captivating and confusing. And from this came his interest in these composite divine beings that is the subject of his talk. The composite forms seen in Egyptian art are most famously human bodies with animal heads. But you do also see other examples like a mix of two or more animals, or of a human or animal with an inanimate object as part of their body. An example he showed us of… Read More »“Understanding ‘Composite’ Forms of Egyptian Divine Beings”, Jordan Miller

“The First Pharaohs” Professor Aidan Dodson

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At the beginning of February 2022 Aidan Dodson gave a talk to the Essex Egyptology Group about the topic of his most recent book – “The First Pharaohs”. He noted that the use of “Pharaoh” in this title might be seen as anachronistic because the Egyptians didn’t use the term we translate as pharaoh for their kings until the New Kingdom. However it’s now become the standard English word we use for kings of Egypt in general hence why he’s sticking to it! He began by setting the scene – the subject of the talk was to be the very earliest kings of Egypt from the time of unification through to the end of the 3rd Dynasty and the beginning of the 4th Dynasty. There were two main themes to his talk. Firstly, this era can be seen as the prototype era of Egyptian history – lots of things that… Read More »“The First Pharaohs” Professor Aidan Dodson

“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