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egypt

TV Watched While We Were Away (Almost All Egypt Related)

While we were visiting J’s parents we watched a few documentaries about ancient Egypt (or related subjects) that they’d recorded from TV channels we don’t have. A bit of a mixed bag – one of them I’d’ve switched off if it was just me (J wasn’t as annoyed by it), but the others were better. Ultimate Tut Ultimate Tut was a documentary about Tutankhamun, presented by Chris Naunton (who’s the Director of the EES), so J had heard of it and was looking forward to the chance to watch it. The focus was on how he died, and how come his burial was so small compared to other Pharaohs, although it also covered a lot of what’s known of the history of the period too. It presented a new theory for how Tutankhamun died – perhaps run down by a chariot on the battlefield. The evidence here comes from the… Read More »TV Watched While We Were Away (Almost All Egypt Related)

Neues Museum, Berlin

As well as the Amarna exhibition (post) J and I spent quite a lot more time in the rest of the Egyptian collections in the Neues Museum. Where we could take photos, and I did – you can find them on flickr and some highlights in this post. Floor 1 (Ground Floor) As you go into the museum the Egyptian collections start on the right hand side with a room they title “Prologue” that covers where they got their material – i.e. the German excavations in Egypt. I’m not, as it happens, particularly interested in 19th Century colonial behaviour by the European nations so I was more looking at the various objects in their own right. Notably this room had some of the original ceilings of the museum, which are painted blue with gold Egyptian style decoration. I particularly liked a pair of objects where they had the vase they… Read More »Neues Museum, Berlin

Im Licht von Amarna (Exhibition at the Neues Museum, Berlin)

Back in March J & I visited Berlin (post) and the main purpose of our visit was to go to the exhibition at the Neues Museum about Amarna – Im Licht von Amarna (In the Light of Amarna). We went in March because the exhibition was originally scheduled to end in mid-April, but I think it’s been extended till early August now. I’ve finally finished processing my photographs from the Neues Museum, originally I was going to post about both the exhibition & the rest of the museum in the same post. However it was turning into a bit of a monster post, so I’ve split it into two and in this post I’m going to talk about the Amarna exhibition (where photography wasn’t permitted). 100 Jahr Fund der Nofretete The premise for this exhibition is that it is 100 years since the famous bust of Nefertiti was found, and… Read More »Im Licht von Amarna (Exhibition at the Neues Museum, Berlin)

“Marriage in Ancient Egypt” Lucia Gahlin (EEG Meeting Talk)

Last Sunday Lucia Gahlin came to the Essex Egyptology Group meeting and talked to us about marriage in Ancient Egyptian society. She started off by explaining that the talk was originally prepared around the time of the Royal Wedding because she was requested to give a talk about Egyptian Royal Weddings somewhere, to be topical. It wasn’t actually possible for her to do that, because there’s no evidence for a ceremony that could be called a wedding in Ancient Egypt even though there were partnerships that we can call marriages. So marriage in Ancient Egypt is the subject of the talk. First she spoke a little bit about marriages of the Pharaohs. It’s known Pharaohs had one or more wives through the whole period of Ancient Egyptian history (obviously …) but it’s only in the New Kingdom and later that they begin to be distinguished from one another by titles… Read More »“Marriage in Ancient Egypt” Lucia Gahlin (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Monuments to Amun-Ra ‘King of the Gods’: The Temples of Thebes” George Hart (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday George Hart came to the Essex Egyptology Group to give us a talk about the temples at Thebes. He started by talking about the god to whom most of them were dedicated: Amun-Ra. Amun was a creator god from at least Old Kingdom times – he is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts on the wall of Unas’s pyramid. He starts to rise to prominence during the Middle Kingdom and Hart showed us a few reliefs from this era and used them as illustration of Amun’s name & iconography. The name “Amun” literally means “hidden one” or “self-concealing one”, it’s not so much a name as a reference to the god. Hart said the belief was that if Amun’s true name were ever known then the people who heard it would drop down dead, it was that powerful & that much of a secret. This is also why the… Read More »“Monuments to Amun-Ra ‘King of the Gods’: The Temples of Thebes” George Hart (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Mummies, Asps and Far Too Much Eye Make-up: Ancient Egypt in the Cinema” John J Johnston (EEG Meeting Talk)

I’ll admit I was a little dubious in advance of May’s Essex Egyptology Group meeting – I don’t really watch many films, so a whole talk about Ancient Egypt in the cinema had the potential to be completely incomprehensible or boring or both. Thankfully, it was neither 🙂 And this was down to the fact that the speaker, John J Johnston, was very entertaining and good at explaining what he was talking about even if you hadn’t ever seen the film in question. His talk had three main strands, which were those listed in the title – mummies, asps (i.e. films about Cleopatra) and far too much eye make-up (everything else). The first half concentrated on films about mummies. I knew there was a film called “The Mummy”, what I hadn’t realised is that there were several films with that name each of which came complete with sequels. Johnston took… Read More »“Mummies, Asps and Far Too Much Eye Make-up: Ancient Egypt in the Cinema” John J Johnston (EEG Meeting Talk)

EEG Trip to the Petrie Museum

On Saturday about 20 of us from the Essex Egyptology Group went to the Petrie Museum for a tour. We were shown round first by Tracey Golding, the Visitors Services Officer, who gave us an introduction to the museum. It is part of UCL and was founded to house the collection of items that Petrie dug up in his excavations in Egypt. There are 80,000 objects in the collection, of which about 10% are on display. To fit everything into the relatively small space that they have in the museum (about a quarter to a third of the space is shown in the first photo below) the cases are very full and the labels are pretty minimal. However every item is numbered and you can look them all up on the museum website and learn more about it. Golding pointed out some of the highlights of the collection including some… Read More »EEG Trip to the Petrie Museum

Assorted Documentaries About Ancient Egypt

J’s parents have Sky and so have TV channels that we don’t, so they record anything about Ancient Egypt that they notice & then we watch several of the documentaries when we visit. I’m not going to write these up in detail, instead here are some capsule reviews. I wasn’t always paying full attention to the programmes, so I’ve possibly misremembered stuff. Ramesses III: Behind the Myth of the Pharaoh Programme about the harem conspiracy against Ramesses III which led to his murder, and the resulting trial & execution of the conspirators. Focussed on how the papyri tell us a very different story to what the monuments do – the court of Ramesses III was a paranoid one concerned with threats to the Pharaoh and his authority both magical & physical. The monuments are the confident record of a Pharaoh with no enemies, and a secure succession, so if there… Read More »Assorted Documentaries About Ancient Egypt

“Farming & Agriculture in the Nile Valley” Victor Blunden (EEG Meeting Talk)

Victor Blunden’s talk at the EEG meeting this Sunday wasn’t called “What the Ordinary Ancient Egyptian Did All Day” but I think that would’ve been a pretty good alternative title 🙂 Early on his talk he pointed out that 90% of the population of Ancient Egypt were peasant farmers, who grew the food that the country survived on. I thought this was particularly good timing for this talk because we’d just been watching Joann Fletcher’s programmes on the BBC about Kha and Merit, where she was referring to them as “ordinary Egyptians” and I felt they were high status even if they weren’t part of the elite. So here was a talk about the real ordinary Egyptians, focussing on their farming methods. Blunden opened his talk by discussing how the Egyptians divided the year into three seasons – the inundation (ahket, June-Sept), the growing season (peret, Oct-Jan) and the harvest… Read More »“Farming & Agriculture in the Nile Valley” Victor Blunden (EEG Meeting Talk)

Ancient Egypt – Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings

The second part of Joann Fletcher’s series about Kha and Merit who were buried in Deir el-Medina 3500 years ago covered their deaths, burials and beliefs about the afterlife. She opened the programme by explaining that death was the major employer in Deir el-Medina, and that country-wide it was one of the primary industries of Egypt. The village at Deir el-Medina was inhabited by the craftsmen and their families who worked on the tombs and temples for the Pharaohs. But it wasn’t just Pharaohs who were believed to live on after death – it was anyone who’d made the right preparations, and who’d had the right rituals performed at their funerals. So even relatively ordinary Egyptians would spend as much as they could on getting the right things said & done. If I have one criticism of this programme it’s that Fletcher kept referring to Kha as “an ordinary Egyptian”… Read More »Ancient Egypt – Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings