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Talk

“Pyramid Evolution and Construction in Ancient Egypt” Stuart Baldwin (EEG Meeting)

The talk at the Essex Egyptology Group meeting this September was given by one of our members – Stuart Baldwin. He’s interested in the development of the Egyptian pyramids over time, and in how the Egyptians managed to build such monumental structures with such early technology. His talk presented what he’s learnt about the subject, as well as several entertaining asides (which I generally shan’t try and reproduce in this writeup, translating someone else’s jokes from speech to text is an exercise doomed to failure!). Baldwin started by giving us a bit of an overview of Egypt from a geological perspective – the country sits on the north-eastern corner of the African plate, near the boundaries with the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate. The northern part of Egypt around Cairo is blessed with many of the rocks and other things that the Egyptians used. To the west of the… Read More »“Pyramid Evolution and Construction in Ancient Egypt” Stuart Baldwin (EEG Meeting)

“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)

“Howard Carter: An Alternative View of the Man Through His Art” Lee Young (EEG Meeting Talk)

At the beginning of this month Lee Young came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk about Howard Carter as an artist (rather than as an archaeologist). She is an independent researcher associated with the Griffith Institute in Oxford where the bulk of Carter’s notes and archives are kept. Although she was talking to us today about Carter she said that her real research interest is in the female artists whose works are represented in the Griffith Institute collections. She began by sketching us a quick verbal picture of Howard Carter’s character: he was contrary, stubborn, opinionated and sometimes rude. He was short-tempered and didn’t suffer fools gladly. He also had a chip on his shoulder about his humble origins – going so far in later years as to re-write his background into something that he felt was more “suitable”. But to offset this picture of a proud man Young… Read More »“Howard Carter: An Alternative View of the Man Through His Art” Lee Young (EEG Meeting Talk)

“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)

“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)