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Talk

“Times of Transition: Herihor and the High Priests of Amun at the End of the New Kingdom” Jennifer Palmer (EEG Talk)

On Sunday Jennifer Palmer came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk about Herihor, who was High Priest of Amun in the reign of Ramesses XI and also called himself King. This is a complicated period of Egyptian history and there are several different views among Egyptologists. Palmer was presenting us with both an overview of the controversies and also her own opinions on the subject. She started by giving us some historical context for the time of Herihor who lived at the end of the 20th Dynasty (which is also the end of the New Kingdom). This dynasty consisted of the Pharaoh Sethnakhte followed by Ramesses III to XI. They all (except Ramesses XI) had fairly short reigns, and there were several invasions of Egypt during this time (for instance the invasion of the sea peoples during Ramesses III’s reign). This was also a period of internal chaos as… Read More »“Times of Transition: Herihor and the High Priests of Amun at the End of the New Kingdom” Jennifer Palmer (EEG Talk)

“New Discoveries at Hierakonpolis” Renee Friedman (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Renee Friedman came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk about the latest discoveries she and her team have been making at the site of Hierakonpolis. First she put the site itself into context. It was an important pre-dynastic Egyptian city, situated just north of modern Edfu, called Nekhen (and later Hierakonpolis by the Greeks). It’s perhaps best known as the site where the Narmer Palette (now in the Cairo Museum) was found, as well as the Scorpion Macehead and the ivories of the “Main Deposit” (which are now in the Ashmolean Museum). By the time of the unification of Egypt (which the Narmer Palette is thought to commemorate) it was already a thriving and important city and the cult centre of the god Horus of Nekhen. By thriving city Friedman means that there is evidence of several thousand people living on the site, in a hierarchically organised… Read More »“New Discoveries at Hierakonpolis” Renee Friedman (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Beyond Indiana Jones: The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Ritual Processional Furniture” David Falk (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday David Falk came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about his research on Egyptian Ritual Processional Furniture. He comes at the subject from a bit of a different angle from the speakers we generally hear – his central question is what can this Egyptian furniture tell us about the Ark of the Covenant, and the context in which the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible) was written. He started by explaining what he wasn’t going to be talking about – when discussing the Ark of the Covenant there is often what he called “an unhelpful dichotomy”. At one extreme there are those theologians who regard the Ark of the Covenant as purely mythological or allegorical, and don’t consider the idea of it being a real object at all. At the other extreme position is the Indiana Jones type of “discussion” about the Ark… Read More »“Beyond Indiana Jones: The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Ritual Processional Furniture” David Falk (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Mysteries of the Amarna Period Royal Tombs: The Kings’ Valley” Dylan Bickerstaffe (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Dylan Bickerstaffe came to speak at the Essex Egyptology Group meeting about the 18th Dynasty tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He structured his talk around the order of discovery of the tombs, and concentrated on those related to the Amarna era (from Amenhotep III through to Horemheb). As well as telling us what is known he spent a lot of time telling us what is less well understood – the facts in need of an explanation (generally giving his own theories and discussing those of others). I shan’t attempt to give an overview of the whole talk, instead I’ll pick out a few things that particularly caught my attention. One of these was KV58 – which was an almost empty tomb (having been robbed in antiquity), but the few bits and pieces left were intriguing. Bickerstaffe believes that this could be the tomb of Nakhtmin, the… Read More »“Mysteries of the Amarna Period Royal Tombs: The Kings’ Valley” Dylan Bickerstaffe (EEG Meeting Talk)

August EEG Meeting

The August meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group is a little different from the other meetings – it’s the AGM, and so instead of an invited speaker we have 10 minute talks given by members and a book auction for charity. This year we had five speakers. After a few technical hitches I was the first speaker and talked about the tomb of Kha and Merit, as we’d seen the items from there in the Turin Egyptian Museum last October. J videoed my talk, and it’s up online here. I was followed by Blake Sellors who talked to us about Hatshepsut and her temple at Deir el Bahri, focussing on how she used the reliefs in the temple to legitimise her rule. Tilly Burton then spoke to us about the image of the Pharaoh trampling his enemies as a bull (or other creature), showing us how the same imagery is… Read More »August EEG Meeting

“The Coffins of the Senior Lector Priest Sesenebenef: A Middle Kingdom Book of the Dead?” Harco Willems

Each year the British Museum host a two day colloquium about an egyptological topic, and a lecture in the evening of one of the days which is the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Egyptology. J went to the whole colloquium this year (about coffins) and I just came along and joined him for the lecture. This was given by Harco Willems, and concerned the texts on a particular coffin from the Middle Kingdom. Willems started by giving us a bit of context for this particular coffin. It was discovered in the 1890s at al Lisht. This site includes the mastaba of Imhotep and Senwosret I’s pyramid, and was initially excavated between 1894 & 1896 by a French team. It has been re-excavated in the 20th Century (I think he said the 1980s), but the tomb of Sesenebenef wasn’t part of this later excavation. The tomb contained the coffins,… Read More »“The Coffins of the Senior Lector Priest Sesenebenef: A Middle Kingdom Book of the Dead?” Harco Willems

Peeling Back the Shadows (SSAE Chesterfield Study Day 12 July 2014)

On Saturday J and I visited Chesterfield to go to a study day being held there by the SSAE called Peeling Back the Shadows. This consisted of two talks (each split into two parts), one given by Chris Naunton about Tutankhamun and one given by Barry Kemp about the latest work at Amarna. We’d originally signed up for it because the holiday we were booked to go on last year was accompanied by Barry Kemp – that holiday got cancelled, but when we signed up for the study day we were signed up for it again for this year so this seemed a neat way to get a preview of our holiday. Sadly it got cancelled again (due to Foreign Office advice about travel to Middle Egypt) and we’re actually going on a different holiday (still to Egypt) this year instead. However, it was still an interesting study day to… Read More »Peeling Back the Shadows (SSAE Chesterfield Study Day 12 July 2014)

“Up the Nile with Amelia” Clive Barham Carter (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Clive Barham Carter came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about Amelia Edwards. She was a rather formidable Victorian woman who was the driving force behind the founding of the Egypt Exploration Fund (which became the Egypt Exploration Society). Carter told us about her life, frequently reading from Amelia’s own writings and illustrated by her own watercolour paintings (as far as possible). Amelia was born in the 1830s in Islington, the only child of rather older parents. She described her father as having “indifferent health” and Carter pointed out that this was probably due to her father’s days as a soldier. He’d been a lieutenant in Wellington’s army in the 1812-1815 campaigns which were particularly harsh. Amelia was a multi-talented child – she painted watercolours, she was a musician and she also liked to read. I think Carter said she was educated by tutors, and… Read More »“Up the Nile with Amelia” Clive Barham Carter (EEG Meeting Talk)

“Music and Dance in Ancient Egypt” Suzanne Lax-Bojtos (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Suzanne Lax-Bojtos came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about music and dance in Ancient Egypt. She started off by reminding us that we have no idea what Egyptian music actually sounded like, because they had no musical notation. We also need to remember that Egyptian art is not representative of what is but rather symbolic of what they wanted things to be (in particular in a funerary context). However, with those two caveats in mind it’s still possible to glean quite a lot of information about the types of instruments the Egyptians played, and the sorts of contexts they played their music in. And Lax-Bojtos spent the rest of her talk showing us what we can learn, with the help of a lot of pictures. The Egyptians had a variety of different instruments available to them, and it seemed like most of them were… Read More »“Music and Dance in Ancient Egypt” Suzanne Lax-Bojtos (EEG Meeting Talk)

“The Eloquent Peasant” Linda Steynor (EEG Meeting Talk)

On Sunday Linda Steynor came to the Essex Egyptology Group to talk to us about a Middle Kingdom Egyptian poem called “The Eloquent Peasant”. She started her talk by telling us the plot of the story. This poem follows an Egyptian small market trader, Khunanup, who travels from his home on the outskirts of Egypt to the capital. The journey is not easy, and on his way there he has to travel along a very narrow path between the Nile and the farmlands. Partway along he meets a bully who has hung his washing across the path – in order to get past Khunanup accidentally walks on the washing (and his donkey eats a small amount of grain). The bully beats him, and confiscates his donkey & goods, an over the top response to such a minor transgression. Khunanup continues on to the capital where he petitions Rensi, the Chief… Read More »“The Eloquent Peasant” Linda Steynor (EEG Meeting Talk)