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Taylor, Ian

“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

“Perceptions of Seth” Ian Taylor

Photo by John Patterson, of a (heavily restored) statue of Seth & Horus (not shown) crowning Ramesses III now in the Cairo Museum

At the beginning of December Ian Taylor, one of the members of the Essex Egyptology Group, talked to us about the subject of his PhD: Seth. He began by talking about the modern image of Seth*, before turning to the evidence for how the Ancient Egyptians thought about this god. The common modern perception of Seth is as the dangerous enfant terrible of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon who brought death to the gods by murdering Osiris & came into conflict with Horus by usurping the throne. This comes to us by way of Plutarch, whose “Isis and Osiris” was the only version of the myth known before the translation of hieroglyphs. *As an aside Taylor mentioned here that while the name of Seth is different in different places and at different times he was going to stick to using “Seth” throughout his presentation. In Plutarch’s text Seth along with his… Read More »“Perceptions of Seth” Ian Taylor