Edition - August, 2012
Editorial: First Anniversary Edition
Egyptological is one year old and we celebrate with a bumper edition with eighteen original articles, reviews and albums for your delectation. The Journal It is hard to know where to start! Perhaps with Edition 5 of the Journal. Although three articles have been deferred to the next edition of the Journal we still have […] [more…]
By Kate Phizackerley
Ancient Egyptian Religion, Part 7 — Roots Too Deep to Dislodge
We have been watching the force and flow of three concepts in the stream of Egyptian culture and religion through the course of this series — order, duality, and divine magic — which informed Egyptian thought and practice for more than 3,000 years. The business of this article is to go back into the deep past and look at the roots of Egypt’s religious and socioeconomic culture, and then to test the durability of those formative ideas by examining the only major departure — the 18th Dynasty heresy of Akhenaten — which, by threatening the ancient heritage, actually reconfirmed it. [more…]
By Brian Alm
Arthur Cruttenden Mace – Taking His Rightful Place, Part 2
In Part 1, we discovered how Arthur Mace took excellent advantage of a distinguished family name, overcoming the fact that wealth would not play a part in making his dreams a reality. Through education, an apprenticeship with his distinguished relative Flinders Petrie and a devotion to proper artifact conservation, Mace ensured respect from his peers. In Part 2, I will show how Mace continued to make contributions to Egyptology throughout a prolonged illness. His conservation techniques preserved artifacts spanning the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the pyramids in Lisht. Mace’s final acts of preservation, as he worked in the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh made a name for him, although it may very well may have also contributed to his untimely passing. [more…]
By Garry Beuk
Egyptologically Speaking ~ Dr. Carolyn Graves-Brown, on her work as curator of The Egypt Centre, University of Swansea, UK
The Egypt Centre at Swansea is quite unusual in the museum world in that we have a large percentage (almost a quarter) of our artefacts on display. By comparison, larger museums may only have between 2 and 4% of their collection on display. This is partly because we want to show as much as possible and partly because our display area can be environmentally controlled while the stores cannot. The funding for the new museum in the 1990s was for the display area and not for storage and hence the storage is not as good as we might like. The display area is thus partly ‘open storage’. I decide how the collection is displayed and what is displayed. Of course I do have bosses (curators are often low down in institutional hierarchies), but I am lucky in that I am allowed a lot of freedom. [more…]
Pleasant living in Amarna
Many houses have been excavated in Amarna over the last century. More than five hundred houses were the subject of studies, one of which was how climate was controlled inside buildings. In this article I will describe some of this research. In present-day Egypt the temperature in summer can easily reach 40 degrees Celsius. At night the thermometer gives much lower values. This big difference in diurnal temperatures is one of the characteristics of the desert climate. Other important aspects are the humidity of the air and the low rainfall. These principles are also applicable to the time of the Pharaohs, as modern scientific research has demonstrated. [more…]
By Jac Strijbos
Coptic Heritage in Egypt – Qubbat el-Hawa
There are many important and disappearing sites of the Early Coptic period in Egypt that should at least be considered as world heritage sites. These include Wadi el Natrun in the desert edges of the eastern Delta, the site of an important early Christian monastic tradition, with four functioning monasteries surviving today (and recently put forward to UNESCO for consideration); Kellia, an important monastic site north east of wadi el-Natrun, which demonstrated the ‘bridge’ between the ascetic (lone) monks and the cenobitic (communal). Just as important is the vast Christian cemetery of el Bagawat near the Kharga oasis, with its painted private tomb-chapels, considered to be the oldest and largest Christian cemetery in the world. A few hour’s drive from Luxor it is now an increasingly busy tourist attraction and should certainly be considered for a place on the UNESCO list. [more…]
The Pyramids of Zawiyet el-Aryan
By Kate Phizackerley. Published in Egyptological Magazine, Articles on August 14th 2012 The Pyramids of Zawiyet el-Aryan Together with the mask of King Tutankhamun, the Sphinx and pyramids are probably the most readily recognised of ancient images, with countless images published of the Giza pyramids. Rock cut tombs were designed to be covert, but pyramids […] [more…]
The Egyptian items at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Merseyside
To call William Hesketh Lever an entrepreneur or a visionary would be to pin him down, to imply a limit to the scope and depth both of his personality and his achievements. Lever was both these things, but he was so much else besides. He was a philanthropist, an innovator, a skilful salesman, a marketing genius, politician, eccentric, fanatic, occasionally a tyrant, even on occasion an inventor, a supporter of the rights of women, factory workers and the elderly, an enthusiastic ballroom dancer and always a family man. He made some grim mistakes, particularly with respect to his Pacific and African ventures, but his astonishing contributions to social progress in England are spectacularly praiseworthy, and he was knighted for them. Amongst his various extra-curricular obsessions, which included architecture, ferns and gymnastics, the 1st Viscount Leverhulme was a dedicated collector. [more…]
Anatomy of a Dig: Getting up Close and Personal in Thebes
Before I begin this article recounting my experiences on an Egyptian excavation, I have to point out that protocol dictates that I cannot be specific about the project I worked on. That is only right and proper. When the majority of Egypt’s archaeological record remains unreported and unpublished it would be wrong of me, a novice in the business, to give details of the mission before dig leaders have had an opportunity to report officially to the SCA (the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the body which oversees all archaeological activity within Egypt). Therefore, this account will of necessity lack specific detail, although I hope that the following will provide a reasonable overview of an ‘awesome’ experience (in the true sense of this word); one which will remain with me forever. [more…]
Overview: The Gurob Harem Palace Project Conference
The Gurob Harem Palace Project (http://www.gurob.org.uk), directed by Dr Ian Shaw from the University of Liverpool is collaborative, led by the University of Liverpool, University of Copenhagen and University College London. The conference took place on July 29th 2012 in Liverpool. Originally named Mer-Wer, today’s name derives from the nearby Medinet el-Gurab. It was investigated by a number of previous excavators including Flinders Petrie, William Loat and Guy Brunton before coming, for many years, under military control. The Gurob Harem Palace Project started work at the site in 2005, and their work is ongoing. [more…]