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Other People’s Tales Write ups of Egypt related talks and trips About Tales from the Two Lands ↗ Photos by Tales from the Two Lands ↗ Other People’s Tales Write ups of Egypt related talks and trips Navigation Menu Navigation Menu About Tales from the Two Lands ↗ Photos by Tales from the Two Lands ↗ Flinders Petrie – from Stonehenge to Jerusalem” Lorna Oakes by Margaret February 3, 2023 January 31, 2023 In the middle of January we began the 2023 programme of talks at the Essex Egyptology Group with a Zoom lecture given by Lorna Oakes. Her subject for the talk was William Matthew Flinders Petrie – she began by noting that she wasn’t going to be able to cover all aspects of his career in a single talk, so she was going to concentrate on some of the main archaeological sites that he investigated. Flinders Petrie was the pioneer of modern archaeological methods in Egypt, and this was a great contrast to the work of his contemporaries. His main interest was to halt the destruction of the remains of Egyptian monuments, he’d been horrified by what he saw while he was working at Giza – at the same time Mariette was working at the Valley Temple of Khafre and Oakes quoted us something that Petrie later wrote about that excavation.… Read More » Flinders Petrie – from Stonehenge to Jerusalem” Lorna Oakes Literacy in Deir el-Medina: Signs, Marks and Tallies” Daniel Soliman by Margaret December 16, 2022 December 14, 2022 At the beginning of December Dr Daniel Soliman spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about his work on literacy at Deir el-Medina, a topic which he told us was very dear to him. He has mostly been using ostraca to investigate the topic – there are many that are marked with signs and tally marks rather than the hieroglyphs and other scripts that we are more familiar with. Soliman began by giving us a brief introduction to the site of Deir el-Medina, which is situated in the western Theban mountains (and he had a lovely photo of the village from an angle I’ve not seen much, clearly showing it nestled in the hills). The name, Deir el-Medina, is a modern name but the village is ancient. It was an extraordinary settlement which was founded by the state to house the workmen who worked on the royal tombs for… Read More » Literacy in Deir el-Medina: Signs, Marks and Tallies” Daniel Soliman Harry Burton: Tutankhamun’s Photographer” Ian Taylor by Margaret December 2, 2022 November 26, 2022 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 ‘God is his potter’: Disability and Bodily Difference in Pharaoh’s Court” Kyle Jordan by Margaret September 6, 2022 September 5, 2022 At the beginning of August Kyle Jordan spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group via Zoom about the work he has been doing for his Masters degree at University College London on disability and bodily difference in Ancient Egyptian society. The title of the talk is intended to capture the broadest extent of his dissertation, so he began by telling us what the specific question he’s addressing is: What does the presence of disability and bodily difference tell us about the formation of early court societies in Egypt?”. As a disabled person himself he’s particularly interested in disabilities in the ancient world, and he hopes to bring his lived experience to the study of ancient Egypt in particular. The literature thus far on the subject is pretty sparse, and he thinks that previous scholars haven’t found it worthy of much consideration, but he thinks that the study of disability brings something… Read More » ‘God is his potter’: Disability and Bodily Difference in Pharaoh’s Court” Kyle Jordan The Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu: Birth Place and Burial Place of the Primordial Deities” Lucia Gahlin by Margaret July 26, 2022 July 23, 2022 At the beginning of July 2022 Lucia Gahlin spoke to the Essex Egyptology Group about the Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu. She began by telling us that as our talk length is normally 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes she was going to be able to augment the lecture that she usually gives with even more information on the cult of Amun, which is so important for understanding the Small Temple. So the first half of the talk before our coffee & cake break was to be primarily about Amun and the second half would move on to the history of the temple itself in more detail. But first Gahlin began with some orientation – even tho, as she said, most people in the room probably already knew the basics about where Medinet Habu is etc she still likes to make sure any newcomers are not left adrift. The… Read More » The Temple of Amun at Medinet Habu: Birth Place and Burial Place of the Primordial Deities” Lucia Gahlin Body Image and Structuring the Identity: An Analysis of Body Ornaments in Predynastic Egypt” Maryan Ragheb by Margaret June 21, 2022 June 21, 2022 The June 2022 speaker at the Essex Egyptology Group was Maryan Ragheb, who is a 6th year PhD candidate at UCLA (California), and she told us about the research she’s doing that will be the subject of her dissertation. She’s at the point in the process where she has quite a bit of her data and has drawn some preliminary conclusions but still has more questions than answers. As her title says, she is interested in what can be discovered about identity expression in early Egyptian history from their body ornaments. So she began by defining identity” for us. In essence this is how an individual demonstrates themselves to part of a broader group or community, and indicates their place within it. You can have more than one identity and most of us do. Identity expression is a performative action – it is something you choose to do, and it… Read More » Body Image and Structuring the Identity: An Analysis of Body Ornaments in Predynastic Egypt” Maryan Ragheb The Narmer Palette [Again]: Early Egyptian Stone Carving in Practice” Dr Kathryn E. Piquette by Margaret May 24, 2022 May 21, 2022 The second in person meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group in 2022 was in May, and the talk was given by Dr Kathryn E. Piquette. She had visited us at the EEG before back in 2015 (see my write up here: https://writeups.talesfromthetwolands.org/2015/11/06/new-light-on-the-narmer-palette-with-advanced-digital-imaging-kathryn-e-piquette-eeg-meeting-talk/). Her talk then was about the preliminary results of her research on the Narmer Palette – and this talk is an update on what she’s done since. In 2018 she had the chance to do further imaging of the palette, and this talk was about the analysis she’s done on the more detailed imagery. Piquette said she wanted to present the talk seminar-style with people asking their questions during the presentation, so we went off on some interesting tangents during the meeting. Piquette began by giving us a bit of context for the project and for the Narmer Palette. The work she’d done in 2015 was a pilot… Read More » The Narmer Palette [Again]: Early Egyptian Stone Carving in Practice” Dr Kathryn E. Piquette Vessels of Innocence: Child Pot Burials in Predynastic Egypt” Sara Ahmed Abdelaziz Mostafa by Margaret...