The Significance of the Crossed Arms Pose in the New Kingdom – Part 1
Amongst the many miracles through which delicate objects are preserved from ancient Egypt down into modern times, perhaps the most remarkable is the survival of the mortal remains of a virtually complete sequence of New Kingdom rulers. These kings, along with a number of queens and lesser royalty – who date from the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty through to the start of the Twenty-Second Dynasty – are generally referred to as the Royal Mummies, and were for the most part recovered from the Royal Cache of 1881 (in tomb TT320), and the Second Royal Cache of 1898 (in tomb KV35, the tomb of Amenhotep II). [more…]
Labib Habachi. A Life to Know…. Part 1
The story of Labib Habachi was predictable (Figure 1). For centuries Egyptians suffered from the prejudicial views of foreigners arriving in their country. Some came in search of treasure, others in pursuit of knowledge and many simply to pass time because they had the wealth to do so. Half-hearted efforts were made by a few to train Egyptians as excavators, such as when a University was opened in 1869 in Bulaq. Lacking support and adequate funding it proved unsuccessful, closing its doors in less than five years. [more…]
By Garry Beuk
Replicating the tomb of Tutankhamun. Conservation and sustainable tourism in the Valley of the Kings
The closure of the tomb of Tutankhamun, to be replaced by an exact facsimile, has been much reported in the UK media and highlights a number of issues and raises some interesting questions. Although this is largely a discussion about the tomb of Tutankhamun, the tomb cannot be discussed in isolation and is put into the wider context of conservation issues across the royal cemeteries of the West Bank and broader globally-relevant issues of sustainable tourism. [more…]
An Exploration of the term ‘inw’ from the Early Dynastic Period to the New Kingdom
By Barbara O’Neill. Published on Egyptological, Magazine, Edition 8. 18th April 2013 Introduction: The term inw has been described as ‘vexatious’ in its complexity, touching as it does on a range of intricate subjects outside the scope of this article. The following article does not claim to cover all aspects of inw. A reading [more…]
Marianne Brocklehurst and the West Park Museum, Macclesfield – Part 1
By Andrea Byrnes. Published in Egyptological, Magazine Edition 8, 18th April 2013 Introduction Marianne Brocklehurst was the daughter of a wealthy Victorian silk manufacturer (figure 1). On the one hand she was, by all accounts, charming, bright, and full of curiosity, with a love of travel and history. She was articulate, an engaging writer [more…]
Revisiting Heqanakht
By Barbara O’Neill. Egyptological Magazine, Edition 8. April 18th 2013 Introduction The following article developed out of an earlier research project on Heqanakht and the society in which he lived (http://bit.ly/SgPsFZ). Heqanakht’s papyri are now owned by The Metropolitan Museum of New York, and although permission to publish images of the papyri arrived too [more…]
Merneith – The First Queen of Egypt?
By Kate Phizackerley. In Egyptological, Magazine, Edition 8. April 18th 2013. With considerable attention lavished upon the Eighteenth Dynasty, popular TV documentaries, and with a much-visited Mortuary Temple at Deir el-Bahri, many people are aware that the female ruler Hatshepsut reigned as “King” and Pharaoh during the New Kingdom. Many people also know that [more…]
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…]