Daily Photo - Seriously off-topic in Kew Gardens

Forgive! There was no blog update yesterday because I was at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, for which I have a season ticket. I got back late and I had a dozen other things to do. I'll be back to Egypt-themed photos tomorrow.

It was a very overcast day yesterday, constantly threatening rain but never quite delivering it. My friend Donna brough her mother, aunt and grandmother. Her grandmother was a complete revelation - we walked for nearly four hours with only two short breaks and we had to keep up with her! Speaking to Donna by phone later we agreed that we had been seriously out-walked and outclassed by an 86 year old. Fabulous.

Just to bring things slightly more back into the realm of ancient Egypt, the Royal Botanic Gardens is not just a wonderful garden but an internationally important research facility. They have an anient Egyptian collection of their own, details of which, with photographs, can be found on their website:

The Collections house items from many important sources. Specimens excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie and Guy Brunton include about 80 specimens from the Roman Cemetary at Hawara, and 25 late Middle Kingdom specimens, mostly wreaths, from Lahun. The Collections also house around 30 New Kingdom specimens from Thebes, and Geoffrey Martin's excavations in the 1970's contributed 68 Ptolemaic specimens from North Saqqara. Additional material comes from Tell el Amarna, Faras, Roda, and Carter's excavations in the tomb of Tutankhamun.