An update from John Wyatt

Thanks very much to John Wyatt for both cheering me up and giving me all sorts of information today when we chatted by phone.

Long term visitors may remember that when the Bloomsbury Summer School was running a few months ago I did some lecture summaries, and one of those was a summary of John Wyatt's lecture entitled Animal Worlds.

John specializes in ancient Egyptian birds and animals, and has been actively engaged for some months in the background research for a new illustrated book on the subject of birds in ancient Egypt.

John and the artist who will be illustrating the book have just returned from a research trip to Egypt, where they went up to the tombs at Beni Hasan (see the Beni Hasan page on Su Bayfield's website to get see a description and some photographs of the site). John's team had SCA permission to photograph the tombs, so I am very much looking forward to seeing them.

As John progresses with the book I will post updates about any of the many fascinating details that he has been uncovering. One of the interesting aspects of his research concerns the availability and use of different colours at different times in Egypt. For example, pink was not available in the Old Kingdom, so where a bird had pink plummage another colour would have been needed as a subsitute. This fact alone can make identifying which birds were which quite a challenge because the colours in painted scenes may not correspond to the exact colouring of the bird itself.

John and his research team have found that telescopes are of immense help when trying to get a better look at the details of individual birds for purposes of identification. The telescopes are supported on tripods and give a much better look at some of the more distant reaches of the tombs. Different lighting was found to change the perception of an image completely, which is something that rock art experts have also discovered. If you are tempted to emulate John's use of telescopes then be warned that at Beni Hasan each tripod incurrs an additional fee.

On the subject of fees John warns that the Mallawy Museum are currently charging photographic fees per artefact, at LE150.00 per item. This means that if you take a photograph of a shelf with 9 artefacts on it you will be charged LE150.00 x 9! I dread to think what a whole room would cost :-). He says, however, that at the moment it is still okay to photograph in the Nubia Musum in Aswan free of charge, without flash.

The subject of the mew Nebamun gallery at the British Museum has been much discussed in the recent past, and I very much look forward to seeing the new gallery. John has been doing some work on the species represented and I hope to be able to add some details to the blog at some point. Ancient Egypt magazine has an article in the current edition about the Nebamun paintings and how they have been conserved and studied.

John and I are both interested in the impact of climate change on different species, and hope to get together to discuss this matter in greater depth in the New Year. I hope to be able to update the blog with some of our discussions.

The Bloomsbury Summer School will be running again in 2009, and John has an entire week 's course dedicated to the Fauna of ancient Egypt. As anyone who has been reading the blog will know, I am fortunate enough to have regular involvement with the Summer School and am never shy of giving it a good plug! So here are details of the course John will be delivering next summer:

6 – 10 July
FAUNA OF ANCIENT EGYPT: REMAINS AND REPRESENTATIONS
Mr John Wyatt

John Wyatt's guest lectures for recent BSS courses have been so well received that we have invited him back to direct his own course. As you will see from his biography, he is the perfect person to teach such a course. By examining the art, artefacts, mummies, bone remains, hieroglyphs and other evidence from Ancient Egypt, from prehistoric times through to the end of the Roman period, this course will determine what species of mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles, amphibians and insects were present, and whether climate changes (not only desertification) led to the appearance or disappearance of any of these, and if so, when. Religious significances, use and abuse, and what the Ancient Egyptians believed about particular species will also be covered. Lectures will combine with visits to the Petrie, Grant and British Museums to provide a full and varied learning experience taught by a knowledgeable and charismatic expert in his field.