EES Newsletter 4

Dear friends,

The Spring field season in Egypt has finished and all our teams have now returned to their respective bases in the UK and elsewhere. This seems like a good opportunity to let you know what the Society has been up to therefore!

Fieldwork

Three teams worked in the field this spring as part of The Society’s Delta Survey. Firstly, Jeffrey and Patricia Spencer spent a short season of surface and geomagnetic survey at Yetwal wa Yuksur in the Northern Delta, close to the site of their previous work at Tell el Balamun (subject of a fascinating seminar at Doughty Mews in February – photos are here). As many of you will know Patricia agreed to keep us all informed of her work throughout the season via short updates sent from her phone via text message, and longer updates sent by e-mail to the London office. These all appeared on a specially created page of updates (http://deltasurvey.tumblr.com/) which received almost 500 page views in just over two weeks, which suggests that many of you were keeping well informed of developments! Indeed, feedback received was very positive and we are hoping to repeat the exercise for other projects in future.

Penelope Wilson’s work at Sais continued during March and April and on 4 April Penny held an open-day at the site for an enthusiastic group of EES members led by the Society’s Cairo representative, Mrs Faten Saleh (photos). Penny has now installed information panels – in both English and Arabic – at the team’s magazine in the centre of the village of Sa el-Hagar, so that visitors and locals can get a better idea of the archaeology in the area and the work of the project. The magazine also doubled as a museum for the purposes of the open-day and members were treated to an exclusive viewing of the finds, and team-members were on hand to answer questions and explain the material that has been discovered.

Joanne Rowland’s work at Gebel Ramla continued in April and May this year, and was very successful, with numerous discoveries of very early date (Palaeolithic to Neolithic) being made. Jo also made use of the facility to send updates to our Delta news page by text message and these now appear above Patricia’s posts. Jo’s season this year received funding as a project of the Amelia Edwards Group, members of which heard an early report on her work at a special event at Doughty Mews on 21 May (see below).

Another of the Amelia Edwards Projects, the Karnak Land and Waterscapes Survey, was led in the field during March and April by Angus Graham. Members’ donations allowed Angus to continue the study of ceramic material with the aim of shedding further light on the possibility that the temples of Karnak were built on an island. The significance of the project’s findings is clearly recognised by other teams in the area now, with the result that Angus has also looked at a variety of other issues connected with the relationship between the river and archaeological sites in the East and West, and the team’s interpretations are already causing us to revise our understanding of the development of the region’s monuments.

Pamela Rose led a final season of study of the material excavated at Qasr Ibrim and now kept at Shellal. This incredibly rich site has yielded a vast quantity of material of many different kinds, the significance of much of which is yet to be realized. To illustrate the point Mr Joost Hagen, a doctoral student at the University of Leiden, recently gave a lecture to members at Doughty Mews on a series of Coptic and Arabic documents discovered by the Society at the site in 1972. It is very gratifying to think that material uncovered by the Society over such a period of long time can still yield fascinating ‘new’ results. The Society’s contribution to Nubian studies was recognized recently by the award of a medal from the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums of Sudan in recognition of its contribution to the UNESCO rescue campaign half a century ago. See here for further details.

Lastly, Janine Bourriau and Peter French have spent a season at the Society’s house at Saqqara studying and recording the remaining ceramic material from the Society’s excavations at the Anubieion, in preparation for publication.

Excavation Fund Projects

In addition to the above, three projects which received financial support from the Society’s Excavation Fund in 2009, undertook their work in the first few months of 2009 at, respectively, Ismant el-Kharab (directed by Olaf Kaper), The Panehsy church at Tell el-Amarna (Gillian Pyke), Sesebi (Kate Spence) and Tell Basta (Daniela Rosenow).

The Directors of all the Society’s Excavation Fund and Amelia Edwards Projects will all be presenting the results of their work at our annual conference, ‘New Explorations’ at SOAS on 20-21 June (see here for full details). Tickets are still available for this event (priced at £65 for members, and £75 for non-members) and you are urged to apply as soon as possible in order to avoid missing out. Please contact the Society or use the application form here.

For this event only we have a *special offer for students*: we are now offering tickets at £30 for EES student members and £35 for non-members. This offer applies only while tickets are still available so again, for those of you who are students, please do get in touch to reserve your ticket as soon as you can or use the application form here.

Amelia Edwards Evening

As mentioned above the Amelia Edwards Group members were invited to a special event at Doughty Mews on 21 May as a thank you for their generous support of the first round of projects. The donors were given the opportunity to talk to staff, the Treasurer, Paul Cove, Project Directors and others about the Society’s work and to contribute their own ideas for the Society’s future work. Angus Graham, Jo Rowland and Chris Naunton each gave short presentations, and we were very glad of the opportunity to thank the Group members in person and delighted by the feedback we received. Photos of the event are here.

A wonderful addition to the collections

Earlier the same day Professor Kenneth Kitchen had visited Doughty Mews to hand over a painting by Amelia Edwards which he has generously agreed to donate to the Society. This scene of an unnamed pharaonic site by moonlight had been passed to Professor Kitchen by Miss Rosalind Moss (of Porter and Moss) in 1970. We are very grateful to Professor Kitchen for this most generous donation which represents very significant contribution to the Society’s collections, and a highly appropriate one in light of the celebration of the first round of Amelia Edwards Projects that evening. As we are now entertaining more visitors to Doughty Mews than ever before we are hoping to find the resources to refurbish parts of the premises in the next few years and to display this and other paintings in the Society’s collection so that visitors can see more of this wonderful material.

Interview with Professor Kitchen now online

Professor Kitchen had of course been the first interviewee of the Society’s Oral History Project and, as promised in the last e-newsletter, a short video clip from the interview is now available online, here. You are all warmly encouraged to watch the clip and to let us have your thoughts and comments either by posting them to the Youtube page or by e-mailing them to the Society. We are very much hoping to make more footage of this kind available online in due course and would value your thoughts while the next clips are still in preparation

Events

The Society has as usual been very busy hosting events in the last few months. A round-up of lectures and seminars etc. held in the early part of the year was posted on our news page in March and since then we have held a seminar on ancient Egypt in Museums (an encore performance from Ashley Cooke and Karen Exell arranged due to popular demand), and another on the First Intermediate Period led by Glenn Godenho.

Furthermore, on 26 March 2009, the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the EES hosted a day of short presentations and discussions about the problems and priorities for future archaeological work in the Nile Delta at the British Council in Cairo. The workshop was attended by 54 participants of many nationalities who contributed to lively and wide-ranging discussions. A report was posted on the Society’s news page here.

Photos from this and all our recent events are available here.

Forthcoming events include a recently arranged lecture which we have not previously advertised in either paper or e-newsletters:

· Beheira Survey: New light on old discoveries in the Western Delta of Egypt

By Mohamed M Kenawy.

The lecture will take place at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 3 June, at Doughty Mews (full address below).

Mr Kenawi is a PhD student at the University of Siena & University of Trento, Italy.

Entry is free of charge but numbers are limited to 30 so application for tickets as normal is required (please contact the Society to reserve your place or use the application form here). We look forward to seeing some of you there!

eBay

The second auction of duplicate Egyptology books on eBay finished on 15 May. Again, most of the items in the sale attracted a good number of bids and the Society stands to raise well over £1,000 which will be put towards the purchase of new books for the library. We have no plans at present to sell as many books in one go as in the last two sales, however we will be using eBay on a semi-regular basis in future, in the first instance by re-listing the books that were left unsold at the end of the last sale – at lower prices in most cases! Bidding on these items is open already so please do take another look at the Society’s profile at eBay.

Thanks as always!

We have added some 400 e-mail addresses to our database since the last e-newsletter was sent which is very encouraging. We hope you all enjoy this issue as much as the previous ones!

Many thanks also to those of you who have taken the time and trouble to write to us with your thoughts and comments on our various activities in the last few months - your encouragement is very much appreciated. Our ‘New Explorations’ conference this summer gives us an opportunity to showcase the fieldwork and research we have been able to undertake this year despite the withdrawal of the British Academy grant and we would be very keen to know what think of the work; to those of you who are able to attend this or any of our other events in London and elsewhere please do come and say ‘hello’ and share your thoughts, and for those of you who aren’t, please feel free to drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you!

Best wishes,

The EES team.

The Egypt Exploration Society
3 Doughty Mews
London WC1N 2PG
Tel. +44 (0)20 7242 2266
www.ees.ac.uk

Registered Charity No.212384. A limited company registered in England No.25816