10th anniversary celebrations of Young Egyptologists Workshops - Wendy organising celebrations!

Wendy Goodridge has been very busy organising the celebrations for a whole 10 years of Egypt Centre Young Egyptologists Workshops. It was Wendy's aim to make sure that we targetted all groups and these workshops were specifically for Community First Areas. Children learnt literacy and numeracy but more importantly were given greater confidence through the fun, Egypt related activities such as practising embalming on our dummy mummy, playing the ancient game of Senet and handling real ancient Egyptian objects. And how successful they have been. They were even instrumental in the Egypt Centre being runner up in the widening participation section of the Times Higher Education Annual Awards (though we think we should have won!).

You can find out more about the workshops here:
http://www.egypt.swan.ac.uk/index.php/out-of-school-hours-learning/385-young-egyptologist-workshop

And, if you would like to come along to the celebrations let Wendy know.

A centipede, hedgehog or gazelle?

I have been looking anew at W1155a. It is a faience ring bezel (the decorative part of a ring) and comes from the 'Coronation Hall' at Amarna. But what is the motif? It was catalogued in the Egypt Centre around 1997 as showing a centipede (if you imagine it 'upside down' you can see why. I later thought it was a hedgehog. I now think it is a badly executed gazelle with palm branch. This would make it appropriate for the start of a new year. The palm branch symbolised newness or vigour. But, I am not 100% certain. Any further ideas appreciated.

There is more on it here:

http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/25-w1155a

Mandrake fruit

I have been putting mandrake related items on the Egypt Centre website and noted that not only do we have at least one mandrake amulet from Amarna, shown above, but also several pieces of wall plaster from the North Riverside Palace. The North Riverside Palace was possibly the main royal residence at the site (Kemp 2006, 284).

Kemp, B. 2006 Ancient Egypt. Anatomy of A Civilisation.

You can see more of our mandrake items at:
http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/398-mandrake

The missing lion- now found!

EC451 is the head of a figure of a lion deity measuring 3cm in height. The artefact has a hole in the top of its head, presumably for the insertion of a headdress. There are traces of an inked number on the bottom of the piece but it is too damaged to read. 

A very similar, piece is described as coming from a room of a house in Meroe (See Török 1997, Vol 1, 205 and Vol. 2 pl. 168, below). This was one of the pieces Török couldn't track down. The item in the Török volume is illustrated from a Garstang photograph and is so similar to EC451 that it is assumed that EC451 is the same item. Many thanks to the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, University of Liverpool for permission to use this photograph below/left. However, EC451 is much worn compared to the original photograph and there thus remains a slight possibility that the two are different items, though in my opinion, very slight. I think we have the missing lion. 





Most of the items from this area of the house in the Meroe volume appear to be temple furniture or statues of divinities and personal ornaments. Török (1997, 1.205) describes the piece as probably Early Napatan, which dates it to 450-250BC.


The chief lion deity at Meroe was Apedmek, perhaps a form of Amun. It seems likely that this is the deity represented by this faience head.


EC451 was thus probably excavated by Garstang during his 1909-1914 excavations. As far as can be ascertained, the item came to Swansea University in 1971 along with the rest of the Wellcome items which now make up the core of the Egypt Centre, Swansea collection. However, it is not clear how the item was obtained by Sir Henry Wellcome. Various artefacts were given to subscribers to the excavation. The Egypt Centre has a handful of other artefacts from Meroe which are also from Garstang’s excavations. At least some of these were purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome from the MacGregor collection, part of which was sold in 1922 (Sotheby 1922, lot 1321). It is possible that this constitutes one of those items, though the item is not specifically described in the catalogue. It may, therefore, alternatively have either been given to Wellcome for subscription to the Meroe excavations, or may have been purchased from another collection.

We also have other stuff from Meroe, see: http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/310-meroe



References

Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge. 1922. Catalogue of the MacGregor Collection of Egyptian Antiquities, London. 

Török, L. 1997. Meroe City. An Ancient African Capital. John Garstang's Excavations in the Sudan. London: Egypt Exploration Society.  

Amduat scene

Been trying to find out a bit more about this scene. It's a fragment of a Third Intermediate Period coffin. I thought the scene was quite unusual.

It shows the sun-disc with arms embracing the scarab. On either side there is an ankh and the symbols for East and West. At the bottom is the hieroglyph showing the rising sun.

As far as I can tell this shows the last hour of the Amduat. The deceased (evoked by the scarab) travels through the Amduat to be reborn with the new sun. Liptay has written on this.

I only know of one other occurence on a coffin (a coffin from Budapest), does anyone know of more?

For more information see: http://www.egypt.swansea.ac.uk/index.php/collection/300-w648

Objects are magic - some musings

What's the point of objects? Objects are magic.

That is the topic a group of Swansea MA students will be discussing tomorrow. As part of an MA module in which they will learn about how to prepare and deliver an object handling session (thinking about preventative conservation, museum aims and ethics, evaluation, as well as researching the objects). Tomorrow the students and I will be considering why objects are important and particularly, object-centred learning.

Object-centred learning is something that museum curators inevitably think is both vital and neglected. Of course, it is vital if you want a job in museums. The 2010 CIPEG resolution stated: "Whereas CIPEG has recognised that many students no longer receive object- and materials-based training in Egyptology and consequently do not have an appropriate professional knowledge to enable them to work in Museums with ancient Egyptian Collections and that this tendency has been identified in many other museum-relevant disciplines from the sciences to art-history; Accordingly CIPEG resolves to urge ICOM members and supporters to appeal to their colleagues and those in other appropriate institutes and organisations to intensify art-historical and object focused teaching as an essential part of the curriculum for the relevant sciences, social sciences and humanities disciplines". [For those interested in CIPEG, this is the link: http://cipeg.icom.museum/]

Additionally, object-centred learning is something which can bring the past to life, in a different way from traditional learning. So, what can you learn from objects that you can't learn from text? Of course you can't simply divide up objects and test quite so simply - texts are often written on objects. Also, the traditional way of teaching, using text and non-text, may obscure the real differences between objects and texts. So, texts are traditionally studied separate from context but the importance of context in studying artefacts is known to all first year undergraduate students. But this difference is one of tradition, it doesn't have to be this way, so it isn't a real difference. To me the differences between text and non-text are that:

• Text is biased towards the elite; non-text is generally more democratic 

• Artefacts are more multivocal than text, less precise and more messy in meaning

• Artefacts appear more real than text

• Objects are subject to ‘magical contagion’

And, these differences lead to others. So, for example, the very real appearance of artefacts, and their ‘magical contagion’ properties, mean that being in close proximity to ancient objects makes people feel some direct emotional involvement with the past. It's a bit like touching a holy relic. This ‘magical contagion’ (a term used by Nemeroff and Rozin 2000*), can be seen in the way that people will avoid drinking out of a cup if they are told it once contained poison ­– even if that poison has since been thoroughly cleaned out. The contact an object once had with another world enables the otherworld to be ‘magically’ brought into the present world. This leads on to the almost spiritual nature of artefacts. They are almost inexplicably special, but I suppose I would say that wouldn't I? Sometimes museums are criticised for being too like churches. Perhaps they should celebrate their similarity?

What do you think?

*Nemeroff, C. and Rozin, P. 2000 The makings of the magical mind: the nature and function of sympathetic magical thinking. In K. Rosengren, C. Johnson and P Harris (eds.) Imagining the Impossible: the development of magical, scientific and religious thinking in children (1-34). Cambridge University Press.

Renée Friedman and Armant

On Wednesday night the Friends of the Egypt Centre invited Renée Friedman to Swansea to talk about Hierakonpolis and the animal burials there. It was, as predicted, a brilliant talk.

While in Swansea, Renée also took the opportunity to look at the Egypt Centre stuff excavated by Mond from Armant cemeteries 1600, 1700, 1800 and 1900, particularly the Badarian pottery. It's always useful to have researchers visiting our collection as we get to know more about our own artefacts. I had long been amazed by our material from Armant, particulalrly the incredibly fine-walled Badarian stuff, much better made than later material. While it has been on my to do research list, it probably would never have happened. The list is somewhat long! So, I am really happy that Renée found us. She explained that our Armant material was important as it was a site which not only had A-group ('Nubian') and Pan Grave (later material in the Nubian tradition) material and Badarian pottery but also the mysterious 'Saharan' sherds which no one knows a great deal about. We have possibly the most northern collection of Nubian pottery.

The picture above is one of the pieces of Badarian pottery. The holes are where the piece had been mended. We are hoping that in the future, with  Renée to advise, we may have a small display of the Armant material discussing the different cultural groups. Meanwhile, the piece of pottery shown above and a few others from Armant are integrated into our existing display.