It has been a good start to the year and a memorable one for the small party (10 of us) who made it to Egypt for a two-week tour of some of the most important sites. Ten days in Luxor were followed by three full days in Cairo. The programme was very full as you will see if you look at the pictures elsewhere on this website.
Following on from the Egyptian tour we were visited by our first speaker of 2024, Sarah Griffiths who spoke on the subject of the Middle Kingdom, a period of developing art and literature as well as military success and the development of mineral resources. The talk was broad in its scope and yet fascinating in its detail.
April saw us visited by Ian Trumble who spoke on the topic of ancient Egyptian textiles. Ian is curator of Bolton Museum which is famous for its textile collection – a reflection of local industrial activity coupled with the activities of some very wealthy industrialists local to that area. Anyone who has not been to the Bolton Museum should definitely make it a priority to get across to see it. (You will see there a really good, very accurate, replica of the tomb of Tuthmosis III).
Our “members only” online talk in March was a review of our visit to Egypt and I hope that our slides gave some idea of the scope of our visit.
And then, on the first of May, a group of thirteen of us visited the Petrie museum in London. The Petrie museum is to be found at University College, and is guardian of 80,000 artefacts. They can only display 10% of these but there is plenty to see amongst the 8,000 objects on display – including the oldest woven dress in the world and even a rat trap to protect the ancient home! ( And it’s a live trap!!) We managed to fit in a quick visit to the British museum and finish the day with a nice meal at Pizza Express – that’s the second time we have ended up at Pizza Express so I guess it is now a tradition!!
Our website continues to develop, thanks to the commitment and hard work of our Webmaster Simon Marriott. If you log on as a member you will now find a map showing the location of all our members as well as a new cartouche quiz – a bit fiendish this one! Please do log on when you visit the website, otherwise you will miss its finer features – we think it is rather good.
And so forward to May 14th when our member, Diana Hayden, will deliver a “members only” online talk on baboons in Egyptian art and religion, and then to June 15th when we will be welcoming Dr Huw Twiston-Davies to the Cooper Gallery for his talk “Singing With the Dead”.