Friends Catchup No.8: 🥇 Another Tiny Egypt first look
May 29, 2022 4:01 am
Hi ,
Welcome to May's edition of my Friends' Catchup, and a big hello to those of you who've recently joined up 👋
In this month's newsletter:
- Updates: Tiny Egypt update; my blog post for Manchester Museum; 'Love your burial ground' week
- Photo of the month: First look at a photo of a seal impression from Amarna
- A dose of inspiration: Moon Knight on Disney+
- Wise words: stating the obvious about archaeology, from Moon Knight
Updates
Tiny Egypt
As you know, I launched the new project website a few weeks ago, which I was so pleased to get done.
I have, of course, launched, then had to focus my time in on the other two projects I've been doing - the book for the Egypt Exploration Society, and the photography project at the Garstang Museum 🤨
However, the EES book is coming to a close for me now, so I've been putting some hours back into Tiny Egypt again over the last week.
I shared an update with members about my research trip to Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, including some snaps of some particularly interesting objects I found, and thinking about the difficulties smaller museums without the budget for specialist curators can have when identifying objects.
I've also I used a bit of my lunchtimes whilst up at the Garstang to make my own photographs of a couple of objects I was photographing for them: a gold heart plaque (a small square of beaten gold with Spell 30B of the Book of the Dead etched into the surface) and rephotographing a small ivory label from the Naqada Royal Tomb, which bears the name of Hor-Aha, one of the earliest kings of Egypt. I'll be posting images to the members'-only photo gallery once I've had a chance to work on them.
If you'd like to be one of those project patrons who see my new photos before anyone else does, get behind-the-scenes news, member-only content, and help shape the project, you can do so by joining the Society from only £1.00 per month (and you get your first month half price). You can find out more on the Support Tiny Egypt page:
To Have and To Heal blog post for Manchester Museum
To Have and To Heal was a really important project for me. Not only was it the first commissioned work I got after life ground to a halt during the early phase of the pandemic, it's also a project that focusses on supporting wellbeing and mental health after the impact of isolation and loss caused by Covid.
So, I wrote a post for Manchester Museum's 'Hello Future' blog about the photography. The post includes a couple of my favourite objects from the project and how I went about photographing them.
Love your burial ground week, 6th-12th June
The week of the 6th-12th June is 'Love your burial ground week'. Wandering around graveyards with my camera is something I really enjoy doing (when I have the time or energy!). Exploring, looking for interesting graves, and picking out details with my camera is surprisingly soothing and distracting, and a really great way to start to connect with our ancestors.
So, although I've been up to my eyeballs in it recently, I'm going to make the effort to get out to a local graveyard one day during the week with my camera and see what I can find.
If you feel motivated to do so, I'd love for you to try to do the same. And it can be a great way to find a bit of Egyptology, especially in countries like the UK. We have lots of Victorian-era obelisk-shaped gravestones, for starters, as well as as few grander offerings.
One of my favourites is the cemetery at Beckford's Tower in Bath. It's a few minute's drive from where I grew up, and has some beautiful gravestones, including that of William Beckford himself.
The Egyptianised grave of William Beckford, with his Tower in the background
I have a whole collection of photos from a visit last summer, which I'll put into a blog post at some point (again ... when I have the time! 🤪).
I'm also hoping to revisit the grave of Amelia Edwards at Westbury-on-Trym on the outskirts of Bristol over the summer, when I'm back down that way again. So if I get there, I'll share some photos with you.
But, in the meantime, I also have photos and a blog post about the Tomb of the Gambler, a pyramid-shaped grave in Liverpool city centre, not far from the University of Liverpool. It has a rather strange legend attached to it ...
Photo of the month
This month's photo of the month is another first look for you from Tiny Egypt.
It's a clay seal impression from the north suburbs of Amarna, and measures just 2.7 cm tall. It's in the collection at Bolton, where there's a number of these seal impressions from Amarna. They really jumped out at me when I first started researching the collection, because when you first look at them, they just look like little clumps of dried mud. It's not until you get the light right that all these tiny, delicate little images and hieroglyphs reveal themselves to you.
I love this particular seal impression for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's so obviously 'Amarna'! Although the information that came with the piece is scant, I think the figure could well be Nefertiti. For one, they're sitting in front of a large 'nefer' hieroglyph, and secondly, the crown they're wearing is very much like Nefertiti's famous headwear.
What do you think?
The other thing I love about it is that it's one of those wonderful objects that has a direct human connection. If you look above the impression itself, around the top-left corner, those swirly patterns you can see is a fingerprint. And I love finding fingerprints on objects. It's such a close, personal reminder that these objects were made by, and belonged to, real people.
Now that I've shared this photo with you, I've put it up in the public gallery on the Tiny Egypt website. If you want to have a better look at it, then head on over to the page and click/tap on the photo to open up a larger version:
A dose of inspiration
This month's dose of inspiration is Marvel's Moon Knight. You may or may not have heard of Moon Knight. For those that haven't, it's a story set in the Marvel universe (Marvel Comics created superheroes such as Spiderman, the Hulk and Iron Man) which introduces us to Steven Grant, a rather awkward, Egyptology-obsessed man working at the giftshop at the British Museum, who finds himself tumbling into the world of Egyptian deities and their human avatars, and a nemesis in the shape of a rather sinister Ethan Hawke.
I won't say too much about it here, because if you're one of those people who like to watch without seeing the trailers first, I don't want to be that person who spoils it for you.
But, I will say this. I loved it. It's great fun (if a little dark at times), and they've taken their Egyptology seriously. The lead director is Mohamed Diab, an Egyptian screenwriter and director best known for Cairo 678, and the lead female character is played by Egyptian-Palestinian actor May Calamawy. Much care and research has gone into both the ancient Egyptian iconography and mythology, as well as depictions of modern Cairo.
If you want more information about the show's production, there's a comprehensive article on Wikipedia about it.
If you want to watch Moon Knight, it's available only on Disney's streaming service, Disney+. If you're not already subscribed, you can sign up for a month (£7.99 in the UK). It's only 6 episodes, so it's quite quick to get through (yes, I totally binged-watched it over just a few days ...). And if you don't have access to Disney+ on your TV, you can watch it online on your computer, or via your phone or tablet.
But, the main article I wanted to share with you today is on The Conversation, titled Moon Knight – an Egyptologist on how the series gets the gods right, and is penned by Egyptology's own Claire Gilmour. Read it to get an introduction on the deities, and how it compares to their depiction in the show. Honestly, you could probably write an entire dissertation on the topic, but Claire's piece is a great introduction. Hopefully we'll see more on this in the future.
Wise words
This month's wise words are spoken by a character in Moon Knight credited only as 'Forger':
Archaeology. One big mess of obsessive bookworms.
And what do I have to say about that? 'Well, duh!' 😂
Well, that's it for another month. Feel free to hit reply and let me know what you've been up to, or if you have any recommendations for the Dose of Inspiration and Wise Words section of the newsletter. Or share your Egyptology and heritage photos with me. I'd love to hear from you!
Until next month,
Julia