Hi ,

Welcome to March'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; To Have and To Heal in The EES's Egyptian Archaeology; I book in a #NotEgyptology day out
• Photo of the month: New photo from Tiny Egypt of an amethyst scarab
• A dose of inspiration: Tom Hiddleston introduces us to the Egyptian Book of the Dead
• Wise words: from pioneering photographer Berenice Abbott

Updates

Tiny Egypt

A screenshot of the members'-area dashboard currently in development

Over the last couple of weeks, my primary focus for Tiny Egypt has been to start developing the members' area on my website for the Tiny Egypt Society.

You may remember the short survey I sent out to you all recently – a big thank you to those of you who responded!

Looking through the list of replies, the most popular features were a photo gallery and project-specific blog posts, so these have gone top of the list.

I've been working hard on my website, adding pages and content, and I'm not far off being able to launch.

I'm really very excited to get this aspect of the Tiny Egypt Society going, so as soon as it's ready, I'll ping an update out to you.

Members of the Tiny Egypt Society are the backbone of this project; I really couldn't keep it going without their amazing support.

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 and help shape the project, you can do so by joining the Society from only £1.00 per month (first month half price). You can find out more on the Tiny Egypt project page:

Visit the Tiny Egypt project page

To Have and To Heal in Egyptian Archaeology

For those of you who are members of The EES, you should have received your latest edition of Egyptian Archaeology. If you open it to page 28, you'll see Manchester Museum's To Have and To Heal project is featured in the article about how Egyptology has responded to the pandemic.

There are two photos on the page: my photo of an amulet of Sekhmet, photographed for the project; and one I took around 7 years ago when Campbell treated my two girls to a tour around the museum stores at Manchester. I snapped this photo of him showing them a page from the Amduat, and it captures such a lovely moment.

My girls were so pleased to see their faces here (getting some 'Egyptology fame' 😊) that on Friday, my youngest took the magazine to school for show-and-tell.

If you're not a member of The EES, they do amazing work supporting the archaeological relationship between the UK and Egypt; find out more on their website:

The Egypt Exploration Society website

A day out with the Lifeboat Station Project

On Tuesday, I'm off across the water to Hoylake on the Wirral to see Jack Lowe at work on the Lifeboat Station Project. The project is Jack's quest to photograph every RNLI station in the UK using wet collodion photography, for which he uses glass plates, a proper old Victorian-style camera with bellows, and a decomissioned ambulance called Neena.

Because of the pandemic, he's been unable to visit stations for two years, so we're all excited that he's now able to resume his travels.

I will, of course, be taking my camera along with me, so I'll report back again next month. In the meantime, check out the project's website:

The Lifeboat Station Project website

Photo of the month

This month's photo of the month is one of my newest additions to Tiny Egypt.

It's an amethyst scarab in the collection at the Garstang Museum of Archaeology. If you've visited the Garstang, you might recognise it, as it's usually on display in the Death and the Afterlife gallery, and it's one of those pieces that I was really excited to get my hands on.

It was found at Abydos and dates to the 12th Dynasty (1991–1778 BCE). It measures in at just 2.7 cm in length, and you really can't quite appreciate the detail until you get it over a lightbox and in front of a macro lens.

Unlike many scarabs, it doesn't have an inscription on the base, but it does have some of the classic markings of a scarab beetle, which you can see around the front and over its back.

Although I've worked with translucent objects before, and scarabs, I've not photographed a translucent scarab, so it was exciting to see how it'd work.

I think it's come out quite well, wouldn't you say ... 😊

A dose of inspiration

This month's dose of inspiration is an audio track (on YouTube) of Tom Hiddleston – best known for playing Loki in the Marvel Avengers movies – introducing us to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Originally featured in a British Museum exhibition, Tom tells us about some of the ancient Egyptians' beliefs about the afterlife and the Book of the Dead (or 'The Book of Coming Forth by Day', as the Egyptians called it).

Tom has such a beautiful, relaxing tone of voice, I could listen to him all day. Quite frankly, he could tell me an asteroid was about to hit Earth and destroy us all, and I'd probably be OK about it ... 😂

Listen to Loki

Wise words

This month's wise words come from photographer Berenice Abbott:

Photography helps people to see.

Berenice was born in 1898, and is best known for her documentary photography of New York during the interwar period.

However, between 1958–1961, she produced photographs for the Physical Science Study Committee project based at MIT and for Educational Services Inc., making images of wave patterns in water and stroboscopic images of moving objects.

She believed that photography could be the 'friendly interpreter' between the scientific world and the 'layman', demonstrating concepts in physics that might be otherwise hard to teach to high-school students.

In this vein, I feel a sense of comradeship with what Berenice was doing. It's my intention to use Tiny Egypt to introduce people to objects that are small and have to fight to capture attention, and to showcase them in a new and exciting way. To use photography to create a bridge between the objects I photograph and those that might otherwise miss them.

I want to help you to see.

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