Hi ,

Welcome to December's edition of my Friends' Catchup, and a big hello to those of you who've recently joined up 👋

As always, Christmas preparations become frontline activites in December, especially in a household with two children, so it's not been quite such a productive work month. But, that's OK; we all need to take things a little easier from time-to-time!

In this month's newsletter:

• Update: Tiny Egypt update; Christmas shopping; working with the EES
• Photo of the month: detail from a gilded statue of Osiris
• A dose of inspiration: Dr Jenny Cromwell's Ebony and Meretseger: On a New Kingdom Herd of Cows
• Wise words: Mark Twain speaks words that will resonate with all archaeologists

Updates

Tiny Egypt update

Tiny Egypt is progressing. I've been out to the Garstang twice during December to look for objects to add to my photography wishlist. I now have over 340 objects 😲 on my list, though I may narrow it down again.

I looked around the galleries, and through card catalogues and boxes of scarabs, amulets and funerary cones, and found so many interesting things.

Pandemic allowing, I'm off to Manchester in the second week of January, and hope to book in a session at the Garstang in the second half of the month to get going with some photography (keep your fingers crossed for me!).

Members of the Tiny Egypt Society have already had the lowdown on my Garstang sessions, including a few snaps of objects that've caught my eye. If you'd like to become a patron of the project by joining the Society from only £1.00 per month (first month half price), then amongst other things, you'll get access to the archive of past emails I've sent to members, so you can catch up.

• Tiny Egypt project page

Christmas shopping

I made a number of sales from my online shop in December, which really helps support me this time of year, so thank you so much to those of you who chose to do some of your Christmas shopping with me.

T-shirts and mugs seem to have been the most popular items, closely followed by cushions and hoodies.

I'm also excited that the award-winning art and photography printhouse, The Printspace, has just launched an online integration compatible with the web software I use for my store. So, in the New Year, I'll start work on setting up the integration, which means I'll be able to offer a wider choice of high-quality print options. And, not only are The Printspace widely recognised as experts in their field, they're also carbon neutral, which is such an important consideration for us now.

Working with the EES

As some of you may be aware, the Egypt Exploration Society are publishing a reprint of A Thousand Miles up the Nile, by the Society's founder Amelia Edwards, and I'm working with the EES to produce the book. My contribution is designing the book layout and doing the typesetting (laying the text and images onto the page to create the print file for the printers).

This is an important republishing of the book; it's not just a straight reprint, but it will include new material written by EES director Dr Carl Graves and Dr Anna Garnett of UCL to provide context to and commentary on the language and attitudes in the book, which is so important, considering the current conversations about colonialism and Western attitudes in archaeology.

Book production isn't a major part of my work, and probably not something you particularly associate with Tetisheri. However, I've typeset several of the EES's Excavation Memoirs over the last eight years or so, and it's rather enjoyable work to add to the mix.

So that will also be keeping me busy in the first half of 2022.

To find out more about the project:

• The EES's appeal page
• Free Zoom event in March 2022 - Discussion Panel: Unpacking Amelia

Photo of the month

This month's photo is of detail from the base of a gilded statue of Osiris.

I photographed this statue for Manchester Museum's To Have and To Heal project. Unfortunately, the statue has lost its head, but it still has much to offer. On each side of the base are inscriptions, and I particularly like this one. It shows alternating tyet-knots and djed-pillars; symbols associated with Isis and Osiris respectively.

The statue's only 23 cm tall, so these decorations on the base are only a few centimetres wide.

The sides were actually quite difficult to photograph; I had the statue laid down flat - easier and safer to do than trying to stand it on the ancient, damaged pegs. However, balancing it on its side was not easy; because the side of Osiris himself is narrow, the statue kept trying to tip forwards, and I had to prop it up using pieces of plasterzote foam.

Campbell Price recently wrote one of his object biographies on his blog about this piece:

• Object Biography 29: A gilded statuette of Osiris (acc. no 4849)
• You can see full-res versions of all my To Have an To Heal photos on Flickr

A dose of inspiration

BM EA 9997/1 © Trustees of the British Museum (additional red markings by Jenny Cromwell)

This month's dose of inspiration is Dr Jenny Cromwell's blog post, Ebony and Meretseger: On a New Kingdom Herd of Cows.

In this article, Jenny talks about an ancient Egyptian administrative text, which contains a list of cows and their names.

Whilst we often admire the big things, like the Egyptians' feats of architectural engineering, it's the little things such as this - that Egyptians named their cows - that's the human connection.

Read Jenny's post here:

• Ebony and Meretseger: On a New Kingdom Herd of Cows

Wise words

A fun one from Mark Twain to finish the year with, and something that I think many of us can relate to:

The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.

So, that's me for this month. How about you? How's your month been? I hope you were able to enjoy Christmas, all things considered.

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. I'd love to hear from you!

And so, all that remains is for me to wish you all a happy New Year, and hope that 2022 is the year that brings more light to our lives, after a very difficult two years.

Until next month,

Julia