An EXTRA exclusive MAES meeting for September – all welcome!

Wojciech Ejsmond & Marzena Ozarek-Szilke:  The Warsaw Mummy Project and the world’s first Mummy Mummy

The Warsaw Mummy Project aims to gain information on the state of health, medical practices, and burial traditions of the ancient Egyptian population through a comprehensive examination of ancient Egyptian mummies preserved at the National Museum in Warsaw. Recently the collection increased in number with the discovery of a new individual. Thanks to X-ray and CT analysis it appeared that one mummy in the collection was pregnant. The surprise was even greater because it was thought earlier to be the body of a male priest. It is the first such known case of an ancient Egyptian pregnant mummy. During the lecture, we would like to present her story and new facts since she is the subject of our ongoing research.

Wojciech Ejsmond is an archaeologist working at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences; Marzena Ożarek-Szilke is a physical anthropologist, palaeopathologist, and archaeologist who, with Wojciech, who is co-Director of the Warsaw Mummy Project. Both are graduates of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

Free to MAES members. Guests welcome £5 via Eventbrite here:

We kick off our new season of MAES on Monday 13th September with a fascinatinglecture from Chris Naunton, which will be online via Zoom (and not at our normal venue as previously advertised). Online lectures are free to members! You can join here. Guests welcome – tickets £5 via Eventbrite.

The Lost Baths of Cleopatra and Other Disappearing Monuments

The Baths of Cleopatra? They were seen and recorded by numerous travellers, explorers and early Egyptologists but then seem to have disappeared from view. Since the nineteenth century almost no-one has written about them and even fewer people seem to have seen them. Have they disappeared, and if so, how can this have happened? Alexandria seems a special case so many of its most famous monuments including the tombs of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra having disappeared. But in fact, a similar story can be told of numerous sites and monuments around Egypt.

Dr Chris Naunton is an Egyptologist, writer and broadcaster and author of Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt and Egyptologists’ Notebooks. He has presented numerous television documentaries, including The Man Who Discovered Egypt (BBC4 2012), Secrets of King Tut’s Treasures (Channel 5, 2018) and Egypt’s Lost Pyramid (Channel 4, 2019). He was Director (CEO) of the Egypt Exploration Society from 2012 to 2016 and President of the International Association of Egyptologists from 2015 to 2019.

Our next lecture and sadly the last of the current season is on Monday 12th July.

[Fear not. A new and exciting series is being put together for our next season, starting in September.]

Eric Cline: 1177 BC – Egypt and the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

1177 BC was year that saw the collapse of once flourishing civilisations across the Mediterranean region – and Egypt did not escape the devastation. New studies of lake sediments, stalagmites in caves, and coring from lakes and lagoons, in regions stretching from Italy and Greece to Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran, all point ever more conclusively to the occurrence of a megadrought that impacted much of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean beginning ca. 1200 BC and lasting between 150 and 300 years. The notion is inescapable that we would do well to heed what happened to the flourishing kingdoms of the Aegean, Egypt, and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Collapse at the end of the Bronze Age, for we are not as far removed from those days as one might think; the COVID-19 pandemic has just exposed a vulnerability of modern societies to one of the forces of nature and should remind us of the fragility of our own world.

Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics, History, and Anthropology, the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University, in Washington DC. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, Getty Scholar, and Fulbright Scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. Eric is an active field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at Megiddo (1994-2014), where he served as co-director before retiring from the project in 2014, and another ten seasons at Tel Kabri, where he currently serves as Co-Director. Eric is the author or editor of 20 books and nearly 100 articles; translations of his books have appeared in nineteen different languages.

Members free, £5 for guests via Eventbrite.

Our next lecture will be on Monday 14th June 2021. Entitled ‘Wonderful Things’, it explores Fifty Years of the Wellcome Collection in Swansea and will be presented by Dr. Ken Griffin. This talk will present the history of the collection, including many of the highlights. It will also feature a virtual tour of the Egypt Centre.

Please note this lecture starts at 7:30pm, not at 8pm. Sign in from 7:15 onwards. Members free, £5 for guests via Eventbrite. http://bit.ly/ManchesterAESocZoom

Fancy a tour of the Egypt Centre Swansea’s stores without leaving your lounge?

Join MAES for our June lecture on Monday 14th!Ken Griffin will be talking about “Wonderful Things: Fifty Years of the Wellcome Collection in Swansea” and giving us an online tour of the collection by the wonders of mobile phone and zoom!

With almost 6,000 objects, the Egypt Centre (Swansea University) contains the seventh largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the UK. The majority of these objects originate from the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome, which was dispersed by the Wellcome Trustees in 1971. This talk will present the history of the collection, including many of the highlights. It will also feature a virtual tour of the Egypt Centre.

Dr Ken Griffin is the Collections Access Manager at the Egypt Centre, Swansea. He is a former lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University. His PhD research on the rekhyt-people has recently been published by Golden House Publications. Ken has excavated extensively in Egypt and Sudan over the last decade, including at Abydos and the Valley of the Kings.

Free to MAES members – link will be emailed round. Guests welcome – you can book (£5) via Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/maes-june-online-meeting-ken-griffin-swansea-egypt-collection-tickets-151462762199?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

How did the Kushite pharaohs of Egypt take on the Assyrian empire? What impact did the Babylonians have on Israel and Judah? How was the powerful Persian empire stopped in its tracks?

This is the story of invasion and conquest, rebellion and survival in Egypt and the Near East, leading to the end of the native Egyptian pharaohs, the sacking of Thebes, the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of Israel’s national independence.

Join us this Saturday (22nd May) 9:30am to 4:30pm to discover the changes brought about over this tumultuous period of 400 years!

A Study Day taught by Michael Tunnicliffe & Sarah Griffiths in association with the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society. All welcome. MAES members £20; guests £30

For more information and to download a booking form, click here:

Manchester Ancient Egypt Society monthly lecture

A joint lecture with KNH Centre

José-Ramón Pérez-Accino: A Place Badly Concealed. Newest Research on the Royal Cache Wadi, Luxor.

After the discovery of the royal mummies in 1881 and the Lansing excavation campaign in 1920, the Royal Cachette Wadi has traditionally been considered an archaeologically empty site. Since 2017 the C2 Project has undertaken two field campaigns at the site. The results permit to dispute the validity of the previous definition of the valley as a concealed and hidden location. In both campaigns, structures not previously described have been identified, such an area of worship with the presence of a monumental image on the mountain, offering tables and prayers and semi-caverns in the mountain with evidence of human action.

José is Co-Director at C2 Project – the Royal Cache Wadi Survey, Professor of Ancient History and Egyptology at the Complutense University of Madrid and Director / President of the Complutensian Egyptology Society, an academic society aimed at promoting Egyptological studies.

Free to MAES members; guests welcome £5 via Eventbrite: http://bit.ly/MAESZoomLectures

MAES extra April online meeting. Monday 26th April 7:30pm. Everyone welcome to attend!

Maria Nilsson & John Ward: Recent Discoveries at Gebel el-Silsila – New Kingdom material

Located some 60 km south of the grand Edfu Temple, and 65 km north of the stunning golden landscape of modern day Aswan, Gebel el-Silsila – “Kheny/Khenu” to the ancients – played an important role within the overall development of Dynastic Egypt. While the site was a vital strategic trading location, marking the boundary between Egypt and her southern neighbour Nubia, one of Egypt’s “nine bows” (chief enemies), it was first and foremost the source of a bountiful supply of prime Nubian sandstone for the building of pharaonic monuments throughout Egypt, particularly during the New Kingdom. In this lecture, Maria and John will reveal their latest New Kingdom discoveries, exploring the Temple of Sobek, the necropolis, Tutankhamun’s workers village and new finds from the quarries of Amenhotep and Ahkenaten.

Dr Maria Nilsson and John Ward are Directors of the Gebel el-Silsila Project , and are based at Lund University, Sweden, where Maria is currently Marie Curie Researcher. They have appeared in numerous television documentaries and have written a series of articles about their work at the site for Ancient Egypt Magazine.

Free to members – link will be emailed to you. Guests welcome £5 via Eventbrite here:

Egypt & Israel and the Rise of the Empires

The rise and fall of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians

An Online Study Day with Sarah Griffiths and Michael Tunnicliffe

In association with the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society

The Late Period (c. 747 – 332 BC) – Egypt’s Silver Age,  but great changes were taking place all over the Near East, with the rise and fall of great empires such as Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. The rise of these expansionist empires would also have important consequences in the land of Israel. This is the story invasion and conquest, rebellion and survival over 400 tumultuous years.

Saturday 22^nd May 2021 9.30am– 4.30pm Via Zoom           MAES members £20; Guests £30

Download a booking form here: