In 2012, Manchester Ancient Egypt Society celebrated its Silver Jubilee, making us one of the longest established Egyptology groups in the UK.
At the core of our activities are the ten monthly meetings we arrange each year, when leading Egyptologists visit Manchester specially to share with us the findings of their latest research.
We also organise Egyptology conferences and trips to museums with Egyptology collections – all part of a varied annual programme of activities aimed at anyone with an interest in this fascinating ancient culture.
Manchester Ancient Egypt Society’s online study day this Saturday!
Piety, Archaism and Excavations: A Glimpse of Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period
with Roger Forshaw, Jennifer Turner and Robert Morkot
Join us as we explore the lesser known Third Intermediate Period – 400 years of politically divided rule following the end of the Ramesside kings – a period that saw significant developments in culture, in art and in religion.
Discover the ‘Treasures of Tanis’, find out how the ancient Egyptians communicated with the gods, explore the wonderful archaising ‘art’ of the Libyan and Kushite periods, and discover how Psamtek I reunified Egypt, ushering in the rule of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
Everyone welcome – booking essential.
Saturday 26th October 9:30am – 4:30pm (GMT+1) Via Zoom
MAES members £19 (via form emailed to you; Guests £30 via Eventbrite
The next online meeting of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society is next Monday, 14 October with Kyle Lewis Jordan:
“God is his Potter”: Disability in Ancient Egypt
Today, disability is broadly understood to be a category that applies to people with a wide array of complex health conditions and impairments, which also has many complex layers of social and cultural interaction. Many of these conditions and impairments have been around as long as humanity itself. So how did Ancient Egypt, one of the world’s oldest societies, recognise and react to individuals that we would today call disabled? In this talk, Kyle Lewis Jordan will provide an insight into new and rapidly developing studies in this area, sharing his own reflections as a disabled archaeologist and curator, and the reasons why he believes deeper studies of disability in the ancient past are integral to fully appreciating the richness of the tapestry that is humankind.
Kyle Lewis Jordan is an early career archaeologist and curator who specialises in the study of disability in antiquity, with a particular focus on Ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Upon completing his studies at UCL, Kyle went on to work as a curator for the Ashmolean Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, where he curated two displays based on his research. He is currently curating a temporary exhibition for the Verulanium Museum in St. Albans on health and disability in the Roman world. Born with Cerebral Palsy, Kyle has been passionate about Egyptology since the age of six, and has had the lifelong ambition of being Director of the British Museum since he was ten.
Free to MAES members (you’ll receive an email link). Guests welcome via Eventbrite
Doors open 7:30pm (GMT+1) and the lecture begins at 8pm. See you there!
Manchester Ancient Egypt Society’s online study day in October!
Piety, Archaism and Excavations: A Glimpse of Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period
with Roger Forshaw, Jennifer Turner and Robert Morkot
We have an exciting online study day lined up in October, exploring the lesser known Third Intermediate Period – 400 years of politically divided rule following the end of the Ramesside kings – a period that saw significant developments in culture, in art and in religion.
Discover the ‘Treasures of Tanis’, find out how the ancient Egyptians communicated with the gods, explore the wonderful archaising ‘art’ of the Libyan and Kushite periods, and discover how Psamtek I reunified Egypt, ushering in the rule of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.
Everyone welcome – booking essential.
Saturday 26th October 9:30am – 4:30pm (GMT+1) Via Zoom
MAES members £19 (via form emailed to you; Guests £30 via Eventbrite
We kick off the new season of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society on Monday 9th September with a Zoom lecture from Aidan Dodson!
Like the vast majority of rulers of ancient Egypt, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut had vanished from human consciousness by the end of antiquity, with a few garbled echoes to be found in the surviving excerpts of Manetho. It was only with the decipherment of hieroglyphs that they began to emerge from the shadows. The novel status of Hatshepsut as both a woman and a king caused much head-scratching and bizarre theories before her position in history became generally accepted. Both pharaohs were great builders, and we will also trace how excavations have revealed their monuments and what they can tell us about the careers of the rulers themselves.
Professor Aidan Dodson has taught at the University of Bristol since 1996, and is a former Chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society. A graduate of Liverpool and Cambridge Universities, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003, and is the author of some thirty books. ‘Thutmose III & Hatshepsut, Pharaohs of Egypt: their lives and afterlives’ is due to be published by the American University in Cairo Press at the beginning of 2025.
Everyone welcome. Free to MAES members (who will receive an email link). Guests (£5) can book via Eventbrite here:
Doors open 7:30pm GMT+1. The lecture begins at 8pm.
Current Research in Egyptology (CRE) is an annual postgraduate conference set up to facilitate research and promote bonds between British and international universities conducting research in Egyptology.
This year’s conference is being held at the University of Liverpool from 2-6 September and MAES members will be there representing the society. We will also be selling second-hand Egyptology books, so come and bag a bargain!
On Monday 8th July we have our final lecture of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society – and our last ever venue lecture as we move to zoom-only for the new season! We are pleased to welcome back an old friend – Renee Friedman, who will be giving the Bob Partridge Egyptology Lecture in memory of our late Chair.
Hierakonpolis 40 Years On: My Favourite Discoveries
In 1983 Renee Friedman joined the Hierakonpolis Expedition, and over the years, progressing from pot-girl to site director, had the privilege to be part of many remarkable discoveries that have enhanced our understanding of ancient Egyptian civilization in the predynastic as well as later times. In this talk she reflects on her favourite (if not always the most famous) discoveries from over the past 40 years and shares some of the personal stories that surround them.
Dr. Renée Friedman has directed the expedition to Hierakonpolis since 1996, fielding annual campaigns to explore various aspects of this vast site, the large of the Predynastic period still extant and accessible anywhere in the Nile Valley, Former Heagy Research Curator at the British Museum, she is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.
Everyone welcome. Free to MAES members – £5 for guests on the door. To be held at the Pendulum Hotel, Sackville Street, Manchester, M1 3BB. Doors open 7:15pm. The lecture begins at 8pm.
This Monday we explore part of Egyptian history that is often neglected! Long after the last of the pharaohs, what happened to Egypt when the Roman empire divided? Michael Tunnicliffe has the answers! Zoom lecture – all welcome. Doors open 19:45 GMT+1 (slightly later as we have an AGM for members only at 19:15). Free to MAES members (you’ll be sent the link via email) and guests can book via Eventbrite!
10 June ZOOM Michael Tunnicliffe
Egypt and the Byzantine World
In 395 the Roman Empire split into two, with Egypt firmly part of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire Christianity was now the official religion and as the last pagan temples were closed churches and monasteries rose in their place. But in the 5th and 6th centuries Egyptian personalities would be at the heart of the controversies that rocked the Byzantine world. Eventually a distinctive form of Egyptian Christianity would emerge in the form of the Coptic Church. Then in the mid-7th century the new religion of Islam erupted onto the scene and Egypt was ripe for conquest. This presentation will give an overview of these, often neglected 250 years.
Michael Tunnicliffe studied Theology at Birmingham and Cambridge and completed the Certificate in Egyptology at Manchester. He is a member of MAES and served on the Committee for 6 years. He teaches a variety of courses face to face in the North West and by Zoom for a number of Adult Education providers.
This Monday (13 May) we welcome Sofia Aziz who is presenting a zoom lecture for the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society!
The Human Brain in Ancient Egypt: A Re-evaluation of its Function and Importance
Biomedical investigative techniques are gradually changing our understanding of mummification methods. Sofia’s research refutes long held claims that the brain was of no relevance to the ancient Egyptians. She will discuss how CT imaging, the medical papyri and archaeological records provide a wider understanding of ancient Egyptian medicine and the importance of the human brain in the afterlife.
Sofia Aziz is a Biomedical Egyptologist with a lifelong passion for ancient Egypt. Her focus has been on understanding the health of the ancient Egyptians and the diseases from which they suffered . She has been involved in a range of publications, media consults and has appeared in a variety of TV documentaries. Her current research looks at neuroscience in ancient Egypt.
Everyone is welcome! The lecture is free to MAES members who will receive a link by email. Guests can join us via Eventbrite here – tickets £5.
Tickets are now available for our Amarna online study day at £19 for MAES members (via booking form which is emailed to you) and for GUESTS (£30 via Eventbrite).
The second half of the14th century BC saw one of the most remarkable periods in Egyptian history – the so-called ‘Amarna Period’ and its aftermath. Over less than two decades, one man upended millennia of tradition in religion and art only to have his revolution reversed within perhaps weeks of his death. An ensuing ‘counter-reformation’ nominally returned matters to normal, yet actually re-set the Egyptian state for the coming centuries.
Professor Aidan Dodson will present two lectures giving an overview of the history of this period, from the reign of Amenhotep III down to the accession of Rameses I; Dr Anna Stevens, assistant director of the Amarna Project, will present the results of the 2022 season, held at the North Desert Cemetery, one of the most unexpectedly diverse of the Amarna cemeteries; and Paul Docherty will showcase 3D reconstructions of the temple and the early 3D reconstructions of the central city area.
The next Manchester Ancient Egypt Society lecture is a VENUE lecture on Monday 11th March with a special opportunity to see replicas demonstrating furniture-making techniques .
Pendulum Hotel, Sackville Street, Manchester M1 3BB 7:45pm start.
Free to MAES members; Guests £5 on the door.
Geoffrey Killen: William Arnold Stewart – How he reconstructed the royal furniture of Queen Hetepheres.
In 1925 the tomb of Queen Hetepheres, the mother of the pharaoh Khufu, was discovered at Giza by a team from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Harvard University led by George Andrew Reisner. The Queen’s tomb was found in a poor state of preservation, but it became apparent that it contained the Queen’s royal furniture. All the wood had decayed to a fine powder which Reisner suggested resembled cigar ash. He decided that the furniture should be reconstructed using the surviving material. He employed William Arnold Stewart, a British artist and director of the Cairo School of Arts and Decorations, to attempt the furniture’s reconstruction. Stewart was to develop a number of innovative techniques to reconstruct the furniture and wrote a detailed conservation diary. Unfortunately, Stewart died before his manuscript could be published.
Dr Geoffrey Killen, together with the assistance of Helen Farrar and Julie Dawson, has completed and edited Stewart’s manuscript which will be published shortly by the Griffith Institute. This lecture discusses Stewart’s imaginative and pioneering work that should be seen as an important contribution to the early preservation of ancient artefacts. The lecture will include replicas made by Dr Killen to analyse the techniques developed by Stewart in a small mud brick workshop in the shadow of Khufu’s Great Pyramid.
Geoffrey Killen is a leading ancient furniture historian, technologist and Egyptologist. He has studied the collections of Egyptian furniture at most of the major world museums and has written four major works on his specialism, as well as being a contributor to Nicholson and Shaw’s: “Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology”; Redford’s: “The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt” and Anderson’s: “A Cultural History of Furniture in Antiquity”. He has also led in the field of experimental archaeology where making and using replica woodworking tools and equipment has generated and tested archaeological hypotheses. His practical work is now displayed together with those original artefacts in several British museums.
Manchester Ancient Egypt Society 