archaeology

The Victorian Quest for Ancient Egypt

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For our last lecture of the season, the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society is please to welcome our newly appointed President – Rosalie David OBE – who will be taking us on a Victorian journey through inscriptions, archaeology and palaeopathology!

Many developments In British Egyptology have been inspired by the Victorians’ early interest in the subject – largely resulting from the rise of an affluent middle-class who enthusiastically pursued leisure reading and foreign travel, as well as membership of newly established learned societies. This specific interest in ancient Egypt was prompted by a desire to shed new light on Biblical accounts, inspired in part by the emergence of Protestant non-conformism. This generated support for archaeological expeditions to excavate sites presumed to have links with the Bible. In parallel, a growing curiosity about science, medicine and the history of disease provided the impetus for scientific studies on human remains, associated with the ‘mummy unrollings’ that reached their peak in Victorian times. 

This lecture will consider some key developments from Victorian times down to the present day, focusing on discoveries related to language and literary studies; archaeological exploration; and palaeopathological research on mummified and skeletal remains. Concepts and practices developed over the past two hundred years which reflect the availability of new technology and changing social attitudes and perceptions will be considered, demonstrating how these strands have combined to form the basis of current Egyptology.  This lecture is dedicated to the late Chair of MAES, Robert B Partridge.

Professor Rosalie David O.B.E., F.R.S.A is Emerita Professor of Egyptology and former Director of the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester. She is also an Honorary Research Associate at The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, and a Vice-President of The Egypt Exploration Society. She was awarded the O.B.E. for services to Egyptology in the 2003 New Year Honours List.  Her research involves the use of biomedical/scientific techniques to study ancient Egyptian mummified remains to enhance knowledge of pharaonic medicine and pharmacy.

All welcome. Free to MAES members (you will receive an email link shortly) and guests can book here via Eventbrite (£5).

Doors open 7:30pm GMT+1 and the lecture begins at 8pm.

Coffins for Eternity: Houses of the Afterlife

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This Monday we welcome Sara Aly to the Manchester AE Society zoom lecture! All welcome. Free to MAES members (you should by now have received an email). Guests welcome on Eventbrite here:

11 May: Sara Aly              

Coffins for Eternity: Houses of the Afterlife

One of the most important aspects of Ancient Egyptian culture was death. With it came resurrection into the afterlife, where people would reach eternal existence. They had to properly prepare for death and resurrection through magical rituals and offerings to the gods. There were also special requirements for the place where their bodies would rest, so they built tombs to preserve them. These were furnished with copious funerary equipment, of which coffins were the most important. Coffins enabled the protection of the body, allowing the spirit of the deceased to continue its existence in the afterlife. Seen as a house for the mummy, coffins undergone remarkable development, both in form and style, reflecting the evolution of religious and cultural beliefs. However, despite being an integral element of royal and private funerary assemblages, they were beyond the reach of the lower strata of society. Due to the wide range of informative features, coffins offer today a valuable source for Egyptologists to investigate many aspects of ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Sara’s research focuses on the circulation of illicitly sourced Egyptian artefacts on the art market, following a collaboration with the Circulating Artefacts project at the British Museum five years ago.. Her MA dissertation at the University of Manchester (2023) examined upper coffin fragments appearing on the art market. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Franco-Egyptian Archaeological Mission of Western Thebes, working at the Ramesseum, where she analyses coffin and cartonnage fragments. From 2023 to 2025 she worked as an Art Market Expert at the British Museum helping to identify and recover missing items from the museum’s collection. Now based at the Griffith Institute, Sara is now studying the archival material documentation of Egyptian objects in the possession of antiquities dealers and collectors between the 1930s and the 1980s.

The World’s First Recorded Dentist

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This Monday at the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society, we welcome Roger Forshaw, our Treasurer to tell us the history of the physician Hesyre.

Everyone welcome. Free to MAES members (link will be emailed). Guests welcome – £5 on Eventbrite here:

9 February: Roger Forshaw   Zoom Lecture      

Hesyre: Court Official, Scribe, and the World’s First Recorded Dentist

Hesyre served as a high court official under King Djoser around 2650 BC, early in Egypt’s Old Kingdom. He was chief of the royal scribes and held both religious and secular offices, and is also celebrated as the earliest recorded dentist in history. Our understanding of Hesyre derives chiefly from his richly decorated mastaba tomb at Saqqara, whose walls feature depictions of objects from daily life, including tools, furniture and board games.

Among the tomb’s most striking features are eleven exquisitely crafted acacia-wood relief panels that once lined the niches of a long corridor. Six of these panels have survived the ravages of time and show Hesyre in a range of elegant poses and garments, reflecting various stages of his career. Particularly notable is the earliest known depiction of a man seated before a table of bread, accompanied by a short offering list and inscriptions detailing his many titles. These panels are celebrated as some of the finest surviving examples of ancient wooden relief art, offering a vivid testament to the artistry and cultural refinement of third-millennium BC Egyptian court life.

Roger Forshaw is an Honorary Lecturer in Biomedical Egyptology at the KNH Centre, the University of Manchester – and a former dental surgeon. He studied Egyptology at the University of Exeter before completing an MSc in Biomedical Egyptology and a PhD at the University of Manchester. His doctoral research examined the role of lector in ancient Egyptian society, and his broader interdisciplinary work explores medical and dental practices in Pharaonic Egypt. Roger’s publications include Egypt of the Saite Pharaohs, and Medicine and Healing Practices in Ancient Egypt, co-authored with Professor Rosalie David.

RECENT EXCAVATIONS AT DEIR EL-BAHRI!

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Deir el-Bahri by M. Jawornicki

Manchester Ancient Egypt Society Lecture on Zoom

Monday 10th February, doors open 7:30pm (GMT); lecture from 8pm

Free to MAES members; Guests welcome £5 via Eventbrite

This Monday we are pleased to present Patryk Chudzik who will be speaking about The history of Deir el-Bahri in light of recent excavations at the Hathor Cult Complex of Hatshepsut Temple.

The great rock amphitheatre of Deir el-Bahri was one of the most significant sacred areas of the Theban necropolis since at least the Middle Kingdom. Dominated by the three terraced temples built by Mentuhotep II, Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, the site was the cult centre of the goddess Hathor and the destination of the Beautiful Feast of the Valley – the most important annual festival of the Theban region. In the shadow of the monumental royal buildings, a necropolis developed for more than two thousand years, where members of the royal family, priests and priestesses were buried. This lecture will explore the transformation of the sacred space of Deir el-Bahri over the centuries, and present its most significant milestones through the lens of the results of the author’s latest excavations carried out at the Hathor Cult Complex on the south side of Hatshepsut’s temple. This lecture will open with the story of the tomb of an enigmatic prince, son of the founder of the Middle Kingdom, who was also instrumental in the construction of the temple of Hatshepsut, and will conclude with a presentation of a hitherto unknown part of the necropolis of the Roman elite.

Dr Patryk Chudzik is an Assistant Professor at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw. He studied Prehistory, as well as Oriental and Classical Archaeology at the universities in Poznań and Wrocław. He received his PhD on the topography and architecture of the Theban necropolis in the Middle Kingdom (2017). He is the director of the Polish-Egyptian archaeological and conservation expedition to Deir el-Bahri and the co-director of the Polish Archaeological Expedition to North Asasif.

Kinglists and the Writing of Egyptian History

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This Monday we kick off the New Year with a lecture from Chris Naunton! Everyone welcome. Free to MAES members – you’ll receive an email link. Guests welcome – £5 via Eventbrite

13 January Chris Naunton

Kinglists and the Writing of Egyptian History

‘Dynasties’ form the backbone of ancient Egyptian history. We’re all familiar with dating people, events and objects to this or that Dynasty, and we know that the 18th was ‘great’ era, or, say, the 29th rather more obscure. Each Dynasty seems to have represented a coherent group of pharaohs – perhaps they were all related, or came from the same part of Egypt. And the end of one Dynasty and start of the next marked a clear change. Or did it? The archaeological evidence does not always support the idea. And would the ancient Egyptians have recognised the idea of these Dynasties? Maybe, or maybe not… It was the historian Manetho, writing in the early Ptolemaic Period who arranged Egyptian history this way; his system was adopted in modern times and now we’re stuck with it – warts and all. This lecture looks at Manetho’s history, the Aegyptiaca, how it sometimes seems remarkably close to the archaeological evidence, and at other times miles off. And we look at the Egyptians’ earlier records of their own history in the form of kinglists in particular.

Chris Naunton is an Egyptologist and author of several books including ‘Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt’ (2018) and ‘Egyptologists’ Notebooks’ (2020), and is currently making a meal of writing another one on ‘Dynasties’. He regularly appears in television documentaries on ancient Egypt, and lectures around the UK, overseas and online. 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, and is now Director of the Robert Anderson Trust.

AMARNA ZOOM STUDY DAY 23 MARCH

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Saturday 23rd March 9:30am – 3:45pm (GMT)

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.

We look forward to seeing you!