Manchester Ancient Egypt Society members enjoy a range of trips to Egyptology collections across the UK and further afield, including Egypt. Recent trips have included visits to Amsterdam, Munich and Budapest. Our 2025 trip was to Rome. 

MAES ON TOUR

Trips are available only to MAES members and their partners.

————————————————————————————————————

TRIP TO ROME MARCH / APRIL 2025

MAES members enjoyed several days in Rome and its surrounds, enjoying the Roman sites (including the Forum, the Flavian Amphitheatre or Colosseum and the Vatican Museums), visiting Ostia, and touring Hadrian’s villa and the Villa d’Este at Tivoli. There are also many ancient Egyptian objects in many of Rome’s museums, and of course obelisk spotting was part of the trip, including the ‘Flamian Obelisk’ of Seti I, the obelisk of Psamtek II, and the Macutean Obelisk of Ramesses II that stands in front of the Pantheon, and is said to be the most looked-at obelisk in Rome. All photos by Rob Coles.

————————————————————————————

TRIP TO BUDAPEST APRIL 2024

Visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary, by Rob Coles.

Foiled by Covid in 2020, our planned trip to Budapest to visit their Egyptian collection was rescheduled for April 2024. Our intrepid members, some veterans of ‘MAES on Tour’, some new to the experience, were all excited to explore the Hungarian capital and experience our latest ‘Egypt Fix’ in Europe.

Bernadett Szűcs was our guide to the Egyptian Collection. She was keen to learn about MAES, and her enthusiasm for the collection had us mesmerised, guiding us through the galleries with a potted history of the collection, and showing us some of the artefacts that she had particularly chosen to discuss.
The collection at the ‘Szepmuveszeti’, is a fairly new display which combines objects from different Hungarian museums, now in one permanent home. The artefacts are superbly displayed, well lit and thematically arranged into three groups: Temples – Gods; The Nile Valley – People; Tombs – The Dead.

Look out for our next foray into ‘who knows where’? Is there a collection you would like to visit.? Feel free to send in your suggestions and join us on our next search for Egypt, in Europe….

Highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (clockwise from top left): fragment of a 19th Dynasty funerary statue; New Kingdom gold necklace with amulets in the shape of Taweret; the entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts; votive statue of the demi-god Imhotep, 26th Dynasty; a Ptolemaic cippus stela.

———————————————————————————————————–

TRIP TO MUNICH, MAY 2019 

A group of MAES members spent a long weekend in Munich, visiting the  impressive collection at the recently refurbished Egyptian Museum (Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst).

The spacious, well-lit galleries house a stunning array of Egyptian artefacts arranged chronologically from the Predynastic Period through to the Roman era.  Highlights include: a large blue-painted Bes pot; a kneeling statue of Senenmut, architect of Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahri temple; a portrait face of Hatshepsut herself;  a double New Kingdom statue of Neye and Mutnofret; a Ptolemaic statue of Isis; a display of prehistoric artefacts and a Coptic sculpture of a youth holding up an arch.

Part of the group also travelled to Hildesheim and Hanover to visit the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim (which includes a particularly fine collection of Old Kingdom objects including the seated statue of Hemiunu, chief architect of the Great Pyramid) and the Egyptian collection at the August Kestner Museum in Hanover, which includes a range of objects from Amarna.

Photos: Louise Hart (Senenmut, Bes) and Rob Coles.