Image of the Week #4

Here's a shot of the British Museum's touring 'Pharaoh: King of Egypt' exhibition from my visit to Leeds City Museum on Saturday (April 14th), with the iconic upper section of a colossal statue of Ramesses II in the foreground and a statue of a seated falcon behind the cartouche of Ramesses II in the background (more photos of the exhibition to follow).

Visiting Haweswater

I finally made it to Haweswater last Sunday (April 1st) long after gaining an interest in the site after reading a book about Mardale and the Haweswater Reservoir from Kendal Library as a child (see previous blog post: Mardale: A Village Lost).

Here's a photo taken from beside Haweswater Reservoir, at the opposite end of the reservoir to Haweswater Dam. Unfortunately (though fortunately with regards to the country's water supply!) the reservoir was not low enough to reveal Mardale, but I hope to make it up there again soon when the water may be a little lower.

Image of the Week #3

On a very special week for me, this week's Image of the Week is a photo of a quote from Alfred Tennyson's poem 'The Two Voices' in the Great Court of the British Museum: "and let thy feet, millenniums hence, be set in midst of knowledge".

Image of the Week #2

This week we have a view taken in June 2010 of the interior of the rock-cut tomb of Ankhtify at el-Mo'alla, where a team from the University of Liverpool is currently working. Ankhtify was Governor of the ancient Upper Egyptian town of Hefat in the 9th Dynasty. 

From Egypt's Sands to Northern Hills - Thank You Blackburn!

The second leg of the 'From Egypt's Sands to Northern Hills' touring exhibition on John Garstang's excavations in Egypt has just closed at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, and the objects are due to be unveiled on their third leg at Towneley Hall, Burnley on March 24th, where they will remain until June 28th.

The exhibition has been very well received on the first and second legs at Kendal and Blackburn respectively, and we look forward to seeing the exhibition in its stunning new venue at Burnley. Any feedback from visitors to the exhibition so far would be gladly received. 

Image of the Week #1

I've decided that I have far too many photos and drawings sitting unused on my computer, and so I'd like to start sharing them in the form of 'Image of the Week'.

This will include photos and drawings of ancient Egyptian sites, museum visits and the landscape of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. 

The first is this photo of bound captives at the Temple of Sobek at Kom Ombo, taken in June 2010. 

Website of the Week: Digitisation of Davies Theban Tomb tracings

This is my first 'Website of the Week' for a while due partly to fieldwork commitments and to my encroaching Ph.D deadline, but I'd like to kick-start it again with a link to the newly-digitised collection of Theban Tomb tracings made by Norman and Nina de Garis Davies during the early 20th Century by the Griffith Institute, Oxford. This is an indispensable resource for those studying the Theban necropolis; a plan of the tomb and copies of the traced wall decorations are provided where available for 73 tombs which the Davies' recorded. My personal favourite is the tomb of Sennefer (TT96), Mayor of the Southern City during the reign of Amenhotep II.

The tracings are cross-referenced with Porter and Moss' 'Topographical Bibliography' and it is possible to buy high-resolution images from the Griffith Institute on request. By preserving these unique images and making them freely available this site will significantly aid both relevant Egyptological research and those curious in the subject.

[Image: http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/gif-files/davieses.jpg].