UCL Museums & Collections Blog

As part of the Petrie Museum’s A Fit Mind in a Fit Body season of events for summer 2012, we are encouraging you to explore Egypt in London. We have run walks in London for some time now; visiting cemeteries, factories, cinemas, parks and mausoleums in the search for Egyptian influences on London monuments, architecture and places.

We’d love to hear about any more places that you think are a bit of ‘Egypt in London’  – visitors have suggested the Homebase on Warwick Rd for example. Tweet pictures and places to @PetrieMuseEgypt.

Map of London and Egyptian places

Guest post by Rachel Farmer

Ever wondered how much work goes into conserving a single object? Ever wanted to try a bit of conservation yourself? A new exhibition at the Petrie Museum looks at the work done on Petrie objects by Conservation students at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.

The small pedestal case was chosen as a great place to put on exhibitions about the work that happens behind the scenes at the Petrie Museum. To start the ball rolling an exhibition on conservation has been installed which also highlights the close relationship between the Petrie Museum and the Conservation students from the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. During the Conservation course at the Institute the students are given objects from material groups and over a number of years many groups of students have been given glass vessels from the Petrie Museum’s collection to work on. (more…)

How do you do an overview of one of the most famous archaeologists responsible for 60 years of ground breaking techniques in Egypt, Palestine and Britain for a general audience in an hour? Well, last night’s The Man Who Discovered Egypt at 9pm on BBC4 did it pretty well. Of course, you can quibble and point out all the great things Petrie did, the people he knew, the sites he worked at etc etc, but it is difficult to get a documentary about Flinders Petrie, ‘a Victorian Brit of whom I’d [the Guardian critic] never heard’, right for the larger audience of television.

I will admit to having a vested interest in this documentary as a small section of it was filmed at the Petrie Museum and Institute of Archaeology, and obviously myself and the other colleagues involved in helping with photographs, information and more, want to see it succeed. Despite the title, which would annoy me if I was Egyptian, as a documentary explaining Petrie for the non-expert it did succeed.  It helped that the presenter was Chris Naunton, director of the Egypt Exploration Society and an archaeologist himself, who explained Petrie’s interests and discoveries with enthusiasm. The locations in Egypt and Palestine helped too and the cinematography was impressive. It was great to see Petrie’s work in Palestine given almost equal billing with his work in Egypt.

The range of experts involved also conveyed the scale of Petrie’s work; from our very own Stephen Quirke and Rachael Sparks to the Palestine Exploration Fund to the Quftis Omar and Ali to curators at the Cairo Museum and Rockefeller Museum and archaeologists in the field at some of Petrie’s sites.  The documentary did not shy away from Petrie’s eugenic thinking or the differences between him and his wife Hilda with younger archaeologists towards the end of their working lives. Overall it was a rounded picture of Petrie, the man and archaeologist.

And Petrie would so have an iPad if he worked in Egypt today and would have created an iMeasure app!

The documentary will be repeated over the next week but is also available to view on BBC iPlayer here.

After a full Petrie Museum at last Thursday evening’s (1 March) Ancient Egypt and Comics talk by Dr Paul Harrison, the Supergods workshops on comics return to the Petrie Museum for the Easter holidays.

COMIC BOOK SLAM

Date: 31 March | Time: 2-4pm | Price: Free | Age group: Teen / Family

Create your own comic panel and characters in 2 hours in this comic book slam at the Petrie Museum. explore comics using Egypt as inspiration and objects from the museum for your own ideas. With Kel Winser. All ages. Just pop in!

Create your own superheroes based on the Ancient Egyptian gods. Get advice from a comics writer on how tell your story. Take inspiration from the museum and other comics about Egypt to put your own comic strip together. Suitable for 12 years upwards. With Kel Winser.

020 7679 4138 |  events.petrie@ucl.ac.uk          Sponsored by the John Lyon’s Charity.

If you missed Paul’s talk and want to hear a bit of what he covered around Hawkman, Dr Fate and others, he gives an interview to Alex Fitch on Resonance FM:

http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/8471

http://www.archive.org/details/PanelBordersBuyingAndCelebratingComics

What is a fit body? What do we mean by ‘fit’? Athletic? Attractive? Slim? Medical?

Copy of Greek Athlete on UCL Front Potico steps

UCL Museums are running a student competition. We would like to see some alternate views of physical fitness. The idea of what is an athletic body has changed over time; for example, compare photographs of athletes in 1900 to those of today. The role of fitness has also changed in society; the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs had to prove their physical fitness every 30 years in Sed festival and, though today such physical prowess is not expected from our political leaders, arguably we prefer tall and slim Prime Ministers / Presidents in the Anglo world. This competition is looking for fun, thought-provoking and critical responses to this theme.

Up to 10 photographs or graphic works will be chosen by a panel of judges. They will be printed, mounted and framed and the winning students will receive them after the duration of the exhibition in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. The winner will receive £100 in Amazon Vouchers.

The exhibition will be accompanied by panels in the museum exploring ‘fit bodies’ and athletics ancient to modern. In addition poster panels may be put up in the North Cloisters display space. Duration of exhibition: Friday 1 June – Saturday 15 September 2012.

So don’t delay – enter the race!

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology has celebrated LGBT History Month every year since 2008. It is a mark of interest in ideas about sexuality and Queer Studies around antiquity that our two events on Sappho and Antinous this year are fully booked (though there may be returns on the night – take your chances). UCL Equalities also runs a fantastic programme for Diversity Month at UCL and there is loads going on in Camden and Islington.

A few years ago I gave a talk on the reception of the ancient poet Sappho’s poems and this year Sophia Blackwell is doing her stand up performance Sappho in Sainsburys. It’s not as good as seeing Sophia perform live but Megan Price made a short film a few years ago – part of which she has put on You Tube for us to use. Guidance: It does contain references to sexual acts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBqj3GZtIUk

'Portrait' of sappho from Henry Wharton's translation c. 1885.

One of the rare facts about Sappho that we know with any certainty is that she was a poet. By the time of the Hellenistic period (c. second century BCE), the Alexandrian scholars had collected her remaining poems by metre in nine books and of these books we have 1 extant poem, several longer poems and about 200 fragments. We know that she composed and sang in the sixth century BCE and was probably born at Eresos on Lesbos in c.620 BCE. She was part of an aristocratic family and went into exile to Sicily for political reasons around 600 BCE. She had a daughter and was married, but to whom it is not certain. She had three brothers, one of whom traded in Naucratis in Egypt and, when not in exile, she lived most of her life at Mitylene, the main town of Lesbos.[1] Lesbos was an important island for trade and agriculture throughout antiquity but there is very little evidence for life on the island in the 6^th century, or ‘Archaic’ period, of Greece. She signed herself as Psappho.

This is what we know of her life – derived in part from her poems and in part from what biographers have written. We also know that she was lyric poet, that is she sang her poems to a lyre and composed choral odes. Her poetry is rich and full, as Virginia Woolf puts it in ‘On Not Knowing Greek’, of ‘constellations of adjectives’.[2] It is also about love – mainly love for women – and invokes the fatal power of passion. Love in the Greek world was not a benign cuddly myth but a powerful force that wounded. She also wrote wedding songs and some poetry about her family. However, it was her expressive desire towards women that contributed to her ambiguous reputation, even in the ancient world, and various legends surrounding her were formed.

Statellite Map of Tanis

The use of ‘space archaeology’, a pioneering approach using satellite technology and infra-red surveying, in finding previously undiscovered monuments and towns from the ancient past in Egypt was illustrated on BBC1 last night (Egypt’s Lost Cities, BBC1, 30 May 2011). And very exciting it all was too as the group dashed from site to site, came up against problems with permits to dig, then got support from the supreme authority, dashed around some more sites, got other archaeologists to dig for them (with varying results) and then were embroiled in a democratic revolution.
(more…)

The answer is Alexander, or more properly Alexander III of Macedon. In February I accompanied the Friends of the Petrie Museum to Holland to see two exhibitions on Alexander the Great at the Hermitage Museum and Allard Pearson museum in Amsterdam.

Although I work at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, I am a rogue classicist with an unhealthy interest in Greek Egypt. My partner in crime, John J Johnston, and myself had already planned to theme our LGBT History Month for 2011 around Alexander the Great in 2010. We were then very excited to see that two exhibitions were planned around Alexander in Amsterdam. Jan Picton, Secretary of the Friends of the Petrie Museum, suggested that I tag along on a Friends trip to assist with information.

We also visited the Leiden National Museum of Archaeology where two Buddhist heads (see above) from Afghanistan in the ‘Greek style’ reminded me how far flung Alexander’s empire and Hellenic influence spread in his eastern campaign.
(more…)

On March 10, the Petrie Museum hosted In Stone: Egyptian Stonework. The event was a celebration of the work done on recent conservation efforts, funded by the Friends of the Petrie Museum, and the mounting of stone inscriptions. Conservators on hand talked about the conservation process, while two geologists talked about identification and the provenance of Egyptian stone.

The geologists set up a microscope to look at thin sections of stone and other stone samples, along with geological maps and fossils. Another table at the event exhibited special labels about the six large stones that were conserved recently by Clivden Conservation – which gave a behind the scenes look at how the stones were restored. Guests who attended were intrigued by these concepts and enjoyed informal conversation throughout making this a very successful event.

Thank you to the Friends of Petrie, our Petrie Staff, as well as Eric Miller (formerly from British Museum, currently teaches at City of Guilds), Dr. Ruth Siddall (UCL Earth Sciences), and Dr. Charlie Underwood (Birkbeck College).

Danielle Payton

Last week the Petrie Museum had a packed house to honour Amelia Edwards with a mesmerizing performance by Kim Hicks. The actress captivated the audience with poise and a bit of humor through her monologues and readings of Edwards’ travel tales. It took place to mark International Women’s Day.

It also marked the re-display of the cast of a bust of Amelia Edwards in the  entrance of the Petrie Museum, in front of an image of her study kindly supplied by Somerville College Oxford. Amelia Edwards was a prolific novelist whose ‘sensation’ novels and ghost stories make Wilkie Collins (Woman in White or The Moonstone) look like a trembling violet. (more…)