Launch of the Sixth Egypt Exploration Society Congress

This week sees the launch of the Sixth biannual Egypt Exploration Society Congress (#EESCon6), which is hosted by colleagues at Swansea University. The Congress provides a platform for researchers to present their ongoing projects and discoveries to a broad audience of peers and the interested public through brief 20-minute presentations and posters. Because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the previous Congress (hosted by Durham University in 2020) took place exclusively via Zoom. This helped the Society to engage with different audiences, both academic and non-academic, while also greatly increasing accessibility. Following on from this success, the Congress will be held across online events throughout September and will culminate in an in-person/hybrid weekend on Saturday 1st–Sunday 2nd October. The online event is completely free and can be booked here. Note that you will have to register for each of the panels that you wish to attend. The full programme of events can be found here.

The event kicks off on Thursday 1st September with the keynote lecture and poster session. The keynote will focus on the objects in the Egypt Centre collection associated with the Egypt Exploration Society. Many originate from the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome, who sponsored the excavations at Amarna and Armant during the 1920–30s. The objects from Amarna include pottery, painted plaster from the North Riverside Palace (fig. 1), statue fragments, architectural elements, and styli. From Armant we have a large stela commemorating the burial of the mother of the sacred Buchis Bull, which dates to the reign of Commodus (AD 190), a scribal statue of a well-known Thirteenth Dynasty official called Teti, pottery, coffin clamps, and two spheroconical vessels, which are often interpreted as grenades from the crusades!

Fig. 1: Painted plaster from the North Riverside Palace at Amarna

Over 300 objects were donated to the collection in 1978 as part of the dispersal of the “disposable remains” of the EES excavations. Kate Bosse-Griffiths, the curator of the collection in Swansea at the time, talks about going on a “treasure hunt” to London to collect these objects. The majority of the objects are small, with many originating from the excavations at Amarna (fig. 2). Others can be traced to Abydos, Bubastis, Deir el-Bahari, Ihnasya el-Medina, Naukratis, Nebesheh, and Sesebi. Several other donations containing material excavated by the EES will also be highlighted in the keynote lecture on Thursday.

Fig. 2: A ring bezel from Amarna with the name of Amun-Re

Following the keynote, audience members will be able to view the poster presentations and ask questions to the presenters. The posters have already been uploaded to the EES website and are available to view in advance here: https://www.ees.ac.uk/eescon6-posters

Other events will take place throughout the month, including a quiz (16th September) and a virtual tour of the Egypt Centre collection (30th September). During the latter, attendees will be able to see the recently refurbished House of Life gallery for the first time. To coincide with the Congress, we will be putting on a temporary exhibition in this gallery to showcase objects excavated by the Society. Throughout the month of September, I’ll be preparing this exhibition, but in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek of the case (fig. 3)!

Fig. 3: Sneak peek at the new case waiting to be filled with EES objects

If you’re able to join us in-person over the weekend of the 01–02 October at Swansea University, you’ll have to opportunity to see the museum and the temporary exhibition. Once again, the online portion of this hybrid weekend is free, with a small fee for those attending in-person. Do note that tickets for the in-person event are limited, so please book ASAP via the following link if you haven’t already. We look forward to hosting the EES Congress and to welcoming some of you to Swansea in October!