Saturday 24th May 2025, I’ll be giving my talk on Ancient Egyptian curses to Egyptology Scotland in Glasgow. https://www.egyptologyscotland.co.uk/events
Non-members welcome, so if you are interested and in the area, come along.
Saturday 17th May, I’m giving a Zoom talk to Southampton Ancient Egypt Society: The Lighthouse, the Laser and the Stone. The decipherment of hieroglyphs, and the myth of the Rosetta Stone. Details on the society’s web site: https://www.southamptonancientegyptsociety.co.uk/ Still time to sign up!
Also known as the Great Pyramid of Memphis. No, not that Memphis, the one in Tennessee. Hear all about it on the 99% Invisible podcast, which reckons to get a million listeners each week, and for which I was interviewed not long ago.
For over ten years, I sent out Egypt in England newsletters to a loyal band of subscribers. For me, they turned into a way of exploring new topics that I might then go on to research in more depth. It seemed a shame, though, for nothing to then happen with the material, so as part of this new web site I am turning them into articles. The first of them is now up, and you can read and download it, or the other way round. More will follow as other commitments allow. Enjoy!
Interviewed yesterday for the 99% Invisible podcast on architecture and design. Our starting point was the Great Pyramid of Memphis (Tennessee), but we went on to discuss the ways in which Egyptian influences have been expressed in buildings, furnishings, and other ways in American culture. Once the recording has been edited and podcasted, I’ll aim to put a link to it on the site.
I’m delighted to be able to say that the paperback edition of Needles from the Nile is now out, at the much more affordable price of £24 if you order direct from the Liverpool University Press web site, and take advantage of a 20% discount. https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781800856301
So far, most of the work has been getting the basic structure of the site up and running, and adding the initial material. Once that has all settled down, I can start posting about more interesting stuff. Including a few more pictures. First I had to work out things like why buttons were disappearing. (Turns out if you pick the option to have Outline rather than Fill, the button and any link it includes disappears from the page.)
Don’t expect posts that often; I have to research and write as well, but if the quantity isn’t there, I hope the quality will be.
Until next time, ankh wedja seneb.
This is the start of my new web site, devoted to the ways in which Ancient Egypt has influenced us over the centuries. Eventually, it will replace two existing sites, for Egyptian London and Egypt in England. That in itself reflects the way in which my research started off years ago by looking at London’s connections with Egypt, then at Egyptian style architecture in England, and then it just kept expanding. My last book looked at the reasons why there are two obelisks in London and New York, and why it took nearly eighty years for the one in London to get there. My next will try to explain what it is about Ancient Egypt that we find so fascinating, and whether Egyptomania is actually more about us than the Ancient Egyptians.