Lucia Gahlin

While attending a course at the 2001 Bloomsbury Summer School in London, committee member Mick Oakey took the opportunity to interview one of Sussex Egyptology Society’s most popular lecturers and study-day tutors, Lucia Gahlin:

I don’t know about you, but ever since my schooldays I have found that my interest in a given subject is powerfully affected by how good the teacher is. A dull teacher can make any topic boring, whereas a compelling teacher can ignite an explosion of curiosity and fascination. Lucia Gahlin is definitely in the latter category.

Lucia burst on to the lecture scene in the mid-1990s, a fresh-faced whirlwind of enthusiasm who instantly captured wide attention and affection for her ability to communicate her extensive knowledge in a lively and entertaining way. Her impact on the world of Egyptology devotees was a bit like what Magnus Pyke did for TV science in the 1970s - torrential quantities of information delivered with boundless energy. Where did it all start?

“I was interested in the ancient world through doing Latin and Ancient Greek at school”, says Lucia. She was a convert to Egyptology when she visited the British Museum in her teens “and saw that amazing collection. Wow! And so a love of Egypt took over from anything else”.

An exceptionally bright student, she reaped a reward for her efforts - in the shape of her first visit to Egypt - even before she went to university. “I went to Egypt after my A-Levels - my father paid for me to go as a special treat for doing so well at school. I’d already decided I wanted to study Egyptology, but that complete Nile cruise in 1988 is what really cemented it.”

Lucia went to University College London (UCL) as an undergraduate, studying Egyptology and Ancient History, where in 1992 she took a First. “I have been connected with UCL ever since - as a postgraduate student a year later, when I finished my finals, and then teaching in the History Department on the Ancient Near Eastern History courses”. She also taught at Birkbeck, Reading University, Surrey University and Warwick University, “but I was very much based at UCL, doing my research. I’m still there today, as registrar in the Petrie Museum two days a week, so although I’m not part of the History Department I’m still very much connected with it.”

In January 2002 Lucia took up an academic post at Bristol University, lecturing in Egyptology. She lives with her husband Richard and their three-year-old son Dexter in Bath, which is convenient for both Bristol and for easy access to London, so she maintains her connection with UCL and the Petrie.

Lucia’s involvement in the popularisation of Egyptology happened almost by accident. “I started my research - looking at popular religion, specifically rituals and beliefs relating to purity and impurity in the human lifecycle - at UCL in 1994; then I began teaching a year later, and the research went on to the back burner and never got finished.” Through her work in the Petrie and in the field with Barry Kemp at Amarna, she developed a particular affinity with Ancient Egyptian artefacts. “I found I enjoyed working with objects in the Petrie Museum, and I enjoyed going out to Amarna, working with the material there. I loved preparing and giving lectures, and suddenly that was taking up all my time.”

Lucia spent two seasons at Amarna. “I was the Small Finds Registrar, so I was sitting in the dig house with a constant stream of objects, drawing them all at 1:1, describing, measuring them and giving them a number. I had been invited back again and that’s definitely something I would have done, but then Dexter came along. I was getting involved in working on statue fragments there; Barry Kemp had decided I could be the one to publish them - a great honour.”

When pregnancy intervened, Lucia realised that there were so many more things she wanted to do with her life that she could not complete her research thesis. “Since then, however, I’ve written a book on Ancient Egyptian religion which was published in January 2001: ‘Egypt: Gods, Myths and Religion’.”

Important influences on Lucia’s academic career have included her early teachers Harry Smith, Geoffrey Martin and Barbara Adams, the curator of the Petrie Museum. “Barbara Adams’s areas of history - prehistoric and predynastic - are not mine, but the way she handles and understands and interprets objects is inspirational. She has been a major influence.” Lucia has also been powerfully influenced by many Egyptologists whose work she has read and whose ideas she respects - “Jan Assman, John Baines, Stephen Quirke, Kate Spence and Barry Kemp, off the top of my head; there would be many more”.

Lucia considers that she has had two main highlights in her career so far: “Working in Amarna, definitely, having the privilege of being the one to be handling the objects and making the record for posterity. I’m also very proud of my teaching and of the feedback I get.”

As for future ambitions, in the short term “I’d happily do another book”. But looking several years into the future, Lucia has her sights fixed on an objective that will come as little surprise to the many of us who rate her so highly as a lecturer: “My aim in life is to have a museum post that’s based in the educational side, to be able to combine an academic knowledge of ancient Egypt with popularising and communicating it to children and adults of all age groups.”

Lucia’s book ‘Egypt: Gods, Myths and Religion’ is published by Anness (Lorenz books)