Janet Shepherd, SES Chairman

When you ask Janet how she describes her role as chairman, her answer is very simple - but it reveals quite a lot about her level of commitment to the society: "It's a major part of my life", she laughs.

Such a single-minded attitude is an important asset for any volunteer running a special-interest association. It is an attitude Janet has possessed from an early age, ever since she decided, unusually for a Sixties schoolgirl, that she wanted to go to sea...

Janet's interest in Ancient Egypt was sparked off by a Mediterranean cruise she went on at the age of 15, organised by her school (Davison High School for Girls, where the society holds its Worthing lecture meetings). Athens and Pompeii paled in comparison with the Pyramids and the treasures of Tutankhamun in the Cairo Museum: "I forgot all about the Romans and the Greeks after that".

That same trip gave Janet a strong taste for travel, and in the mid-Seventies "I became a Dutch seaman", she reveals, joining a Rotterdam-based cruise line as an onboard shop sales assistant. "I had friends who joined the Wrens, but they only got as far as Scotland and Portsmouth, and I thought 'that's not good enough'!"

She visited Egypt again and again during her 18 months at sea ("We were the first boat through the Suez Canal after the Seven-Day War"), in among many other destinations around the world. Her seafaring career nearly came to a sudden end when her ship was once swamped by a tidal wave off Casablanca.

Several subsequent trips to Egypt cemented Janet's interest in, and love of, the country. Paradoxically, the one time she could not visit it was in the early 1980s, when she lived for four years in neighbouring Libya and diplomatic tensions had closed the border.
Janet became Chairman at the AGM in 1998. Today the society's health is "better than ever", says Janet. "We've got more members than we've ever had before - more than 300 fully paid-up members. The lecturers all seem to know who we are, lots of people have heard of us, and the word has spread".

Janet sees her role as "promoting the society and being there for the members. I go to as many events as I can, and make sure people know we are there. Also, I like to ask lecturers personally if they would come and talk to us - I think it's much better if they can see somebody, rather than just have a voice on the phone.

"I think the personal touch is very important, and so is the social aspect of the society. Not everyone has someone at home that they can talk to about the subject, and events like the biennial barbecue show that members want a social life in Egyptology. This is why we also have a Christmas celebration event after the November meetings.
Looking to the future, Janet feels it is important to keep the society's personal touch, in order to maintain and increase the membership. "We are one of the country's largest regional societies. We have strong links with the Bloomsbury Summer School and Bloomsbury Academy in London, run by Christopher Coleman, and this has even led to us hosting a new website for his organisations on Egyptology-uk.com, our own very successful website".

Janet wants to expand the number and scope of society events, and to arrange further trips to Egypt. When not running the SES she is a tour manager for Ancient World Tours, her most memorable recent trip being a Nile cruise with Kent Weeks; she has also been to the Eastern Desert a number of times. She now works as part of The Eastern Desert Survey Concession with AWT, recording ancient rock art. Many SES members are also involved in this project and now have permits to work as part of an archaeological survey team. "I've always known that I'm a desert person," she says. "I love it, every minute of it."