Photos by James Kellie
Bloomsbury news archive...
23rd August 2010
July summer schools: a great success
Our eight summer courses in London this year were enjoyed by 120 students. Highlights included the opportunity to handle objects from ancient Egypt and Cyprus; sessions taught in the Petrie Museum, British Museum and Egypt Exploration Society; illuminating lectures; parties in the Petrie Museum and UCL's Institute of Archaeology.
You will find information about our 2011 courses here on our website in November.
This year BSS students were able to handle Late Bronze Age objects from Cyprus at the British Museum with Course Director Thomas Kiely.
27th April 2010
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
The Petrie Museum is one of the world’s most important collection of Egyptian antiquities – around 80,000 objects housed here at UCL – and Bloomsbury Summer School students enjoy special-access classes taught in this extraordinary museum Handling an object from pharaonic Egypt really is a rare and special experience. Four of our eight courses this year include object-handling sessions.
You could have immersed yourself fully in this fabulous collection by taking our 2010 course: EXPLORING THE PETRIE MUSEUM III: Technology and the presentation of the individual in ancient Egypt.
If however you can’t get to the Petrie Museum you can always view its entire collection on-line: www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk and you can support the continued preservation of these remarkable antiquities by joining the Friends of the Petrie Museum: www.ucl.ac.uk/FriendsofPetrie.
28th February 2010
Denys Stocks demonstrates the experimental use of reconstructed multiple bead drilling equipment
From private life to technology in Ancient Egypt
Here at BSS we are always pleased to be joined by new course directors offering new courses. One of our new lecturers for 2010 is Dr Kasia Szpakowska. We enjoyed her book Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun so much, that we have asked her to teach a course on Living in Lahun: Private Life in Ancient Egypt. UCL’s very own Petrie Museum houses an extremely important collection of objects from Lahun, so this course will include object-handling classes in the Petrie Museum.
Kasia is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales. She is one of the organisers of the Experiment and Experience: Ancient Egypt in the Present a conference held in Swansea,
10 – 12 May.
4th February 2010
BSS in Egypt 2010: Bookings now being taken
We are excited that John Romer has agreed to teach an innovative course for us in Luxor. His lectures will be supplemented by visits to many of the archaeological sites on Luxor’s east and west banks, including a special opening of Seti I’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
Photo: John Romer in Ramesses III’s temple at Medinet Habu
More details: 'BSS in Egypt 2010'
14th January 2010
Our first BSS in Egypt course is heralded a huge success
2009 was the year we launched BSS in Egypt, and the idea proved so popular that we repeated our first course five weeks later. So, Professor Barry Kemp directed Exploring Amarna: Akhenaten’s Abandoned City twice, with a total of 44 BSS students attending his courses in Minya, the closest large town to Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt.
Photo: Barry Kemp explains Amarna Boundary Stela U (P Lynn)
23rd November 2009
Bloomsbury Academy: Autumn Conference 2009
BA's Autumn Conference on ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE, which focused on the Old Testament, was held in UCL on Saturday 24 October, in the presence of an audience of over 220.
Find out more about a fascinating and very well received programme
1st October 2009
Forensic Aspects of Ancient Egypt
Bloomsbury Summer School offers you in-depth study of ancient Egypt and other areas of the ancient world, by incorporating a range of disciplines into our programme of courses. Many people find one of the most fascinating of these is forensic archaeology. In 2008 ‘mummy expert’ Joyce Filer directed a very successful BSS course: Health, Disease and Medicine in Ancient Egypt. This year she made valuable contributions to our Ancient Nubia and Fauna of Ancient Egypt courses.
Joyce is a font of knowledge and a lively speaker. You can join her for a study day on the Forensic Aspects of Ancient Egypt in London on Saturday 31st October 2009.
Find out more by downloading the 'Forensic Egyptology' poster
2nd July 2009
Latest news from Gurob…
Our course directors and visiting lecturers are often archaeologists active in the field. Ian Shaw, one of the course directors for Technology in Ancient Egypt is Director of the Gurob Harem Palace Project (GHPP) in Egypt.
Following another successful season at Medinet el-Gurob in April Ian updates us: "We continued to work on the first comprehensive map of this large New Kingdom palace, town and multi-period necropolis, using the latest GIS software. We re-excavated areas of the town site, revealing traces of at least one kiln possibly used for working glass during the New Kingdom. Among the more unusual surface finds this season were a faience scaraboid of a duck with its head reversed; a fragment of a late 18th-Dynasty blue glass vessel with feathered design in yellow, black and white; a small tile decorated with a fish in cream and brown glaze (pictured here) similar to those found at Amarna; two ‘lady on a bed’ figurines; and two fragments of shabtis (one in faience and one of Nile silt clay)".
If you would like to find out more about this fascinating project or make a donation to it, or perhaps arrange to make an exclusive visit to the site during the 2010 season, contact Ian Shaw (ishaw@liv.ac.uk) or Jan Picton (j.picton@ucl.ac.uk).
You can download details of their first fund-raising event here: a mini-conference to be held on Friday 11 September, at 6-8pm, organised jointly with the Friends of the Petrie Museum.
20th May 2009
Wildlife artist Jackie Garner
BSS combines a unique range of learning experiences and teachers. This year we have wildlife artist Jackie Garner teaching two sessions on the Fauna of Ancient Egypt course (6-10 July). All BSS students are invited to attend a special Private View of Wild about Egypt, an exhibition of Jackie’s wildlife paintings inspired by pharaonic art, on Tuesday 14th July, 6-9 pm at The Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Road, London W1T 4RJ. You can also visit the gallery daily, 12-18 July.
If you miss it in London you can always see it at the Nature in Art Museum in Gloucester (11-30 August) where it is showing alongside Egyptian Landscapes, an exhibition of Egyptian tapestries from the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre in Egypt.
Find out more at these websites:
www.jackiegarner.co.uk | www.coningsbygallery.com | www.nature-in-art.org.uk
www.wissa-wassef-arts.com
