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100th Anniversary, Howard Carter's Discovery Of Tutankhamun's Tomb (4th November 1922) - Ep 9
438 Plays1 year ago
The discovery of the Tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamun is one of the most celebrated discoveries in Egyptology and perhaps archaeology in general. This month is a significant anniversary of that discovery and we at The Flipside are privileged to be able to explore this topic with Dr. Daniela Rosenow and Prof. Richard Parkinson, who are both educators at the University of Oxford and custodians/researchers of the Griffith Archive. For those who are not already aware the Griffith Institute Archive is one of the most significant UK-based collections to explore the cultures of Ancient Egypt. In particular the Archive houses the complete excavation records including journals, reports, object cards, drawings and photographs of Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Working with these materials Dr. Rosenow and Prof. Parkinson have curated an exhibition entitled Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive, this provides an exceptional exploration of previously neglected aspects of the Archive and asks questions about how the Archive itself came to be and highlights the absence from the narrative of the Egyptian people. The discussion this month was truly exceptional and insightful and I for one am sure that it will influence my future practice and the way in which I think about archaeology.
Links
- Access to The Griffith Institute Online Resources via the link below!
- http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut/
- Access to details regarding the Exhibition via the link below!
- https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/tutankhamun-excavating-the-archive
- To keep up to date with the Archive and Egyptology try following
- https://twitter.com/griffithoxford?lang=en
- or read the institute blog at https://blog.griffith.ox.ac.uk/
Music
Intro/Outro Music - Creative Commons - "Fantasia Fantasia" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript
Introduction and Membership Invitation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, this is Chris Webster, founder of the APN and I just want to thank you for downloading this episode. Please consider becoming a member of the APN if you're not already and helping us make more great shows and get them out to the world. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash members or click the link in the show notes. On to the show.
Historical Anniversaries and Tutankhamun's Discovery
00:00:17
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Flipside. This is, as always, the podcast that brings to you important discussions about the past, prompted by specific historical anniversaries. This month, it's a big one, guys. As we dive into events surrounding the 100th anniversary of Howard Carter's discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb,
00:00:57
Speaker
on the 4th of November 1922. This is of course one of the premium Egyptological discoveries ever made and perhaps one of the most astounding discoveries ever made archaeologically too. At the time it was big news and it is still big news today, partly because of the intact nature of the tomb and the amount of artefacts that were recovered from it.
00:01:25
Speaker
some of which artefacts have come to typify the image of Egyptology globally. But of course this is an early excavation and so fundamentally colonialist, as are the archives at the Griffith Institute of the excavation.
00:01:44
Speaker
which holds
Exhibition 'Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive'
00:01:45
Speaker
Howard Carter's entire record, which is the inspiration, I suppose, for discussion today, as we are joined by Dr. Daniela Rosenell and Professor Richard Parkinson.
00:01:59
Speaker
These guys are not only fundamentally interesting in their own right, they are also educators in various capacities at the University of Oxford and custodians slash researchers at the Griffith Institute, which has led to their creation in response to the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.
00:02:24
Speaker
of
Tutankhamun's Reign and Legacy
00:02:25
Speaker
a wonderful exhibition featuring some of the photography and drawings etc from the archive entitled Tutankhamun Excavating the Archive which I highly recommend if you're interested accessing the resources from more details on that later in the episode. Okay so the first thing I guess is a bit of a general background question
00:02:53
Speaker
How do we recognise Pharaoh Tutankhamun as a figure within history? In general, who was he? And how do we recognise his presence in archives? And I suppose as well, what is his significance? Why is his name so well known by so many people? Well, Tutankhamun was a young man, a young king who died more than 3,000 years ago.
00:03:23
Speaker
An Egyptian pharaoh died very young at the age of 19 and is probably most famous for the discovery of his tomb as the period he lived in is still not very well studied or let's say we don't have many resources to understand exactly what
00:03:40
Speaker
politically happened during the so-called Amana period and post Amana period he was living in and in terms of written records that's probably one of the few disappointments of the Tomb of Tutankhamen because historians had hoped that
00:03:55
Speaker
maybe some papyri would be discovered that would give us additional ideas about the political, the historical, the cultural, the artistic developments during that poorly understood period, the Amana period, but that didn't happen.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yes. And with Tutankhamun, we suspect his father was the King Akhenaten who had a religious revolution in Egypt. As Daniel says,
Media Sensation and Egyptomania
00:04:22
Speaker
the Imana period. And the fact he died so young
00:04:28
Speaker
meant that the tomb was a very hasty burial and partly because of that it was quickly covered over by later burials. It was buried by sand water
00:04:43
Speaker
reinedebri in the valley and the unexpectedness of the death, the hurried state of the burial in a reused tomb somehow helped ensure that it survived intact unlike any other royal tombs. And he's a young man, he's not an insignificant king,
00:05:03
Speaker
He oversees the transition back to normal Egyptian religion and society in his reign. But it's really the sheer chance that his tomb survived intact until 1922. That is what makes him so exceptional. And he really has become, after the discovery, the best known of all Egyptian kings.
00:05:26
Speaker
If you had asked people in 1900 who the best known Egyptian pharaoh was, nobody would have mentioned Tutankhamen at all. It is purely the good luck of his tomb surviving undisturbed and of being discovered in a period where archaeological excavations were done as well as they could be at the time, that that is what's made him into a worldwide phenomenon.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yes, for having such a comparatively short reign, Tutankhamun certainly had quite the influence on contemporary material cultures, in particular with the shift back to a more traditional religion.
00:06:10
Speaker
and how that influenced temple building and monument building in general, but also in terms of when the tomb was excavated, the sheer detail and the extent of the tomb I suppose as well with number of artifacts and its completeness
00:06:33
Speaker
influenced something which has been termed Egyptomania and I wondered if you'd come across anything sort of reflective of that within the archives. Well for the toomania I think it is not a surprise that
00:06:53
Speaker
King Tat and Titmania happened after what Richard just said, why he's so exceptional. It was the first royal burial discovered more or less intact and it had more than 5,000 objects in it. Some of them specially made for the funeral, but many of them just from his everyday life.
00:07:11
Speaker
And so I think that was such a sensation for people to see it. And it also happened at the right time as it was really the first event of that kind that was transmitted globally, more or less in real time. I think that a lot of people in particular reacted to the funerary mask because it showed this very young man and people could connect to him. And I think that's two of the elements, I think.
00:07:39
Speaker
that led to mania and you have the merchandising for better or worse. And it basically touched every kind of popular culture, fashion, furniture, music, paintings.
00:07:55
Speaker
Books, I think, that, yeah, that was clearly such an exceptional find and burial that it's almost not surprising because, I mean, at the end of the day, especially with the merchandising material, of course, it's a perfect opportunity to make money. And our exhibition, we have one poster that said, King Tut Lemon. So it's not any lemons, it's King Tut's lemons suddenly. So they are, of course, better and they will sell better.
00:08:21
Speaker
and
Ethics and Symbolism of Tutankhamun's Burial Mask
00:08:22
Speaker
the photography of the tomb is one of the great features of the archive and Lord Canavan very early on in the discovery signed an exclusive deal with the Times newspaper and that meant they were running daily stories on what was happening in the excavation and things like the London Illustrated News were
00:08:45
Speaker
running photograph after photograph of the event as it happened, as Daniel says, in real time. So it was a real worldwide media phenomenon, which I don't think had ever happened with an excavation before.
00:09:00
Speaker
And that is building on a long tradition of Egyptomania in European culture, where people were fascinated with the occult, with mummies, with the funerary practices of ancient Egypt. And of course, that's exactly what people got from the tomb. And to put it bluntly, there was a huge emphasis on gold.
00:09:21
Speaker
And the gold again ties into the familiar colonialist stereotype of the European treasure hunter rescuing golden secrets out of darkness in Africa.
00:09:34
Speaker
So it really came at the end of a long fascination with Egyptian culture, and it really tapped into some not entirely ethical aspects of that fascination. So for good or ill, some of the responses to Tutankhamen are very deeply felt and very profound and aesthetic.
00:09:57
Speaker
But there is something we tended to refer to as tat-tat when we were talking about the exhibition where you just find these wonderfully sophisticated works of art turned into modern trivial souvenirs and even the use of the name King Tut.
00:10:17
Speaker
is potentially, I think, rather disrespectful to a young man who died early from another culture. Again, in the exhibition, we avoided
00:10:32
Speaker
using that abbreviation until we got to the case dealing with the crass commercialization of the find. And I think some of it is really, really crass and horrible. Not all, of course, but tourist souvenirs are not always the highest form of art and cultural production.
00:10:54
Speaker
You both hit on something there which I think it'd be worth expanding further on and seems incredibly interesting in terms of the ethics of using someone's image and in particular I'm thinking of Tutankhamun's burial mask which has come to typify the tomb excavation
00:11:20
Speaker
in general and is often the image which is used in any media to do with that significant event. But apart from that it sort of expanded in terms of that being an image which probably a majority would immediately
00:11:38
Speaker
think of when they consider ancient Egyptian culture, which we know, I mean, it's difficult to refer to it in that way because of course it wasn't a stagnant thing. There is no such thing as an ancient Egyptian culture.
00:11:55
Speaker
But what is the ethics of that image coming to so typify an entire period of history? And what is the danger of that being the image that most people immediately associate with Egyptian culture in general?
00:12:18
Speaker
Of course there are many artifacts which are brought to mind, but that one in particular seems to resonate with a lot of people. Do you think that it is just that aspect of human connection? Well, I would hope that that's not the only image.
00:12:35
Speaker
someone associates with the ancient Egyptian culture, most definitely with the burial, because her face is something so ultimately human. Of course, that's the thing you can most connect with. And people did, not only in the Western world, also in Egypt, because Egypt had just become an independent nation or had started the process.
00:12:57
Speaker
a few months earlier and the king, his face, his mask became an icon of this newly found independence, a new national pride, also inspiring a lot of artwork in the exhibition, he's in the catalogue in the audio guide.
00:13:13
Speaker
We were, for instance, talking about beautiful poems written by Achaoki, who's talking about the excavation, about the discovery, and sees Tutankhamun very much in line as having had the authority to reign over our country and drawing the comparison that after the long dominance by Ottoman and British forces, Egypt had finally
00:13:38
Speaker
was at the point to start becoming an independent nation. And that face was literally the face of that feeling and of that moment. And I think in the Western world, it was again a point that it came at the right time, because it was just after the First World War.
00:13:55
Speaker
And the pandemic, let's not forget it, happened before our times already. Many people had died young, especially in the war, of course, many young men. And then people saw that the memory of someone who died too young as well could still be preserved for more than 3,000 years.
00:14:15
Speaker
I think the distraction of the image which is taken over in a lot of reproductions is the gold. As Daniela says, it's a very human face and it's partly that because the eyes are inlaid, so it has great immediacy and vividness. In the archive, there's a photograph of the mask where for conservation reasons, in part, the mask has been covered with a layer of wax.
00:14:44
Speaker
And so you see the face without the glitter, the reflections of the gold. And in that image, you realize it is a very sophisticated, beautifully modeled work of sculpture. The way that it's often lit for modern photography is simply to emphasize the fact it is high quality gold.
00:15:10
Speaker
The mask was gold because gold represented the impenetrable flesh of the gods. The young king wanted to be transformed into an eternal being who would survive death and retain this youthful face. So that's why it is gold. Of course, the treasure seekers,
Viewing Artifacts in Context
00:15:28
Speaker
the capitalist art collectors see gold and value. And I think that that shine
00:15:35
Speaker
It really stops you appreciating the sculptural qualities of the mask. I think if the mask didn't have those qualities, it wouldn't have been quite such an effective icon.
00:15:49
Speaker
But the modern reproductions really just concentrate on that surface sheen rather than the deep understanding of the human physiognomy that you get. And the Burton photograph with the mask is really quite a shock. Yeah, it's absolutely stunning to see the difference between
00:16:10
Speaker
the photographs today and the images that Burton took more of, the modern 20 for more possible angles and the unshiny surface. It gives us a completely different feeling when you look at it. Carter talks about it in his notes saying, he thought the King looks set yet tranquil, the words that Carter uses. And looking at these images in the archive, you can really confirm that.
00:16:38
Speaker
It's a very subtle face, a very subtle expression. The lips are very, well, the whole face is very sensuously dark. It's a young person in the prime of health with a confident, serene expression, but also quite a human one. It is not the stereotypical idealizing image you often see in some of the cheaper reproductions.
00:17:07
Speaker
It's really interesting to hear you note that the effect in terms of human connection is stronger when perhaps the restoration process has not been undertaken. I think most archaeologists would agree with you that that connection is greater for them whilst they're excavating and in particular when they see these artefacts
00:17:31
Speaker
in context, perhaps with other artefacts and noting the relationship and interrelation between these aspects of life that we are privileged to see. I think sometimes unless the museum is particularly adept, and I would say that it's not so much of a problem now,
00:17:53
Speaker
as it used to be, but there is this issue of a disconnection and a dislocation between artefacts which have come from the same context when they are displayed. One of the things you also get from the archive is the fact the mask is just the head of the mummy.
00:18:17
Speaker
sorry, is just the head of the mummified body of the young king. And it was joined to the rest of the body. There were hands, there was a necklace, there were sceptres. And of all these additional bits to the portrait of the mask, it's really only the beard that is still seen.
00:18:38
Speaker
in modern displays. It was never a portrait bust. It was a portrait head that was part of the entire body of the king. So to somehow take it away from the body and put it in a separate case is decontextualizing it.
00:18:55
Speaker
Of course, it had to be done. And of course, it works beautifully as a portrait bust to modernize. But the archive allows us to see it in its original as part of an original conception of of the whole being of Tutankhamen. Yeah, I mean, it really makes a difference. We say in the exhibition, we say that you see familiar things in unfamiliar ways.
Botanical Remains and Burial Practices
00:19:23
Speaker
Because everyone, thinking of the mask, thinks of this iconic object, that masterpiece, beautifully displayed. But it was just one part of a larger concept of protecting the mummified body. So that was the closest to the head. But then you had the three coffins, the sarcophagus, the four shrines, the burial of the tomb, the valley of the kings.
00:19:47
Speaker
And that was just one piece of an ensemble. And that's, as Richard just said, of course, it had to be destroyed. The second you remove something out of the context. But it's very good to see the original images. And the shrouds and the flowers and the garlands, again, all of them part of the process of burial was as important as the actual physical shape of the mask itself.
00:20:17
Speaker
Of course, and these are aspects of life which have been removed, artefacts which could directly symbolise life, or personal details such as relationship to place.
00:20:34
Speaker
which have been removed from what was an entire portrait of Tutankhamun. Of course it was a portrait of him as defined by those who were grieving, those who constructed the tomb, those who filled the tomb with artefacts. Mortuary culture is obviously a reflection of those who are left behind more prominently than the individual who has died.
00:21:02
Speaker
I think one thing we've both responded to a lot with the exhibition of the archive are the vegetable remains. And so for the anniversary on the 4th of November, we commissioned a replica
00:21:18
Speaker
of a little wreath that was placed on the outer coffin which is made of olive leaves and cornflowers and the olive leaves are interwoven in such a way they alternate between dark and light front and back.
00:21:34
Speaker
And Daniel and I worked with florists in Oxford to produce a replica of this, and the replica was deposited in memory of the young king and all the Egyptians and non-Egyptians who worked on the tomb by the British-Egyptian writer, Adaf Sowef, on the 4th of November.
00:21:55
Speaker
And we are also exploring the theme of flowers with a set of love songs that is being composed by the Oxford composer James Whitburn for the Egyptian soprano Fatma Saeed. And I think, as you say, it's a way of getting people to see the tomb not just as golden treasures, but as something fragile, transigent, and really delicate,
00:22:22
Speaker
human remains, the remains of human actions of flowers, of garlands, of bouquets that are placed as part of the funeral ceremony. And these really, they struck Carter very strongly.
00:22:38
Speaker
as well. It isn't just us imposing a more modern take. Carter himself described these garlands very, very movingly. And I know Daniela can remember the words of this quote better than I can. He said that saying that among all the voyeur's blenders, there is nothing as beautiful as these few withered leaves that had still kept a tinge of their original color.
00:23:01
Speaker
So clearly Carter must have reacted to himself in that way. But he thought, OK, I'm surrounded by all this gold here. But actually, nothing for me is as beautiful as these few blue cornflowers in green and silver olive leaves.
00:23:17
Speaker
which I think it also shows that Carter was very sensitive to these aspects as well as being an excavator, as well as being somebody who is often now regarded in rather hostile terms as simply after treasures and artifacts. He had a much more subtle and sophisticated approach in many ways.
00:23:38
Speaker
There is something about object permanency, which affects our view of the importance we place on artefacts. But apart from that, I think as well, there's something about rarity. We rarely see these wonderfully preserved vegetable remains, these botanical remnants.
00:24:02
Speaker
because they simply don't survive in the archaeological record and Egypt is one of the few places because of the conditions where that is a possibility for us. They are one of the missing links of the
00:24:17
Speaker
archaeological world I think quite often when we examine a new mortuary context we often forget to think about what is potentially missing from that context and I think quite often there would have been some sort of dedication of plant material whether that is a bouquet of flowers or a garland or a wreath
00:24:46
Speaker
or a posy because we and there is evidence for this we associate things which are so delicate and so obviously not permanent with the ending of life. It's also rare for plant remains to be a subject in an exhibition partly for this reason and partly because I
00:25:07
Speaker
I think the assumption is that people won't be enthused about seeing some what is often brown, shriveled plant remains. But the recreation aspect of that wreath, that's very intriguing.
00:25:23
Speaker
And I think both of us were slightly taken by surprise by it because, of course, you see the notes, you see the photographs. But I mean, I think both of us were really quite shocked to see how colorful the cornflowers were and to see how the textural variety is really quite intense.
00:25:43
Speaker
And how small it was. You read it in the notes. It gives you the diameter. But it doesn't quite kick in until the moment you see it and have it in your hand. But of course it's small. It fitted on the forehead of the coffin. It fitted on a human forehead.
00:26:00
Speaker
And that is something, an aspect which is so hard to communicate, that these artefacts often would have been completely covered in pigment, that the tomb itself would have been a riot of colour. Even when
Howard Carter's Artistic Documentation
00:26:17
Speaker
Carcer opened the tomb, there would have been significantly more colour than we notice now.
00:26:23
Speaker
because of the largely sealed nature of that context. But that is in some way such an upsetting aspect of what we do in that it's so hard to communicate
00:26:39
Speaker
that the past wasn't this sort of sepia diluted tones, but that we often associate colour with celebration in the modern context. And because of that absence of colour in archaeological contexts, quite often it's difficult to communicate to people that there was an aspect of the celebration of life. And I wondered how you might have tackled that in the exhibition.
00:27:08
Speaker
And one thing, one problem which we didn't address in the exhibition, though we had considered it, was to talk about the difficulties Carter and his photographer, Harry Burton, had in recording the color of the objects. And there are notes, annotated photographs, and some attempts at color photography. But on the whole, it was decided
00:27:38
Speaker
by Burton that black and white was the way forward. And we took a decision very early on that we would not use modern colorized versions of the black and white images so as to keep the historical integrity of them. And I think the colorized versions are a good fun, they're very vivid.
00:28:04
Speaker
But they do risk misinterpreting that original record. And we wanted very much to try and show the archive as a historical resource of its time and really to keep its ethical integrity to show the difference between these early forms of photography and modern color photography.
00:28:25
Speaker
However subjective and derisive we might be of it now, that is an incredible fact, however, that they put the effort in to record the colours of the artefacts and things they were seeing. And it makes me wonder how
Transition in Egyptian Art Styles
00:28:43
Speaker
detailed were Carter's and his team's notes on the excavation
00:28:50
Speaker
Obviously now we fill out tons and tons of paperwork for every context we dig through and because of that we have a pretty poor impression of earlier excavations and I think we seem to sometimes consider them all with the same one-track thinking
00:29:10
Speaker
and obviously have an awful tendency to discard the context in which these companies were digging. But what were Carter's excavation notes like? What was the record? Carter really was absolutely meticulous with that. You have so many object cards where he is recording, let's say it's a necklace and you have a sequence of beats where he makes sure to note
00:29:39
Speaker
The colors, you know, sometimes that just meant he would write down the material because then that kind of speaks for itself. But he put a lot of effort into that because he was clearly very aware of the fact that this is all black and white photography.
00:29:52
Speaker
And of course he was trained as a painter, not just as a draftsman, but a full color, watercolor painter. So his sensitivity to shape and to form was also matched by an intense awareness of color and tone. And I think that skill set is something that he brought to the excavation, which the excavation was very lucky to have.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a perfect combination of that he was very precise, but you can clearly see and feel whenever you look at one of his drawings that he really appreciated the ancient art. He had a clear eye for artistry.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yes, and the art styles, it's particularly useful that you had an appreciation of art because the art styles of Tutankhamun's period are a little strange, I know. So prior to Tutankhamun's
00:30:56
Speaker
rain you have the Armana period which has a very strange distorted in some ways art style completely different from your traditional representations and then during Tutankhamun's period there's that transition back to a more traditional art style
00:31:17
Speaker
which is broadly more reminiscent of the Thutmose dynasty. These factors together sort of
Interpreting Artifacts and Avoiding Modern Bias
00:31:25
Speaker
mesh in Tutankhamun's reign to create a rather strange hybrid of art styles. Just a further note on that, there have been some scholars that have suggested that this representation
00:31:44
Speaker
supports the idea that Tutankhamun was in some way in poor health or disabled. Personally, because of where the styles of art are coming from and the influence of the Armana period, I don't think that you can use this as evidence for that.
00:32:11
Speaker
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00:32:46
Speaker
Chris Webster here, founder of the APN and host of several shows. I just wanted to let you know about our membership program and what it offers. Members of the APN get, for just $7.99 a month or cheaper if you pay for the year, ad-free episodes so you don't have to listen to me on the breaks, membership in our Slack team so you can continue the conversation with hosts and other members, and exclusive access to any of our live event recordings. Live events are always free, but you only get to watch the recording if you're a member.
00:33:13
Speaker
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00:33:32
Speaker
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00:34:04
Speaker
No, I can think here of some colleagues who are very aware of the representations of disability who are, I think, quite rightly very sceptical about the way the finds are determined. And it is an issue of assessing artefacts and representations in terms of the cultural context.
00:34:28
Speaker
People often
Colonial Lens and Diverse Perspectives
00:34:29
Speaker
will mention the huge number of sticks and staffs that were found in the tomb. Carter himself was very struck. But one also has to remember that these are not just supports for the body. In ancient Egypt, a stick, a staff, was also a sign of power and authority.
00:34:49
Speaker
So that is one reason why they might be so plentiful in the tomb. But the great thing about the tomb is it gives us a huge quantity of materials such as clothes, which can be used in trying to assess the physicality of Tutankhamen's life. We have the royal underwear, we have royal loincloths, tunics, we have such a wide range of material that that allows us to get one step closer to interpreting that physical reality.
00:35:19
Speaker
So presenting any archival evidence is probably extremely difficult and raises some questions, particularly archives which have a colonial aspect to them. How did you go about
00:35:38
Speaker
doing that? And in particular, how did you go about maybe demonstrating differences or absences in terms of European perspective of the excavation in the tomb compared to native Egyptian participation and perspective? I think what I'd say is what we're displaying is the British archive.
00:36:06
Speaker
And so we do not have any real archival records of any other stories or views. And so we have images of Egyptians as team members, but we are seeing them through the lens of a European camera and a European photographer. We have included
00:36:34
Speaker
The poems by Ahmet Shalki as a way of signaling.
00:36:39
Speaker
the other side of the story, which is the Egyptian reception of the of the discovery. But that is not a story that is part of the British archive, nor is it a story that we as European Egyptologists have any right to tell. Egyptian Egyptology has has not been allowed to speak for itself.
00:37:05
Speaker
and having European Egyptologists speak for it now, it risks being another form of colonialism.
00:37:15
Speaker
What we have in the archive is the 1920s view from Britain and America of the discovery. And we have tried to showcase that, but drawing attention to the fact that it is a partial colonialist setting view of the discovery, only one story amongst many other possible stories of the discovery.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean the fact alone that we don't really even know the names of all these men who are in the images, they are visible, we see what they're doing that they have many different tasks, but we only know the names of the four men, so called vorassa, because Awad Kater names them in this book and thanks them, but that's basically it and of course
00:38:03
Speaker
You also have to take into consideration that, let's say, Carter employed 150 men and dozens of children. Many of them couldn't even read or write. So, you know, from the English, the American excavators, we have letters, we have diaries and journals, but the Egyptian
00:38:20
Speaker
members of the team, they would just go home in the evening and talk about it, talk to their families, tell what happened during the day. But you know, I'm sure these traces are there and there are several Egyptian colleagues who have started working on finding out more about
00:38:37
Speaker
the Egyptian people involved in the excavation, not only the excavation itself, but also officials working for the ministry, people who assisted in the autopsy of the mummified body. There's so much potential. And from what we've seen today at the
00:38:54
Speaker
until now from our colleague. One of them is called Han Muhammad and has written a beautiful article. There is so much potential and I'm very much looking forward to learning more about the other side. It's brilliant to hear that that work is going on and obviously that means there's some brilliant hope down the line for maybe a collaborative
00:39:17
Speaker
exhibition between two different archives are comparative of the narratives from both sides seeing how this amazing discovery affected different people. And this exhibition is perhaps one of those first steps towards being able to do that, to construct a more complete history.
00:39:41
Speaker
And it is brilliant and it should be necessary that all archives, museums, archaeologists acknowledge that what we have is never a complete story. I think the record we have in the archive is very full and it has still a great deal to reveal. What we are trying to do with this exhibition is to shift
00:40:09
Speaker
awareness of it from the idea that it is an authoritative comprehensive archive to a more nuanced awareness that it is
00:40:18
Speaker
one archive shaped by a particular historical context and the Egyptian stories, the Egyptian records are necessary to complement it. But the big difference between these archives that causes distress, I think for us as curators, is how the richness, the nuance, the reality of the archive
00:40:46
Speaker
when that is compared with the crass stereotypes, the docudramas that repeat the old, old myths of the Englishman in his period costumes triding into the desert. I think that that is such a popular media stereotype and cliche. Yeah.
00:41:08
Speaker
And it is one that is it has grown out of it, but it's not grown away from colonialist racist ideas about ancient Egypt. And certainly the archive is a 1920s archive, but the people involved with it were much more, I think, nuanced than many of these retellings of the Tutankhamen story. I would not pass a hostile judgment absolutely on any of the original actors.
00:41:38
Speaker
on the British perspective, but I certainly would on some of the people who nowadays repeat these stereotypes without thinking what the political, social and cultural implications of them are.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it has to be said, images from our archive, the images Harry Burton took, there are still today quite often used in publications, in exhibitions, but of course, mainly in documentaries in this extremely uncritical way. Then painting this image
Local Workers and Archaeological Contributions
00:42:09
Speaker
of this nostalgic golden age of archaeology. And I find this really disappointing. I spent a lot of time in the last one and a half years
00:42:18
Speaker
giving interviews, doing podcasts and sometimes filming happens over a day and then when I see the outcome and that again there is so much focus on the gold, on this vintage colonialism, the cars,
00:42:36
Speaker
It just makes me really sad because there are so many more important stories to tell why again and again the same. It can be very frustrating. Yes, yes. It is the issue of perpetuating a narrative being far easier.
00:42:53
Speaker
and economical than attempting to change that same narrative. And I think this is a wider problem in archaeology, not just Egyptological, but also in terms of wider cultural histories as well. There is a push thankfully at the minute and this has been going on for a while for equality, diversity and inclusion policies within institutions
00:43:20
Speaker
However, it does make you question how effective these policies sometimes can be when stereotyping within research studies still exists. I don't think you can be diverse in one sense and then still perpetuate those stereotypes through your research or your outreach projects and media output.
00:43:48
Speaker
In terms of an Egyptological example, I suppose the one that comes to mind most clearly is that when we talk about the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, one of the only people we ever mention is Howard Carcer, and the discovery is down to him in our reading of it. And that is because he is essentially the head excavator of that site, and that is something
00:44:17
Speaker
which is normal in archaeology. However, in the literal sense, which I don't think many people do acknowledge or realize, it is highly unlikely that Howard Carter himself discovered Tutankhamun's tomb. It is far more likely that it was unnamed local workmen.
00:44:38
Speaker
And their contribution in general to the excavation of that completely wonderful discovery really isn't acknowledged enough. It was incredibly skilled work.
00:44:49
Speaker
The crucial diary entry simply says first steps of tomb found, but I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that it was not Carter who was shifting the dirt at that moment. One example where Carter can be held to be at fault
00:45:11
Speaker
is if you compare the journal describing the first glimpse into the tomb, there he makes it clear that he and the English party were accompanied by two Egyptian foremen. And in the published account, if I remember correctly, the mention of the Egyptians slips away.
00:45:35
Speaker
And I don't for one moment suggest that that is an intentional rewriting, but it shows that how much the focus was on the Englishness of the great discoverers as the main agents. And the archive gives us a chance to compare
00:45:54
Speaker
the closely contemporaneous records with the visual records and then the later publication of the find and its later reception. And so you can study the way in which the find was announced and thought about at the period, as well as the actual events, well, as well as trying to get to exactly what happened on the ground.
00:46:18
Speaker
In that sense, representation is such an important aspect of what we do, particularly with the archives and working out who isn't
Critique of Facial Reconstructions
00:46:29
Speaker
represented and not necessarily adding that narrative
00:46:35
Speaker
but just the acknowledgement that that is missing. I wondered what you thought of when you were talking about representation in terms of the mask of Tutankhamun and how that is a very human representation.
00:46:50
Speaker
I wondered, relating to this, what you thought about the various facial reconstructions and projects which have been undertaken in regard to Tutankhamun. They are very contentious.
00:47:08
Speaker
I don't think either of us are great fans of them. And I think Tutankhamun's body, of course, is not a very well-preserved one in terms of the mummification. And my father was an artist who specialized in portraits to some extent. And I am always very suspicious by how unrealistic many of these facial reconstructions look.
00:47:34
Speaker
and how much the final dressing of the reconstruction, the skin colour, the style of hair, the eyebrows, how subjective that is. Yes, the physiognomy can be, I'm sure, reconstructed with a fair degree of scientific accuracy, but the final dressing
00:47:56
Speaker
of that reconstruction. I think that is often very imaginative and I have nothing against imaginative approaches to history, but they are often shaped in such a way as to reflect, of course, the concerns, the ideas of the scholars inevitably. I'm always slightly suspicious about being told that I am seeing the face of Tutankhamen for the first time in reality.
00:48:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I have, I have the same feeling I'm generally not a big fan of facial reconstructions the only time.
00:48:34
Speaker
I actually ever really looked into this was when I was still studying. So this was many years ago, and I was writing an essay about the mummy masks, the for you masks, where at least in these cases, you have the comparison. Then of course, the question is how much of the portrait is that or not? And already back then, when you actually kind of have an insurance in your hand with the mask, with the portrait,
00:49:01
Speaker
It didn't strike me as working very well and being convincing. So yeah, I would always take this with a pinch of salt.
00:49:10
Speaker
I think one of the issues with them is, is that often they are presented with a degree of finality and assurance, which I don't think is entirely fair. Of course, they're used as sort of an inspiring instrument towards getting people to engage with histories. Because as you've already noted, that human connection is something which inevitably helps people to engage.
00:49:40
Speaker
And it is often said as a tagline for these reconstruction projects that you'll be looking into the eyes of the past into a face which is of the past and has seen the past and that sort of romanticisation
00:49:58
Speaker
I think really is a bit of a gimmick that helps people to engage with histories, as I've said, but of course you can already do that. These mummies exist for better or for worse on display in museums in certain cases.
00:50:17
Speaker
But apart from that you have these wonderful pieces of art like the Tutankhamun mask and endless sculptures of these people as well. And unfortunately you're completely right in terms of it being quite subjective down to the artist interpretation in terms of things like skin colour.
00:50:37
Speaker
which is often quite problematic and I would say often the skin colour chosen is incorrect in these cases of facial reconstructions. That also goes by the way for all the colonisation on Burton's images where our biggest question mark and where the greatest sensitivity is needed is the skin colour. Gold is gold, so to speak.
00:51:07
Speaker
Even gold can be reddish gold or greenish gold. Yes, I know, but it's not a living substance. I think one thing we have learned from dealing with the press, the publicity and the public about the exhibition is inevitably people would like to have certain answers. And one thing as an
Simplification vs. Historical Complexity
00:51:27
Speaker
Egyptologist, one realizes is that if you're looking back over 3000 years,
00:51:34
Speaker
you should not be expecting a black and white certainty. It simply isn't possible. And one of the problems, perhaps, of the Amana period about Tutankhamen is the face and the features of the of the kings and the queens seem so familiar that we assume they are closer, more understandable than, of course, they actually are. We can look at the golden mask of Tutankhamen
00:52:02
Speaker
We cannot know exactly how much he looked like that. Still less can we look beyond the eyes and understand what he would have thought, believed or felt. And I think that is something that affects anybody working with individuals in history.
00:52:23
Speaker
But when the figure is well known, is popular, is visually very familiar, like Tutankhamun, everybody thinks they own him. Everybody thinks they can understand him. And we don't. Yeah, no, it's interesting you say that that most people want an answer.
00:52:40
Speaker
I find it quite interesting. I think it actually makes whatever topic object you talk about much more interesting if they're asked the things we just don't know and we might never know. And accepting that, it makes it for me personally, that makes it much more interesting. Yes, of course, normally you will be asked one then answer, but it's not always there.
00:53:04
Speaker
Daniela knows I work on an ancient Egyptian poem, which is about a moment of panic and confusion that affects a person's life.
00:53:12
Speaker
And they never know what happened. But all the Egyptologists and scholars say, oh, there must be a good black and white explanation. And the whole poem is saying there isn't. And looking at my own life, I cannot say in a black and white certainty why I did something or how I am feeling at any precise moment. And I wonder why we expect to have black and white certainty about an individual from a foreign culture three and a half thousand years ago
00:53:38
Speaker
When, if we look at our own lives, we are entirely incapable of saying with black and white certainty how we are, how our culture is, how we make our own decisions. It's pretty racist to assume we exist in complexity and uncertainty, that they, the ancient dead, are just black and white, simple cardboard cutouts.
00:53:57
Speaker
or that there must be scientific ways to come out about that. And when you speak to scientists, of course, they present a very complicated nuanced picture of possibilities. What type of wood is this? Well, we want them to say sycamore or cedar, but no, they will say, well, it has features that suggest it could be this or it could be that. It's a very childish attitude, I think, to the past.
00:54:24
Speaker
and to humanity itself. I do think sometimes our research results and our research in general is only valued if we present it as concrete answers. Certainly in terms of how and when we communicate this to public audiences
00:54:42
Speaker
I think one of the reasons we love research is because we know when we're researching we will never know a certain answer. We're surrounded by this nebulous world of questions and it's wonderful. But the end of the day when we've completed, I say completed like we ever feel we've completed research, but when we've completed a project we know that the question we set out to answer will still be asked.
00:55:08
Speaker
The problem is balancing this ethics. In my own research, I always present with a probability factor of my results. But that isn't what people want to hear. Apart from that, it's balancing this ethics with programs of education and public outputs.
00:55:27
Speaker
which is a real problem. One of my friends is a journalist and she says quite often and you know when I'm criticizing how let's say I was interviewed or what made it into the final cut she says with you academics, you scientists, you know you just give very complicated answers but this is not what we can give to our listener or to our viewer.
00:55:51
Speaker
it needs to be digested in a certain way, not necessarily saying making it completely simplified, but basically ideally yes. And this is where it is really difficult to find a balance.
00:56:03
Speaker
Both of us had curatorial experience in the British Museum. And there, I think the presentation of research is extremely accessible, but very nuanced as well. But I think one thing we've both sensed is the commercial pressure to get a good story, to sell a program means there is a tendency to go for the safe options.
00:56:31
Speaker
Indiana Jones has been selling cinema tickets for decades. It's a safe bet to do something a little against the grain, to do something a bit closer to what we would see as accurate research is going to be a bit risky. And sometimes the commercial factors of investing
Human Stories in Archaeology
00:56:51
Speaker
In filming in publicizing an exhibition tend to to influence the way people will respond. And so, I mean we've had some wonderfully sympathetic interviews and filming visits.
00:57:07
Speaker
I'm deliberately not mentioning who I think they are, as opposed to some of the others, where people are really receptive to seeing and understanding a slightly different take on the excavation. And I should say some of the most sympathetic people have been both British and Egyptian. It really
00:57:26
Speaker
hasn't been determined by any nationalistic lines in our views. But some people are willing to take a risk and to treat public with a degree of respect and not just give people the lowest common denominator that they know will sell, but to give them something. And it is, to be honest, I find it it's so much more exciting. Gold, wonderful, fine. Marvelous works in gold, marvelous.
00:57:55
Speaker
Perfect, but a jar of ointment that was robbed shortly after the burial, where you can still see the fingerprints of the person who removed that ointment during the robbery,
00:58:11
Speaker
Isn't that just as exciting as a highly polished piece of gold? Doesn't that give you a realization that these people were in some ways still remarkably similar to us? That give what Marxist critics would call the touch of the real.
00:58:27
Speaker
you know, there we actually have that touch. We can't get the fingerprints, but we can see the fingerprints. We can see the the impression. And as with the flowers, that gives us a shock of realization that these ancient people are people. It's a different world, entirely different. But still we can we are operating in the same environments. We are operating with the same bodies as they were. And I think that
00:58:56
Speaker
That is some that image of the fingers, which is not in the exhibition because it is, it must be said, a horrible dark and bit of ointment with time. It's not the most appealing of photographs, but in some ways it's it's one of the most moving ones. It's in the book, though. Yes, it is in the book, indeed. But as an illustration, not as an item in itself.
00:59:19
Speaker
It's the same on excavations, really. The one thing I've discovered where I was probably most moved was wear some hand and finger and footprints. You know, not necessarily, I don't know, a gold bead. So I'm just sometimes wondering, do media kind of patronize?
00:59:40
Speaker
I think what's very striking is Daniela comes from a hard archaeological background. I come from a literary theory, poetic background. And yet we see the presentation of the archive in exactly parallel ways, which is quite reassuring. I think if two very different skill sets find common ground,
01:00:01
Speaker
in trying to represent this archive. I hope that that means we're not completely lunatic. We can support this approach from very different perspectives and different methodologies.
01:00:15
Speaker
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01:00:42
Speaker
Okay so I've got a bit more of a basic question this time but one I feel like the listeners will like to hear about. So obviously you guys get to engage with this wonderful collection within the archive and just a note
01:00:58
Speaker
that most of the archive is accessible online to general public, so you can have a look as well. But I just wondered, as you get to interact with it in this different sense, what was your most impactful find within the archive for you? Well, given I have excavated myself for more than 20 years and I have myself produced these kind of records, let's say
01:01:24
Speaker
keep it to the exhibition where we have about 150 objects on display and not the thousands of documents we have in the full Tutankhamun archive, which by the way you can have a look at online. Every single document is scanned and on our website, available for free.
01:01:42
Speaker
I think what strikes me most
Nuanced Archaeology Education
01:01:44
Speaker
are things that show how accurate as an archaeologist you document something. So for me, it wouldn't necessarily be a photograph. But if I have to choose an object from the exhibition, probably would be the plan of the barrier chamber.
01:01:58
Speaker
where you have this perfect mixture of precision, accuracy, and artistry. And I think, yeah, now if I had to choose probably, it would be a document that reflects how archaeology works, not necessarily a picture or something nice to see.
01:02:15
Speaker
I would cheat and suggest two items. One is a perspective drawing of the tomb as a whole, which was produced many years after the excavation and was taken by the archive for its publications. And we include it in the exhibition because it shows something that nothing else could show quite so clearly, which was the sheer mass of stuff in the whole sequence of chambers.
01:02:45
Speaker
I'm particularly attached to it for personal reasons because my father was an art teacher. He wanted to teach me measured perspective. I was keen on ancient Egypt at the time when I was 12, and so he taught me measured perspective by doing this drawing.
01:03:03
Speaker
And the drawing when I came to study at Oxford was donated to the archive at their request, I should say. And it's also a reminder of how the discovery affects people's lives personally.
01:03:20
Speaker
And I very much believe that we are, as individuals, we have to be very self-reflective in our engagement with the past. And as Christina Riggs has said, we shouldn't be producing, and very, very wisely said, we shouldn't be producing celebratory narratives of great discoveries. We should remember this is about a human loss. And so for me, remembering Dad in the archive is part of that.
01:03:48
Speaker
But pursuing that further, I think the favourite case in the exhibition is the one that contains a photograph of a young Egyptian boy wearing one of the jewelled necklaces from the tomb, partly because it is in some ways slightly barbaric, because it is clear that the image was taken simply to show the means of suspension. The boy is simply there as a prop.
01:04:17
Speaker
to support the necklace to show how it would be worn in ancient times. We don't know the name of the boy in that it is not recorded in the archive. But now, of course, it is an immensely moving image because it shows ancient and modern Egypt together. And it shows the jewelry where it belongs, which is in Egypt.
01:04:41
Speaker
being born by an Egyptian who is perhaps a little younger than Tutankhamen was when he died, but still that the face looking rather uncomfortable in some of the shots, that's more of a shock than staring into the gold mask itself. It reminds you that these were living people and also that Egypt is of course still a living culture in itself. So I think of, I'm torn between those two.
01:05:07
Speaker
It's definitely, it's a series of three images all together. And you can literally see how tense he is in his neck and his jaw. It's very touching. And you can see this, kind of see what's going on behind his eyes in his head. It's really amazing.
01:05:25
Speaker
Do you know, I know exactly which image you're talking about. I can visualize it in my head even now. It really is very impactful. And it is one of the images which stayed with me from the exhibition as well. You've already begun answering my next question, I think, but I would ask you, if you could influence in any way the way in which we educate and communicate these histories,
01:05:53
Speaker
What statement would you make? What have you learned from your own experience of curating this completely wonderful exhibition, which does tackle some rather challenging themes at times?
01:06:09
Speaker
I would say, forget the tales of adventure. Forget the Mummy films. Forget Indiana Jones. It's all good fun. It's all very childish. It's time we grew up. It's time we actually faced quite what a wonderful discovery this is.
01:06:28
Speaker
to get beyond the stereotypes. So what I would try and teach children is not to think in cliches and in stereotypes, but to look for themselves and to try and imagine what it was like, reality, the archaeological reality, the physical reality. Look at the gold fern of Tutankhamen. Was it comfortable? How old was he when he sat on it? How often did he sit on it? Can we see where marks?
01:06:59
Speaker
just to get beyond this stupid, fatile facade of the Golden Age of Egyptology. And I think that's a culture, but I think getting away from the cliches is the key thing. I mean, it's about time. Yes. Right.
01:07:15
Speaker
100 years is not that long. The next 100 years we should try and do a bit better and we should try and do it together with all of our colleagues internationally and all of our different colleagues from different disciplines.
01:07:30
Speaker
Danielle is an expert on ancient glass. She can tell me things I didn't even know about objects in the tomb, botanists likewise. We have a whole world in this tomb and we need a whole world of different specialisations to get to grips with the musical instruments in the tomb. It has such potential and all we do is repeat the same old stupid mummy stories.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, I would hope that Tutankhamun period, but also the burial, the discovery, are just really seen in their complexity at some point, or archaeology in general. Yes. But yeah, also to just be, as Richard said, see the point that there are always two sides and highlight things that have been overlooked in the past, and then hope you come to a point at some point where you can say these things, by the way, without being criticized.
01:08:28
Speaker
Yes. For speaking out and being. I use the word now, you are accused of being both. Yes, we've had some quite strong reactions, but not many, it
Accurate Historical Understanding
01:08:37
Speaker
has to be said. Okay, so I guess, summing up, what would be the one thing that you would like people to know of Tutankhamun or how we approach the study of Tutankhamun as a human being? If you could change the way that we study Tutankhamun or historical figures in general,
01:08:58
Speaker
How would you want that to change? Well, the problem is of course that we ourselves don't really know who he was. I mean, I'm sure we can all agree that he was a young man who died too early, which in itself speaks volumes. But yeah, there are still so many unsolved questions. It's difficult in that position to tell people what we hope they should think.
01:09:22
Speaker
And how on earth do people think they can know somebody from a different culture across so many thousands of years when all they have is basically a state funeral? Do people imagine that they are intimately
01:09:39
Speaker
knowledgeable about the personality of Queen Elizabeth II because they watched the state funeral. I think I'd advise people to get real and to understand the complexity of things and to give up imagining we can get to any sort of certainty about understanding a different individual across such vast periods and vast cultural differences.
01:10:05
Speaker
We can try. We can imagine. We can work. And that opens up a whole world of possibilities. But we will never know. You never know what somebody sitting next to you is thinking and all their complexities. It doesn't matter.
01:10:22
Speaker
or what their situation is at home behind the scenes. Indeed, indeed. No, that is the way humanity is. Except we know he was like us in many, many ways, very similar to us, and in many, many ways, extremely different as well. And that's the balancing act.
01:10:43
Speaker
Yeah and I think in general I would advise people if they want to learn something about someone or a period or whatever try to use as much sources as possible. Try to just for a second think about how valid they are. I know that people you know they're not necessarily expecting or that wouldn't even read a text
01:11:04
Speaker
with footnotes and references. But please keep in mind what you read online, everyone, every person can just put anything in there.
01:11:15
Speaker
Also, let's say you start with Wikipedia. Everyone can alter Wikipedia entry. Just don't be blind slash stupid and believe all of these. That's the best start. If you really want to know something about someone or something, try to use as many different diverse as possible, of course, ideally academic ones. But even if they're not academic, try to judge how realistic is that person's background or is there even an attention behind something?
01:11:43
Speaker
No, no source is entirely reliable. The archive is not entirely reliable. Carter changes his story in different formats. The photographs are taken for different purposes that affect. Nothing can be taken at face value, which is true of ancient sources, modern sources, everything. So, yeah. Don't go for easy answers. No, that aren't any. And don't believe people who promise you a solution.
01:12:14
Speaker
And I think that's something that would be good for us to remember in any situation and researching anything or learning about anything. Firstly, that these historical individuals were human.
01:12:29
Speaker
and that we are human and therefore we are equally fallible and unknowing in the way that we think sometimes. But also that it is always worth reaching out for as many reputable sources as you possibly can in order to learn something. Unfortunately, there is a lot of non-reputable work out there which is sometimes easier to find.
01:12:56
Speaker
But it is worth fact-checking, unfortunately, these days that is a necessity. So with that summing up, this next little bit is just an opportunity for
Future of Egyptology Exhibitions
01:13:07
Speaker
you guys to plug any work that you're doing, that colleagues are doing, any amazing research that our listeners would want to hear about, anything in that vein really. I mentioned for the exhibition in particular would be quite good. I think we are hoping it will appear on Google Arts and Culture.
01:13:26
Speaker
Yes. Physically, you still have until the 5th of February, just to mention it. Yes. It's entirely free. You don't have to book anything. A lot of complementary material is also on the website. I mean, if you can't come, you can listen to the audio guide. You can have a look at our 3D fly-through reconstruction. But yes, just yesterday, I had an email from colleagues in Google
01:13:51
Speaker
And I was going through proofs for finalizing the street view we have done through the exhibition.
01:13:57
Speaker
And we have written several small editorials, as they are called, highlighting specific aspects. And so that will be an online exhibition from the Griffith Institute. As I've already said, the exhibition used to have until the 5th of February. And a lot of the materials is on the website. We have all the captions, dependent label texts in the exhibition are in Arabic available. The audio guide comes in English and Arabic as well.
01:14:24
Speaker
There is the 3D fly through. Obviously, there is an accompanying book, which you get in bookshops. And I'm very happy it will happen as a kind of legacy project. The exhibition will live on in a slightly modified version on the Google Arts and Culture platform with a street view and then several editorials. So I think strictly speaking about our exhibition, that's probably the things to highlight.
01:14:50
Speaker
Yes, and I think if people are interested in developments in Egyptology, keep looking at the websites for the National Museums. There's a great Egyptian collection in Edinburgh, there's a wonderful collection in the Petrie Museum at the British Museum. Keep your eyes up for the news stories from those institutions and remember the university departments like Oxford, the Growth Institute, which produce new research, new stories, new insights,
01:15:19
Speaker
sometimes by archaeology, sometimes by research in the archives or in artifacts in collections, and sometimes simply just by library work. So there's a lot happening. It's not always about golden treasures being pulled out of the darkness of a pit in the ground. Other wonderful things exist in Egyptology.
01:15:43
Speaker
The Griffith Institute itself, the archive, the Tutank Amun archive is only one of 160 holdings. It's the tip of the iceberg. And we do regularly post. We have blogs on the website. We do posts on social media. So that might be always the more reliable sources, especially in social media. Look what our colleagues in the museums and universities post.
01:16:09
Speaker
And though for the Griffith Institute also posts about the academic department, the research that academics, students and events are going on as well. And I am well aware that I have gone over time again. So with that, thanks for listening to this episode. It's been a joy
Conclusion and Acknowledgements
01:16:29
Speaker
to record it. You can find this podcast every month on the APN network, where there are also many other podcasts, which are well worth a listen.
01:16:39
Speaker
Our special thanks to Dr. Daniela Rosnow and Professor Richard Parkinson, whose discussion will last on in my memory for a very long time, I think, and whose excellent work is a credit to that institution.
01:16:58
Speaker
Truly, if you get the opportunity, go and take a look at that exhibition. And as always, thanks to you, our wonderful listeners as well. So with that, I'll see you on the flip side, guys.
01:17:31
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
01:17:56
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this podcast. Please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcasting app. You can also consider becoming a member so we can keep content like this free and available to all. Check out pricing and info at arcpodnet.com slash members. Thanks again and have a great day.