Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries
Stephanie Boonstra and Campbell Price, Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries. The Egypt Exploration Society, 2025. ISBN: 978 0 85698 258 3. Price £25.00 (paperback), $28.99 (eBook)
Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries may be small in terms of dimensions, yet its scope is enormous, reflecting the scale of the Egypt Exploration Society’s achievements from its creation in 1882 to its pioneering work over the subsequent century.
Edited by Stephanie Boonstra and Campbell Price, who provide most of the discussion around the entries, which do ‘reflect the interests of the authors’, the book also features contributions by scholars from around the world. This includes contributions from Egyptian colleagues who participated in the Society’s Egyptological Archives Skills School, as well as sections written by Egyptologists based in the US and Europe.
The international impact of the Society’s work is further reflected in the fact that ‘the 50 Discoveries within this book now reside in over twenty museums and archaeological sites on five continents’. By discussing these 50 finds individually, in chronological order, to unpack Egypt’s story from the Predynastic to Coptic times (c. 4400 BCE–600 CE), the book clearly demonstrates how the Society’s excavations and epigraphic work have significantly advanced our understanding of Egypt’s ancient history.
At the same time, it also traces the way in which Egyptology itself has developed and changed over time. Useful additions throughout the main text expand key points, from ‘The Egyptian Archaeological Workforce’, focusing on the specialist teams from Quft, to ‘Distributions’, explaining that at the Society’s founding to preserve and document Egypt’s threatened heritage Amelia Edwards understood that Egyptian law required all discoveries to remain in Egypt. Yet within a year of the Society’s first excavations, the introduction of the ‘finds division’ system allowed excavators to take a share back home while the Egyptian authorities retained any finds wanted for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (see EA 67, p. 4–7). As a system which ‘became a major incentive for institutional sponsorship of EES work’, it could have expanded on Amelia’s network of ‘local secretaries’ across the UK and abroad, many of whom were women and prolific fundraisers. One local secretary, Annie Barlow, active between Bolton and Manchester, personally raised upwards of 10% of the Society’s annual subscription income several years between 1900 and 1930.
It's largely thanks to Barlow’s efforts that Bolton Museum has some 12,000 Egyptian artefacts, almost all from EES excavations. This includes the Late Period (c. 664–332 BCE) Pyramidion from Abydos featured in the book (no. 35), which certainly benefits from showcasing artefacts in overlooked collections. So, alongside the well-known ivory figure of Khufu (no. 6) in Cairo, the authors have also selected ‘never-before-published artefacts from Egyptological collections… that have not received as much attention’, including a rarely-seen votive cat plaque in Bristol (no. 20) and child’s knitted sock from Antinoöpolis in Leicester (no. 48).
Such well-chosen objects are further enhanced by the Society’s rich archive of excavation photographs, not only showing discoveries during excavation but giving fascinating insights into the working conditions of past archaeologists, including the common use of tombs as dig houses as recently as 1950, highlighted by a wonderful colour image of Michael Apted’s neatly-made bed in a tomb at Meir.
Certainly, Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries is highly recommended, delivering on its subtitle: ‘Highlights from the first century of the Egypt Exploration Society’. Indeed, so rich is the Society’s legacy that a follow-up volume could continue to tell untold stories and shed even more light on its pioneering past and Egypt’s own epic history.
