Behind the Boxes: Interns Making History

Since February, three volunteers have been working tirelessly to rehouse the EES collections ready for relocation to off-site storage ahead of our redevelopment campaign, following the initial stage with Maia Nolan. This week we have said goodbye to our third intern Charley Buchan, who oversaw some of the final packing stages before the majority of our archive left the building on 13 May 2026!

Shamim Ghaderi was the first intern to look at rehousing the broader collections housed at the Egypt Exploration Society. See the vlog below to find out a little more about this process, get a glimpse into the variety of collections and how this experience has aided Shamim's career development.

One of our interns, Kit Lopez, wrote a short piece describing their time at the Egypt Exploration Society below.

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity over the last six weeks to assist in the packing and moving of the EES collections ahead of the new renovation of the building as part of the Building the Future project, helping to create a more accessible central hub for Egyptology in London. Due to my own fascination with archiving and museum collections, the work so far has not only helped to grow my experience but also my passion for the safe preservation of historical material.

Since the building has recently closed to the public, I have been working on cataloguing, packaging and putting the vast array of ephemera into boxes to prepare for transportation. This has included using Excel to carefully catalogue names of collections, barcodes and other important information about the objects being stored as many come with original notes from scholars and researchers. Starting the project, I never imagined how familiar I would be with making boxes but before long I had made around three hundred of them, creating a space that is sometimes more box than office. However, seeing the collections for myself and being able to make sure they were properly archived was always a joy. Some of the highlights so far that I have worked on have been travel magazines from the 1930s advertising Egypt with beautiful Art Nueva illustrations, film negatives depicting images of Tutankhamun’s tomb and photo albums of British Egyptologists and locals from the early 1930s.

Despite not having a background in Egyptology, the collections make it easy for anyone to understand why so many dedicate their careers to studying it. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to help maintain this archive and the many wonderful stories of the history of Egyptology they contain, thanks to the generous support of the EES donors to our Future plans for future generations appeal. It has not only developed archival skills that will massively help my future career, but also reminded me of the joy of discovering new pieces of history that help tell a larger story of passionate research.

Thank you to all the generous donors of our 2024: Future plans for future generations appeal that made all of this work happen! Find out more about our Building the Future project and how you can still get involved here.