Fieldwork & Research grant awards 2015

Fieldwork & Research grant awards 2015: funding eight projects at sites throughout Egypt
In November, we invited applications for grants from our Excavation and Development Funds, and from the Murphy Bequest – a legacy given “to support restoration work, recording and collecting data at Memphis, Tell El-Amarna (Akhetaten) and / or the Temple of Aten at Karnak”.  

This was the first year of open competition for our main grants, and the Society’s Fieldwork and Research Committee was delighted to see a variety of projects spread over a number of sites, some of which are new to the Society’s portfolio, whilst others continue or renew our relationship with the project teams.  The Society was able to make a total of £50,000 available in grants, which will fund work at Abusir, Amarna (4 projects), Kom al-Ahmer, Quesna and Zawiet Sultan.

We are delighted to announce that awards will be made to fund the following projects:

• Richard Bussmann – Setting the pyramid of Zawiet Sultan in its local context
• Khaled Daoud – Photographic and epigraphic documentation of the tomb of Nakht-Min at Abusir-Memphite Necropolis 
• Delphine Driaux – The French Epigraphic Expedition at Amarna at the end of the 19th century
  Anna Garnett – The Amarna Stone Village: Understanding a New Kingdom workers’ community through its pottery assemblage 
• Anna Hodgkinson – Tell el-Amarna M50.14-16: Excavation of a bead workshop and chemical analysis of glass found throughout Amarna
• Mohamed Kenawi – Kom al-Ahmer Archaeological Project* (including topographic study, photography of structures, geophysical survey and finds analysis).  
• Jo Rowland – Contextualising the results of fieldwork in Quesna (analysis of finds from Old Kingdom tomb and Ptolemaic animal necropolis)
• Anna Stevens – The Amarna Coffins Project: non-elite funerary belief in the reign of Akhenaten

You can see our grant holders at work in the pictures below.

Above, left to right: Richard Bussmann at Zawiet Sultan; Anna Hodgkinson at Amarna; Delphine Driaux doing background research in the EES archive; Jo Rowland at Quesna with Professor Salima Ikram

Above, clockwise from top left: A decorated coffin appears for Anna Stevens at Amarna; Anna Garnett works on recent finds on the British Museum expedition to Amara; Mohamed Kenawi, Cristina Mondin and Giorgia Marchiori on site at Kom al-Ahmer; Khaled Daoud copying one of the blocks from the tomb of Nakht-Min.

We are very pleased to be able to fund all this exciting work, and look forward to sharing the results with members in due course.  We wish all the teams success in the forthcoming season!

As well as these new grant holders, work continues on the Delta Survey, where Jeff and Pat Spencer have recently completed their season at Tell Buweib, Ben Pennington and Gregory Marouard will survey at Naukratis and Tell ed-Dahab respectively, and Penny Wilson will continue work at Tell Mutubis, as well as her separate concession at Sais.  Around Luxor, Angus Graham is Field Director for the Society’s ongoing Theban Harbours and Waterscapes Survey.  All in all, the Society has rarely been so busy in Egypt.  You can find all these sites on an interactive map of our current work, and we will post links to relevant blogs and news items as the work progresses.

Thank you to all our supporters for making this possible.

* The Kom al-Ahmer/Kom Wasit Archaeological Project is a joint mission between Padova University and The Italian Egyptian Archaeological Center (CAIE) Italy, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.