Fieldwork & Research grant awards 2016

In October, 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 second year of open competition for our main grants, and the Society’s Fieldwork and Research Committee was delighted to see an increased number of applications from a variety of projects spread over a number of sites.  As so often happens, the available funds could not match the amounts requested, so we were sadly unable to make grants to some excellent projects. The Society was able to make a total of £46,000 available in grants, which will fund work at Abusir, Amarna (2 projects), Hatnub, Tell Timai, Tuna el-Gebel and Zawiet Sultan, as well as in the Natural History Museum in London. We are delighted to announce that awards will be made to fund the following projects:

• James Bennett – Survey and excavation of the religious complex in the North West of Tell Timai;
• 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;
• Roland Enmarch – Hatnub: The texts of the south wall of Quarry P in their industrial landscape context;
• 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;
• Diane Johnson – The “iron” bones of Seth: a study of the massive funerary fossil collection from Qau el-Kebir; and
• Daniela Rosenow – The mountain settlement at Tuna el-Gebel.

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

Top row, left to right: James Bennett on site at Tell Timai; Richard Bussmann at Zawiet Sultan; Roland Enmarch examining inscriptions in the descending entryway of Quarry P at Hatnub; Anna Garnett studying ceramics at Amara West; Daniela Rosenow at Tell Basta

Bottom row, left to right: Anna Hodgkinson using the portable X-ray fluorescence kit to examine glass samples in Berlin; Diane Johnson examining and identifying hippopotamus anatomy at the Natural History Museum, London; Khaled Daoud scrutinizing one of the tiny inscribed fragments from Nakht-Min’s tomb

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 seasons.

As well as these grant holders, work continues on the Delta Survey, where Penny Wilson has taken over from Jeff Spencer as Director working at Tell Buweib and Tell Mutubis, as well as her separate concession at Sais, and Ben Pennington will survey at Naukratis.  Around Luxor, Angus Graham has recently returned from a field season as Director for the Society’s ongoing Theban Harbours and Waterscapes Survey. Jo Rowland continues work at the Society’s concessions at Quesna and Merimde Beni Salama.  Anna Stevens and Anders Bettum continue work on The Amarna Coffins Project, looking at non-elite funerary belief in the reign of Akhenaten – research which received 3-years’ funding in last year’s grants.  And our own Essam Nagy has spent a very successful season in the field with Martin Bommas of the University of Birmingham working on the causeway of the tombs of Khonsu and Sarenput north of Qubbet el-Hawa.

You can find all these sites on an interactive map of our current work, we will post links to relevant blogs and news items as the work progresses, and you will be able to hear many of the researchers speak at our 2-day Current British archaeology in Egypt conference in July.

Thank you to all our supporters for making this possible.