To build and maintain an effective kingdom, the Ancient Egyptians developed a strong bureaucracy. This event explores a usually forgotten section of this administration: the sealing practices (that is, the closing of an artefact with clay to control who accesses it) that were used to record and secure commodities in Ancient Egypt.
A sealing found in the Early Dynastic town of Hierakonpolis, with a sealing impression bearing the title of "scribe" and covered in fingerprints (Z 46008, Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology).
As part of this afternoon event, we will visit the galleries of the British Museum. We'll pay attention to artefacts from Egypt and the Near East, and discuss the evolution of sealing practices in Ancient Egypt, their rationality and social significance, and the people behind them. This will be followed by a workshop at the Honey and Co. Studio. There, we will reproduce Egyptian sealing practices through clay and replica scarabs, learning, in a practical way, how Egyptians controlled their precious commodities. Looking at the fingerprints that we will leave in the wet clay, we will also explore the possibilities of paleodermatoglyphics—the study of archaeological fingerprints to determine the age, sex and individuality of ancient people—and discuss the preliminary results of Pablo’s ongoing analysis of fingerprints in Early Dynastic sealings. Your fingerprints left in clay will be used by the researcher to improve methods of age-sex determination in archaeological fingerprints.
Capturing a fingerprint through macrophotography for later measurement from a sealing found at Peribsen's funerary enclosure at Abydos (UC42996g, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Nubian Archaeology).
Join us in this afternoon event to learn more about how Egyptians kept their possessions under control in a hands-on way!
Schedule
13:00 – Meet at the British Museum
Exact location to be sent to attendees via email nearer the time.
13:00-15:00 – Walking trail around the Egyptian and Nubian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean galleries of the museum
15:00-15:30 – Leave the British Museum and Walk to Honey & Co. Studio
15:30-16:00 – Tea and Coffee break with selection of cakes
Refreshments provided by Honey & Co.
16:00-16:30 – Presentation on the wider Handling Bureaucracy research project
16:30-17:30 – Practical workshop creating clay sealings
You can create more than one, so one can be used for further research work and you can take at least one home.
17:30 – Wine reception
Representation of a cylinder seal in a beaded necklace, from an inscription in the false door wall of Rahotep's Tomb from Beni Suef, the Old Kingdom (British Museum EA1277).
Venues
Tutor
Dr Pablo Barba
Booking and information
Event consent
To participate in the workshop, you will be required to sign a consent form where you agree to provide some anonymised demographic information about yourself (age, sex, height, ethnicity) and to your fingerprints being kept and studied by the main researcher. This information will be kept only for research purposes until the end of June 2025. For more information, see the information sheet and consent form of the study available to download below. You can also contact the main researcher (Pablo Barba, [email protected]) if you have further questions regarding the collection, storage, analysis, research purpose and/or deletion of the fingerprints and other data. Please note that this form is preliminary and for information purposes only, we will provide the finalised form for you to sign on the day of the event.
Booking
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event in person. If you do not receive your email, then please check your junk folders before contacting the Egypt Exploration Society.
Event tickets are only refundable if notice is provided at least one week prior to the event date.
The venue has a limited attendance capacity, so please only sign up if you’re confident that you can attend. If this event does become sold out, please click the book now button to join the waiting list. We will email you if a place becomes available for this event, so you may reconfirm your interest in attending this workshop.
