Dr Margaret Maitland

Project Curator: Hidden Stories of Childhood Greece and Rome; Egypt and Sudan Full-time: 41 hours per week (including one hour paid lunch break) Fixed term for 12 months £36,396 per annum Application deadline: 12pm (midday) on 17 October 2025

Come work with us!🏺
Together with my brilliant colleague Georgia Barker we are looking for a project curator to research how childhood is represented in the collections of our two departments at the British Museum, Egypt & Sudan and Greece & Rome. 👇👇👇

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In case anyone was still in any doubt about the relevance of historical context to current conflict…

Also a reminder, if you can, to see Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades and Drama 1882 at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh until Sept 28! www.trg.ed.ac.uk/exhibition/w...

Excellent thread on the problems inherent in "heritage" and the nation as organizing concepts and frameworks for archaeological work.

Examples from the Americas, but all of this will resonate with those of us working in/on the Mediterranean, where there is now lively discussion along these lines. ⬇️

Just one of the many extraordinary objects found in an intact 17th dynasty royal burial excavated in Thebes/Luxor, Egypt and now displayed in National Museums Scotland www.nms.ac.uk/discover-cat...

The Carrier Nets from a Burial at Qurna With Janine D. Bourriau

It was made using a system of half knots, executed in alternating diagonal rows. Here’s an article about the exceptional range of decorative netting in the Qurna Burial: www.academia.edu/9378985/The_...

Funding for Arts and Humanities PhDs in the UK was always tight, now it is nearly non-existent. This will exclude even more scholars, leaving PhDs an option only for the wealthy.

Help Gazan students to complete their university degrees The war in Gaza has devastated the region’s higher education infrastructure. Several universities have been damaged or destroyed, forcing students to continue their studies online under extremely diff...

We are fundraising to support #archaeology #students in #Gaza to settle their tuition fees & complete their degrees. We've worked with them at the #GAZAMAP project monitoring vulnerable #culturalheritage. Please donate and share: gogetfunding.com/help-gazan-s...

Thanks so much Cameo!! 🥰🙏

Copy of an ancient Egyptian wall painting depicting two women shown with yellow skin, long black hair, wearing white dresses, squatting at a weaving loom

Great post offering insights the lives of girls in ancient Egypt! @julia-hamilton.bsky.social draws together administrative, archaeological, and artistic evidence in discussing girls’ working lives, wages, migration, and more:
theconversation.com/work-wages-a...

Brilliant and important research. Archaeology and nationalism have been entangled for centuries, still producing all sorts of poisonous bullshit.

Great opportunity! Paid remote internships related to the ancient world 🏺

Fantastically fun and inspiring podcast with the amazing @robertamazza.bsky.social examining papyrology’s problematic past, questionable practices of the present, and building a more ethical future peoplingthepast.com/2025/05/06/p...

Shocking to see Labour take anti-immigrant rhetoric to new lows, preferring to spread hate and blame rather than putting in the work to rebuild our society after years of Conservative cuts. This piece is a good reminder of the many important forms of migration and the UK’s responsibilities

The threat to Sudan’s cultural heritage | Apollo Magazine Reports of looting at the Sudan National Museum were confirmed last month as government forces retook Khartoum. Rennan Lemos weighs up the potential losses

A significant part of the Sudan National Museum’s collections come from the UNESCO campaign of the 1960s and ’70s to salvage ancient artefacts from areas to be flooded for dams. The looting of those collections is the undoing of those efforts, writes Rennan Lemos

I am especially excited because I will open this conference, organized by Romane Betbeze, with a key note lecture on intersectionality and #gender studies in #Egyptology. @humboldtuni.bsky.social @humboldt-foundation.de

I'm excited to announce my co-editor & I are hosting a virtual author panel for "Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology: All Our Yesterdays," on May 21st. Come listen and join our brilliant authors for a detailed discussion. More information & registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/qa-panel-w...

Top: Siapo (barkcloth) face mask, by Reggie Meredith Fitiao, American Samoa 2020 Left: Green cotton mask, workshop of Essam Ali, Cairo, Egypt 2020 The Eye of Horus (wedjat) design is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and healing. Right: Iranian green silk mask, Bita Ghezelayagh. London, UK 2021 This artist made masks using fabric she already had from earlier projects. Bottom: Sockeye salmon skin mask with border of blue beads, Crystal Worl, Tlingit/Athabascan tribe, Alaska, USA 2020 The salmon skin used to create this mask was harvested by the artist and her family.

Last few days to see the exhibition ‘Injecting Hope’ @ the National Museum of Scotland! I helped collect these beautiful masks during the pandemic, incl. one from the khayyamia workshop of Essam Ali in Cairo featuring a protective Eye of Horus (see alt text for more) www.nms.ac.uk/exhibitions/...

Come follow us on Bluesky, and also please let us know who else we should be following!

Making Memories in Ancient Egypt Cambridge Core - Egyptology - Making Memories in Ancient Egypt

Friends, TOMORROW is your last chance to download this @cambridgeuparchaeo.bsky.social Element for free!
cup.org/4iCMeQb

Cover of On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo by Julia Elyachar. The cover features a dark, geometric background pattern from a brass decoration on an ancient door in Cairo. The title is displayed in elegant serif fonts, with "On the Semicivilized" in gold and the subtitle in white and italicized text. The author's name appears in pink in the bottom right corner.

"On the Semicivilized" by @jeelyachar.bsky.social is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped—and blocked—sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Check out the intro for free! #Anthropology #MiddleEastStudies
buff.ly/2L5s53D

We're delighted to welcome Leire Olabarria, Ass Prof in Egyptology @unibirmingham.bsky.social, as Chair of @theees.bsky.social!

Read how Leire plans to contribute to our mission, making #Egyptology more inclusive and expanding our activities in London and Cairo.
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ℹ️ www.ees.ac.uk/resource/gre...

Many congratulations Dr O’Brien!!! 👏🎉

Iron shackles found at Ghozza suggest at least some gold miners during Egypt's Ptolemaic period were slaves A historian with Laboratoire HiSoMA, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, in France, has theorized that iron shackles found at a dig site in Ghozza, Egypt, suggest that at least…

📰 Iron shackles found at an Ancient Egyptian gold mine reveal the brutal working conditions of those mining precious metals in the Ptolemaic period.

#AntiquityResearch in the news via Phys.org

phys.org/news/2025-03...

A museum display case with a gilded ancient Egyptian rishi coffin at the centre and about a hundred objects surrounding it including numerous ceramic vessels, wooden furniture and boxes, baskets, and stone vessels. ©️ National Museums Scotland

On International Women’s Day this Saturday at 2pm, I’ll be giving an online talk about the ‘Qurna Queen’ and our work reassessing this 17th Dynasty intact royal burial from Thebes, now held at National Museums Scotland. More info/booking with the Thames Valley Ancient Egypt Society: www.tvaes.org.uk

Senebkay - Wikipedia

Yes indeed! King Senebkay didn’t quite fit in the post, but definitely worth a mention, thanks! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senebkay

Wooden labels Inscribed in hieratic with the names of daughters of Amenhotep III and Thutmose IV excavated by Rhind and an Egyptian team in 1857 now in National Museums Scotland

An ancient Egyptian box of gilded cedar wood inlaid with ebony and ivory featuring a figure of the fierce god Bes and the cartouches of Amenhotep II found by Rhind and a team of Egyptian excavators in 1857. NMS A.1956.113

Objects from the Rhind Princesses Tomb are now held at National Museums Scotland, including wooden labels naming daughters of Amenhotep III & Thumose IV & a unique exquisitely crafted gilded box inlaid with ebony and ivory used in the royal palace 4/4 blog.nms.ac.uk/2017/01/10/a...

Rock cut tomb entrance of Thutmose II when it was initially discovered in early 2025

Plan of the Rhind Tomb and Rhind Princesses’ Tomb discovered by Rhind in 1857

When Scottish archaeologist Piers Litherland & the excavators of the King Thutmose II tomb 1st found the entrance, they thought it might be intended for minor royalty & compared it to the Princesses’ Tomb discovered in 1857 by Scottish archaeologist AH Rhind 3/4 www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2023/01...

Ancient Egyptian gold mask of King Psusennes I, wearing a royal nemes headdress with royal cobra and beard, found by Pierre Montet and Egyptian excavators in 1940

It was initially reported as the 1st pharaoh’s tomb discovered in Egypt since the tomb of Tutankhamun, but actually several kings’ tombs were found at Tanis in 1939 incl. astonishing gold & silver masks & coffins, often overlooked as the discoveries were during WWII. 2/4 the-past.com/shorts/the-p...

Ancient rock cut tomb entrance with black metal gate

Fragments of calcite jar inscribed with hieroglyphs

Exciting reports of the discovery of the tomb of King Thutmose II, husband of female pharaoh Hatshepsut! Though the tomb is mostly destroyed, the excavation team still found items naming Thutmose & Hatshepsut, & fragments of the Amduat, a royal funerary text 🧵 1/4 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

The Mystery of the World's Oldest Writing System Remained Unsolved Until Four Competitive Scholars Raced to Decipher It In the 1850s, cuneiform was just a series of baffling scratches on clay, waiting to spill the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia

Finally, an article on the decipherment of cuneiform that does justice to the many figures involved, the timeline, competition, and sheer philological grit.

Fascinating and colourful synopsis of how we came to be able to read tablets from ancient Mesopotamia www.smithsonianmag.com/history/myst...