As our major fundraising campaign this year we are looking for contributions to the Excavation Fund to enable us to continue and develop our fieldwork. The urgent need for us to ask for your help in this way is clear but we are confident that with your help we will be able to make a significant contribution to tackling the problem in the coming years. We are also giving you the opportunity to support a series of new Amelia Edwards Projects.

The Excavation Fund

It is vital, now more so than ever, that we can continue our programme of fieldwork and research.

The security situation at sites throughout Egypt remains of very great concern, to the extent that almost any fieldwork should now be considered rescue archaeology. The problem is exemplified by the important site of El-Hibeh which has suffered repeated episodes of looting since the revolution of January 2011, as is described in the latest issue of Egyptian Archaeology. Our teams continue to uncover new material every season. Everything they are able to recover from the ground is saved: the physical material is put into safe storage, and each and every item that is documented and studied contributes a little more to our knowledge of the past in Egypt.

For other material, not yet uncovered it is only a matter of time before it is lost. Some material will be uncovered by illicit excavations and will disappear from view before scholars have any chance to document it, with consequent loss to our knowledge of the past; in other cases, material or even entire sites may be lost to land reclamation or even wanton vandalism. It is vital that we do as much as we can, now.

One-off contributions, of any size, are very welcome of course but regular contributions, however small, will allow us to plan our activities more effectively, and to tackle the threat to Egypt’s heritage most effectively. if just 125 of our members gave as much as £10 per month to the Excavation Fund we would have enough money every year to support an entire season at a major site such as Tell Basta or Quesna. The more members making regular contributions the more we will be able to do.

To make a one-off contribution to the Excavation Fund please click here.

To set up a regular payment please download and return the form on p.7 here.

Amelia Edwards Projects 2014-15

Preserving Amelia's Legacy

Amelia Edwards’ greatest achievement was, of course, the establishment of the Society, but prior to this she had already made a name for herself, and is now historically significant, as a writer and artist. We are very fortunate that some of her works are preserved in the Society’s archives, but they are now in urgent need of attention if we are to ensure that they can survive into the future. We are asking for your help to conserve the beautiful painting above several early editions of her books, her letters, and various other archival documents.

Total Funds Required: £2,000.

An EES ‘fellow’
- to provide education and practical training in Cairo

We aim to repeat the programme of scholarships – one of last year’s successful Amelia Edwards Projects - in 2015 and we now want to augment it by creating a fellowship to send a post-doctoral Egyptologist from the UK to develop activities from our Cairo office. The first ‘fellow’ will, in partnership with the Society’s representative in Cairo, develop a series of educational events, focusing on the Society’s fieldwork, research and archives, and also practical workshops for potential EES scholars, and others in the Egyptological community in Egypt. These will provide training in preparing for research for oral presentation and publication, completing applications for scholarships and other opportunities, managing data, and making best use of libraries, archives and research tools such as the Online Egyptological Bibliography, and Topographical Bibliography (Porter and Moss).

Total Funds Required: £3,000

Amarna Object Cards:
- Unpublished Records from the City of Akhenaten

During the 1920s and 30s the Society excavated many thousands of objects at Tell El-Amarna, leading to a massive leap forward in our knowledge of the city of Akhetaten and the period of Akhenaten’s reign. Every one of the objects was recorded in meticulous detail, and many were the subject of exquisite drawings made by members of the team including Mary Chubb, author of Nefertiti Lived Here. The objects cards were never published themselves, although they contain far more information than was published in the City of Akhenaten volumes. Some of the cards have now been scanned and samples made available online in 2013-14 as part of the #Amarnafortheday series. We now aim to digitize the entire collection, making every one of the records available online, and to conserve the originals, some of which are works of art in their own right.

Total Funds Required: £2,500

Making the Society’s research available in Egypt
- A full set of EES Memoirs for the Cairo Library

While it will remain essential that we can continue to bring researchers to the UK, we also want to make the Society’s publications more accessible in Cairo by transporting a complete set of the Society’s back catalogue of Memoirs and other reports to the small library in our Cairo office. The scholarships were in part prompted by the paucity of accessible research libraries, and this means that the Society’s publications, which represent its enormous contribution to knowledge of ancient Egypt, are largely unavailable to our Egyptian colleagues. We want to help redress this situation, and to provide a very visual indicator of the Society’s historic achievements, by installing a complete set of Excavation Memoirs and other reports in the small library in or Cairo office. We have the volumes ready, but cannot cover the cost to ship them to Cairo without your help.

Total Funds Required: £1,500

To make a contribution to the 2014-15 Amelia Edwards Projects please click here.

Help us to continue the successes of the last 132 years

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the contribution made by the Society during its 130-year history of archaeological work in Egypt. Its excavators have been responsible for discovering some of the most important monuments in the country including a sacred cow of Hathor at Deir El Bahri, the Osireion at Abydos, the North Riverside Palace at Amarna, the Memphite Tombs of Horemheb and Maya, and Sacred Animal necropolis at Saqqara. Our knowledge of many more of the most important sites has been massively improved by the surveys and excavations carried out during that time. 

Our teams have continued this pioneering work right up to the present day. In the last few years...

Dr Joanne Rowland has uncovered a previously unknown catacomb for the burial of sacred animals at Quesna. This has added significantly to our understanding of animal worship in the Delta region, providing a wonderful complement to the masses of information yielded during the Society’s excavations at Saqqara.

Dr Angus Graham’s wide-ranging survey work in the Luxor region has show that there is a strong possibility that the famous temples of Karnak were originally built on an island in the Nile. Angus’ revolutionary approach is showing an aspect of the ancient people’ lives in the city of Thebes that is entirely new to us.

Drs Jeffrey and Patricia Spencer’s work over many years in the Delta has provided masses of new information at numerous sites, some of which were, beforehand, barely even recognized as having any archaeological value. Earlier this year their work at a new site, Tell Buweib, revealed that a temple identified using satellite images, was much earlier than previously thought, and may well date not to the Late Period, but to the reign of Ramesses the great.

Many more sites and monuments remain to be properly investigated, and there will no doubt, be many more discoveries to be made. We are determined that our work must continue, but we will need your help.

Please support the Excavation Fund by making a one-off donation or setting up a regular payment by Direct Debit (please download and return the form on p.7 here) and join us in continuing this vitally important work.

Thank you!