An excerpt from the Society’s Oral History Project interview with Professor Harry Smith has now appeared on the Society’s YouTube channel and is available below. In this part of the interview, which was conducted by Chris Naunton in March 2009, Harry talks about the EES' 1961 survey of archaeological sites in Egyptian (Lower) Nubia, which he directed and which formed part of the Society's contribution to the UNESCO rescue campaign. This was the last opportunity to gather information on the archaeology of the region before it was submerged beneath the flood waters created by the High Dam at Aswan.
Harry Smith (left) with Egyptian Antiquities Service Inspector Aly Hassan aboard the boat used during the Survey.
The first half of this part of the interview appears here and a second installment will follow shortly.The recording of Harry's voice is accompanied by footage shot by EES member Dr Anthony Hovenden during a tourist visit to Lower Nubia in 1962, and also by images from the Society's Lucy Gura Archive. We are extremely grateful to Professor Smith for his time and recollections and to Dr Hovenden for permission to use his footage.
The editing of this material was prompted by the recent work of Dr Alice Stevenson who had transcribed the interview on behalf of the Project, and whose interest was aroused by Harry’s mention of an A-Group cemetery discovered during the survey which had remained unpublished ever since. Alice is a specialist in the funerary practices of the earliest phases of Egyptian history – she is the author of the 2009 volume, The Predynastic Egyptian Cemetery of el-Gerzeh. Social Identities and Mortuary Practices (Peeters, Leuven, 2009) among other works – and has now completed a study of the site, based on the Nubian Survey records, which had been in Professor Smith’s possession until September 2009 when he presented them to the EES for the Lucy Gura Archive.
A short article on Alice’s work will appear in the next issue of The EES Newsletter which is currently in press, and a full version will be published in JEA in due course. Full-size versions of the images on this page are now available via our photo galleries at Flickr and the full set of photographs relating to Tunqala West will be available after the forthcoming conference 'Egypt at its Origins: The Fourth International Conference on Predynastic & Early Dynastic Egypt', at which Alice will be announcing the results of her work.
The survey team in the field. David O'Conner is seated at left, and Harry Smith is seated third from left. Between them is Professor Smith's wife Hazel.
Survey team members (L-R) Martin Minns, Aly Hassan (Egyptian Antiquities Service Inspector) and David O'Connor aboard the Nubian Survey boat in 1961.