Mnajdra temple
I have just returned from a few days break in Malta, just lovely – the image shows part of Mnajdra temple, dating to a little before the Pyramids.
Before going away, we hosted a Study Day at the Museum, on Daily Life in ancient Egypt, with Joyce Tyldesley and Stephen Snape, which was very enjoyable – we had lectures and store tours looking at relevant objects. The Saturday before, the Wirral Ancient Egypt Society paid a visit for a morning of tours and a handling session. I also went down to Oxford on a lovely sunny day to give a research seminar, and attended a board meeting of the Egypt Exploration Society in London.
This week at the Museum we have been developing faience research project outlines for students, with Conservation and Manchester Metropolitan University, to look at the composition of the material and how it deteriorates, and the best environment for storing faience artefacts. I’m also catching up with research enquiries, and have a researcher in next week photographing some of the Predynastic palettes in preperation for publication. Tomorrow I will be in the stores, continuing to document and store jewellery from earlier displays.
Hi
Glad you were impressed by the Mnadjra temple in Malta. Did you get to see any of the others? It is common teaching by Egyptologists that the first monumental stone buildings are in Egypt. A visit to Malta demonstrates this to be clearly untrue as the temple remains, in stone, predate the Egyptian 3rd Dyn and contain sophisticated stone building techniques for example corbelled (cantilevered )ceilings such as seen in the pyramids and carved and often decorated door lintels etc.