GLASGOW AND ZOOM
THE COMMITTEE WELCOMES YOU TO OUR COMBINED IAN MATHIESON MEMORIAL AND 25TH ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE LECTURE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT.
Dr Campbell Price: Facing Pharaohs: The Art and Imagination of Winifred Brunton
The South African-born artist Winifred Brunton (1880-1959) was an Egyptologist and a skilled painter of watercolour miniatures. More than most, she contributed to how many people have viewed the ancient Egyptians by (re)creating the faces of royals and elites based on surviving representations and on the mummified bodies attributed to certain individuals. Brunton's contributions mark a significant point in knowledge of the ancient Egyptian face and act as a forerunner of later scientific facial approximations. This lecture discuss the importance of Brunton in the search for the elusive faces of ancient Egyptians.
Dr Campbell Price received a BA, MA and PhD in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, where now he is an Honorary Research Fellow. Since 2011, he has been Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, one of the UK’s largest Egyptology collections. He was Chair of Trustees at the Egypt Exploration Society 2021- 2025.Campbell undertook fieldwork at Saqqara with the late Ian Mathieson, at Zawiyet Umm el Rakham and at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Recent books include Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Orion, 2024) and (with Stephanie Boonstra) Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries (Egypt Exploration Society 2025).
John J Johnston: 'Contemplating the Eternal Gaze: The Reception of Roman Mummy Portraits
Since their initial description by roaming Italian composer Pietro Della Valle in 1615, the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt, painted in encaustic or tempera on wooden panels, and bound into decorated linen and gessoed wrappings of the ancient deceased, have been a focus of curiosity, while the ubiquity of their discovery during the nineteenth century, has caused debate, confusion, and even bewilderment, among art historians and critics within the discipline of Egyptology and far beyond. The almost startlingly immediacy and, apparently, lifelike appearances of these deftly skilful paintings has influenced the work of archaeologists, collectors, and academics. As modern technology enables a greater understanding of these mortuary paintings, certain questions remain, which will be discussed in this heavily illustrated lecture addressing the frequently misunderstood Roman mummy portraits within the contexts of Egyptian funerary archaeology, the Roman empire, and the world of art history.
John J Johnston is a freelance Egyptologist, Classicist, and cultural historian. A former Vice-Chair of the Egypt Exploration Society, he is a Chair of the Theatre of the Gentle Furies and Ambassador of the International Society for the Study of Egyptomania. John has lectured extensively at institutions such as the British Museum, the British Film Institute, the National Museum of Scotland, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. His research interests encompass mortuary belief and practice, gender and sexuality, Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, the history of Egyptology, and the reception of ancient Egypt in the modern world. In addition to contributing numerous articles to both academic and general publications, he has co-edited the books, Narratives of Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Literary Linguistic Approaches (Peeters, 2011), A Good Scribe and an Exceedingly Wise Man (Golden House, 2014), and an anthology of classic mummy fiction, Unearthed (Jurassic London, 2013). He has made numerous television appearances for BBC, Discovery Science, National Geographic, and Channel 5.
Entry: £10