EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Ian Mathieson, who died on 24 June 2010 at the age of 83, was a friend and colleague of EES missions working at Memphis and Saqqara, and at Amarna, for many years. He opened our eyes to the importance of ground-based remote sensing techniques and achieved astonishing results with his own Saqqara Geophysical Ian Mathieson at Saqqara in 2006. Photograph: Campbell Price Survey Project with Jon Dittmer, sponsored by the Glasgow Museums, (formerly by the National Museum of Scotland). He was also an inexhaustible fund of shared expertise, advice, humour and ideas, and generous donations of equipment during our collaboration with him over the past thirty years. Ian had a long and varied career in mineral exploration in the Middle East, and became interested in archaeology through his work in Iran. When we first got to know him he was running a successful business in Saudi Arabia, and soon after that opened an office in Cairo. Our first collaboration with Ian goes back to the early years of the Memphis survey when in 1982 he and his wife Padi agreed to conduct a resistivity meter survey over parts of the Memphis ruin field. At the same time he offered us our first piece of high-tech equipment – a Topcon Guppy total station, obsolete to his company but cutting edge and undreamed of to us as archaeologists! Since then EES projects have shared a series of increasingly complicated surveying instruments. Ian launched his own remote-sensing programme at Saqqara in the 1980s, starting at the Gisr el-Mudir, the enormous early dynastic enclosure west of the Step Pyramid. This Project has been extraordinarily successful in showing, with great precision, just how much archaeology (much of it quite unsuspected) still lies below the desert surface at the site. For recent results, see the article by Campbell Price, a member of Ian’s team, EA 34 pp.38-39. Ian’s passing is a huge loss, both profesionally and personally, and all our sympathy and best wishes go to Padi and the rest of Ian’s family. We will all miss him. DAVID JEFFREYS
Win Exley, who had worked for over 25 years at the Society as a volunteer (see EA 29 p.44), died on 10 August 2010 at the age of 87. Win was born in North Bierley, Yorkshire, and as a young woman was the smallest member of a troupe of stage players/dancers - the Leta Players. She performed in several pantomimes in Leeds in the old Win Exley at the theatre, including Alice in Wonderland Society’s Christmas Party in 1990 with Peter O‘Toole. She later moved to London and served during World War II as a lieutenant corporal in the Transport Division (ATS) of the army, from 1943 to 1946 looking after the barrage balloons and making sure they were all in flight, in the right place and at the right time. Win had to work on for a further year after the war ended and was sent to several places in Germany but despite having to work when everywhere was in disarray, she still found time to go dancing in the NAAFI and attended local plays and shows. Ever the traveller, she visited many places but the love of her life was Egypt and her first trip there in 1970 set her on a path of continual thirst for knowledge of the place, its people and literature. She learned how to translate hieroglyphs and eventually helped to catalogue slides, photographs and articles for the Egypt Exploration Society from where she retired in her eighties. She revisited Egypt several times and attended lectures and exhibitions all over the country and in Europe. Win left all her Egyptology books, photographs and slides to the EES. Win had a ready smile and laugh which made her eyes light up and made children and pets warm to her. Once met you could never forget her and she will be greatly missed by all her friends in the Society. FRANCINE PRINCE Lydia M T Barker, a member of the EES since 1976, left a significant collection of books on Egypt which her daughter has donated to the Society. Mrs Barker travelled widely throughout her life, with her family or on her own if they couldn’t keep up with her, notching up no fewer than five trips to Egypt and 20 to Morocco plus visits to Iraq, Jordan, Iran and Syria. Also a keen linguist, Mrs Barker, born in Lombardy, became proficient in Spanish, French, German and of course English, and found time to attend adult education evening classes and amass books on the history of art, philosophy and archaeology. A keen horsewoman, Mrs Barker hired her mount from stables in Wimbledon, and loved gardening, cultivating orchids, hoyas and camellias. She is survived by her son and daughter. Lydia Barker on JANE COOPER holiday in Egypt
Ian and members of his team working at North Saqqara in 2006 for the Saqqara Geophysical Survey Project. Photograph: Campbell Price