EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Continuing Amelia’s legacy by Howard Carter and also to clean and re-house Petrie’s glass negatives from his earliest excavations for the Society. Full details of the 2012-13 Amelia Edwards Projects can be found at www.ees.ac.uk/news/index/200.html and electronic or printed leaflets are available on request from the EES London Office. In EA 40 we paid tribute to Margaret Drower as she celebrated her own centenary and David Jeffreys writes a personal recollection below of Peggy who died just a month short of her 101st birthday. Sadly the Society has suffered other losses recently. Kenneth J Frazer, who worked as surveyor on several EES expeditions, has died at the age of 98 and a tribute by Harry Smith can be found at www.ees.ac.uk/news/index.html (see also EA 25, p.44). Patricia Lloyd who died on 13 December 2012, aged 71, was the wife of our President, Alan Lloyd, and had a strong interest of her own in ancient Egypt. She will be remembered, and missed, by the many EES members who met her at events and on the Society’s tour to Egypt in March 2010. PATRICIA SPENCER
In 2008 the Egypt Exploration Society launched a new development initiative with the first Amelia Edwards Projects, named, of course, after our founder. The aim was to raise funds which would support directly several discrete, carefully budgeted proposals: fieldwork at Quesna and Karnak, and the Society’s Oral History Project. This initial appeal was so successful that the Amelia Edwards Projects have now become a regular part of the Society’s development strategy and the current fund-raising campaign offers members and friends of the EES the chance to support a wide range of projects, both in the field in Egypt and in the Society’s Archive. The 2012-13 projects include two opportunties to support geophysical exploration; at Karnak (to investigate early land formation at the site) and at Tell Mutubis in the Nile Delta. At Tell Basta a new project will record and publish the Old Kingdom cemetery and Eva Lange describes the background to the proposal on pp.8-10 of this issue. In the Society’s Archive, funds are needed to conserve and display the important collection of paintings
Margaret Drower Margaret Drower (known to everyone in the profession as Peggy) was an inspirational teacher to those of us who were her students at University College London in the 1960s and 1970s. She taught me during my undergraduate years (1970-75) in ancient near eastern history and invariably delivered lucid, considered and impeccably referenced lectures; but even more important were her tutorial sessions following the pitiful essays that I turned in to her (and bear in mind that there were no more than three students around in those days). Peggy was always charming, supportive, friendly and with a twinkle in her eye - but utterly ruthless, even brutal, when it came to detailed discussion - an approach that has always stayed with me and has been a model in my own academic career. I learned more from her, not just about the recorded evidence for past societies but also how to think, than almost any of my mentors at that time (with the obvious exception of Harry Smith). Many have noted that Peggy was the last living link to Flinders Petrie, and she was, of course, his biographer, but in my experience she was surprisingly reticent about those years - I have often wondered why. We had kept in touch on and off since my graduation and I like to think that she took an interest in our work at Memphis, initiated during the time when Peggy was Chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society, and other activities. Even though her hearing was deteriorating she would regularly appear in the front row at EES lectures to support speakers, many of whom were, like me, her former students.
Peggy Drower in conversation with Harry Smith and Sue Davies at a party in the EES Committee room at Doughty Mews in 2006
I was very glad to see Peggy briefly, with her great friend Diana Driscoll, just after her 100th birthday on 8 December 2011 (see also EA 40, p.2) - she was still amazingly alert mentally and as gracious as ever. DAVID JEFFREYS Margaret Hackforth-Jones (née Drower) was born in Southampton on 8 December 1911 and died in London on 12 November 2012. A full obituary was printed in The Times on 20 December 2012 and can be found (pay wall) at: http://tinyurl. com/d6xg7ds. For other personal recollections of Peggy, see: www.ees.ac.uk/news/index/202.html (by Patricia Spencer) and http://tinyurl.com/b7r2wx4 (by Jan Picton).