Egypt Exploration Society

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The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a foundation that funds British excavations in Egypt . It was founded in 1882 by Amelia Edwards under the name Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) and changed its name to Egypt Exploration Society in 1919 . The EES is headquartered in London , with a second office in Cairo .

history

Amelia Edwards had traveled through Egypt by ship from Cairo to Aswan in 1873–74 and saw the imminent decline of the monuments with her own eyes. Her travelogue A Thousand Miles up the Nile , published in 1877, was an instant bestseller .

A letter published in the Morning Post in December 1879 by the young Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville , in which he pointed out the urgent need for financial support from abroad for archaeological research because the Egyptian state was bankrupt and the work of the government under Auguste Mariette as a result poor health could not be continued, was the trigger that Amelia Edwards actively campaigned for the preservation of Egyptian antiquities.

Together with Naville they wrote to Auguste Mariette that they were collecting money for his plans. However, Mariette died in 1881 and Gaston Maspero was his successor in Cairo as head of the Service des Antiquités .

With Reginald Stuart Poole , head of the department for medals and coins at the British Museum in London, she began planning the establishment of an Egyptian society. They first met in the British Museum in 1880. Amelia Edwards was determined to bring ancient Egypt to the general public, with a particular concern for the preservation of the Egyptian monuments. Over the next two years she gathered support from all circles of the population, be it church, nobility , museum or university.

On March 30, 1882, Edwards and her colleagues announced in the Times that a company had been formed with the purpose of excavating the ancient sites in the Nile Delta in Egypt and that the plan had a reasonable chance of success. When the Egypt Exploration Fund was founded , Amelia Edwards and Reginald Poole were joint honorary secretaries. While Poole took care of the international administration, Edwards took care of public relations and recruiting of members.

Thanks to a donation of £ 500 from Sir Erasmus Wilson , the EEF - as it was now called - applied for a license to excavate in the Delta from the Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte in Egypt . Gaston Maspero issued the first license to a company. They agreed that the Swiss Edouard Naville should start the excavations in Tell el-Maschuta in January 1883 .

The foundation is currently carrying out excavations in Amarna and Qasr Ibrim and financing the German excavations in Bubastis .

Periodicals

Series

Results of fieldwork and research published as monographs in the following series:

  • Excavation Memoirs
  • Archaeological Survey Memoirs
  • Texts from Excavations
  • Occasional Publications
  • Graeco-Roman Memoirs (GRM)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alan L. Jeffreys, Lisa Giddy: Index to Egyptian Archeology. Bulletin of the Egypt Exploration Society. Issues 1-10 (1991-1997). online (PDF; 1.96 MB) ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ees.ac.uk
  2. ^ Publications of the Egypt Exploration Society