The Queen's College Newsletter: Trinity Term 2019

THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE
www.queens.ox.ac.uk
The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures
A glimpse of Ancient Egypt
Queen’s has always supported a diverse and dynamic research
community. With the encouragement of the Provost, the College
has recently created two research centres to build on shared
research interests among its senior and
junior members: The Queen’s College
Translation Exchange (see pages 14-15)
and The Centre for Manuscript and
Text Cultures (CMTC), which crystallizes
an initiative launched by our Fellow in
Chinese Philosophy, Dr Dirk Meyer, in
2012 as The Workshop for Text and
Manuscript Cultures.
CMTC is an inter-disciplinary research
centre and academic melting-pot for the
study of material text cultures and their
written artefacts from a broad range of
pre-modern cultures, including ancient
China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and medieval Europe. It draws
on the interests of Queen’s Fellows in
Oriental Studies, Egyptology, Classics,
and Ancient History, and of colleagues in other colleges in
Egyptology, Sinology, and Medieval English and German.
Through its activities it aims to enable informed debate across
subject boundaries and to contribute to shaping an emerging
field of enquiry into the material factors of knowledge production
across societies.
The Centre has a regular programme of workshops for doctoral
students and for early career academics, together with a
research seminar in sixth week each term given by distinguished
invited scholars on topics ranging from ‘Ancient Mesopotamian
Concepts of Disease and Cure’, through ‘Epigraphic Mania
in the North Arabian Desert’, ‘Literacy
and Numeracy in a Babylonian Village’,
‘Scrutinizing the Qur’an in Western
Europe’, ‘The Zhou Bronzes and the
Shaping of Tetrasyllable Poems in China’,
to ‘Why Medieval Users Rubbed and
Kissed their Manuscripts’.
The Centre has a Junior Research Fellow,
Dr Selena Wisnom, whose work on
Babylonian divination has reached the
columns of The Times, and a doctoral
student in Sanskrit, Fabienne Heuze,
who is supported by the John P. Clay
Scholarship. The Centre’s Director is
Dr Dirk Meyer.
CMTC has an international advisory
board and has begun to build a research
network with similar centres in Germany, China, and Hong
Kong. Most excitingly, it is about to launch an open-access
journal, Manuscript and Text Cultures, the only one of its kind,
to publish research in annual themed issues devoted to specific
questions placed in cross-cultural contexts. The first issue will
appear in 2020, edited by Dr Christelle Alvarez and Dr Yegor
Grebnev, and will examine the question of Transposition and
Monumentality in Writing.
www.queens.ox.ac.uk/centre-manuscript-and-text-cultures
A new display in the relocated Peet Library has brought some of
the colours and textures of ancient Egypt into the College.
Thomas Eric Peet (Reader and Professor designate of
Egyptology 1933–1934) was notable for studying Ancient
Egypt in its own terms and worked in an interdisciplinary
manner. Peet, like many of his successors, was appreciative
of Queen’s for being ‘most kind to me in every way’, and he is
commemorated in the College by the Peet Library, a collection
of Egyptology books that is used by Egyptologists across the
University, and which is now part of the New Library.
The case includes artefacts from the College’s collection with
the addition of some pieces donated for display by descendants
of T. E. Peet. The new permanent display is intended to give
readers a sense of the material reality of this ancient culture,
which can often be lost in academic accounts and publications.
Professor of Egyptology, and former British Museum curator,
Richard Bruce Parkinson is behind the new installation, assisted
by Dr Ann-Katrin Gill (Univ.) and Barns Student Jordan Miller.
He said: ‘publications inevitably fail to capture a full sense of
ancient experience. The display aims to remind library users of
the physical presence of Egypt, through its stone and ceramics,
and to break down the institutionalised habit of conceiving that
culture in somewhat abstract terms. I wanted the readers to
have the same privilege that curators have when they work with
artefacts in a museum collection on a daily basis – a familiar
touch of the real’.
Most of the artefacts, like much ancient data, are from funerary
contexts, spanning four millennia. The display prioritises the
visual qualities of the shapes and materials, producing a simple
uncluttered effect, to complement the architecture of the New
Library. Detailed information on each piece is available online
(https://tinyurl.com/PeetDisplay), but there is only an introductory
information panel in the case itself, encouraging viewers to
look rather than to read. Some of the objects are instantly
recognisable as Egyptian, such as the canopic jars (pictured)
intended to hold the internal organs of mummies, but Parkinson
hopes that ‘people will also be struck by the aesthetic qualities
of the banded Egyptian calcite stone and the simple style of
the vessels.’ This, and the fact that their carved faces establish
an immediate engagement with the viewer as they enter the
New Library. They all face into the main library space, apart
from one with the head of a falcon deity, which now faces into
the Peet Library, as its head looks distractingly like a budgerigar
(the poorly carved head will remind readers that a human hand
was involved in the carving!).
Ancient Egyptian texts have been central to Egyptology at
Queen’s, and a key piece is a round-topped limestone stela
(a carved stone slab) made around 1700 BC for an official
named Khentykhetyemhat, containing a Hymn to Osiris.
This poetic hymn to the god of the dead alludes to his triumph
over his enemies as resurrected ruler of Egypt. A duplicate of
this stela in the British Museum contains the same hymn, raising
issues of text transmission and workshop practices; the higher
quality of the carving on the Queen’s stela suggests that
Khentykhetyemhat might even have been unsatisfied with the
work of the first stela and ordered a second.
Whether you’re a student of Egyptology or not, this exhibition
allows you to take a closer look at this fascinating period of
world history as well as prompting reflection on the nature and
function of academic spaces: a reminder of the material reality,
aesthetic beauty and even the fallible humanity of ancient
works of art.
If you’d like to view the display, please contact the library on
01865 279213; please note that visiting is restricted during
examination periods.
The College has a long association with the study of Ancient
Egypt, beginning with Francis Llewellyn Griffith, a Fellow of
Queen’s and the first Professor of Egyptology at Oxford
(1924–1932). In 1939 the Griffith Institute was founded in his
memory, and it remains at the heart of the subject in Oxford
(www.griffith.ox.ac.uk). The Griffith Institute has a strong spirit of
collaboration with Queen’s and has supported the College with
research on the new display.
Photo © David Olds
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