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simonbralee.com
Advocate for history, arts, museums and humanities. I believe in the importance of sharing the stories and findings of research to create impact outside of universities. 🏛🐍 He/him
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Took in the Peter Mitchell exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery. When architecture becomes archaeology. In one series he imagined a Martian space probe landing on Earth and recording important sites like the Egyptian inspired Kays Mail Order Warehouse in Leeds (formerly Temple Works) #Egyptology

Oooooo! Another chariot wheel, this time from Scotland! ❤️ #Archaeology ⚱️ www.bbc.com/news/article...

A horrible but important piece of evidence to think about Roman animal history.

Happy Birthday, Rome! It’s a long time since the founding of the city, but we pay our reverence always to the greatest She-wolf who ever lived and the fantastic mosaic she inspired! #MosaicMonday #AncientBluesky🏺

I only recently learnt that the song Bitch (“I'm a bitch, I'm a lover…”) is not actually by Alanis Morissette and has nothing to do with her. Is this well known?

Luke Jerram’s T4 Bacteriophage in the Oxford Natural History Museum, recalling Blaschka glass models. It’s the artist’s most detailed glasswork and was created for the 2011 Venice Biennale. This virus infects E. coli bacteria. Beautiful and deadly, in all the right ways.

Adding sone stitches to the UCL Arts & Humanities Community Cloth celebrating 200 years of @ucl.ac.uk

The glad eyes of Serapis. You know things are looking up when the god gives you the look. Unprovenanced, Ptolemaic - Roman terracotta head of Serapis from Egypt and now held in the Ashmolean. 🏺 #Egyptology AncientBluesky

And also this dopey looking Roman dog... #FindsFriday 🏺

If there’s an afterlife, I want the first thing I see to be all of my companion dogs and cats, waiting for me across the rainbow bridge. The #Romans loved their dogs as well, and reflected it in their art. Bronze Molossian, terracotta Maltese, and a chubby puppy of some kind. 🏺 1/ 📸 me

This figurine looks incredibly contemporary even though it was made in ancient Egypt. For me, it symbolises the universality of certain feelings. Unknown provenance but possibly XI Dynasty, held in the Petrie Museum 🏺 AncientBluesky #Egyptology

One of the most beautiful trees in central London is in bloom. This cherry tree in Tavistock Square was planted in 1967 in memorial of the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack. A poignant reminder of why striving for peace and justice remains so important today.

I was reminded by @johnjjohnston.bsky.social that today is the birthday of Alexandria. The guardian of this city was the friendly snake, Agathos Damon, who became associated with Serapis and joined with Isis. Here’s an image of the two from Naukratis. Held in Ashmolean 🏺 AncientBluesky #Egyptology

According to Plutarch, on 7 April c.331 BC, Alexander the Great founded the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which, became the site of his own tomb, home to the Ptolemaic dynasty, the famed Library, and the Pharos lighthouse; a bustling metropolis of high culture and higher drama. #Egyptology

Very sad news about Bentley Layton. I only knew him through his books but an inspiring teacher and scholar.

A gorgeous porphyry bust of the god Serapis found in Highworth, Wiltshire 2nd century CE. The choice of stone was associated with Egypt. The stories this guy could tell. 🏺 #Egyptology AncientBluesky

Hello. Here’s a hare on a Greek coin found in Sicily. It’s an absolute gem. The moulding of the face, whiskers and inner ears are breathtaking for something so small. 🏛️ Mandralisca museum, Céfalu 📷 mine #AncientBlueSky 🏺

When you look at the list of institutions they want to defund: libraries, museums, the Smithsonian, public schools, PBS, NPR, archives, you can clearly see that the real threat to an authoritarian regime is an informed and educated public

Terracotta figurine of a #dog holding his pup (or a prey?) in his mouth. Greek, Boeotian 1st half of the 5th century BC. Life without #dogs is possible but pointless 🐶🐕 On display at Antikensammlung München 📷 me 🏺 AncientBluesky #archaeology

Went to the Tarot exhibition at the Warburg’s new Kythera Gallery. An intricate, beguiling, perfect little show. Of particularly interest was the invention of an ancient Egyptian origin for the cards in the 18th century & the Egyptian inspired art of the occult revival of the early 20th #Egyptology

For a late #FrescoFriday, superb paintings from #Herculaneum depicting a ceremony at the temple of Isis, with palm trees, Ibises, and priests and priestesses, some with sistrums (rattles). A priest disguised as the god Bes performs a ritual dance on the podium steps. 🏺 1/ 1st c. CE, #MANN

Want to be clear moves like this show how little power they have; we should not feel defeated. Materials in a museum like NMAAHC were fugitive for most of U.S. history. Ordinary folks collected, archived, studied, recorded these knowledges. Attacking institutionalization is bad but can't erase us.

figure vase of woman holding a dog ❤️ one of my favorites of the #BrooklynMuseum #NewYork #Egyptology #Archaeology #dogsofBluesky

Great write up on the Petrie Museum and its research partnerships: “The interdisciplinary nature of some of these collaborations are so novel and unorthodox that I almost wouldn't be surprised if they inspired the publication of a book with a title like 'Business Secrets of the Pharaohs’ #Egyptology

Great news. I am particularly drawn to the discovery of the first evidence for four-wheeled wagons in Britain, which researchers suggest may imitate vehicles seen in continental Europe, providing further evidence for long range information networks (for want of a better term) #AncientBluesky 🏺

To be fair I see ancient Egyptian influences everywhere but this 15th century Madonna by Gregorio di Lorenzo is giving strong Isis vibes, from the position of Jesus’ hand echoing images of Harpocrates to the angel immediately above the virgin recalling the horned solar disk (🏛️ Courtauld) #Egyptology

An image of pure bliss for International Day of Happiness. Pan riding on a panther. 2nd century CE, Tunisia. Held in the British Museum 🏺 AncientBluesky

An image of an ancient mounted woman with a bow, perhaps hunting or heading to war. Could she be an Amazon or Artemis? A goose nonchalantly pecks the ground beneath the horse’s hooves. From Capua, today held in the British Museum. 🏺 AncientBluesky

Recently messaged an Irish-American friend asking how everything was. His reply, ‘Why aren’t *you* angry? Why aren’t *you* protesting? Sir Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have promised the NHS to Trump to avoid tariffs and are in the process of preparing the sale’. And suddenly this all makes sense

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led... “Kellam met with the heads of other data-librarian organizations, and together they founded the Data Rescue Project to preserve the enormous data sets that website-focussed efforts had missed.” Read this now and thank a data / digital librarian. 📕

My article on just a few of the many great Harlem-based artists and writers inspired by Ancient Egypt, featuring some personal favourites: Alain Locke, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent and more #Egyptology

Ancestral remains should no longer be displayed in UK museums, say MPs

Zahed ran a faience-making workshop (in a field in Sussex) for my year’s Primtech in 2008 when he was based at the Petrie Museum, and it was a privilege to be taught the process and chemistry of faience by him. Always lovely to see his modern shabtis.

Research from UCL has found early human ancestors transferred toolmaking techniques from stone to bone around 1.5 million years ago, demonstrating that they could adapt techniques to different materials, a significant intellectual leap 1 million years earlier than previously thought.🏺 AncientBluesky