In the last talk of the Essex Egyptology Group study day Cédric Gobeil told us about an exciting discovery in the 2014/15 season of a female mummy with several tattoos. He began by giving us some context for the discovery, and showed us some photos of Bernard Bruyère's excavations of the eastern & western necropolises. Bruyère wasn't interested in the human remains, he was only interested in the amulets etc that he could find on these mummies.

In his second talk of the Essex Egyptology Group study day Cédric Gobeil told us about his own personal work (as opposed to the work he oversaw as director). The original publications of the tombs at Deir el-Medina were some time ago, and the photographs were all in black & white and were supplemented by drawings that aren't to modern standards. And so the tombs need to be re-examined and republished - Gobeil has been working on tomb TT250.

In April Susanne Bickel came to talk to us at the Essex Egyptology Group about the work she and her team have been doing in the Valley of the Kings for the last decade - mostly re-excavating previously known tombs with the benefit of modern archaeological methods, but they also discovered a new tomb in 2012.

In December Meghan Strong, a PhD student (about to submit her thesis!) at Cambridge, came to talk to us at the Essex Egyptology Group about the use of artificial light in Ancient Egyptian ritual. Light in ritual is something we're still familiar with in the modern world - think of Divali, Advent (or the Easter Vigil service), Hannukah and many other examples. Strong's argument is that the Ancient Egyptians were no different from modern people in this respect.