‘The Handy Cinema’: A short cinematograph film of EES excavations at Amarna
Abstract
Among the many treasures kept in the Egypt Exploration Society's Lucy Gura Archive is the 'film record' of excavations at Tell el-Amarna, which was made over the course of three seasons from 1930 to 1933. The Society carried out excavations at the site of the ‘city of Akhenaten’, between 1921 and 1936. Having spent one season as a field assistant under the direction of Henri Frankfort in 1929-30, John Pendlebury was appointed director of the excavations from the 1930-31 season onwards. Pendlebury took it upon himself to raise awareness of the importance of the work by any means possible and was quick to embrace the idea of capturing moving images of his dig. Photography had been an important part of the process of recording archaeological work in Egypt by the mid-1880s and quickly became a fundamental part of the presentation of the results; by Pendlebury’s time the days when the use of photography in archaeology was pioneered were already half a century past but in the recording of moving images of the dig Pendlebury and his team could claim to be closer to the cutting edge.
Chris Naunton
Chris Naunton is Deputy Director of the Egypt Exploration Society where his responsibilities include oversight of the archives, library, education and events programme, and online communications. He is also editor of the Society’s Newsletter and director of the EES Oral History Project. He studied Egyptology at the universities of Birmingham and Swansea and has worked in the field at Abydos and at a series of Theban tombs. Click for directions |
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