Professor Emily Williams
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
is really thrilling. In terms of the scale, it's over 800 items, which is a huge number. But it's the diversity in the finds. That's 28 tires. There's a cauldron. There's a vessel for mixing wine. a mirror, a lot of horse equipment, things like bridal bits, the decorations from harnesses, spears and lances. And there are probably things that we have yet to identify, little tiny fragments.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
Yes, Peter has. And Peter was very involved with the project the whole time. He visited the site almost daily during the excavation. He came to the lab often and had lots of great insight and just a huge amount of enthusiasm for everything that was being done and being learned.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
Yes. So I'm a conservator. So my role is really to help ensure that objects are kept stable, that they don't deteriorate once they're excavated. So I was on site, particularly when there needed to be some help with lifting. And then I was also receiving a lot of the objects in the lab. And immediately looking at what kinds of environments we needed to put them into to stop corrosion.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
Some of them were so encased in mud that we couldn't tell what they were. So doing x-rays, doing small amounts of cleaning to help give us information to do analysis of the materials.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
I think probably the ancient world fascinates people for lots of different reasons. Speaking for myself, it's the sense of connection through the past, seeing the ways in which our forebearers were similar to us and also the ways that they were different from us. I find that just so...
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
enchanting and exciting in the same way that modern humans are interested in vehicles and cars and there's an element of conspicuous consumption around that. We see that in the past. We see how you would express your wealth in the forms of these wagons and vehicles and the trappings of the ponies. And that's just really neat to see those connections that stretch over 2000 years.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
Well, we're always drawn to the richness of archaeology, these big spectacular finds, Tutankhamen's tomb, And in this case, it is, again, that richness. And then for me, being an American and having moved to England relatively recently before this, it's been an opportunity to grow, to increase my knowledge base.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
And there's been such an amazing team and everybody's been so generous and so collaborative. What I'm also really excited about now is we've been able to share the news. You know, for two years we were somewhat working in secrecy because of the whole process.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Football while fasting -- Egypt's Ramadan pastime
Now that we can share it with the broader world, the insights others will have and the questions that they will ask that will inform the research. Durham University's Emily Williams.