June’s meeting began with the presentation, by Professor Joann Fletcher, of the Society’s Lotus Chalice Award to Ritherdon and Co Ltd, a local manufacturing company who paid for the conservation of a rare, Roman helmet-cover in Bolton Museum’s collection (hopefully, soon to be displayed).  Following this, Joann built her lecture around the importance of memorials to the Ancient Egyptians and how preserving their own history was so important to them.

The Ancient Egyptians arguably invented the written word which, of course meant that they probably invented the study of history too.  They measured time far back into their past by recording the names and dynasties of their pharaohs (their so-called King Lists), beginning with Narmer:  the first pharaoh of the first Dynasty.

Another first for the early kings and queens of Egypt was the building of huge monuments; from the brick funerary enclosures at Abydos to the stone pyramids built through the Old and into the Middle Kingdoms, further down-river as the centre of Egyptian power moved north.

Joann told us about the floods and famines of Pepi II’s reign in which unrest caused rioting, looting and the destruction of many precious historical records.  The climate improved again and Egypt rebuilt into the Middle Kingdom.  Culture and architecture flourished and the Egyptians again made a point of memorialising this period and preserving the records for the future.

There are many examples of attempts to erase history, such as the temple of Hatshepsut (a pharaoh in her own right and step mother of Thutmose III – see the replica of his tomb at Bolton Museum) being defaced and the attempts to erase Akhenaten (the ‘heretic’) from the records.

And then there were the Ancient Egyptian historians, such as Amenhotep III and his wife, who were fascinated with antiquaries and added to Hatshhepsut’s temple.  Alexander the Great might have been Macedonian but studied Egyptian history and inserted himself neatly into it!

So, the Egyptians were certainly some of the earliest (possibly the first) historians and antiquarians.  They invested huge amounts of effort and wealth into preserving their past, from building monumental structures and carving the King Lists, to researching their past and conserving their own antiquities (thousands of years before the European craze for Egyptology began).

The importance that the Ancient Egyptians placed on recording and preserving their history has been a gift to us here in the third millennium.  Joann’s lecture skilfully illustrated this and brought it, full-circle, to our little corner of Lancashire, the Lotus Chalice Award and the importance of preserving and remembering our past in objects like Bolton Museum’s Roman helmet cover.

Joann concluded that the Ancient Egyptians taught us that what is worth remembering can transcend the centuries and cannot be destroyed.