An Evening with Sarah Griffiths

Sarah will be speaking on: 

Egypt’s Middle Kingdom: Conflict, Murder and a Cultural Golden Age

As the great age of the pyramid builders petered out, the warrior princes of the south were building a powerbase at Thebes. Eventually one ruler was strong enough to march north and reunify the country, ushering in a new age of powerful warrior kings, architectural innovation, high quality art, funerary development and a golden age of literature.  In this lecture, Sarah Griffiths traces the evolution of the Middle Kingdom and explores the greatest achievements of the kings and courtiers of the 11th and 12th Dynasties, from the great reunifer Nebhepetra Mentuhotep, through to the Amenemhats and Senusrets of Lisht.

The Ancient Egyptians: The World’s First Gardeners

The walled gardens of the ancient Egyptian elite were the earliest known domestic gardens in the world: sanctuaries of flowers, shady trees and lily ponds where the fortunate few could escape the desert heat, and the sounds and smells of the bustling cities. Take a trip back in time to visit these beautiful landscapes through the painted scenes in Egyptian tombs, and discover the plants and features that made up a typical Egyptian garden, and the magic and symbolism of the garden in the afterlife.

Sarah Griffiths is Deputy Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine and Secretary of the Manchester Ancient Egypt Society. She regularly presents lectures and study days in Egyptology, covering a wide range of topics and eras, and revises manuscripts for Egyptology books and reports for non-native English writers. She is currently part of the University of Jaen excavation team at Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan), working in the Middle Kingdom necropolis. In a previous life she taught science in secondary schools in the UK and Hong Kong, and worked for the BBC for 17 years in radio, television, and project and partnerships management.

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