STARS OF EGYPTOLOGY

Born in Surrey, England Dr Chris Naunton was Director of the EES and President of the IAE. He often appears in documentaries, including The Man Who Discovered Egypt, Secrets of the Dead, and Patterns of Evidence: The Red Sea Miracle to name a few. I caught up with him in the middle of a hectic schedule which included the writing of his next book.

When did you first become interested in Egyptology?

I am never sure how to answer this question! I was certainly taken to the British Museum as a child – I was lucky enough that we lived in the London area so there were plenty of family and school trips. I certainly remember my family watching – and recording – the four-part BBC TV series, The Face of Tutankhamun which was broadcast in 1992; the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the tomb, when I would have been around 14, and already fascinated by then, I think. I can also remember telling my history teacher at school that I would it would be much better if we could study ancient history rather than more modern stuff like the Tudors… And I opted to do Ancient History and Archaeology at university straight after school although in fact I was more interested in rock music at that point! It was only after I’d started my undergraduate studies, and realised I LOVED it, that I started to think seriously about trying to make a career out of it.

What qualifications do you have?

I have three degrees: a BA in Ancient History and Archaeology and an MPhil and PhD in Egyptology. So I clearly did enjoy my studies!

What is your area of expertise?

Well, my doctoral thesis was about Twenty-fifth Dynasty Theban officials and that’s probably the most in-depth piece of research I’ve done on any one subject. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the history of Egyptology and archaeology in Egypt, and the discovery of tombs.

How did you manage to obtain a job in Egyptology?

Perseverance and luck – being in the right place at the right time! When I was about half way through my Master’s degree I was planning to continue straight on and do a PhD but a supervisor, Lisa Montagna-Leahy, advised me that along with my academic qualifications, I ought to go away and get some work experience and a taste of real life! It was very good advice and a real turning point for me (thanks Lisa!). So I wrote to a few museums and expeditions in Egypt to try to get some volunteer work for what I thought would be a year away from my studies before resuming as a doctoral student. I also decided to apply for every job going, for the experience of filling out application forms and maybe, I thought, if I was lucky, an interview or two. A few weeks after I’d finished my Masters, while I was working full-time in a bar, a job came up as Librarian and Membership Secretary at the Egypt Exploration Society – not an academic job, but one I thought would give me good experience. And, in any case, I had no expectation I would get it, but to my astonishment it was offered to me and I started working there in January 2001. I loved everything about it from day one; being part of an Egyptological organisation – one with a very rich and prestigious history of its own; getting to work with, and meeting people, who knew the subject and the field; but also just having an income and working in central London. I felt very grown up! It was fantastically enjoyable, and provided me with a lot of opportunities, all of which I seized with great enthusiasm. I stayed for almost 16 years!

You are what could be described as a ‘successful’ Egyptologist. Some of your posts, such as Director of the EES and President of the International Association of Egyptologists have been obtained at a relatively young age. Could you explain a bit about your career path?

Thanks! At the EES I was very lucky to find an organisation and a succession of roles there that suited me very well. I was given a lot of scope to develop myself and my work as I wanted. I was very keen to become a fully-fledged Egyptologist (whatever I thought that might mean!) so took every opportunity that came my way, and with lots of encouragement from colleagues, particularly my boss, the then Director, Dr Patricia Spencer, I was able to continue to develop myself. The Society generously allowed me to join Josef Wegner’s South Abydos expedition in May 2001 – experience I had lined up before I got the job – and they helped get me onto Dr Francesco Tiradritti’s Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor, which I worked with for four seasons. All of this was immensely valuable, showing how archaeological expeditions really worked, helping me to get comfortable with life in Egypt, seeing way more sites and monuments than I could have done otherwise, and meeting umpteen colleagues. The Society also agreed to my request to work part-time and then to take a sabbatical so I could go back to my studies and get a PhD. Not many employers would be so generous and almost 8 years elapsed between my first taking time away and finally getting through my examination, so they were very patient too! While I was at the EES, and thanks in a large part to the credibility it gave me, I was asked to do a little teaching at UCL and elsewhere; to write a few articles etc. and to give lectures for special interest groups, which also led to me being asked to accompany tours to Egypt – more opportunities to visit the country and sites I had never been to before – and ultimately to be asked to get in front of the television cameras. I’m not the most brilliant academic, I’m not a natural field archaeologist, not brilliant with the language, but I’m a good all rounder. I can do the boring things that many don’t want to do – administration etc – and I like to think I’m a good communicator – if I have a strength it’s that I think, and I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to make the most of that in a field that I really love.

I became President of the IAE without really meaning, or expecting to! I had been interested in the Association and its work for some time, largely as I felt it wasn’t doing enough! In 2015, when the role of President became available, the Association asked candidates to provide their ideas as to how it could develop. I felt that if I wanted the Association to change then I ought to put myself forward, and that if nothing else, this would be a good opportunity to share my thoughts. As, by that time I’d had a good amount of experience of leading a not-for-profit organisation (the EES), I thought I would be able to formulate my ideas in a persuasive way. But I never thought I would get elected! I just wanted the opportunity to have a say in how things should be run. Just as with the EES job, to my amazement, I got the role and was pleased to be able to accept it. I like to think that I did a decent job during my 4 years as President, but it was a challenge and I wish I could have done more. The Association has very limited resources and almost all the work has to be done by the President, Vice-President and, most of all, the Secretary General (helped by an assistant), all of whom are unpaid and have to do the work in their spare time, on top of very busy and responsible jobs. We all lived in different countries, so meeting was difficult. Nonetheless, during my time the Association continued to support various projects, in particular the Online Egyptological Bibliography. It was vocal in expressing its views on various important issues, in particular the trade in Egyptian antiquities, and I was very pleased that we were able to revise the Statutes of the Association to include a Code of Conduct for professional Egyptologists to which all members are now asked to adhere. 

Both the EES and IAE roles were a privilege, but also a challenge to hold and I was very grateful that in both cases I was succeeded by very talented and energetic colleagues. It has been a pleasure to see both organisations developing since, despite many challenges.

What advice would you give the young, budding Egyptologist?

Enjoy what you do – remember that no-one is in Egyptology for the money or job-security(!) but for the sheer joy of learning about the ancient past in Egypt;  Do whatever you can to create opportunities for yourself and take what opportunities come your way.  Be confident in your expertise. These days the web and social media allow people from all kinds of backgrounds to create a profile and audience for themselves – set up a blog, and Instagram feed, or a vlog and share what you know. There are opportunities there for those who have the skills to do it. Remember, it’s not just how well you do in your exams that will help you get on – there are many other skills you might be able to draw on. I like to think I’m good to work with, nice guy, fun to be around – enough for people to want to work with me anyway, and that can be just as important. You could be the best in the world at reading hieratic but if you’re pain in the neck you won’t get on! Go to Egypt – if you are not there already! – as much as you can and try and get to know it and its people as much as you can. Learn Arabic, walk the streets, eat the food, absorb as much of the modern country as you can. 

Please explain a bit about the documentaries in which you have appeared? Did you choose them? Were you selected, and if so, how?

The first film I made was The Man Who Discovered Egypt – a biography of Flinders Petrie made by the BBC in 2011-12. When I was in charge of the library at the EES (2001-11) I would handle all research requests, including the many we used to get from television companies making documentaries. I tried to be as helpful as possible, partly because I grew up watching loads of TV (including Egyptology docs!) but also because I thought it might benefit the EES, especially if any of them ever became interested in featuring the Society in a film, and also because I enjoyed helping people with their research. I knew how to search for, and find the right literature, and enjoyed applying those skills. The BBC was making a big-budget documentary (Prof Sarah Parcak’s first major film, Egypt’s Lost Cities) and did a lot of research at the EES and even hosted a couple of meetings there with EES archaeologists. A producer thought that I might be good in front of camera and so I was asked to do a screen test for the Petrie film. I passed, we filmed a few months later, and the result was aired in March 2012. It was well-received and I then had something of a track-record as ‘on-screen talent’ and I’ve since become known as someone to call when such expertise is required. Again, I was very lucky to land a job presenting a film for BBC Four – as highbrow as television documentaries get – as my first gig. I also had the benefit of a very helpful team, in particular Producer / Director Deborah Perkin.

The Petrie film was not my idea. If I hadn’t passed the screen test I assume they would just have found someone else. Since then I have often pitched ideas to producers, production companies and commissioners but  it’s very, very hard to get anything made and almost everything I have done since has involved ideas already agreed between broadcasters and production companies before I get involved. I then have varying degrees of influence over how the films turn out, but I certainly cannot dictate! I remember once seeing a question posed online in response to something I had posted asking ‘why do Egyptologists only ever make films about the same subjects like Tutankhamun etc?’ The reality is that most Egyptologists would love to cover a much wider variety of more obscure topics, but the broadcasters are more risk-averse and need to make sure that lots of people are watching the end product – and there seems to be a limitless appetite for a small number of topics – Tutankhamun, pyramids, Cleopatra etc!

What is your latest project? Book?

Yes! For the last year I’ve been working on a book called Egyptologists’ Notebooks – a brief history of exploration and archaeology in Egypt as told though the lives of 32 Egyptologists and the notes, sketches, painting, maps etc. they left behind, from Athanasius Kircher to Bryan Emery, via Robert Hay, Luigi Vassalli, Amelia Edwards, Howard Carter and many more. It’s been a joy to work on. I’ve learned a lot and had the privilege of examining at first hand some wonderful archival material. The only frustration has been that I have only been able to include a tiny fraction of what exists – 1-2,000 words and half a dozen images per Egyptologist. The images are beautiful though, and I hope that even if it falls short of telling the full story, it at least touches on some very interesting and relevant issues for our subject, and will inspire a few readers to find out more. All being well it should be out in September 2020 and you can already pre-order a copy here: https://amzn.to/2IYVm2h.

Can you explain a bit about the Robert Anderson Trust?

With pleasure! Robert Anderson was an Egyptologist, music scholar and musician and an inspiration to many. He died in 2015, leaving behind the Trust which he had founded in the 1980s to provide support (principally accommodation) to young visiting researchers, many of them Egyptology students from a wide variety of countries, but more from Egypt than anywhere else. Robert was the Honorary Secretary of the EES from 1970 until 1982 and he would regularly bring his visitors to the Society’s offices in Bloomsbury to use the library – which is where I first met him. His role as Hon Sec would later become that of Director. When I became Deputy Director in 2008, and then Director in 2012, he was full of advice and encouragement. He was very intelligent, talented, extremely knowledgeable, shrewd and sharp – right up to the very end of his life (he died aged 88). In his last years he mentioned to me that I might like to get involved with the Trust, and his death coincided roughly with the time when I was beginning to look for a new challenge, having been at the EES for a long time. I was appointed Director of the Trust not long afterwards, taking up the post in 2016, and have been in the role ever since. It’s not a full-time job, but I get to live in one of Robert’s two London houses; help to run the charity; maintain the property (a grand and beautiful listed building in the history district of Kensington; (Howard Carter lived a few streets away!) and receive our visitors, all of whom in Kensington at least, have been Egyptologists over the last few years. It’s perfect for me – much of my work at the EES, particularly while I was Director in my last years there, was as much to do with running a charity as anything to do with Egyptology, so I get to use those skills, while spending the rest of my time on my own work, mainly writing. Robert had a splendid library spread throughout his house, including a collection of approximately 1,500 Egyptology books,  which serves my purposes very well, and those of our visitors!

Thanks Chris! What a great interview. For more visit: https://chrisnaunton.com/ . And don’t forget to pre-order the new book. Here is the link again! https://amzn.to/2IYVm2h.