Made in Ancient Egypt

This book looks at the art and material culture of Ancient Egypt in a new way - by finding out who made it and how.

The making of various kinds of Egyptian art was dictated by the different materials used: stone, ceramics, faience and glass, metalwork, jewellery, paint, linen, basketry, wood, papyrus and cartonnage. Each of these media is examined in turn, and the exquisite workmanship and knowledge of individual makers is here revealed and celebrated. The book accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Fully illustrated and full of new research, this book will appeal to enthusiasts and scholars alike. It approaches a familiar subject from a fresh angle, focusing on the artists and makers. The many scholars involved also reveal their personal appreciation and understanding of the different media that they have studied or, frequently, restored, seeking to get to the heart of the methods of the ancient craftsmen, whose work they
have learned to respect and admire. These scholars have been aided, of course, by modern technology, which gives a holistic analysis of these objects that are now some 4,000 years old but which can now often be ’read’ very nearly in their entirety. Almost 100 different objects are presented and discussed for their typical or unusual features. Besides the editor’s introduction, there is an essay on the difficulties of talking about individual artists in Ancient Egypt by Alessio delli Castelli and Dimitri Laboury, and conversations with contemporary makers working with the same materials today in much the same way as artists would have done in Ancient Egypt.

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
3 October 2025 - 25 January 2026

Published by Paul Holberton Publishing

Helen Strudwick is Senior Curator Ancient Nile Valley and exhibition curator. Helen is responsible for the Museum’s collection of Egyptian Antiquities. Since 2014, with Julie Dawson (Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow and Affiliated Researcher), she has a led a project to study, document and publish information about the Fitzwilliam’s collection of Egyptian coffins.

Julie Dawson (Cambridge, UK) is an archaeological conservator with a particular interest in the technology and conservation of ancient Egyptian material. She was co-lead with Helen Strudwick on the Egyptian Coffins Project from 2014.

Trevor F. Emmett (Cambridge, UK) is a geologist and former principal lecturer in the Department of Forensic Science at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Elsbeth Geldhof (Boston, USA) is an independent historic paint conservator and researcher of longue-durée painting techniques and pigment sources from the ancient world.

Nesrin el-Hadidi (Cairo, Egypt) is an expert on Egyptian woods and their conservation, and a professor in the Conservation Department of the Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University.

Geoffrey Killen (Huntingdon, UK) is the leading expert on ancient Egyptian carpentry techniques.

Dimitri Laboury (Liège, Belgium) is an Egyptologist at the University of Liège.

Paul Nicholson (Cardiff, UK) is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University, specializing in ancient Egypt, particularly the animal cults of Saqqara and the technology of pottery and vitreous materials.

Martin Odler (Newcastle, UK) is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Newcastle, specialising in the study of metal craft tools from late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Egypt (c.3500-1070 BC).

Susanna Pancaldo (Cambridge, UK) is an objects conservator at the Fitzwilliam Museum, specialising in the conservation and care of archaeological objects, with a research focus on metal objects.

Melanie Pitkin (Sydney, Australia) is Senior Curator of the Nicholson collection of antiquities at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney.

Pamela Rose (Cairo, Egypt) is a specialist in pottery from Egypt and Nubia and a senior researcher at the Cairo Branch of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Andrew Tanser (Cambridge, UK) is a sculptor and carver working in stone and wood. He is a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors ARBS and the Art Workers’ Guild.

Marcos Martinón-Torres (Cambridge, UK) is Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge.