WAG Series: Ancient Egyptian Woodworking
Includes a Live Web Event on 06/10/2024 at 12:00 PM (EDT)
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Register
- Non-member - $10
- Member - Free!
Join the Wooden Artifacts Group for the second session of its online webinar series. Dr. Geoffrey Killen will present on Ancient Eqyptian Woodworking and the techniques and tools used by Egyptian carpenters. A discussion will follow with Q&A from the audience.
Egyptian carpenters used a wide range of tools, techniques and processes to create products that were manufactured to serve the needs of Egyptian society. Egyptians exploited all the products of the tree, its wood for constructional work, leaves for fodder, basketry and matting. Locally sourced woods were used from an early period but the variable quality of these timbers led Egyptians to venture beyond their borders to source better quality material.
Originally tree trunks were cleaved into boards by driving wedges into the tree’s grain. However, advances in metallurgy and the development of metal woodwork tools made it possible to accurately convert boards by sawing down the tree trunk. Egyptian carpenters also developed a range of sophisticated woodwork joints and tools and they also mastered the techniques of gluing, veneering, inlaying, marquetry and parquetry as well as experimenting with woodturning.
This event is open to WAG and AIC members for free and $10 for nonmembers. The Zoom webinar will have automated captioning in English.
Dr. Geoffrey Killen
Geoffrey Killen studied Design and Technology at Shoreditch College, a Constituent College of the University of London, where he qualified as a teacher. He received a BA (Hons.) from the Open University and a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where he specialised in Ramesside woodworking.
As an ancient furniture historian and Egyptologist he has written four major works on his specialism. He is a contributor to both Nicholson and Shaw’s: ‘Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology’ and Redford’s: ‘The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt’. He has also published a number of articles and papers in conference reports, Festschrifts, books, journals and magazines.
He has studied the collections of ancient Egyptian furniture at most of the major museums including the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, Cairo. He has lectured and given practical demonstrations of ancient woodworking processes and techniques in the Egypt, Israel, Switzerland, United States of America and Britain.
He has also led in the field of experimental archaeology where in making and using replica woodworking tools and equipment he has generated and tested archaeological hypotheses. He acted as a consultant for the ‘Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of Ancient Egypt’ exhibition held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in 2016. This work involved building a number of replica coffin displays. William H. Peck commented on the exhibition and its catalogue ‘Analysis of woods and the ongoing work on carpentry and the cabinet-making techniques of Geoffrey Killen have added greatly to our knowledge about Egyptian craftsmen and their methods’ (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.02.41). Geoffrey Killen’s practical work and reconstructions are displayed together with those original artefacts in many British museums.
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