Project description
Digging up Egypt’s ancient floral secrets
The study of Egyptian archaeobotanical material has long posed challenges due to the unique preservation of plant parts in ancient floral compositions, such as garlands and bouquets found in tombs. These rare finds, which date back to the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods, lack parallels in Mediterranean and European archaeology, leaving many undiscovered aspects of ancient Egyptian flora and cultural practices. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the FLOGYPT project aims to fill this gap by developing identification tools for archaeobotanists working with Egyptian material. By analysing floral specimens housed at the UCL Petrie Museum and Kew Gardens, the project will create a standardised protocol to identify species and explore their cultural significance, bridging the past and present of Egyptian archaeological research.
Objective
The peculiarity of Egyptian archaeobotanical material has created many difficulties in its study over the last two centuries. Floral compositions (dry ancient garlands and bouquets found in tombs of the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods) have no comparison in Mediterranean and European archaeobotany, as they preserve parts of dehydrated plants with which the archaeobotanist has commonly not been trained to compare and study. The result is that to this day, many floral arrangements found in contemporary excavations remain unpublished, creating gaps in information regarding ancient Egyptian flora and cultural practices that use flora as raw material.
The project will therefore focus on the development of specific identification tools for the plant species of this material available to all archaeobotanists who may find themselves dealing with Egyptian material.
The numerous floral compositions preserved at the UCL Petrie Museum and Kew Gardens will be used as ancient material to develop valid species identification criteria. The project will propose identifying morphological characters of the species which can be established primarily with low magnification observation, and only secondarily with the collection of thin sections to be observed under a light microscope or samples for the SEM. The result will be a specific protocol and an analytical key for the analysis of ancient Egyptian floral compositions which will finally also bring greater uniformity in the identification of the species of floral compositions and their publications. Furthermore, all dissemination phases of the project will try to involve the ongoing archaeological excavations in Egypt as much as possible, to create a fruitful and mutual exchange on the presence and study of this material. Finally, the results of the identifications made on museum objects will be integrated with textual and iconographic evidence to explore the sociocultural dynamics behind these objects.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom
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