Colleagues Sonja Bernhard (TLSE Coordinator) and (Archaeology PhD student) ran an Insight Day giving the year 12 students first-hand experience with the archaeology teaching collection in our archaeology lab. Based upon the success of this event we want to promote our labs for use as an outreach space.

Thursday, 25 January 2024 saw the return of SALC’s popular Insight Days for Year 12 students. 200 students from Sixth Form Colleges across the North West (as far afield as Carlisle and Lancaster in some cases) came onto campus to explore History, English and related disciplines via presentations and hands-on workshops. And it does not get much more hands-on than the ever-popular object handling session in the Archaeology lab! 

Every last workbench was filled by students eager to learn from our PhD researcher Jane Barker how to handle ancient artefacts safely and what they can tell us about the people who made and used them. With Archaeology no longer offered at A level, it is ever more important to give students opportunities to explore this discipline and make them understand how it links Humanities with a scientific, lab-based approach. 
 

Jane said: 

We plan to show off our lab and include handling sessions at future Insight Days and other school events. They are a vital part of showcasing what makes Archaeology at 91ֱ�� special and unique.

It’s an industry with an estimated 2.5 billion global players with games played on consoles, mobile devices and VR headsets. How can video games be a tool that offers educational benefits to this worldwide audience?

Following on from the livestream event, Dr Nielsen gave an insight into how video game representation of history can enhance public understanding in an engaging and educational way.
 

Dr Nielsen said:

The open-world format of such games gives the gamer the opportunity to play the game in a different way to others, interpreting different elements as they play through. How historical accuracy be maintained when creating a game to be played in the modern day continues to be challenge for historians.
 

Dr Nielsen added:

This billion-dollar, multi-billion player industry has a significant capability to influence historical understanding whilst tackling the need for a clear, in-game structure that can begin to question some of those accuracies. Overall, video games can be a helpful tool in understanding history but there is a challenge in sometimes telling the difference between the real and virtual worlds.

A team from the universities have been excavating at Arthur's Stone in Herefordshire, and continue to make exciting discoveries at the site, believed to date to 3700BC. 

Professor Julian Thomas, Director of Archaeology at the University of Manchester, is leading the project with Professor Keith Ray of Cardiff University. 91ֱ�� colleague Dr Nick Overton is Associate Director. 

When asked about the recent work undertaken by the team, Professor Thomas said:

Members of the public are now able to visit the site and see the work undertaken by the team. Since the BBC’s news story regarding the discovery of the cremated remains, the site has become a popular destination for enthusiasts.

Professor Thomas added:

The project is an important research excavation that acts as a training exercise for British and overseas students. As well as academics, the project is staffed by professional archaeologists taking leave of absence from commercial archaeology units, most of whom are graduates from 91ֱ�� and Cardiff. It also brings together 38 current and recently graduated 91ֱ�� students, who are taking Archaeology-related degrees. There were also 10 students from Cardiff University and five students from a variety of American universities.

On Monday, 7 March 2022 the University will welcome David Wengrow FBA, Professor of Comparative Archaeology at University College London.

The lecture, titled ‘For an anthropology and archaeology of freedom’ will draw on Professor Wengrow’s collaboration with the late Professor David Graeber. The lecture will argue the importance of an ethnography of freedom to the foundations of anthropology.

Professors Wengrow and Graeber recently co-authored the New York Times bestselling ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’.

The public lecture will be followed by an audience Q+A and a drinks reception, all hosted at Alliance 91ֱ�� Business School. Tickets are available to book online:

Thomas returns to The University of Manchester, where he spent five years as Professor of Musicology and Head of the Division of Art History, Drama and Music. He has also held posts at Bangor University, the University of Frankfurt and the University of Huddersfield.

The role formally began on 1 July and is dedicated to developing and driving strategic decision-making across the School.

Professor Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean of Humanities has said on the appointment: “I look forward to working with Thomas as he returns to 91ֱ�� in this new role. I am confident he will build on Alessandro’s many achievements and will lead the School from strength to strength." 

Prior to joining the University for his appointment as Head of School, Schmidt was Visiting Professor at the University of Frankfurt, before moving to the UK in 2005 as Professor and Chair of Music at Bangor University. From 2012, he was Professor of Music at The University of 91ֱ�� (later also leading the Division of Art History, Drama and Music), and from 2017 he was Dean of Music, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield.

Thomas studied at the University of Heidelberg and as a Fulbright Scholar in Chapel Hill. His key research interests are in music of the 15th/16th and the 18th/19th centuries.

On his appointment, Professor Schmidt said: "I am delighted to have been appointed as Vice-Dean and Head of School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. I enormously look forward to returning to the institution where I previously spent some of the most fulfilling years of my career; I am honoured and excited to be working with a dedicated team of staff in one of the leading Arts and Humanities schools in the UK, and with the outstanding students it recruits.”

Due to popular demand, the deadline for entries for The University of Manchester Making a Difference Awards has been extended.

The new closing date is midnight on 24 January 2021. It is hoped the extension will help anyone struggling to meet the deadline due to the current challenging times.

The Making a Difference Awards provides the opportunity for staff, students, alumni and external partners to highlight the great work that goes on at The University and the huge difference they are making to the lives of others.

The Awards are open to all staff, students, alumni and external partners at The University. . The Awards aim to celebrate, raise awareness and provide valuable recognition of how individuals and teams across The University are making a difference to the social and environmental wellbeing of our communities and wider society.

The award categories include the following:

• Outstanding benefit to society through research
• Outstanding teaching innovation in social responsibility
• Outstanding contribution to social innovation and environmental impact through enterprise
• Outstanding public and community engagement initiative
• Outstanding contribution to equality, diversity and inclusion
• Outstanding Professional Services for social responsibility
• Outstanding contribution to environmental sustainability
• Outstanding contribution to widening participation
• Volunteer of the Year Award

Further information, award criteria and the entry form can be found on the .

The University of Manchester’s School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) will be hosting a celebration to mark the strength and resilience of its students in a virtual event.

The celebration will take place at 3pm on Wednesday 16 December 2020, and will be available to view and return to on the .

These celebrations are an opportunity to recognise the accomplishments of students throughout their studies, particularly acknowledging the resilience and strength they have shown over the course of a challenging year.

After the celebration, students will have the opportunity to attend a live, virtual event with staff and classmates from their Department.

Links for the celebrations will be sent out to students via email and are intended to complement the winter graduation ceremonies.

SALC encourages students to follow the SALC and accounts @UoMSALC to share positive memories and experiences of their time at The University of Manchester, using the hashtags #SALCGrad and #UoMGraduation and to direct any questions to salcstudents@manchester.ac.uk.

Time and date information

SALC Virtual Celebration

3pm on Wednesday 16 December

Department-specific live events (links to follow)

Art History and Cultural Practices: 4.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology: 5pm, Wednesday 16 December

Drama and Film: 4pm, Friday 18 December

English & American Studies and Centre for New Writing: 5.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

History: 10am, Thursday 17 December

Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute: 4pm, Wednesday 16 December

Linguistics and English Language: 5.30pm, Wednesday 16 December

Modern Languages and Cultures: 4pm Wednesday 16 December

Music: 4pm, Wednesday 16 December

Religions & Theology: 1pm, Thursday 17 December

Nicky Nielsen and Joyce Tyldesley received Outstanding Teaching Awards for the 2019-2020 academic year, while both academics also scooped the Outstanding Technology Enhanced Learning Award – the only educators in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures to do so. 

Finally, MA Egyptology, which is directed by both Nicky and Joyce, was awarded Programme of the Year. 

The Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology extends its congratulations to Nicky and Joyce and all the staff members who were nominated by their students to be shortlisted. 

Supervised by Dr Nick Overton, this research explored British Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and wild boar, through a detailed synthesis of animal bone assemblages and a highly original exploration of human-animal interactions and relationships.

Kate's dissertation research was inspired by her pet pigs which led her to develop an interest in their Mesolithic relative, the wild boar. She noticed that there was a lack of information on Mesolithic wild boar and how humans would have interacted with this intelligent and often dangerous species.

Her research found that frequent interactions during this time between humans and wild boar would have made them highly aware of each other's behaviour and individuality. She also focused on how wild boar would have been difficult and often deadly to hunt, which has often been overlooked within archaeology.

Everyone in CAHAE extends their warmest congratulations to Kate - very well done!

has announced a programme of engaging new online talks for a public audience, including teachers, pupils and students for 2020/21.

The organisation, which was founded over a century ago, is run by colleagues and students from both the University of Manchester and 91ֱ�� Metropolitan University. The current chair is Dr April Pudsey (ManMet). The CA is hosting eight events, including a number of international speakers, all to be held over Zoom from 6pm-7pm.

All the events will be open live to members and will be recorded to be uploaded to the Association’s YouTube channel.

Autumn/winter 2020/21 programme

17 Nov 2020: Greece Recreated 

Dr Sally Waite and Dr Susanna Phillippo (Newcastle University)

15 Dec 2020: Alcestis: In Bits

Live discussion and q&a of a story performance of Alcestis. A specially-recorded performance will be made available in advance.

Dr Stephe Harrop (Liverpool, Hope)

19 Jan 2021: Mixtures, Medicine, and the Moretum: Roman Recipes and Food Culture

Dr Ian Goh (Swansea University)

9 Feb 2021: Homer's Passage in Postcolonial Hispaniola 

Prof Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton University)

16 Feb 2021: Royal Authority in the Neo-Assyrian Empire: Representations and Realities 

Dr Shana Zaia (University of Vienna)

9 Mar 2021: The Illicit Trade in Papyrus Manuscripts from Egypt: Old and New Tales 

Dr Roberta Mazza (University of Manchester)

11 May 2021: Blazing Blackness in Greek Antiquity 

Dr Sarah Derbew (Stanford University)

25 May 2021: Prostitutes, Youths and Potty-Mouthed Clowns: Who Swore in Ancient Greek and Why it Matters

Dr Amy Coker (Cheltenham Ladies’ College / University of Bristol)

Information on is available on the Association’s website, while the audience the Association if they wish.There will be further events for members throughout the year, including a student-led and careers workshops and short talks, as well as children’s competitions with Athena’s Owls.

Ancient Egypt fever has barely cooled in Western civilisation since the first major excavations European excavations in Egypt after the Napoleonic conquest of the country in 1798, and a new book written by University of Manchester Egyptology Lecturer Dr Nicky Nielsen seeks to explore our obsession with this ancient world and bust some myths along the way.

Egyptomaniacs dives into popular perspectives on the mystical culture of ancient Egypt and its obsession with death, funerals, mummification and grand tomb-building, and examines some of the most common misconceptions people hold about this civilisation and its centuries of legendary dynasties of Pharaohs.

“Ancient Egypt remains a source of perpetual fascination for people all across the world," Neilsen explained. "Very few ancient civilisations can claim to have inspired such wide-ranging trends in fashion, architecture, music, movies and literature. But there is also a lot of misconceptions and very unfortunate colonial and downright racist attitudes that have underpinned Western fascination with Pharaonic Egypt and in Egyptomaniacs, I’ve tried my best to address and dispel some of these.”

Egyptomaniacs is published by and is available to buy.

Students from The University of Manchester’s Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology are exploring intriguing discussion points about ancient societies and history in a podcast series that is going from strength to strength.

Laura Thompson and Jordan Perris, both Ancient History and Archaeology students, seized the opportunity of lockdown to be creative by launching Time’s Tall Tales, which takes their passion for their subject down some interesting avenues with different guests.

The podcasts cover everything from Greek mythology, to witch hunts, to the drinking habits of the Pharaohs, and feature insights from fellow University of Manchester students and members of the academic staff from the Faculty of Humanities.

“We have also covered folklore and modern history with topics such as the Banshee and the history of playing cards,” said Laura. “So truly, as long as there is some sort of link to history, no topic is too weird or obscure for us.”

Time’s Tall Tales is now more than 20 episodes in and is available via Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and . Students, academics and other interested parties keen to participate in the podcast are invited to get in touch via email 

Katharine Mawford, Sarah Douglas and Silvannen Gerrard have all been awarded the title Doctor this summer, and all three had to complete the final stages of their research and their vivas remotely. 

Dr Ina Berg, Postgraduate Research Director for the Department, was one of the first to wish them congratulations: "On behalf of the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to Drs Katharine Mawford, Sarah Douglas and Silvannen Gerrard on completing their PhDs.

"We are extremely proud of our students who, in some cases, had to complete the final stages of their PhD and the viva itself during lockdown conditions. Congratulations on your special graduation day. We wish you all the very best for your future."

These celebrations are an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the accomplishments of students throughout their studies, particularly acknowledging the resilience and strength they have shown in unprecedented, challenging times.

At the celebrations, students will have the chance to enjoy recognition and tributes from their classmates, as well as messages from lecturers and staff across The University.

We encourage students to follow the SALC and accounts @UoMSALC to share positive memories and experiences of their time at The University of Manchester, using the hashtags #SALCGrad and #UoMGraduation.

Organisers of the event, which was due to take place on 3-4 June 2002 at The University of Manchester, chose to take their outing online via Zoom rather than cancel, with more than 250 registering. This is more than three times as many attendees than the event would have been able to host had it taken place the old fashioned way.

IARSS 2020 was led by four PhD students from Classic, Ancient History, Archaeology & Egyptology in SALC, who worked with IT services to deliver it as a free conference using the popular video-conferencing platform. Jane Barker, Emma Tollefson, Catherine Jones and Matt Hitchcock (studying various aspects of the British Iron Age with supervisor Dr Melanie Giles) enabled 16 research students from across Britain, Ireland and the near Continent to deliver exciting news of their latest research, as well as a keynote lecture and two guest lectures from Early Career Scholars.

This novel format allowed for more attendees, and enabled people to ‘dip’ in-and-out of sessions around their other commitments.

Virtual attendees tuned in from Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia – enabling research students from across the globe to share in the event.

Comments from attendees noted how this format helped people with care responsibilities to participate while home-schooling, or ‘listen in’ on mute, while commercial and professional archaeologists were able to engage in the conference while working from home. Lecturers and researchers, curators from national museums, experimental archaeologists and budding applicants to university all joined in on the discussion: using the ‘chat’ function to send in questions to speakers or share ideas and news in between sessions. This cost-free way of delivering a conference helped to democratise access to this research event, which would otherwise have had a much more restricted audience.

“This was a remarkable feat by my students: one of whom had been ill with Covid-19 and another who was shielding at the time,” said supervisor Dr Melanie Giles. “Undaunted, they used their initiative to deliver a much bigger, interactive event which tripled the audience and created a wonderfully supportive online atmosphere, sharing research ideas together. It shows the creativity and generous spirit of The University of Manchester at its best. I am very proud of them.’

To add to the success of the day, organiser Matt Hitchcock was awarded the Annual Prize of the Later Prehistoric Finds Group, for a paper on his School of Arts, Languages and Cultures-funded PhD, ‘Re-framing Iron Age Shields’.

Q: You are one of the leaders of the ‘Prehistory to Primary Schools’ outreach project. Can you tell us more about the project, and why it is so important for the children that it reaches?

A: Prehistory to Primary Schools is a project based in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Archaeology and Egyptology, led by myself and fellow archaeologists Drs John Piprani, Hannah Cobb and Elizabeth Healey. Prehistory was recently added to the Key Stage 2 national curriculum, but from conversations with primary school teachers, we realised teaching resources were lacking, and teachers did not have a detailed knowledge of Prehistoric Britain. So our aim was to turn the world-leading archaeological research our department does, into teaching resources, putting our knowledge in the hands of the people that are experts at teaching children.

Our resources were designed in consultation with local teachers, to ensure they met their needs and provided a practical and engaging way to learn. Each pack contains booklets covering four prehistoric periods for the teachers, practical activities, graphic novelettes by graphic novelist Tony Pickering, and lots of simplified information for children, so they can fall in love with researching prehistory, just like we have. And it wouldn’t be archaeology without artefacts, so we laser-scanned real archaeological artefacts and added 3D printed models to the packs. These include Neolithic and Bronze Age arrowheads, an Iron Age mirror, and amazing footprints made by humans and animals over 8,000 years ago, when people were still hunter-gatherers!

Q: How are you sharing your resources with schools, and what impact do you hope it will have?

A: We are especially excited to see our finished packs being delivered into local schools by our undergraduate students, who have volunteered to be our wonderful Prehistory ambassadors. They are leading fun introductory sessions in schools, so the children get an understanding of what Prehistory is.

The aim of these packs is to open children’s eyes to the amazing Prehistory of Britain, so they understand and love archaeology as much as we do. We want to dispel ideas of ‘cavemen’ in leopard loincloths, and instead show how exciting and fascinating Prehistoric Britain is. Lots of children grow up with History as a subject, and this stimulates and develops their love of the past: we wanted to build on this and show children that archaeology is another great avenue to study the past. But there is also more than just an interest in the past: learning about prehistory means thinking about changing climates, shifting sea levels, dramatic changes in the way people lived and large-scale movement of people and ideas. These are some of the big themes we are grappling with today, and hopefully by getting children to think about these, and understand how they are bound into our own past, it will help younger generations think about contemporary issues in new ways.

Q: What are you most looking forward to in your role over the coming year?

A: We are most looking forward to seeing the resources in local primary schools; with an eager team of ambassadors, and 70 packs to deliver, it’s going to be a busy year! We are also currently collaborating with ‘91ֱ�� Classics for All’ to produce a new resource pack for Roman Britain; artefacts have already been 3D scanned, and the graphic novelette is in the final stages, so we are really hopeful it will finish soon. We also have ambitions to make more resource packs – the joy of working in our department is the huge range of expertise we can tap into. Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and even Britain’s first Palaeolithic occupants are all possibilities, so watch this space!

I’m also looking forward to continuing my fieldwork research: over summer I had a fantastic excavation season investigating Early Neolithic monuments in Herefordshire, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers living in Yorkshire over 10,000 years ago. Although the excavations have finished, there is lots of analysis and interpretation to do over the coming months. Hopefully the new understandings of prehistoric life we get from these excavations will make it into our schools' resources in the future.

Q: What is the last book you read, did you enjoy it and would you recommend it?

A: I recently finished a collection of H.P. Lovecraft short stories, which was absolutely fantastic. Lovecraft was keen to present a world where otherworldly creatures or extra-terrestrial beings were more powerful than humans. But they are also about mysterious discoveries in caves, subterranean tunnels or remote places, and include fantastical objects, enigmatic aeons-old artefacts and ancient books of forgotten wisdom. Dark and foreboding, they also very much appeal to my Archaeologist’s sense of discovery and adventure!

Led by Dr Nicky Nielsen, MA Egyptology is already accepting admissions from those wishing to deep dive into ancient Egyptian society and culture, including art, history, archaeology and texts from the ancient civilisation.

“The online MA in Egyptology is an innovative programme in many ways,” explained Nicky. “It's the first of its kind in the world for a start, it offers students an unrivalled flexibility in terms of time management and organisation while allowing them the opportunity to study alongside a diverse cohort of students worldwide.”

The course takes two years to complete on a part-time basis and students are assigned to an academic advisor and dissertation supervisor who will offer tutoring via email and Skype teleconferences. The course has been designed with those with existing work or personal commitments in mind, allowing students to study remotely and with some flexibility, and not requiring attendance at the University of Manchester campus.

In addition to the core modules of the course MA Egyptology allows students to pick their own specialisms within the course, including Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Gender and Identity in Pharaonic Egypt, and the Amarna Period. The course also brings practical modules such as how to organise museum exhibits, publishing at various levels, and how to apply for research funding, preparing students for a career in the heritage sector or in academia.

“The course aims to prepare students both for further study - by focusing heavily on academic skills and research design strategies - and for a career in the heritage sector,” added Nicky. “Lectures and guest lectures given by a variety of academics and museum professionals, assessments, and assignments have been specifically designed to provide the students with a wide range of skills appropriate to the modern Egyptologist.”

The last decade has seen a mushrooming of our awareness of remains of First- and early Second-Century synagogues in Galilee and Judaea.

On 10-11 April 2019, an international conference at University of Lausanne brought leading archaeologists together with historians and textual specialists to investigate these early Jewish meeting halls, so different from the prayer-hall type synagogues of the later, Byzantine period.

One controversial question was whether sacred meals took place in the early synagogues – an idea at odds with Rabbinic texts.

Prof Peter Oakes, from the Centre for Biblical Studies and the Department of Religions and Theology at 91ֱ��, contributed to this question and others with a paper exploring the relationships between meeting, eating, and types of first-space in use by the earliest Christian groups which were, in many ways, akin to synagogue gatherings.

Robert Connolly, who is working with the Egyptian authorities to analyse the mummified remains of Tutankhamen and the two stillborn children, will discuss the new findings at the Pharmacy and Medicine in Ancient Egypt Conference at The University of Manchester today (Monday 1 September 2008).

Mr Connolly says: "The work carried out by Catherine Hellier in Norway and I suggests that the two foetuses in the tomb of Tutankhamen could be twins despite their very different size and thus fit better as a single pregnancy for his young wife. This increases the likelihood of them being Tutankhamen's children.

"I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979, determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamen. The results confirmed that this larger foetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamen.

"Now we believe that they are twins and they were both his children. The forthcoming DNA study on them by Dr Zahi Hawass's group in Egypt will contribute another key piece to this question."

Mr Connolly, Senior Lecturer in Physical Anthropology at the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, adds:  "It is a very exciting finding which will not only paint a more detailed picture of this famous young King's life and death, it will also tell us more about his lineage."

Conference director Professor Rosalie David, of The University of Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences, says: "We are very proud to have Mr Connolly speaking at the conference and are extremely excited about his new findings. Tutankhamen is such an important figure in Egyptology - he was a fascinating character whose tomb and indeed body has given us so much information about life in Ancient Egypt, and it seems will continue to do so for some time yet."

More than 100 delegates from 10 countries, including the Director of the Cultural Bureau of the Egyptian Embassy in the UK and researchers from Egypt's Conservation of Medicinal Plants project in Sinai and the British Museum, are attending the conference, hosted by the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester, in conjunction with the National Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt, and sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust.

The event follows the successful Pharmacy in Ancient Egypt Conference held in Cairo in 2007.

The conference, the first international conference aiming to bring together the two elements of ancient Egyptian healthcare practises: pharmacy and medicine, will also hear how 70% of the pharmaceutical ingredients used in medicines by the ancient Egyptians are still being used today.

Professor Rosalie David's team and Professor Mohamed Demerdash have studied prescriptions written on papyrus, diagnosing and treating ailments such as back ache (treated with saffron) and rheumatism (celery). They are also studying medicinal plants used by Bedouin tribes to see if they are the same as those used by the ancient Egyptians, thus providing a link with modern times.

Professor David says: "Our work shows that the ancient Egyptians preceded the Greeks in developing Pharmacy. These were not magic spells but pharmaceutical products, some of which are still in use in modern times."

Other keynote speakers will discuss surviving craniofacial trauma, cerebral palsy, dentistry and diet in ancient Egypt.

Ends

Notes for editors

The foetuses have been stored at the Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine since archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered them in Tutankhamun's tomb on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt, in 1922. Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife. Never publicly displayed, the two foetuses are to undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh, and possibly identify the foetuses  mother. The results of these are due in December. The smaller foetus, about five months in gestational age, has only been examined by Carter in 1925. The mummy is less than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) in height and is well preserved, according to Ruhli. The older, larger foetus is estimated to be between seven and nine months in gestational age. It is less well preserved than the other and measures 38.5 centimeters (15.16 inches).

The KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester is the first specifically designated research centre for the investigation of Egyptian mummies in the world. The Centre plays host to a multidisciplinary team of researchers and students experienced in many different areas of science, medicine and Egyptology and is a major resource for this discipline. Opened in 2003, the Centre represents the culmination of 32 years of research in this field at 91ֱ�� under the guidance of Professor Rosalie David OBE. See

The University of Manchester Faculty of Life Sciences, with more than 1,000 people involved in research, 1,700 undergraduate students and an annual total budget of £65 million, is one of the largest and most successful unified research and teaching organisations of its kind in Europe. See

Robert Connolly and Professor Rosalie David will be available for interview from 12.20pm to 1pm on Monday, 1 September. To arrange an interview contact Media Relations Officer Mikaela Sitford on 07768 980942.