Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy

🏺 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE MUSEUM CASE DISAPPEARS?
EXCLUSIVE-ACCESS BRITISH MUSEUM OBJECT STUDY SESSION

With Dr Christina Geisen & Dr Kelly Accetta Crowe — British Museum Curators
📅 Friday 13 November 2026
🏛️ British Museum – Department of Egypt and Sudan Study Room

For a limited number of participants, BSS&A is offering exclusive access to the Department of Egypt and Sudan Study Room, where you'll join British Museum curators Dr Christina Geisen and Dr Kelly Accetta Crowe for a special object-study session.

Step beyond the galleries and experience ancient Egyptian objects in a very different way—at close quarters, guided by the specialists who work with museum collections.
🔍 Look closer.
💬 Ask questions.
👩‍🏫 Learn directly from two British Museum curators.

And importantly:
You do NOT need to be attending Saturday's Study Day to book the Friday session. Places are open to anyone, but numbers are limited.

If you've ever wondered what happens behind the scenes of one of the world's great museum collections, this is your opportunity to find out.

⏳ Limited places available – early booking recommended.
👉 Full details and booking via BSS&A.
(Photo Credit, Authors own)

🏛️ HIEROGLYPHS: THE NEXT STEP.

Course Director: Mr Kit Devine (MPhil Oxon)

📅 Saturdays & Sundays: 21–22 and 28–29 November, plus Saturday 5 December 2026
💻 Online (and video recorded)

Already mastered the basics of Egyptian hieroglyphs? Now it's time to take the next step.

Join Kit Devine for this engaging five-day online course as you move beyond introductory reading and begin exploring the rich complexity of Middle Egyptian texts.
Designed for those who already have a foundation in hieroglyphs, this course develops your skills through practical reading sessions featuring increasingly sophisticated monuments created for kings and high officials.
Along the way you'll discover how the ancient Egyptians spoke about:

👑 The king and royal ideology
🙏 The gods and religious language
⏳ The past, present, and future
✍️ More advanced grammatical constructions, including negative statements

Each session will deepen your understanding of Egyptian writing while expanding your ability to read authentic inscriptions with greater confidence.
Whether your ambition is to read temple walls, museum objects or funerary monuments for yourself, this course provides the perfect bridge from beginner to confident reader.

📚 Places are limited. If you've completed an introductory hieroglyphs course—or have equivalent experience—now is the perfect time to continue your journey.

👉 Full details and booking can be found on the Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy website: https://bssac.uk/bssa-programme-2026.htm -next-2026-2

(Photo Credit, Kit Devine, BSS&A
Stela of the Gatekeeper Maati. Ob Nm 14.2.7 metmuseumonline)

📜 A TASTE OF COPTIC.

Course Director: Dr Luigi Prada (University of Uppsala)
📅 Sunday 22 November 2026

💻 Online | Video Recorded

Booking now open!

Did you know that the ancient Egyptian language didn't end with the pharaohs?
Join Dr Luigi Prada for this fascinating one-day introduction to Coptic—the language of early Christian Egypt and the final phase of the ancient Egyptian language.

Perfect for complete beginners, this online course will introduce you to the Coptic alphabet, basic grammar, and the historic world in which Coptic texts were written.

By the end of the day, you'll be reading words and short phrases while exploring a remarkable literary tradition that ranges from biblical texts to documents of everyday life. Specially prepared teaching materials are included, and no prior knowledge is required.

Whether you've previously enjoyed hieroglyphs or simply want to discover another chapter in Egypt's extraordinary linguistic history, this is the perfect place to begin.

⏳ Places are now available.

👉 Visit the Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy website for full details and booking.

(Photo Credit,
Dr Luigi Prada, BSS&A.

• Apa Shenoute (Inv. IV.4475), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst.

• Coptic limestone ostracon (Acc. no. A.1956.318), National Museum of Scotland.

• Funerary stela of Apa Pachom (EA 1533), © The Trustees of the British Museum.)

🏛️ EXPLORING THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS, STATES, AND EMPIRES IN TURKEY: FROM THE NEOLITHIC TO THE HITTITE PERIODS

Course Director: Dr Christoph Bachhuber (University of Oxford)
📅 21–29 September 2026

✨ Places are booking now, so don't miss the opportunity to be part of this unique archaeological adventure.

Join BSS&A on an exciting new learning journey through Turkey with Dr Christoph Bachhuber.

Discover the remarkable world of the Hittites and explore some of the world's most famous Neolithic sites, including Göbekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hattusa. Through lectures, museum visits and guided exploration, you'll experience the archaeology of one of the world's earliest civilisations firsthand.

This is BSS&A's first-ever course in Turkey, following successful overseas programmes in Egypt, Italy, and France.

👉 Full itinerary, prices, and booking information are available on the BSS&A website: https://bssac.uk/turkey.htm

🏺 S*X IN THE CITY: THE EROTIC WORLD OF ANCIENT THEBES.

What did the ancient Egyptians really think about love, desire and s*xuality?

Far from being a taboo subject, s*x lay at the heart of Egyptian ideas about creation, regeneration and the celebration of life itself. Their gods loved passionately, their poetry was surprisingly romantic—and often wonderfully erotic—and their art reveals a playful sense of humour that still feels remarkably modern.

Join Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Cardiff University) for this brand-new BSS&A tour in beautiful Luxor, where daily lectures are combined with visits to extraordinary ancient sites.
Explore famous monuments alongside places rarely opened to visitors, including special access to the palace complex at Malqata and the royal "Harem" at Medinet Habu, while Lloyd accompanies the group throughout to share his expertise and answer your questions.

This isn't simply a holiday—it's an immersive journey into one of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of ancient Egyptian civilisation.

📅 15–22 March 2027
📍 Luxor, Egypt

For the full itinerary, accommodation and booking details, visit the Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy website: https://www.bssac.uk/egypt-spring.htm

(Photo Credit, Cardiff University & Egypt tours)

🏺 Back to the British Museum... and behind the scenes once again!

One of the highlights of this summer's Bloomsbury Summer School wasn't just the fascinating lectures—it was the unforgettable opportunity to step behind the scenes into the British Museum's Department of Egypt and Sudan Study Room, where ancient Egyptian objects could be examined up close under the guidance of expert curators.

It was a privilege to see archaeology come alive in a way few people ever experience. Now, you can enjoy a similar experience yourself at our autumn BSS&A Study Day:

MATERIALITY OF THINGS: THE HIDDEN POWER OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN OBJECTS

Join Dr Christina Geisen and Dr Kelly Accetta Crowe, both curators at the British Museum, for an inspiring Study Day at UCL exploring the hidden power of ancient Egyptian objects. Through remarkable case studies—including underworld papyri, Horus stelae, magic, materiality and cutting-edge scientific research—you'll discover how the very substance of an object shaped its meaning and power in the ancient world.

✨ Special opportunity!

For a limited number of participants, there's an exclusive behind-the-scenes object study session in the British Museum's Department of Egypt and Sudan Study Room on Friday 13 November—a rare chance to work closely with museum curators and ancient Egyptian artefacts.

📅 Study Day: Saturday 14 November 2026
📍 In-person at UCL Institute of Archaeology, London
💻 Live-streamed online

If this summer reminded us of anything, it's that the greatest discoveries often begin by looking at familiar objects in entirely new ways.

Come and discover the hidden stories ancient Egyptian objects still have to tell.

(Link in Bio to book Study Day and Object study Session)

👩 Dr Christina Geisen
👩 Dr Kelly Accetta Crowe
📜 Book of Two Ways inside the coffin of Sen (EA 30841)
📜 Papyrus of Ani (EA 10470,3)
🪄 Hippopotamus ivory wand (EA 18175)
🛡️ Horus cippus (Horus Stela) (EA 36250)
Images © The Trustees of the British Museum

🏺 BEGINNING BABYLONIAN-DAY 5.
THE FUTURE OF CUNEIFORM... AND BEYOND

As the final lecture of Dr Irving Finkel's Beginning Babylonian course brought two unforgettable weeks to a close, our thoughts turned from the achievements of the past to the challenges of the future.

For more than 170 years, scholars have worked to unlock the secrets of cuneiform. Today, projects such as the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) are ensuring that this extraordinary heritage is preserved for generations to come. Thousands of clay tablets are being photographed, digitised and made freely accessible to scholars around the world, allowing ancient Mesopotamia to be studied as never before.

But the story doesn't end with cuneiform.

Dr Finkel invited us to look towards the world's remaining undeciphered writing systems—the mysterious Indus Valley script, the enigmatic Rongorongo script of Easter Island, and Linear A, whose language continues to elude us even though its close relative, Linear B, was deciphered over seventy years ago.

Could artificial intelligence solve these mysteries?

Perhaps one day—but as Dr Finkel reminded us, AI cannot translate a language that nobody yet understands. Unlike Google Translate, which learns from billions of known words and translations, undeciphered scripts offer no dictionary, no grammar and no certainty about the language behind the signs. Technology may help identify patterns, but human curiosity and scholarship remain at the heart of every breakthrough.

One particularly memorable moment came when Dr Finkel showed us his own collection of 26 blue-bound lexical dictionaries. Rather than being tightly packed together, each volume had a little space around it. As he smiled, he explained that the books needed room to "breathe." It was a simple but wonderful reminder that preserving knowledge is about care as much as discovery.

These final two weeks have been a remarkable journey through Babylonian language, literature and civilisation, ending with the exciting possibility that the next great decipherment may still lie ahead.

My thanks go to Dr Irving Finkel and Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones for two extraordinary weeks that have informed, inspired and entertained in equal measure.

And, as the 2026 Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy draws to a close, it seems only fitting to reflect on the remarkable breadth of this year's programme. From Christina Geisen's Crime, Sorcery and Scandal, Penny Wilson's rediscovery of ancient Sais, Kit Devine's and Luigi Prada's hieroglyph courses, to the world of Babylon explored by Irving Finkel and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, it has been a summer filled with discovery, scholarship and unforgettable conversations.

Thank you also to everyone who made this year's Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy such a memorable experience—our course directors, course coordinators, and above all, the students whose enthusiasm brought every classroom to life.

The classrooms may now be empty, but the conversations—and the discoveries—continue.

(Photo credit, Authors own)

🏺Beginning Babylonian-Day 4.

Did children in ancient Mesopotamia learn by playing board games?

One of today's most fascinating discussions explored the famous Royal Game of Ur—not simply as one of the world's oldest board games, but as a possible teaching tool used in Mesopotamian schools.

Rather than seeing the game purely as entertainment, evidence from ancient lexical lists and classroom texts suggests it may have helped trainee scribes learn vocabulary and language. Some texts even preserve everyday phrases that could have been spoken during play, including questions such as:
"How long will you play?"

The lecture also explored simple game boards scratched into baked clay, reminding us that this wasn't only a luxury pastime for kings and nobles. It may have been part of everyday learning for the small number of children fortunate enough to receive a scribal education.

Sometimes the greatest archaeological discoveries aren't palaces or treasures—they're the small glimpses into ordinary life that reveal how people learned, played and interacted nearly 4,000 years ago.

🎲 History isn't only about kings.
Sometimes it's about children playing games.

(Photo credit, Authors own)

🏛️ Beginning Babylonian Day 3-The British Museum with Dr Irvine Finkel–📜

Today our Beginning Babylonian course left the classroom and stepped into one of the world's greatest collections of Mesopotamian history.

There are few experiences quite like exploring the British Museum with Dr Irving Finkel. Every gallery, every tablet and every inscription becomes a doorway into the ancient world as he shares stories that only decades of scholarship—and genuine passion—can bring to life.

We began in the magnificent Enlightenment Gallery, examining foundation cylinders and large inscribed bricks buried beneath temples and palaces. These remarkable objects weren't simply building records—they proclaimed the achievements of kings and were intended to preserve their names for eternity.

From there we entered the Mesopotamian galleries, where something rather special happened...

For the first time, we stood in front of many of the very tablets we have been translating during the course. Instead of seeing photographs in a classroom, we were reading cuneiform signs on the original clay tablets themselves.
Suddenly, Babylonian wasn't just something we were learning—it was something standing before us.

One of the most thought-provoking moments came when we encountered the only surviving life-sized n**e female statue from ancient Mesopotamia.

Known today as "The Last Woman Standing," she remains one of the museum's great mysteries.
Who was she?
A goddess?
A priestess?
A queen?
Or was she deliberately mutilated as part of a political act?

Even after centuries of study, scholars continue to debate her identity and purpose—a reminder that archaeology is as much about asking questions as finding answers.
Another unforgettable day, where history, language and archaeology came together among the very objects that have inspired generations of scholars.

🏺 Tomorrow, the journey continues...

(Photo Credit, Verity Byrne & Jane Lamb BSS&A course coordinators)

📜 Beginning Babylonian – Day Two

Who knew that the world's oldest surviving laws could be so fascinating... and so much fun? 😊

Today at the Bloomsbury Summer School & Academy, Dr Irving Finkel guided us through the Code of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BC), one of history's greatest legal texts.

Rather than simply looking at translations, we explored how Babylonian actually works.

Starting with the original cuneiform signs, we followed the journey through:
🏺 Original cuneiform writing
📖 Transliteration into Roman letters
📝 Translation into English

As Dr Finkel reminded us, learning Babylonian isn't about memorising vocabulary—it's about understanding how an ancient language thinks.

Today we even met Babylonian verbs such as:

🔹 nadû – "to throw"
🔹 kanû – "to be firm"

Little by little, the mysterious wedge-shaped signs are beginning to reveal their meaning.

The afternoon then took us from law to literature we also magnificent Neo-Assyrian tablets preserving the Epic of Gilgamesh—ancient copies that have carried one of humanity's oldest stories across thousands of years.

One thing that certainly hasn't changed in nearly four thousand years...

A good teacher still knows exactly how to make a classroom laugh! 😄

Tomorrow we're leaving the classroom behind for a visit to the British Museum, where we'll meet many of these remarkable tablets in person.

(Photo credit, authors own & Lois Hannon BSS&A course coordinator &Jane Lamb BSS&A course coordinator)