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Dr Campbell Price: Facing Pharaohs: The Art and Imagination of Winifred Brunton and Others
This presentation was planned to be shared with John J. Johnston, who passed away unexpectedly . It is offered in memory of John, and of Professor Kenneth Kitchen, whom we also lost in 2025: two unique individuals, who now join Ian in the annals of great Scottish Egyptologists.
The South African-born artist Winifred Brunton (1880-1959) was an Egyptologist and a skilled painter of watercolour miniatures. More than most, she contributed to how many people have viewed the ancient Egyptians by (re)creating the faces of royals and elites based on surviving representations and on the mummified bodies attributed to certain individuals. Brunton's contributions mark a significant point in knowledge of the ancient Egyptian face and act as a forerunner of later scientific facial approximations. The first lecture will discuss the importance of Brunton in the search for the elusive faces of ancient Egyptians.Fueled by evocative source material such as the so-called 'Faiyum Portraits' of the Roman Period, the recreation of ancient faces seems an inescapable aspect of modern museum presentations. Today's second lecture will consider the limitations of these methods and explore how they tell us more about ourselves than about ancient people.
Dr Campbell Price received a BA, MA and PhD in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, where now he is an Honorary Research Fellow. Since 2011, he has been Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, one of the UK’s largest Egyptology collections. He was Chair of Trustees at the Egypt Exploration Society 2021- 2025.Campbell undertook fieldwork at Saqqara with the late Ian Mathieson, at Zawiyet Umm el Rakham and at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Recent books include Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Orion, 2024) and (with Stephanie Boonstra) Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries (Egypt Exploration Society 2025).
