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Funds Received - £650.00

Summary Report on the Robert Hay Seminar held at Duns 10-12 April 2022

This is a summary report on the Hay Seminar, based on a document originally prepared for the meeting of the ASTENE Trustees held on 26 May 2022.

The Seminar ran over two and a half days from 10 to 12 April 2022 in Duns Castle and the Volunteer Hall, Duns in accordance with the programme previously circulated. This was a ‘hybrid’ event, with Zoom access available for all sessions except the first half-day, and although we experienced some minor technical problems with sound quality and related issues, the event generally passed off with no major hitches, thanks to the cooperation of all concerned. A number of presentations were recorded, and these are available via the ASTENE website; there are also numerous photographs of different stages of the event taken by Dyan Hilton and others.

All sessions on the afternoon of Sunday 10 April were free and open to the public, and Alick Hay’s beautifully illustrated account of the history of the Hay family and Duns Castle provided an excellent starting point to the whole event. Alick’s talk was followed by a showing of the older version of Death on the Nile and a play reading from Alexander Dow’s Sethona (1774), which were much enjoyed by all. Many thanks to John McEwen and Duns Players who gave the readings, even though they were busy preparing for the DunsPlayFest (29 April-7 May).

The next day, 11 April, the first day of the formal Seminar, was largely devoted to Robert Hay himself and to the various Robert Hay collections. Gemma Renshaw’s overview of the Robert Hay Archives and Angus Hay’s description of Robert Hay’s final years in south-east Scotland provided useful context. It was a pleasure to hear our first keynote speaker Larry Berman’s account of the Boston Hay collection and Patricia Usick’s presentation on the Hay plaster casts in the British Museum. Andrew Oliver’s informative paper about Hay’s Illustrations of Cairo, presented in absentia, was a true labour of love. Caroline Simpson provided an introduction to the Qurna project, already familiar to many ASTENE members, and Seminar participants were able to visit her Qurna exhibition in the nearby Duns Library at lunchtime on 11 and 12 April; this exhibition remained open to the public until 9 May.   

We were also privileged to hear first-hand about current ground-breaking research, notably that of Wilhelm Hovestreydt on the application of Hay’s work on the Ramesses III (KV 11) publication and conservation project; the rediscovery of sites in the Eastern Desert previously documented by Wilkinson and James (Hali)Burton, as rediscovered by Blaž Zabel from Ljubljana (in cooperation with Jan Ciglenečki in Cairo); and the immaculate and intricate conservation of the Coptic spells in the British Museum Hay archive, presented by Barbara Wills on behalf of the British Museum team.

On 12 April, the second day of the formal seminar, we focused on a number of Robert Hay’s friends. An overview of Scottish Egyptologists by Claire Gilmour provided useful context. John Gardner Wilkinson’s pioneer Egyptological and historical discoveries were highlighted by Aidan Dodson and Blaž Zabel; the meticulous paintings by Frederick Catherwood in Egypt and later in Latin America were beautifully presented by Angela Thompson; and the second keynote presentation, an account of Edward William Lane and his friendship with Hay by Jason Thompson, proved totally absorbing. Jason’s paper was supplemented by a contribution by Paul Starkey, who spoke about some of the problems attached to the composition of Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon.

With participants from the USA, Croatia, the Netherlands, the UK and Egypt, the event was truly international. Thanks are due to all those who helped to make it a success, in particular to Aline and Alick Hay; to Robert Hay and Angus Hay; to the staff at Duns Castle and the Volunteer Hall; to Kenneth McLean of Live Borders who helped put up the Robert Hay exhibition, and to the Duns Library staff who helped along the way. A particular pleasure enjoyed by many participants was the Seminar dinner held in Duns Castle on 11 April, as well as the excellent light refreshments provided in the Volunteer Hall by A Heart for Duns and Border Baguettes.

Following an auction of prints from the Illustrations of Cairo, kindly donated by Selwyn Tillett, and the sale of paintings from an associated local art exhibition at Duns Castle, we were able to send a donation of some £500 to the Red Cross for its work in Ukraine

After careful consideration, it was decided that, for various reasons, it would not be possible to put together a coherent set of Seminar papers in a single volume, as some contributors are publishing their work in specialist journals and monographs, and some contributions represented summaries of the field rather than original research. We are, however, in discussion with Archaeopress about the possibility of their publishing an updated edition of Selwyn Tillett’s Egypt Itself, which is currently in preparation, and this, if published, would represent a very valuable outcome of the Seminar.

It has not been possible to finalise the Seminar accounts yet, as for logistical reasons one element in the original proposal (a lecture to local schoolchildren) has not yet been completed. In broad terms, however, and taking into account the most welcome contributions of ASTENE and the local Blackhill Windfarm Community Fund, the Seminar appears to have roughly broken even, and it should be possible to return to ASTENE some of the £1000 that was advanced to the Seminar Committee some months ago. We expect to prepare a full statement of accounts in the first few weeks of 2023.

PGS

29.11.2022