when life shakes down
through minutes of my day
to sieve through lattice of my mind
in drifting dust of fool’s gold…ash,
I simply sweep the hours away
under a kitchen rug, behind a bedroom
door…and scatter them with sighs

yet, there are times life lifts me…
shakes me from my ennui with
rhythmed song so fresh and true
that I must catch my breath,
and stretch my legs to walking
in its phrasing and its pulse

and search ’till I find pasture glow
of trumpet daffodils, and fill my arms
with slender stalks… and gather gold
abundance into fine-cut crystal vases
so that yellow fragrance fills my house,
and then I’ll wash the kitchen window just so
sun sweeps rainbow scatter on my wall

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Vincent van Gogh
“Forest and Undergrowth”

A modern view of Tell el-Maskhuta, the EEF’s first excavated site

Migration is a central theme in the Biblical story of Exodus. Quite apart from the debated historicity of the account of the departure of Hebrews from Egypt, the story of the Exodus has played an important role in the popular perception of ‘Ancient Egypt’.

For many people who were aware of Pharaonic history in the 18th and 19th Centuries, much of their information derived from the Bible. This is a major reason why the Manchester Museum has such an important collection of archaeologically-sourced objects from Egypt. In 1882, an organisation called the Egypt Exploration Fund was set up to preserve the remains of Egypt’s ancient past through archaeological recording. The first site chosen for the Fund’s work was Tell el Maskhuta, in the eastern Nile Delta – believed to be a store-city mentioned in Exodus. An account of…