Another year has come and gone and now we find ourselves entering a new decade of Egyptology in 2020. We founded Nile Scribes in 2017 and, three years later, it’s exciting to see how we’ve expanded our small Egyptocentric blog to include more on-going projects than we could have ever imagined.
2019 was a year of huge growth for the Nile Scribes – we shifted some of our focus from our online presence to our real-world presence by leading our first tour to Egypt in the Fall. We are incredibly grateful for all of the support we received over the past year from our readers, Patrons, and our Scribes on the Nile participants – thank you! This week we take a moment to look back on 2019 and share our “Year in Review”.
Most popular blog posts
This year we continued writing about a wide-ranging array of topics that caught our interest, from special exhibitions to travel inspirations, and welcomed 4 guest bloggers from 3 different countries to our site. Our “Travel” category may have been our most popular category this year: we shared our favourite Graeco-Roman temples, Delta sites, guidebooks, and our recent hunt for inscriptions at Philae Temple. Our “Museums” category also saw some attention as we wrote about a number of local collections in Toronto, and highlighted new Egyptology exhibits in North America. We also had the pleasure to interview 3 notable female Egyptologists about their careers and research.
Out of the 36 blog posts published last year, our readers enjoyed these five the most:
- Common Misconceptions about Ancient Egypt
- 5 Must-See Graeco-Roman Temples in Egypt
- Egyptian Mummies and Their Stories in Museums
- Hiddenness and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Love Songs
- An Egyptological Review of ‘Tut’ the Miniseries
Most popular social media photo
We continued our growth on Instagram where we are nearing 2,000 followers. With more than 75 posts in 2019, we shared our weekly Travel Tuesday and Friday Find posts and also occasionally updated our followers on recent Egyptological discoveries. Our most popular post comes to us from the outer wall at the Temple of Hathor at Denderah and shows several registers with a variety of Egyptian crowns.
Our favourite blog posts
Thomas: Writing about the most common misconceptions people have about ancient Egypt counts as my choice. Whenever we talk about all things Egyptian, mummies and pyramids are of course number one, but more enticing questions also reach us about other topics. I have frequently been asked about the nature of human sacrifice in Egypt or whether the pyramids were built by slaves – writing a blog to quell these misconceptions is one way our blog looks to foster a better public understanding of ancient Egypt.
Taylor: On my personal to-see list for years, was the last hieroglyphic inscription at the temple of Isis on Philae Island. Our tour to Egypt in October gave me the opportunity to visit the temple for the first time and hunt down the image of the Nubia god Mandulis and accompanying text on Hadrian’s Gate. We recently blogged about our scavenger hunt at Philae where we looked for the last attestations of the demotic and hieroglyphic scripts.
Our greatest achievement
This year we led a tour of fifteen people across Egypt, visiting Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan. Our group was made up of mostly first-time visitors, but by the end of the two weeks, many of them expressed a strong desire to return to Egypt. Our Scribes on the Nile tour gave us the chance to experience Egypt through new eyes, and dispel some misconceptions about travel safety in the Middle East with our participants and their families. We hope to organise more Nile Scribes tours to Egypt in the future, and to continue to show participants what inspired us to choose Egyptology as our careers.
Where are our readers from?
We are delighted to see readers coming to our blog from all over the globe! This year we welcomed visitors from 175 countries (an increase of six countries over last year). Although our top 5 list is dominated by English-speaking countries, we are thrilled that Egypt made it onto the list of our top visitors for the third year in a row.
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- Egypt
- Australia
Our 2019 Patreon Supporters
Alina Santos • Amelia Alexander • Brian Jamison • Callan Tay • Colin Callander and Megan Paqua • David Lassanske • Debra Tily • Henry Bleattler • Jason Scott • Jeremy Henson • Jordan Jamison • Kayleigh Raine • Lane Andress • Lee Robert McStein • Patricia Polocko • Stephen Smoot • Tayte Rian Gerik • The History of Egypt Podcast
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