Egyptologist Wants to Speak in Classrooms

Egyptology is much more than just spooky fun with mummies and hieroglyphs, at least if you’re at the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE.)

Al Berens of Redwood City is president of the ARCE’s Northern California chapter and trained in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. He has made 10 trips to Egypt, 10 of them as a tour guide.

ARCE's , based at , has just launched a free volunteer program to send trained Egyptologists into Bay Area classrooms. The organization is eager to get the word out before fall, because teachers make their lesson plans during the summer.

A lot of Egyptological field work was canceled this year because of the revolution in Egypt and its aftermath — for example, it's no longer clear who should sign off on many researchers' permits. But Berens said ARCE planned its speakers' program long before events conspired to keep researchers home. 

Rather, he said, the outreach is part of ARCE's mission to "foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties."

In sixth grade, every student in California public schools learns about ancient Egypt. Students have fun with such tasks as learning to write their names in Egyptian, an early written language that developed from picture signs. Teachers use this as an entrée to talk about the origins of civilization.

"Contemporary Egypt is both religious and secular, Muslim and Christian, and modern but historically conservative," Berens said. Its ancient sages "deeply influenced Judaeo-Christian thought, and, through the Greek interactions with ancient Egypt, had an impact on fields such as medicine, architecture, and art."

"Their ancient material culture influenced furniture and cabinet making, bee keeping, animal breeding, crop irrigation, the university system and the cosmetics industry," he said.

Berens said he knows several people in and out of ARCE who have been to Egypt since the revolution and were warmly welcomed. It's mainly the disruption to the bureaucratic apparatus that makes fieldwork difficult there now, he said.

The volunteers will divide speaking duties among themselves in line with their own work and other commitments. Before they visit a school, they like to talk to the teacher beforehand, to get a sense of how they can complement his or her work.

Many ARCE members, like Berens are volunteering to go into schools. K-12 teachers who would like to have a free ARCE guest speaker visit a classroom should contact Berens at hebsed@comcast.net.