I spent the afternoon in Bristol so that I could attend the Egyptian Stories event at Bristol Museum. While it was billed as being in the Egyptian gallery, that clearly wasn’t going to happen because there are too many display cases full of interesting artifacts. Instead it took place in the Assyrian gallery which contains little save a bunch of magnificent wall carvings from Nimrud, a city located just south of Mosul. They show King Ashurbanipal II (that’s him with the bow) and some attendant supernatural beings that the museum calls “demons” and I prefer to call “angels” because they are clearly protecting the king. Being an Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal was doubtless busy plotting how he could conquer the puny Egyptians, but he refrained from killing anyone so presumably he approved of the stories.

The four readers are (left to right) Piotr Świetlik, Amanda Huskisson, Jean Burnett and Justin Newland. Piotr and Jean read short stories, while Amanda and Justin read extracts from novels. Amanda tells me that she’ll be performing at BristolCon Fringe in November, so you’ll get to hear some of her work once I have that podcast.

The event was well attended, but could probably have done with an audio system. Reading and projecting at the same time takes practice. Having a microphone means people have one less thing to worry about (provided that they remember to use it).

Trevor Coombs, who is on the museum’s staff and also an historical fiction writer himself, hosted the event. He says that he’s hoping to do more events like that in future. I do hope so. I’m sure that Ishtar wants me to read about her in that room.