Simon Bralee
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simonbralee.com
Simon Bralee
@simonbralee.com
3.3K followers 860 following 480 posts
Advocate for arts and humanities. I believe in the importance of sharing the stories of research to create impact outside of universities. Comms professional and history postgrad researching Anubis in the Roman World. 🏛️🐍
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simonbralee.com
12 powerful, challenging, painful and joyous artworks responding to UCL’s history of eugenics at the university’s Stratford site, including Dog Whistle, a video installation by Veronica McKenzie partly inspired by Galton’s trip to Egypt. I recommend a visit
#Egyptology www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-east/pub...
A screen showing the artist in front of the pyramids in Giza.
November 25, 2025 at 8:46 PM
simonbralee.com
Bronze figurine of the goddess Venus from St Albans, holding an apple to entice Paris. Likely from a Roman period domestic shrine in the town. Verulamium Museum 🏺 #AncientBluesky
A bronze figurine of a woman wearing a skirt blowing open and no top. In her right hand she holds a round object, identified as an apple.
November 18, 2025 at 1:04 PM
simonbralee.com
Two jackals on a stele, dedicated to the cult of the Emperor Nero, showing a combination of Egyptian iconography and a Greek inscription. From Asyut (Greek - Lycopolis, Wolf city), home to a major temple dedicated to Wepwawet, a canine god. 🏺 #Egyptology #AncientBluesky
A stele from Egypt. At the top a winged solar disk hovers above two crouching jackals whose snouts almost touch over an ankh symbol. At the bottom, Greek text.
November 15, 2025 at 8:05 PM
simonbralee.com
Osiris Ptah Sokar statuette giving Monday morning vibes (Made in Ancient Egypt, Fitzwilliam)
🏺 #Egyptology #AncientBluesky
Gilded face from a wooden statue of the god Osiris Ptah Sokar. The nose and mouth are carved but the eyes are painted in black in an ancient Egyptian style. It looks fed up.
November 10, 2025 at 11:41 AM
simonbralee.com
Pilgrim badge of St Leonard, looking like a medieval yoda

🏛️ Kings Chapel Museum, Cambridge
A thin metal badge depicting a monk wearing robes and holding a staff. He looks like he has pointed ears.
November 5, 2025 at 4:16 PM
simonbralee.com
Londoners have always been grumpy as can been proved by this fossil of brychaetus muelleri found in London Clay (Island of Sheppey, so technically not London). They were large fish with armour-covered bodies and sharp teeth, 50-55 million years ago.
🏛️Sedgwick Museum.
Fossil of Brychaetus muelleri
November 4, 2025 at 9:51 PM
simonbralee.com
Classical bust (of Antoninus Pius?) covered in shells in the window of Sinai & Sons, Kensington Church Street 🏺 #AncientBluesky
A black Roman bust covered in various shells.
November 3, 2025 at 9:25 PM
simonbralee.com
So we enter November, aka Anubis month. This image from a calendar mosaic from Thysdrus (El-Jem, Tunisia) depicts a festival commemorating the death of Osiris, which was celebrated all over the Roman Empire (Sousse Archaeological Museum, © Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons) 🏺 #AncientBluesky
Detail from a mosaic depicting three similarly sized men. The first on the right is dressed as Anubis. He is wearing a dog mask and red robe. He holds a caduceus. His hands seem to be a different colour to his mask, suggesting he is a human and not the god. The two men to his right are wearing white robes, possibly linen. Both of their heads are clean shaven and they wear feathers on their head, possibly a symbol of priestly office. According to Clement of Alexandria, scribes wore feathers. Above them the text reads ‘November’
November 1, 2025 at 8:39 AM
simonbralee.com
A replica of Benjamin Franklin’s Glass Armonica in his London home, now a museum. He said this musical instrument was the invention that gave him the most joy. It was quite the hit in Europe: Mozart composed for it, and Beethoven, Donizetti and Saint-Saëns all used it in pieces.
A long rectangular wooden cupboard with a section open on the shortest side, like a piano or harpsichord keyboard but it contains a cylinder of decreasing-sized glass bowls. You play it by rubbing the glass bowls which are all tuned to different pitches.
October 31, 2025 at 4:05 PM
simonbralee.com
A friend sent me this: NYT Connections trying to build bridges after Victoria Coren-Mitchell insulted it last week. #OnlyConnect
NYT Wall
October 27, 2025 at 8:07 PM
simonbralee.com
Enjoying a long train journey with the wonderfully erudite Silence of the Gods. For me, it has a general interest covering a topic that has long intrigued me (the unchristian/pre-Christian bits of Europe) but also provides reflections that can be applied to other periods (Late Antiquity). Recommend.
The Silence of the Gods on a cafe table in a rail station concourse. Chic expresso cup out of shot.
October 24, 2025 at 9:11 AM
simonbralee.com
Hodakova’s Spoon Dress in the Barbican’s fantastic Dirty Looks exhibition, recalling the far-famed Diana of Ephesus, here, I think, we see once again the shadow of the goddess Isis, she who would ladle out benefices and blessings.
The top of a gown formed out of spoons draped over a manikin.
October 18, 2025 at 2:04 PM
simonbralee.com
Pithos fragments restored again from ruin. Ashmolean, Crete (no provenance), 700-600 BCE. 🏺 #AncientBluesky
Clay storage jar with relief and stamped decoration of sphinges, grazing bulls, and snakes and stamped rosettes and circles.
October 16, 2025 at 8:14 PM
simonbralee.com
Stepping out into the weekend

Terracotta figurine of a goddess riding on a lion from Roman Cologne #AncientBluesky
A terracotta of a goddess riding side-saddle on a lion. The details of the figure, including clothes, are worn away making it hard to identify with confidence but she appears to have solar rays or horns on her head. Lion looks very happy.
October 10, 2025 at 6:26 PM
simonbralee.com
A statue of a god with a much more famous wife, once owned by a man with a much more famous wife.

Marble bust of Serapis, 1st - 2nd century CE, formerly in the collection of William Hamilton, husband of Emma.

📷 Visions of Ancient Egypt exhibition, Sainsbury Centre, 2022 #AncientBluesky #Egyptology
A bust of a bearded man with a small discrete cylindrical modius hat on his head
October 5, 2025 at 2:58 PM
simonbralee.com
A very excited friend sent me this photo of the ‘From Toga to Robe’ catalogue. Last year’s exhibition in Slovenia featured the official dress of supreme court judges from 14 courts in the EU. An intriguing piece of classical reception. Has anyone else read it yet? #ClassicsBluesky #AncientBluesky
A hand clutches the From Toga to Robe catalogue.
October 1, 2025 at 3:27 PM
simonbralee.com
A temptress in the desert, but be careful. Check out those feet! The Temptation of St Antony by Master Girard (c.1470-1500) on display in Sam Fogg Gallery, London. #LateAntiquityBluesky
A 15th century painting depicting a grey bearded man in brown and black monk’s robes looking at a most comely woman in richly adorned contemporary fashions. The feet peeking out beneath the hem of her dress are birdlike talons, the feet of a devil in disguise.
September 30, 2025 at 7:42 PM
simonbralee.com
Perfect little Roman period silver statuette of the Egyptian god Harpocrates with a tiny dog (or pard), hawk and tortoise, important animals possibly representing his powers over death. Found near London Bridge. 🏺 #AncientBluesky #Egyptology
A silver statuette of a young child with wings. His right hand is placed to his mouth. There’s a gold chain around his body. On the statuette base are three animals, now worn away: a dog or leopard, perhaps reflecting Anubis or Dionysus, a tortoise, the symbol of eternity, and a hawk, the traditional animal of the god’s Egyptian form.
September 29, 2025 at 5:21 PM
simonbralee.com
Relief from Corinium Museum depicting a horned god holding two friendly snakes in each hand, identified as the Celtic god Cernunnos. Possibly related to fertility or just Iron Age / Roman British rock n roll
🏺 #AncientBluesky
A worn stone relief depicting a human sat down with two large writhing serpents either side. Details on the face are just visible, including eyes and .
September 28, 2025 at 5:06 PM
simonbralee.com
Japanese figurine (Japan House, London) and ancient Egyptian figurine (Louvre).
A brightly painted clay figurine of a cat wearing traditional Japanese clothes on a white horse. A terracotta figurine of a child riding on the back of a dog.
September 23, 2025 at 7:22 PM
simonbralee.com
No one makes a milk jug look quite as muddy and teeming with squirmy, slimy creatures as the Martin Brothers. (Currently on display in the Gallery of Everything.)
A small clay jug painted with an image of fish, eels and weeds in earthy hues.
September 21, 2025 at 12:03 PM
simonbralee.com
One of the two lions of Pharaoh Nectanebo I (360-343 BCE), taken from the Nile delta to Rome in antiquity. They became an important inspiration for church art in medieval Rome. #Egyptology
A statue of a reclining lion with its face pointed to the side. The statute base has hieroglyphs.
September 16, 2025 at 7:51 PM
simonbralee.com
A bronze figurine of Sobek-Kronos from Roman period Egypt, now held in the Louvre. The mighty crocodile god has been reimagined as a bearded man with a tiny crocodile on his arm.
🏺 #Egyptology #AncientBluesky
A bronze figurine of a bearded man in a hooded robe. His right hand is stretched out and his left hand is placed against his chest with a tiny crocodile.
September 12, 2025 at 8:00 PM
simonbralee.com
A terracotta from Roman Syria showing two goddesses on a camel. Held by the Louvre (AO6619) 🏺 #AncientBluesky
A terracotta depicting two finely dressed women with jewellery woman on a dromedary.
September 4, 2025 at 8:40 PM
simonbralee.com
The Egyptian House in Strasbourg, an art nouveau masterpiece designed by Franz Scheyder with painted decorations by Adolf Zilly. The balconies are designed in a bat shape. Gorgeous. #Egyptology
A five storey apartment building with Egyptian style decoration depicting two people on a boat in a stylised marsh with some birds.
August 25, 2025 at 1:15 PM