Last week I was delighted to give a Kazimierz Michałowski Memorial Lecture, “Cairo – an African Metropolis. Archaeological Perspectives on Contacts between Cairo and Eastern Ethiopia in the 12th to 15th Centuries” in the delightful building of the PCMA in the Heliopolis area of Cairo. This still being the COVID age, the lecture was hybrid, in-person and on Zoom, and it was thrilling to see real people again in the lecture room, the PCMA library. The visit to Cairo also allowed me to firm up the connections between Harlaa and Cairo through visits to the Museum of Islamic Art, and from the Wakalat al-Jallaba, kindly facilitated by our Egyptian CfIA PhD student, Hisham Nasr.
– Tim
