Simon Bralee
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simonbralee.com
Simon Bralee
@simonbralee.com
3.3K followers 860 following 470 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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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Went to the Ithell Colquhoun exhibition. Magic stuff. Lots of beautiful art, from figurative to abstract, surrealist to symbolic. In Aaron Meeting Moses, from 1932, she paints the prophet with horns, a mistranslation of the Hebrew 'rays of light’, which linked him with Amun. Plus snake.
An oil painting of two men. Dating from the 1930s it has resonances with Italian Renaissance art. Man on left, Moses, wears brown robes (possibly camel hair). He holds a red twirling snake rod and has horns on head. Man on right, Aaron, wears a red and purple tunic over black clothes.
August 23, 2025 at 3:43 PM
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From the portico of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, an image of a priest, possibly a scribe with his feather headdress (if we can trust Clement of Alexandria). Behind him a divine cat is about to pounce on his scroll. 🏺 #AncientBluesky #Egyptolgy
Fresco against red background depicting a bald scribe in white linen robes. His hands are out stretched and he reads from a papyrus roll. On his head, two white feathers (a headdress seen in other images of Isiac priests). Behind him on a large plinth stands a black cat with a gold headdress (a sign of divinity).
August 18, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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Protector by Evie Anderson, a piece of millinery art inspired by Brizo, an Ancient Greek goddess from Delos similar to Isis, protector of those who sail on the seas with oracular powers. In the Turner Contemporary Margate. #Egyptology #ClassicsBluesky
A cerulean blue satin hat in the shape of a sea with a hand holding a wooden model of Full-rigged-ship.
August 12, 2025 at 8:18 PM