Digging into ancient Egypt

When Bill Needle draws a loaf of bread or a royal falcon, he's not just doodling. He's creating hieroglyphics, the picture script of ancient Egyptian priests.

"I am one of 11 Egyptologists in the United States that can read hieroglyphics," he said, a smile of pride etched on his face.

The Cape Girardeau resident and retired Southeast Missouri State University art professor has built his reputation creating personalized hieroglyphic name drawings in brown ink on white paper at arts and crafts shows across the country.

"A lot of people know me as an artist around town," he said. But Needle said he is also a serious scholar who is as interested in the history of ancient Egypt as the artwork.

His scholarship on a lesser-known Egyptologist who died in 1918 has gained Needle more national recognition. Later this month he will make a presentation about James Teackle Dennis at the 55th annual meeting in Tucson, Ariz., of the American Research Center in Egypt, a group of American Egyptologists. About 600 are expected to attend.

Needle, 73, has spent 28 years researching Dennis, a wealthy Egyptologist from Baltimore. Dennis, Needle said, participated in archaeological digs from 1903 to 1907 that unearthed some of the greatest finds of ancient Egypt prior to the discovery of the lavish tomb of King Tutankhamen. Dennis sent 900 ancient Egyptian artifacts to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Dennis, whose family made millions of dollars from owning a fleet of 26 clipper ships, at one time had relatives in Cape Girardeau. He visited Cape Girardeau at least once in the early 1900s.

Needles' interest in Dennis springs from a 1977 exhibit of a Dennis collection at Southeast Missouri State University. The collection of 51 artifacts -- including necklaces, statuettes and other objects dating possibly as late as 30 B.C. -- was given by his nieces to the Malden Historical Society.

Needle, accompanied by his wife, Ruth, journeyed to Egypt in 1976 to learn more about Dennis and the artifacts in anticipation of displaying them at Southeast. Along the way, they found spiders in the drinking water, ate spaghetti sauce that included cat meat and had cobras flung into their path by a snake charmer who wanted them to pay him money to get the snakes to slither back into a basket.

During Needle's two trips to Egypt, he has journeyed down the Nile River in an effort to retrace the trips of Dennis, whose accomplishments he feels were too long ignored.

"I am here to bring honor to this unsung American," Needle said Tuesday, seated at his basement desk and surrounded by his paintings of temples and tomb artwork.

Teaching at SEMO

Needle taught art classes at Southeast from 1967 to 1988. He chaired the art department from 1976 to 1983. He came back to teach a course on ancient Egypt from 1997 through 1999 and convey his love of hieroglyphics to his students.

Needle's love of hieroglyphics goes back to class lectures in his undergraduate days at Washington University in St. Louis more than 50 years ago. Fueled by his love of Egyptian art and history, he taught himself to read hieroglyphics.

Writing hieroglyphics has become second nature to him. He said it doesn't take an artist to draw the symbols.

"If you can draw a circle, you can draw the sun god," Needle said. "A moon symbol represented a month in ancient Egypt."

He's devised a handout that shows the basic ancient alphabet so students can write their own names in hieroglyphics.

Although retired, he hasn't stopped lecturing about ancient Egypt.

Needle has given talks to students in art appreciation classes at Saxony Lutheran High School in Cape Girardeau and Shawnee Community College at Anna, Ill., taught by one of his former art students, Brenda Seyer.

There's no doubt about his passion, Seyer said.

"He has always had a love of Egypt."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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