Excerpt of Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard

Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

 

Prologue: A New Golden Age

 Our story begins not with Napoleon in 1798 but in 1873, with the

earliest British women who ventured to Egypt as travelers. Amelia

Edwards and Marianne Brocklehurst went to Egypt in search

of something—health, sunshine, a life’s purpose—and they found

1. Both women, independently of each other, had been inspired

to travel by Lucie Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt. These letters

from a lonely woman who had tried to find fresh, dry air for her

tuberculosis-ridden lungs inspired countless women and men to

travel to Egypt. Amelia and Marianne both established institutions

that soon became centers of the burgeoning discipline of Egyptology

in Britain. As we dig down into their stories, the timeline of

activity and opportunity reveals itself like a new stratigraphic layer

each time. As each won her own battles, she set up the women who

came later. Because of Amelia and Marianne, women in Britain like

Maggie Benson and Nettie Gourlay were able to be educated in

Egyptology, and they worked together to do their own excavations

while battling issues of oppression and exclusion. Emma Andrews’s

incredible success as a patron and archaeologist both depended on

Maggie and Nettie’s work and helped pave the way for Margaret

Murray to teach women to go into the field. Margaret’s work in the

university department that Amelia Edwards created allowed the

artists Myrtle Broome and Amice Calverley being on-site,

where they used their abilities to create brilliant reproductions of the art

on the walls of the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. Amelia Edwards’s

influence and money also resulted in Kate Bradbury and Emily

Paterson, as well as Caroline Ransom, having leadership positions

in central institutions, both small and large.

 

Women led the field of Egyptology in a number of ways despite and

sometimes because of the obstacles men put in their way.

Each new step, professionally, broke barriers for the next generation.

Barred from education, they traveled, experienced, learned, and

wrote about Egypt in ways they couldn’t do in a classroom. Excluded

from field training, they found opportunities to be present

and excavate on their own. Prohibited from theorizing or imagining

at the site, they re-created Egyptian art in astounding and wonderful

ways. Forbidden from being allowed to find the artifacts, they

acquired, organized, and maintained the world’s largest and most

important collections.

 

It is because of these women that we have the legacies of richly

illustrated travelogues, of valuable excavation seasons on sites that

had been deemed unimportant, of long-lost beautiful murals copied

and presented in books for future scholars to learn from, of great

collections in famous museums and foundational research institutions

that survived and thrived during wartime and depression.

Women were, in fact, the reason that any of the “Great Men” of

Egyptology were able to be “Great” at all.

 

Frequently, these women worked in tandem with Egyptians, too.

Both groups understood their usually subservient role to the Great

Man on-site. But their work—excavating, training, guarding, funding,

and selling pieces—made sure the European and American

men were successful in the field. Egyptian workers appear alongside

these women throughout the story of early Egyptology, likewise

fighting for inclusion. Egyptians are not as well-known historically

as Western women (which is really saying something), and their

stories in the archives and published sources are virtually nonexistent,

so their stories will be centered and significant, however small.

As the story here unfolds, we will meet and follow men such as

excavators, dahabeah captains, guides, ru’asa (excavation foremen),

consuls, and dealers. Their accomplishments run through this history

like a central thread that, if left out, would unravel the rich and

varied tapestry of the story.

 

Women in the Valley of the Kings presents a new idea of a Golden

Age, defined not by what men did politically but by the arrival of

women on their own terms, beginning with Amelia Edwards’s journey

in 1873 and ending with Caroline Ransom Williams’s death in

1952. These women and their professional and personal activities

cause us to rethink the era and ask questions like: For whom was

this age golden? What roles did women play in building and maintaining

the colonial structures in Egypt? When, how, and by whom

were Egyptians finally allowed to participate in the study of their

own ancient remains? Make no mistake, these women still took artifacts

during this so-called Golden Age, but their main disciplinary

work was more constructive and sustainable, and less destructive,

than men’s work.

 

The women in this volume came to Egyptology because of a

love for the ancient monuments, the people, and their history, not

to mention the mystery of it all. For the most part, women’s work

in the field happened at different times and in different spaces than

men’s. Western women arrived in Egypt later than men did. Once

they were in-country, their focus tended to be more on experience,

travel, and preservation of material remains than discovery,

although several women did uncover a number of important sites

and artifacts. While they worked both on-site and off, women often

used their money, influence, and expertise to create, support, and

maintain institutions instead of spending most of their time excavating

in the field. The discipline of Egyptology, therefore, looks

different when women dominate the field. Based on their work as

artists, diarists, and collectors, these women will be called Egyptologists.

Based on their jobs in university classrooms, home museum

collections, and disciplinary societies, Egyptology will be defined as

building institutions and not deconstructing sites. Egyptology will

finally be seen as women’s work.

 

There are many different definitions of Egyptology, and even more

that try to simultaneously carve out a definition of a “Golden Age”

of the discipline. Egyptology could comprise the “wonderful things”

to which the famous British archaeologist Howard Carter referred

when he was asked what he saw as he first peered through the dark

and dust into Tutankhamun’s almost undisturbed tomb. Egyptology

could include the wide public interest in Egypt’s history that trailblazer

Amelia Edwards said “never flags” in those who truly love

Egypt. It could be the study and mastery of the ancient script of the

people who walked, talked, lived, and loved in Egypt five thousand

years ago. It could be the study of their remains, with the discerning

mind put to solving the questions and problems that continually

arise with new finds. It very well is all of these things.

 

The term ancient Egypt, usually designated as the period from

around 3250 BCE to the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE

at the end of the Late Period, commonly defines the general era

studied by people who call themselves Egyptologists. The Greco-Roman

period is a separate period, but is still considered Egyptology,

beginning in 332 BCE and ending with the death of the final

Ptolemaic ruler, Cleopatra VII, in 30 BCE. That does not mean that

other periods and topics of Egyptian history do not matter—in

fact, the geology, climate, economy, politics, and anthropology of Egypt

matter a great deal. It is simply that those topics are not usually

considered to be part of Egyptology, specifically. The study of many

of the Egyptian scripts—at any point on the ancient timeline—is

often understood as Egyptology. The search for, excavation of, and

study of the material remains of ancient Egyptian civilization are

usually understood as Egyptian archaeology, the discerning factor

between the two being the focus on and comprehension of ancient

scripts. Egyptian archaeologists can be Egyptologists and vice versa;

it certainly helps to be both.

 

The term “Golden Age” of this discipline is also up for some

debate. Typically, “Golden Age” refers to the period defined by the

common Grand Narrative, from the coming of Napoleon and the

French in 1798 to the finding of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

It is a period in which wealthy, white Europeans and Americans ran

rampant over the cultural heritage of a colonized country and its

people, vandalizing and pillaging as they went. To be clear, the 130

or so years of European dominance in Egypt was a “Golden Age”

for the Western study of Egyptology because neither the laws in

place at the time nor the cultural norms put in place by the Western

rulers stopped this looting behavior—in fact, the laws actually encouraged

violence and oppression by allowing the men and women

who came to Egypt to take what they wanted, with impunity, and

reasonably expect to be safe and remain unmolested while doing it.

 

Writing mostly about Western women without acknowledging

their role in the colonized history of Egyptology doesn’t reflect the

true story. These women were part of the colonizing institutions and

were, therefore, colonizers themselves. The reality of the situation,

however, is more complex because, for far too often, women and

Egyptians were also the colonized. If one looks clearly at the accomplishments

of the explorers in the following pages, one can see

that they are the pillars on which the male heroes of Western Egyptology

stood in order to rise to their lofty status. If we are to see the

fascinating history of discoveries in Egypt clearly, we have to look

at the women and prominent Egyptians who did the groundbreaking

work among the pyramids and temples and place them where

they really belong within the history of Egyptology—directly

at the center. By finally acknowledging the accomplishments of these

individuals, a more realistic picture of the history of the field and a

truer, more inclusive definition of Egyptology emerge.