By Amara Thornton

The humble postcard is, I'm happy to say, becoming something of a 'heritage' research field.  My colleague Jamie Larkin has explored the history of postcard sales at museums and heritage sites in the UK while Elizabeth Edwards has been researching photography, postcards and heritage sites. 
 
I've blogged about the history behind the production of postcards relating to specific excavations – namely, the postcard produced in the 1920s by the Palestine Museum (now Rockefeller Museum), showing the Galilee Skull, discovered in 1925 during an excavation near the Sea of Galilee by students at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. In the same period, the Transjordan Department of Antiquities produced a postcard showing part of one of the key sites in the country – the remains of a Roman city at Jerash.  One of these postcards (hand annotated) is found in the Horsfield collection at UCL.
 
The British Museum from the early part of the 20th century produced a series of postcards of objects in their collection, collaborating in the production of these with Oxford University Press.
 
But the British Museum's collection also incorporates relevant externally produced postcards.  In the Middle East Department's ephemera collection are a series of five postcards showing images of inscribed ostraca known collectively as the Lachish Letters (EPH-ME.1562, EPH-ME.1563, EPH-ME.1564, EPH-ME.1565, EPH-ME.1566).* 
 
According to the information provided in the BM's collection metadata, these postcards were created around 1935.  The production date is significant because the Letters were discovered during the 1934-35 season at Tell Duweir, so the postcards would have been made in quick-time – probably, I suspect, so that they could be sold at the end-of-season exhibition in July 1935.
 
I hope more of these ephemeral artefacts will come to light – they are a potent reminder that discoveries made did not always go straight onto the shelves of museum storage or display case and that the ubiquitous postcard is also part of the history of archaeology.
 
* A selection of the artefact Letters is on display in Room 57 in the British Museum.

By Amara Thornton

The Royal Academy will be turning 250 this year.  Two and a half centuries since it was founded to give a home to Britain’s artistic elite. It’ll be interesting to see how the 250th celebrations are received, and what people make of greater exposure of the RA’s history in the forthcoming exhibition (“The Great Spectacle”) and research project in conjunction with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.  Personally, I’m pretty excited about the prospect of the RA's historic Summer Exhibition catalogues being made available online (about which more below).
 
2018 also happens to be the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, giving a portion of women the right to vote.  This centenary celebration is drawing attention to women in history in a number of ways, I’m happy to say. But the Royal Academy has a pretty dire record of admitting women to the lofty heights of Academician status.  Beyond 18th century artists Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffmann, who were part of the foundation of the RA, no women were admitted as Royal Academicians until Annie Swynnerton in 1922 (admitted as a Associate RA) followed by Laura Knight in 1936 (admitted as an RA outright).  So the result is (by my count, excluding Moser & Kauffmann) only 55 women have been admitted as Royal Academicians between 1768 and now.
 
The Summer Exhibitions, thankfully, tell a different story.  That’s why it’s so important that those catalogues are digitised and made available this year. The Exhibition catalogues yield valuable information about the activities of women artists over the course of the RA’s history.  And among those women represented in the RA’s Summer Exhibition catalogues are three artists – Jessie Mothersole, Freda Hansard, Florence “Kate” Kingsford – who also worked as tomb-painting copyists for Flinders Petrie in Egypt.
 
In 1906, Algernon Graves published an 8 volume history of contributors to the Royal Academy.  This included artists who had had work hung in the RA’s Summer Exhibitions, and it is a fantastic resource for exploring the history of women artists in Britain. So, how are my three archaeological artists reflected in Graves’s history?
 
Well, all three had work accepted in multiple Summer Exhibitions. In 1899, Freda Hansard, listed as a painter, had two works exhibited: “Medusa Turning a Shepherd into Stone” and “Isola dei Pescatori in Lago Maggiore”. Kate Kingsford, also listed as a painter, had “Greek girls playing at ball” accepted and displayed. The following year, Hansard’s “Priscilla”, an oil painting, and Kingsford’s water colour “Harmony” and black & white work “1844” were all exhibited.  In 1901, Hansard’s “Rival Charms” was exhibited, as well as Jessie Mothersole’s “Lilian”.  Mothersole was listed as a miniature painter in Graves’s history, so this may well have been a miniature portrait.
 
Unfortunately, I have no idea what most of these works looked like, barring a small black & white reproduction of Hansard’s “Priscilla” published in Hearth & Home in May 1900.  I don’t know if they are still extant – though you can see two of Freda Hansard’s other paintings online at art.org.uk.  One of Jessie Mothersole’s watercolours, displayed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1911, is also available to see digitally – she included a reproduction of her watercolour “The Oldest Inhabitant – Scilly” in her 1910 book The Isles of Scilly: Their Story, Their Folk and Their Flowers, which you can read and download on Internet Archive.

Follow-up volumes to Graves’s History were published in the 1970s, pushing the history of exhibitors to the Royal Academy up to 1970.  These illuminate even further the lives of these women as working artists.  Freda Hansard (listed as Freda Firth, her married name), exhibited a rather intriguing piece called “Men may come, and men may go, but I go on for ever” in the 1908 Summer Exhibition.  I can’t imagine what it looked like, but I hope it’s still around, somewhere.  In addition to her contribution to the 1911 exhibition, Jessie Mothersole submitted one painting in 1913, and two in 1914.  Two of these paintings showcased Mothersole’s experiences in Egypt – showing Deir-el-Bahari, the site of ancient Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, and Abu Simbel.
 
There is a lot of art and associated archive material to explore on the Royal Academy’s new Collections interface.  It’s there that I discovered, for example, that Florence Kate Kingsford (Cockerell) exhibited her illuminated manuscripts, including “Hymn to Aten, the Sun Disk” (now held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), in the 1916 Arts & Crafts Society Exhibition.  And that Winifred Newberry Brunton, another archaeological artist, had her miniature “The Nile” included in the 1915 War Relief Committee Exhibition, held at the Royal Academy.

So let’s hope, that with the digitsation of the RA’s Summer Exhibition Catalogues, we start to learn a lot more about the women whose work was featured there, year after year – so that, as I have argued elsewhere, “the digital makes visible the invisible”. Including the work of Misses Mothersole, Hansard, and Kingsford, artists.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society. 1916. Catalogue of the Eleventh Exhibition, 1916. (catalogue online via RA Collections beta site)
 
Graves, A. 1905. Preface. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of contributors and their work.Vol 1 of 8.  London: Henry Graves & Co/G. Bell & Sons.
 
Royal Academy. 1900. Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts MDCCCC. One Hundred and Thirty- Second. [Catalogue]

Royal Academy. 1911. Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts MDCCCCXI. One Hundred and Forty- Third. [Catalogue]

Royal Academy. 1915. War Relief Exhibition in aid of the Red Cross and St John Ambulancew Society and the Artist’s General Benevolent Institution. London: Royal Academy (catalogue online via RA Collections beta site)
 
Royal Academy. 1973-. Royal Academy exhibitors 1905-1970: a dictionary of artists and their work in the summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts. EP Publishing.

This month's post is on trowelblazers.com, where I've written a piece about archaeologist Marie-Louise Berges Garstang!  I didn't have much to go on - her husband John Garstang is much more well known - but thankfully historical newspapers helped illuminate her activities a bit.  Do check it out!  Read "Marie Garstang - Meroe to Mersin in the Middle of it All" here.

By Amara Thornton

Tuesday 3 June 1930, 2.30 p. m. London’s Hippodrome Theatre. Lady Newnes (aka Emmeline de Rutzen) hosts a “Historical Egyptian Matinee” to raise funds for the British School of Egyptian archaeology's excavations in Palestine and the Friends of the Poor.   Mrs Julia Chatterton, a well-known folk song collector, composes all the music for the occasion, to be played on Egyptian instruments.  The audience enters to the strains of Verdi’s Aida – first presented in 1871 at the Khedival Opera House in Cairo.
 
Once everyone is seated, a gong tolls.  The familiarity of Verdi gives way to something entirely different, and much more authentic. Julia Chatterton wants the music to take the audience away from themselves, away from London, away from the 20th century.  They are to learn and appreciate, the programme notes tell them, “the Oriental mode of musical expressions.” 
 
Julia Cook-Watson Chatterton was no dilettante. She was a member of the Society of Women Musicians before World War 1, she had moved to Egypt at some point before 1914 to edit the illustrated newspaper The Sphinx, and spent ten years living in Egypt with her husband, architect Frederick Chatterton, who was employed in the Egyptian Public Works Department.  While there, she began researching Egyptian songs and instruments alongside making her name and garnering official recognition for her work entertaining the troops based in Cairo via the “Cards Concert Party” during the war. Her wartime medals were sold at Bonhams in 2013.
 
When she eventually returned to England in the 1920s, she began composing pieces with Egyptian themes, using instruments she had collected in Egypt, and presenting them in London.  The 1930 issue of Egypt and the Sudan features Chatterton’s article on “The Music of Egypt” in which she attempts to educate English tourists about the history and musicality of Egyptian songs and instruments.
 
I first came across references to Julia Chatterton’s work on the Hippodrome event some years ago; it’s been on my list of topics to blog about ever since.  In preparing for a talk at the Museo Egizio in Turin, I’ve revisited my initial research. Thanks to Petrie Museum curator Anna Garnett and former curator Alice Stevenson, I’ve now been able to see some of the fantastic ephemera created for this event in the Museum's archive.

The enormous event poster prominently promotes Chatterton’s “Original Egyptian Music”, and lists some of the Egyptian instruments to be featured – pipes, sistrum, lyre, nay, harp, oud (lute), darraboukeh.
 
In the programme, a full picture of the musical programme for the afternoon emerges. Fourteen individual musical interludes, with additional “incidents” occurred during the event. Italian-born London-based composer Francesco Ticciati conducted the orchestra.  Noted music historian, archaeologist and British Museum curator Kathleen Schlesinger loaned instruments from her personal collection.  Vocalists included one soprano, three mezzo sopranos, two tenors and four baritones (one of whom was Petrie student Gerald Lankester Harding).  Among the instrumentalists were a lute player, a tamboura player, a harpist and a pianist. Mamoun Abd el Salam was responsible for playing the nay, the argul and the rebab. Julia Chatterton herself was also one of the musicians playing the darraboukeh, an instrument with which she was particularly skilled, and the kithara.
 
Complementing the music was a series of fourteen tableaux showing ancient Egyptian history between 8000 and 30 B. C.  The performance had 81 cast-members, and “one white pigeon” (representing a dove). It began with a scene of earliest Egypt, accompanied by “Rhythmic Hand Clapping”, showing the Badarian civilisation, the remains of which had recently been excavated by Petrie students Guy Brunton and Winifred Newberry Brunton (also a noted artist). The story of King Khufu and "The Pyramid Age” of the 4th Dynasty was commemorated in Terence Grey’s short play The Building of the Pyramid. 
 
Princess "Sat-hat-hor-ant" (Sithathoriunet), whose elaborate jewellery had been the highlight of Petrie’s 1913-14 season at Lahun, was also featured in the tableaux.  The jewellery worn during the performance was recreated from published plates by Lady Leeds (Eltheleen Winnaretta Singer), who took the part of Nefert in the Pyramid Age Tableaux, using cardboard, beads, wax and macaroni.  The action wound up in Roman Egypt, with appearances from Marc Antony, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra (played by Lady Newnes herself).
 
The matinee attracted an audience of 1400 people, among them Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter.  Lotus-badge wearing volunteers handed out further information on the British School of Egyptian archaeology’s research, schemes and publications to interested audience members - it was a fundraising venture, after all.
 
It seems to have been quite the Society event, and there are so many elements to explore in this one action packed aural and visual extravaganza it’s impossible to cover in one blog post, or in one lecture.  Needless to say I’ll be returning to this topic in due course, and perhaps someone with a connection to the event will have even more information!  (Pretty please?)

*Special thanks to Heba Abd el Gawad for finding suitable links for the Egyptian instruments featured in this piece.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Drower, M. 1995. Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
 
Chatterton, J. 1930. The Music of Egypt. Egypt and the Sudan. London: The Tourist Development Association of Egypt, Cairo Station.
 
Chatterton, J. 1930. The Intimate Significance of Folk-Song. The Sackbut 11 (1): 11-13.
 
Petrie, H. 1930. Notes and News. Ancient Egypt (Part II, June): 63-64.
 
The Sketch. 1930. Nefert – and her Egyptian Matinee Jewels of Macaroni. 4 June. p 461.
 
Times. 1936. Mrs Julia Chatterton. 3 January, p. 17.
 
Copies of the event poster, programme, and preliminary notice are held in the Petrie Museum archives.

By Amara Thornton

A very short post this month to draw your attention to my latest article.  'Filming A Biblical City' was published at the beginning of this month in History Today's recently launched online platform 'Miscellanies'.  The article explores the history behind the creation of Lachish - City of Judah, a film made in the 1930s to document the Wellcome Marston Archaeological Expedition to the Near East's excavation of Tell Duweir.  Hope you enjoy it!

By Amara Thornton

In 1930, archaeologist Harry Reginald Holland Hall published a book on his wartime journey to Mesopotamia on behalf of the British Museum in 1918-19.  Its lengthy descriptive title - A Season’s Work at Ur, Al-Ubaid, Abu Shahrain (Eridu) and Elsewhere: Being an Unofficial Account of the British Museum Archaeological Mission to Babylonia, 1919 - masks what an interesting read it is.  
 
Hall was sent out to Mesopotamia as a military intelligence officer, “British Museum” unit, but on arrival he was converted to political service.  (I imagined, on reading his memories of this incident, something akin to a scene in Marguerite Vance’s Marie Antoinette in which the young Austrian Archduchess Maria Antonia changes from Austrian to French clothes to become the Dauphine Marie Antoinette.)
 
He’d packed up his trowel in a kit bag, to paraphrase that popular WW1 song, and gone to “Mespot” to check on its antiquities and conduct some preliminary excavations, in preparation for what he called a “new regime” of British administered archaeology in the region. 
 
He describes his rather complicated and quite fascinating journey to “Mespot”, involving several stops and changes en route, in great detail with characterful flair in the first chapter of his book. It begins at Waterloo Station, where he boarded a troop-train headed for the coast.  On arrival at the northern French port of Cherbourg, he boarded another train, travelling through France and Italy, celebrating Armistice Day en route at Lyon.  He caught a boat from Taranto, Italy to Port Said, and then went overland to Cairo to have an archaeological confab with fellow excavators David George Hogarth (in charge of the Arab Bureau intelligence network), Leonard Woolley (fresh from a prison camp), and James Edward Quibell (Curator of the Egyptian Museum).  
 
From Egypt he caught the British India Steamship Navigation Co’s Chakdarra, stopping in Bombay. Major-General Sir Walter Cayley, commanding the 13th (Western) Division in Mesopotamia, was also on board, and he asked Hall to deliver a series of archaeological lectures to the troops on board. This request is fascinating, as it indicates the provision of educational opportunities for soldiers serving on the Mesopotamian front during wartime, and an attempt satisfy troops' interest in the archaeological landscapes they were moving through.

Hall observed:

This juxtaposition of military manoeuvring and an archaeological landscape is highlighted in a contemporary publication on the war from the Amalgamated Press. An overview of the war’s theatres and main protagonists, The War Illustrated Album de Luxe highlighted stories of wartime triumph and tragedy alongside every-day activities. The Mesopotamian front was included in several volumes, with images of soldiers on the ground and the emerging British administration featured alongside the archaeology surrounding them. (Two such examples are “Ancient Ruins and Modern Doings in Mesopotamia” and “From the Ruins of Babylon to Modern Baghdad”.)
 
There is a 21st century equivalent to this history too.  After the looting of the Baghdad museum in 2003 archaeologists created a bespoke set of ‘heritage’ playing cards to educate US soldiers serving in Iraq about antiquities and archaeological sites.  Pictures of some of these cards were published in Public Archaeology journal in 2007.
 
The 100th anniversary of World War 1 is still continuing, and with it associated digital history and exhibition projects.  Although there is no equivalent for Mesopotamia that I know of (but do check out Paul Cooper's recent Twitter thread on his great-grandfather's archive), you can discover how WW1 soldiers captured their own experiences in Egypt and Palestine through the Views of an Antique Land project.  I’ve also written a post on the Palestine Exploration Fund blog about a fascinating series of post-war letters from WW1 soldiers who had served in Palestine.  You can read “To the Secretary, Palestine Exploration Fund” here.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Hall, H. R. 1930. A Season’s Work at Ur… London: Methuen.
 
Public Archaeology 2007. The Civilisation Cards: US Army Style. Public Archaeology 6 (4): 242-244.
 
Woolley, L. (Ed.). 1920. From Kastamuni to Kedos Being a Record of Experiences of Prisoners of War in Turkey, 1916-1918. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
 

By Amara Thornton

Constantinople (now Istanbul) was a key city for late 19th and early 20th century British archaeologists. The city and surrounds was, and continues to be, a major tourist destination too. In the late 19th century John Murray issued a guidebook specifically for Constantinople and environs – Brusa and the Troad in northwestern Anatolia, Turkey. (The Troad is the area where from the 1870s Heinrich Schliemann with his wife Sophia Engastromenos and the workers they employed had been busily occupied in digging for the remains of ancient Troy at Hisarlik just south of the Dardanelles, a watery highway separating “Turkey in Europe” from “Turkey in Asia”.)
 
I recently found a 1907 copy of Murray’s Handbook to Constantinople, Brusa and the Troad in an Oxfam bookshop. I couldn’t resist buying it, as guidebooks like this are usually pretty expensive, and this one was relatively reasonable.  I was already excited about it as I took it home, only to discover on having a closer look at it that there was something even more exciting tucked away inside.
 
By the early 20th century Murray’s Handbooks were designed with an envelope opening in the cover, a thin “pocket” between the red cloth covering and the paper endpapers.  It’s easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there. The pocket usually holds a separate fold out map – in this case a detailed plan of Constantinople.  This pocket, however, to my delight also contained a postcard and a tram ticket.
 
The delicate paper ticket is not in great condition; it was crumpled near the edge of the bottom of the pocket and is now in two pieces. But enough of it remains to show that on one side is a map of the tramways and on the other ticket particulars: tariffs, carriage classes and sections.  The text is in French and Turkish.

The Handbook frames Constantinople as a city divided between “Europe” and “Asia”: Stambul (the Byzantine city) and Pera Gelata (a merchant quarter where European ambassadors lived) in Europe and Skutari in Asia (now Anatolia, Turkey).  Its population of well over 800,000 represented, as Murray’s put it “nearly every nation of the globe”. The tramway ticket is a potent physical reminder of Constantinople’s modernity – the Societe des Tramways de Constantinople opened the tramway in 1871. 
 
Just after this copy of the handbook was published the Young Turk revolution began initiating a period of upheaval in Ottoman Turkey.  The archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay, his wife Agnes Dick Ramsay and one of their daughters (who is not named) contextualised and recorded this period from a British point of view for a British readership in The Revolution in Constantinople and Turkey (1909).  The Ramsays’ “diary” begins in Germany in April 1909. On hearing that the Young Turks are marching on Constantinople, “Miss Ramsay” hopes she and her parents will “go straight on and be there when the fighting begins”.  And they do.
 
Like many bits of ephemera, the tram ticket’s delicacy almost guarantees that it won’t survive long beyond the use for which it was created.  I’m very glad though that in this case, the previous owner of Constantinople, Brusa and the Troad hung onto the ticket long enough to forget about it.
 
You can learn more about archaeology in John Murray’s Handbooks in Archaeologists in Print, my forthcoming book with UCL Press!

References/Further Reading
 
Geyikdagi, V. N. 2011. Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire. International Trade and Relations 1854-1914. London: I. B. Tauris.
 
Ramsay, W. M. (with A. D. Ramsay and Miss Ramsay). 1909.  The Revolution in Constantinople and Turkey: A Diary. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
 
Wilson. C. (Ed). 1907. Handbook to Constantinople, Brusa and the Troad. London: John Murray.

By Amara Thornton

This month's post is on the Filming Antiquity blog, where I've put together footage of urban spaces captured in the Harding films.  These sequences show Amman, Jerash, Jerusalem and Gaza as they were in the 1930s when Gerald Lankester Harding encountered them.  Accompanying the footage are some further details on the 1930s context of the films, and some wonderful images from the Horsfield and Harding archives at the Institute of Archaeology.  You can read "Filming the City" here. 

Also recently added to the Filming Antiquity blog is a fantastic guest post from Caitlin O'Grady, Lecturer in Conservation at the Institute of Archaeology.  Caitlin takes us through footage showing conservation practice (much of it done by women) in the 1930s and 1950s, using sequences from three separate films, all digitised through the Filming Antiquity project.  Read Caitlin's blog "Sticking, Mending and Restoring: the conservator's role in archaeology" here.

By Amara Thornton

Like many other people I suspect, I’ve been watching American Gods.  I’m not familiar with the Neil Gaiman book on which the series is based, but I’m intrigued by the plot's mixture of different cultures’ mythologies.
 
I grew up reading D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (first published in 1961), so much so that the family paperback copy literally fell to pieces.  Last year I bought a new copy - flicking through the pages was like visiting old friends.
 
Having now spent years researching the history of archaeology, I’m familiar with some but by no means all of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. But my current focus on popular archaeology publishing has revealed a few books that were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to make the British reading public more familiar with ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses and the stories associated with them.
 
One of the early 20th century authors I’ve come across is James Baikie.  This Scottish vicar wrote fairly regularly for the publishers Adam & Charles Black on various topics both archaeological and scientific (he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society).  His Wonder Tales of the Ancient World is a retelling in English of ancient Egyptian stories and legends recorded in papyri.  It appeared in time for the Christmas in December 1915, priced at six shillings, and was marketed as the ideal gift for children. 

Baikie's aim in writing Wonder Tales was to animate Egypt for his readers.  Otherwise, he declared, Egypt would be “mainly interesting for old stones and old bones.”  His first chapter set out the source of the stories for readers; he explained the system of writing in hieroglyphic and hieratic, and the use of papyrus reed rolls, which thousands of years after they were created were recovered by archaeologists and looters.
 
He drew on the works of archaeologists for the text, referencing among others Flinders Petrie’s popular Egyptian Tales books, which Methuen had published in chronological volumes in the 1890s.  Egyptian Tales featured illustrations by the artist Tristram Ellis, who had spent time in Egypt gathering material to inform his work.  
 
Wonder Tales is divided into three parts: Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure and Legends of the Gods.  Each part begins with a short explanation giving a bit of context to the stories that follow.   The introductory text to the Legends of the Gods section offers an explanation for the complexity of the ancient Egyptian pantheon.  Following that are five legends, featuring a host of gods and goddesses: Ra, Nut, Hathor, Thoth, Isis, Horus, Khonsu.  Some of the stories are linked back to archaeologists – after “How Isis Stole the Great Name of Ra”, for example, Baikie includes an anecdote from Flinders Petrie’s Sinai expedition. 
 
There are twelve coloured illustrations in Wonder Tales – the work of Baikie’s wife Constance N. Baikie (nee Turner Smith). They are rather splendid - I wish there were more of them.  I’d love to find out more about Constance Baikie as an artist but she is proving to be fairly elusive in the historical record (so far). However, as she provided the illustrations for many of James Baikie’s books she had quite a prolific output.
 
It would be great to see these Egyptian gods and goddesses more often in popular culture today.*  Perhaps a revamp of Baikie’s Wonder Tales would be in order.  Any takers?
 
References/Further Reading
 
Baikie, J. 1914. Wonder Tales of the Ancient World. London: A. & C. Black.
 
Petrie, W. M. F. Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. First Series. London: Methuen.
 
Petrie, W. M. F. Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. Second Series. London: Methuen.
 
The Times. 1931. Dr James Baikie. 7 February.
 
*Hamish Steele’s graphic novel Pantheon is a recent re-telling of some ancient Egyptian legends.  The 2016 film Gods of Egypt, although introducing some of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, was justifiably criticised on many points.

By Amara Thornton

In autumn 1923 Hurst and Blackett published Ethel Stefana Stevens (Drower)’s By Tigris and Euphrates.   I came across the book while researching post-WW1 guidebooks to Iraq; it was listed as recommended reading in Cook’s guide to Palestine and Syria (which in the 1920s also included a section on Iraq) and extensively quoted in the text relating to Baghdad.  As I’d written a previous post on Stevens as a pre-war travel writer with an eye for archaeology, naturally my interest was piqued, and I wanted to have a look at the book.  So, off I went to the British Library.
 
Stevens met her husband Edwin Drower in Sudan, but in 1919 they were living in Iraq – first in Basra and then in Baghdad, where they remained for twenty years.  By Tigris and Euphrates is dedicated to Drower, “the best of comrades, with whom many happy hours and good times in ‘Iraq have been shared”.  
 
Stevens charts her experiences in and observations of Iraq and Iraqis early on in the period in which Britain occupied and then administrated Iraq under a League of Nations Mandate – an occupation, it must be said, that she benefited from.*  By Tigris and Euphrates offers an illuminating if imperial glimpse into this period; among the subjects she highlights is the increase in British tourism to the country.  Stevens also reveals the nature of English expat society in Iraq, particularly for women – her chapter “The Englishwoman in ‘Iraq – Her House and Her Husband” is devoted entirely to their experience.
 
Stevens’ two chapters on archaeology form Part II of the work, taking readers on a highlights tour to “Some Buried Cities of Assyria” (including Nineveh, Nimrud and Asshur) and “Some Buried Cities of Babylonia” (including Babylon, Akerhuf and Ur).  At Ur, Stevens explains, the Iraq railways had arranged for a twenty minute stop at Ur junction for passengers to eat a meal and gaze at “great ziggurat” visible from the station. 
 
At the time of her visit to Ur in 1922, Leonard Woolley was just beginning his excavations at the site on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum.  Stevens credits him for providing her with information on the discoveries made in the first season, and acts as excavation champion in the text of the Ur section by flagging up a lack of funds hampering the continuation of work.    
 
While on site she went up to the top of the ziggurat in order to look down on the excavations.   Seeing the site deconstructed (as it were) gave her a perspective on how the site must have looked to the community of builders who originally constructed it.  She also examined some of the expedition's finds, carefully arranged on shelves in a “little room” awaiting conservation (a process she describes in some detail).  
 
Stevens was writing at a time before the Museum in Baghdad was formally instigated.  Gertrude Bell was acting as Honorary Director of Antiquities, but there was no building for accommodating and displaying collections.  Bell’s letters, now text searchable thanks to Newcastle University, show that “Mrs Drower” helped Bell arrange a small exhibition of finds from Ur (those to be left in Iraq after the division, more specifically) in March 1923, constituting the start of a publicly accessible Museum.  At the private view Bell arranged, Woolley and Bell conducted the notable visitors (including King Faisal and his ministers) round the display.
 
A new documentary film, Letters from Baghdad, offers another perspective of this immediate post-war period in Iraq. A visual smorgasbord of archive footage, Letters explores Gertrude Bell’s life and her work in archaeology and politics, complete with recreated interviews with key figures in Bell’s life – including several archaeologists.  It’ll be in UK cinemas from 21 April, so get you to the movies!
 
References/Further Reading
Buckley, J. J. (Ed). 2012. Lady E. S. Drower's Scholarly Correspondence: An Intrepid English Autodidact in Iraq. Brill.

Desplat, J. 2016. The beginnings of the Iraq Museum. National Archives blog. [Online]. 16 Nov.

Newcastle University, 2016. The extraordinary Gertrude Bell. [Online resource].

Stevens, E. S. 1923. By Tigris and Euphrates. London: Hurst & Blackett Ltd.
 
*Edwin Drower was Judicial Advisor in Iraq; Gertrude Bell worked with him to draft Iraq’s Antiquities legislation in 1923.