By Amara Thornton

I came across the magazine Egypt and the Sudan while finishing up Archaeologists in Print. But it wasn't till after the book was published that I had the chance to look at a full run of the magazine, which is held at the Egypt Exploration Society.

You can find my post "A Magazine for the Season" on the Egypt Exploration Society's blog here.

By Amara Thornton

Archaeological reports can be enlightening resources for the history of archaeology. These come in a variety of contexts – you can see British archaeologist John Garstang's interim field reports, handwritten with captioned photographs included, in the "Egypt in Reading" exhibition. These were composed for his funders, sent to Britain from Egypt, and circulated. 
 
Flinders Petrie (and later Hilda Petrie), too, produced field reports from his excavations in Egypt (called Journals) which were circulated – the Griffith Institute has been digitising these, and you can see the lists of people to whom these reports were sent. 
 
I've been recently looking through the journal published by the Egyptian Antiquities Service – the Annales du Service des Antiquites. This journal features reports on the work of the Service and on other excavations being undertaken in Egypt in three languages: predominately French, but also English and German (depending on the author in question).* Some of the issues are (thankfully) online, and they provide important details on the work of the Service and, critically, the individuals who contributed to that work.  This includes not only the Egyptian and foreign inspectors working for the Service, but also their contacts: other officials and experts (some Egyptian); Egyptian foremen (referred to in late 19th century English and French as "rais" or "reis", in Egyptian Arabic رياس transliteration roy yas) working on excavations; independent excavators; Egyptian night guards for villages/sites (referred to in late 19th century English and French as "g[h]afir" plural "ghofera", in Egyptian Arabic غفير); and experienced porters.  
 
As an experiment, I went through the first volume of the Annales (1900) and came up with a list of individuals mentioned by name. The names and references to work yield an illuminating snapshot of the Department's activities at the end of the 19th century.  Some of these individuals are more well known than others - links, where possible, to biographies are provided, and references to specific areas of work as mentioned in the reports are given. The diversity of people listed is remarkable. A selection follows:

• Victor Loret, Director of the Antiquities Service (1897-1899)

• Gaston Maspero, Director of the Antiquities Service (1899-1914)
• Mohammed Effedi Chaban, Inspector at Rodah for the Service, who supervised Farag Ismail and Yassa Tadros's excavations at Deir el Aizam (see below)
• Georges Daressy, working for the Egyptian Museum
• Georges Legrain, designated conservator for the Antiquities Service at Karnak
• George Willoughby Fraser, engineer working for the Egypt Exploration Fund
• Percy Newberry, excavator for the Egypt Exploration Fund
• Claudius Labib, expert in Coptic history and language
• Alessandro Barsanti, Conservator/Restorer for the Antiquities Service at Saqqara
• Jacques de Morgan
• Mohammed Dohair, working with Daressy and Barsanti for the Museum at excavations of the necropolis at Meir and continued the excavations after Daressy and Barsanti left
• Ali a El Sabah, ghafir غفير at Meir who reports on tombs
• Fouli Abd el Kafi, رياس roy yas for the tomb of Pepi-Ankh excavations, Meir, with Daressy leading excavations during a painted wooden statue of Pepi-Ankh and other figurines were discovered
• Eugene Grebaut
• Mohammad Chain, Inspector of Antiquities who worked at Dendereh in 1897
• Farag Ismail
• Yassa Tadros, Tadros and Ismail applied to the Service to excavate necropolis at Deir el Aizam, near Asyut. Ismail stopped after a short time, Tadros continued without him.
• Sobbi Effendi Artif, translator into French of Chaban's Arabic-language report on excavations at Deir El Aizam
• Mahmoud Bey Fahmy, engineer of Luxor district, reporting on the 3 October 1899 disaster at Karnak, during which columns at the temple of Amun collapsed
• Ch. Nicour Bey, Engineer in Chief to Egyptian State Railways, appointed by the Minister to survey the scene at Karnak.
• Youssef Ahmed, supervisor at Karnak who was at the scene of the disaster
• Ahmed Suleiman, ghafir غفير at Karnak who was at the scene of the disaster
• Mohammed Ahmed Abd-el-Rassoul, Valley of the Kings 'whistleblower' ("denonciateur"), Luxor
• Howard Carter, Inspector General in the Antiquities Service
• Jusef Ahmed El-Neggar, reporting to Carter the discovery of remains of granite statues in construction work on his house in Luxor (Carter's report on the matter indicates that payment was made to El-Negger for the destruction of the walls of his house during excavation to remove the statues).
• [William Compton, 5th] Marquis of Northampton, given authority to make soundings at Kom el-Ahmar, 1899
• Richard Chauvin, "European supervisor", working with Legrain on Karnak after 3 Oct 1899 disaster
• Baskharoune Abou Awad, chief porter ("chef portefaix") for above work
• Hassan Abbati, chief digger ("chef terrassier") for above work
• Mohammed Marzouk, writer ("écrivain") for above work
• Ibrahim Ismain, writer ("écrivain") for above work
• Alfonso Maniscalco Bey, architect in chief, Ministry of Public Works, advising on Karnak 
• [George] Somers Clarke, advising on Karnak 
• Perry, director general of civil buildings, advising on Karnak
• F. Ehrlich, German engineer working on Assuan barrage construction, advising on Karnak 
• Khalifa, رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Khalil Mohammed,رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Roubi, رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Mahmoud, son of رياس roy yas Khalifa, working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Alfred Lucas, chemist for the Antiquities Service

 
Several projects are now focused on making the role of Egyptians in archaeological excavations more visible. The Abydos Temple Archive project is currently cataloguing and digitising a large cache of important records of the Egyptian Antiquities Service between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.  These highlight the roles of a number of Egyptian inspectors, guards and rais who worked for the Service, who are (for the most part) totally unrepresented in 'Western' histories of Egyptology.  Many of these records are Arabic, which is another hurdle for researchers (like me) who can't read Arabic (the project is – thankfully – translating the records into English).  
 
Two other recent projects are engaging actively, in different ways, with the history of Egyptians in Egyptian archaeology. In "Hands that Excavated a Civilization" The Place and the People project has published several Facebook posts (in both Arabic and English) profiling Egyptians who excavated with foreign archaeologists.**  The Egypt's Dispersed Heritage project is working with Egyptian comic artists to create new interpretations of the colonial legacies of archaeology in Egypt. These are being produced as vibrant comics in Egyptian Arabic drawing on and from modern Egyptian popular culture and aimed at Egyptians.***  
 
A special thank you to Heba Abd El Gawad for contributing the Egyptian Arabic terms incorporated into this piece!
 
Further Reading/References
Bierbrier, Morris. 2019. Who Was Who in Egyptology. (5th edn) London: Bloomsbury.

Doyon, Wendy, 2015. On Archaeological Labor in Modern Egypt. In William Carruthers (ed). Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. (pp. 141-156). Routledge: New York and Abingdon.

Ministry of Public Works. 1900. ANNALES DU SERVICE DES ANTIQUITÉS DE L'EGYPTE (Vol 1). Cairo:  Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire. 

Petrie, W. M. Flinders. 1892. Addenda to Baedeker's Vocabulary. Ten Years Digging in Egypt. London: Religious Tract Society.

Reid, Donald. 2002. Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War 1. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.


* I must acknowledge Google Translate here; without it this would have been a much more tricky task!
** see the recent recorded lecture
*** see also the recent recorded lecture

By Amara Thornton

In the past month I've finally been able to return to the British Library.  I'd had a number of things I'd been wanting to see, including two issues of the Victoria Quarterly, a Jamaica-based literary journal published in the 1890s.  Having  first learned about the journal in the course of researching last month's post "Colonial Archaeology in the Caribbean", I was hoping to see the issue in which Lady Edith Blake published the article on her excavations on a kitchen midden at Norbrook (Northbrook), near Kingston.  
 
But it was not to be – the British Library's two issues were not the ones in which Blake's article appeared. But all was not lost – in flipping through one issue, from July 1892, I came across Mrs Spencer Heaven's story "My Family Mummy". 
 
The plot summary is as follows: a party of young cousins are in the ancestral family home over the Christmas holidays. The one 'grown up' around – Aunt Bessie – leaves them to their own devices and only communicates with them through (affectionate) notes.  As boredom descends upon the young folks, one of them remarks that the family has a mummy stored away in the attic, a 'relic' of a long-dead ancestor's travels in Egypt. All the others are determined to see the mummy and so they make a pilgrimage to the attic.  One of the girls, Maud, sees the mummy for what it is – a human being – and tells the others that respect should be paid to it. Eventually she convinces everyone that the mummy, nicknamed "Miss Pharaoh" should be reburied. After some discussion, during which it is determined that no suitable ground could be found for the reburial, Maud decides that cremation would be best. A day is chosen, the fire built and "Miss Pharaoh" burned. The cousins abandon the fire to the care of servants and go to town, but it transpires that eventually the servants are arrested for murder; the police have found a burning corpse in thier charge.  The young folks are both horrified and convinced that "Miss Pharaoh" is seeking revenge. However, the story ends tidily with them rescuing the servants from probable hanging by explaining the situation in court. 
 
The story is presented as being an anonymised re-telling of events that actually happened – whether or not that is true I'm not sure! But it's certainly fictionalised, if not fiction. Having literally just listened to an excellent panel on ancient Egyptian human remains ("Your Mummies Their Ancestors") this 19th century story reflects a discussion about how 'mummies' are viewed, displayed and interpreted that is still continuing today. 

[Originally from Devon, Selina Frances Smyly married De Bonniot Spencer Heaven of "The Rambles" and "Whitfield Hall" Jamaica in 1864. She lived in Jamaica for many years before returning to Britain, where she died in 1911. She was a musician and botanist as well as a writer.] 
 
References/Further Reading
 
Colonies and India. 1893 [News]. [British Newspaper Archive]. 4 Feb: 11. 
 
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette. 1864. Abbotsham. Wedding Festivities. [British Newspaper Archive]. 11 Nov: 6. 
 
Heaven, Mrs Spencer (Selina). 1892. My Family Mummy. Victoria Quarterly 4 (2): 16-26.
Stienne, Angela (Ed). Mummy Stories[Blog] 
 
Western Daily Press, 1911. Deaths. [British Newspaper Archive]. 26 June: 10
 
Hartland and West Country Chronicle. 1911. [News] [British Newspaper Archive]. 15 June: 9.

By Amara Thornton

I've have been occupying myself with (among other things) a digital bundle of old letters – one of my favourite things.  These letters are rather more personal than my usual though; they are from my great-grandfather to his sister and were sent during the middle of the First World War, between May 1915 and July 1916.  They are almost invariably signed off "Your Bro, Alex", which makes me smile.

My great-grandfather Alexander Palmer Kelly was from North Carolina. As a twenty-nine year old recently graduated doctor in early summer 1915 his first job was not on land at all but at sea.  He signed on to his first ship Hydaspes (a British & South American Steam Navigation Co. vessel) in June as ship's surgeon, beginning what would be at least a year of near continual travel across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean.  The salary was good, and offered him the chance to pay off various medical school debts. Equally, I think, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity – an adventure with much more than a hint of danger. The sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania, targeted by German submarines en route to Liverpool from New York with the loss of over a thousand passengers, had occurred just over a month before he departed on his first voyage.
 
I was helped in my quest to follow his footsteps abroad by the extremely handy 1915 Merchant Navy Records project, a searchable database of digitised Merchant Navy crew lists hosted by the National Archives and the National Maritime Museum in London.  Using this database I was able to find him on four different ships – Hydaspes, followed by a very brief stint on Sachem, and then two consecutive trips on Turcoman (Dominion Line).  On these he sailed through North Atlantic routes, calling at ports in Canada, Ireland and England.
 
He joined the S. S. Parisian in late December 1915.  A Leyland Line vessel, Parisian was bound for Alexandria.   This would be his first time going so far east, and he was very enthusiastic about it. It would also be his first Christmas outside the United States. 
 
Parisian was carrying mules (bound, I assume, for war service) and the trip east it seems was uneventful.  By Boxing Day he was in Alexandria harbour, soaking up the sun and the (to him) completely new culture of Egypt. Having gone "from the farm to the sea" (as my grandmother later put it) he thought Egypt was worth travelling through the war zone to get to.  He thoroughly enjoyed shore time in Alexandria, abandoning his plan to visit Cairo in favour of staying put. He rang in the New Year with many others at a dinner at the Majestic Hotel (the very hotel where novelist EM Forster had established himself on arriving in Alexandria only a month earlier).* The city was thronging with soldiers and sailors, Egypt being a key staging post for campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean.
 
While he was in "Alex", disaster struck. S. S. Persia, a commercial passenger ship run by the Peninsular and Oriental (P&O) line, was torpedoed in the waters between Crete and Alexandria. Hundreds of people drowned; the ship sank quickly when the boiler exploded as a result of the hit.  What survivors there were floated in lifeboats on the open water for over a day before rescue. They were brought to Alexandria, where my great-grandfather saw them land. They were mainly coatless and hatless he observed (and very probably cold).
 
He writes almost breezily about this tragedy, but reading between the lines I think the danger of his choice of sea over land rather haunted him. The Parisian had followed exactly the same route as the Persia, less than a week earlier, so what happened to its passengers could very well have happened to him.  Enemy submarines, he wrote, "don't bother us but wait for the women and children."
 
By the beginning of February 1916 he was back in the US, but not for long.  He re-joined the Parisian for another trip to the Mediterranean via Gibraltar, expecting to stop again at Alexandria.  Going by my great grandfather's letters, by this point in the war the Parisian was fitted with guns for ports east of Gibraltar (moving from SS to HMS), and was at the beck and call of the Royal Navy. Before heading out he was full of anticipation for the journey, writing "This is a very fine trip and the submarines and sea raiders only add a little excitement to the thing."  Planning ahead for his sojourn in Egypt, he anticipated buying "curios" (as many troops stationed in Egypt did) to bring back as presents. 
 
But Egypt was not to be on this voyage. Parisian instead headed for Salonika (Thessaloniki) in Greece, another key port in the war's Mediterranean theatre.  When he arrived, the Salonika campaign was ongoing. He wrote, "I am in my glory now getting around where something is going on." Unfortunately I have no idea what he got up to at Salonika, but an article on his exploits published in a local newspaper on his return suggests that he spent some time walking around the city. (By the time he was in Salonika, a temporary museum for antiquities found during war trenching had been set up in the White Tower on the harbour, but it wasn't open to the public so it's highly unlikely that he saw it.)  
 
A short time back in the US and he was back at sea on board Parisian once more. The few letters I have from this period are very sketchy in detail. It seems clear the ship was on active service in mid-late May through July 1916, and my great-grandfather was wary of the censor. The last letter in my bundle is from July 1916, written en route back to the US. Frustratingly, in his last sentence he mentions going to Cairo and Algiers. He saw the Pyramids at Giza just outside of Cairo, which he observed were "perfectly grand".
 
I don't know whether this was his last trip on the Parisian – I suspect not as he seems to have found a ship with a route he liked. At any rate, sometime after the United States entered the war in 1917 he joined the US Army Medical Corps and began a thirty-year career as an army medical man.  It's been fascinating to dive into what remains of his correspondence from his first years as a qualified doctor during wartime. I only wish there were more.    
 
Further Reading
Shapland, A. (Ed.). 2018. Archaeology Behind the Battle Lines. London: Routledge.

*Thanks to my father for flagging up the Majestic's importance!

By Amara Thornton

This month we installed a new exhibition at the Ure Museum.  "Egypt in Reading" explores the colonial context of archaeology in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The exhibition storyline focuses on the excavations conducted under the direction of British archaeologist John Garstang. He also happens to be one of five archaeologists whose lives and social networks I researched for my PhD.  
 
Garstang's work in Egypt wasn't an area I had previously researched much, however – I had focused more on his time in Sudan (1909-14).  But the Ure Museum's collection of Egyptian antiquities is drawn from an earlier period in Garstang's life, when he was in his late 20s and early 30s.  

​The exhibition storyline doesn't just concentrate on Garstang.  My underlying ethos in putting the display together was to emphasise multiple perspectives and (as far as I could) present multiple 'voices', to go beyond profiling a male British director-of-dig. So you will find references to a few of the Egyptian men who worked with Garstang – particularly his chief foreman Saleh Abd El Nebi.  There are also some fantastic business cards once belonging to various Egyptian dragomans – these come from Professor Rachel Mairs' personal collection.  In the digital version of the exhibition you can watch her explaining three of the cards now featured in the exhibition.
 
You'll also find references to a few women in the display. These include artist and University College Reading alumna Henrietta Lawes, who as a volunteer with Flinders and Hilda Petrie had gone to Egypt in 1898; Garstang's wife Marie, who would become a noted (though unofficial) conservator; and Meta Williams, Secretary of the Institute of Archaeology at Liverpool who helped facilitate the acquisition of these Egyptian artefacts in the early 1920s.
 
We could not have put this exhibition together in the way that we did without access to the archives in the Garstang Museum in Liverpool, and the help of its curator Dr Gina Criscenzo-Laycock. While the Ure Museum archive has letters relating to the acquisition of the Liverpool collection in the early 1920s, it does not have material related to the original excavation of the artefacts.  That information is in Liverpool, where John Garstang was based. Gina has been incredibly generous in sharing digital images of Garstang's excavation reports, photograph albums and various ephemera relating to Garstang's exhibitions in London. Chief among these latter items is the visitors book to the 1903 and 1904 exhibitions; for a network-lover like myself, this was an absolute gold mine. 
 
Ure Museum Assistant Curator Jayne Holly and I went to Liverpool last month to find materials we could use for the display. I was looking particularly for any references to individual workmen, so I was thrilled to find among the periodic reports Garstang sent to the small Committees providing the funds for excavation his chief foreman Saleh's signature and seal.  A reproduced image of this is now on display in the Ure Museum.  
 
Two other photographic highlights (reproduced for display) came from Garstang's photograph albums.  The images in question show Garstang's British assistant, an artist called Harold Jones, painting portraits inside the rock-tomb site office at Beni Hasan.  I knew from my PhD research that Jones's paintings were shown during the exhibitions held at the end of the season – but I never expected to see the works-in-progress!  
 
I also wanted to profile a few local (to Reading) links to Egypt.  These include Caversham-born Henrietta Lawes, mentioned already. In the course of the planning of the exhibition it became clear that beyond her bequest of Egyptian antiquities to her alma mater, she also gave a number of books on Egypt. These went into the Library, and thanks to the hard work of several people in University of Reading Library and Special Collections the full list of her book bequest was found. We present one of Henrietta Lawes's books, a copy of the 5th edition Baedeker's guide to Egypt, bearing a plate acknowledging her bequest. 
 
Another important Egypt-Reading link I wanted particularly to highlight was the presence of Egyptian students at University College Reading during the time that John Garstang was working in Egypt.  Over the course of my time at Reading I've been looking through various items in the University History Collection, including reports of Faculty and other administrative records.  These have revealed that there were Egyptian students at the College from at least 1908. But the item on display is a copy of the University College Reading Review from autumn 1915.  This notes three Egyptian alumni of the College sending a supportive address to their former colleagues and classmates, as Egypt moved from a country occupied by Britain to a British Protectorate, and war raged across Europe and the Middle East.   
 
I could say a lot more about this exhibition, which has really been a labour of love and an attempt to integrate the complex and rich history of archaeology into a museum display case, privileging archives and other historic materials as much as ancient artefacts. But I hope you will go and see it yourselves – and/or visit the exhibition website for the full handlist, lots of images, and some exciting extra content!

By Amara Thornton

This month's post is on Ure Routes again.  Part of my Role as Research Officer at the Ure Museum has been to start digging into the Museum's history.  Annie Ure's fascinating lecture (recorded in the 1960s) and University College Reading's Annual Reports have given me insights into some of the early displays of archaeological material at Reading.
 
A few weeks ago I had a great tour of Reading's old campus at London Road; my guides, current and former University staff, took me to many places of interest but chief among them were "The Acasias", Portland Place and the old University Gymnasium. Each location is associated with the Ure Museum's history.

​"The Acasias" was a former home of the Palmer family; George Palmer was co-founder of Huntley & Palmers biscuit empire. When University College Reading was given the building, its first floor (now used as the Staff Common Room) became its Library, where a case of Egyptian antiquities given by Hilda Petrie was first displayed.  These antiquities are now part of the Ure Museum's collections, and include a pendant of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. 

During the First World War, local Reading resident Gertrude Louisa (Hill) Hurry donated an Etruscan artefact to University College Reading, also now held and displayed in the Ure Museum.  A few years earlier Gertrude Hurry and her husband Jamieson, a physician and the College's Medical Officer, donated money for the construction of a purpose-built Gymnasium.  My guides pointed out the carving of Discobolus (pictured here, in searing sunlight) incorporated into the Gymnasium wall. 

​By 1919, University College Reading's archaeological collections were gathered together more formally in a museum room, housed at Portland Place, an 1830s Grade II* listed building on London Road.  You can read "On Museum Beginnings" here and hear Annie discussing the Museum's history here.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Childs, W. C. 1933. Making a University. London: Dent.
 
University College Reading Gazettes Calendars and Annual Reports 1909, 1912/13, 1913/14, 1919/20.
 
Thanks to Nicola Pickering, John Grainger and Ian Burn.

By Amara Thornton

Do you know about Tausret?  She was a queen in ancient Egypt. 19th dynasty to be precise.  Until a few months ago I'd never heard of her, but now I know more – thanks to a rather intriguing book: Janet Buttles' The Queens of Egypt.*  
 
Earlier this month I was prepping for Suffrage Standup, an event I took part in at LSE Library, and researching Margaret Murray's participation in a suffrage Costume Pageant and Dinner.  As Margaret Murray probably attended the dinner dressed as Tausret, I was hoping to find out a bit more about this ancient royal.  And so I did, thanks to Janet Buttles. 
 
Buttles was an American writer who was associated with American industrialist and archaeology funder/excavator Theodore Davis.  Her biographical details are online courtesy of the Emma B. Andrews Diary project– a fascinating digital diary and data resource revealing early 20th century Egypt through the eyes of  Emma Andrews, an educated American tourist and collector. Andrews was Buttles' aunt as well as Theodore Davis's collaborator and mistress for many years. 
 
Queens was Buttles's attempt to do something innovative in the field of Egyptology. She pulled together in one volume all the details that were known at that time about ancient Egyptian royal women.  And in doing so she articulated one of the main (and continuing) problems with making historical women more visible – missing or inaccessible historical records.  In her Preface she stated: 

Gaston Maspero, a former head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, wrote an introduction to Queens. He mentions the value of Buttles's personal experience with the archaeology of Egypt in making her sympathetic to her subjects.  
 
The book is organised chronologically, from the 1st to 26th dynasty (omitting the Ptolomaic period, which included the reign of Cleopatra VII). Despite the sketchy details available, Buttles's description of Twosret's life is intriguingly dramatic: 

​Archibald Constable & Co published Queens in 1908, at a period when suffrage campaigns were beginning to turn towards greater militancy.  And it was reviewed in a suffrage periodical, Women's Franchise. The review opens with the observation that Buttles's work was "A valuable addition to the knowledge of the position of women in antiquity".  
 
Now I know about it, I'll be dipping into Buttles's book to discover more ancient historical women in influential roles. You should too!
 
References/Further Reading
Buttles, J. 1908. The Queens of Egypt. London: A. Constable & Co. 

Cana, F. B. 1908.  Where Civilization Began. Women's Franchise [British Newspaper Archive] 13 Aug: 80.

*There are many alternative spellings for Tausret's name. Between 2004 and 2016 the University of Arizona ran an excavation project at Tausret's temple in Thebes.  More information and up-to-date analysis can be found here and here.  

By Amara Thornton

When my grandparents retired, they started taking classes for fun.  One of these classes was in memoir writing, so when I was growing up we'd receive a letter every so often with a short memoir-essay enclosed.  I read them at the time, but didn't consider them anything more than entertaining anecdotes.  But now, with my historian's hat on, I see that they are really valuable insights into 20th century experience, and I thank my lucky stars that my grandparents made the effort to write those memories down.  
 
A few years ago I found a binder full of copies of these short memoirs, which my grandmother had kept along with other family papers.  I've now informally digitised it all, so that I can take these little snippets of family history with me wherever I go.  One of my favourites was written by my grandfather, in which he remembered (among other things) how much he loved reading "penny dreadfuls" as a child, and how they instilled in him a love of history.  My great-grandmother disapproved of such books and eventually threw them away. In doing so, my grandfather reasoned, she had gotten rid of what could have been quite a valuable collection. 
 
I'd like to think that I inherited something of my grandfather's appreciation for pulp.  I managed to incorporate a bit of discussion of archaeological pulp (via Margery Lawrence's contributions to Hutchinson's Mystery Stories magazine) in Archaeologists in Print. But I'm always on the lookout, so I was very pleased when I spotted at a recent pulp-focused bookfair in London Pauline Stewart's* Delia's Quest for the Golden Keys, "A Thrilling Desert Adventure Story", on a table.  It is No 549 of "The Schoolgirls' Own Library", priced at 4d (it cost me £3).  Its bright yellow paper cover features a girl dressed in ancient Egyptian garments with a tall headpiece standing on some sort of platform being pushed towards a temple (half submerged in water, so I'm assuming Philae) by a chap looking remarkably like a swimming 1930s filmstar.  It's dated 6 August 1936.   
 
Happily, "The Schoolgirls Own Library" is a series I've come across before, while I was writing Archaeologists in Print and looking for information on pulp serials.  There are a number of websites out there for collectors and readers of such books, and Friardale is one of them. It's excellent, and has loads of resources available in pdf form.  There is also a list of titles in "The Schoolgirls Own Library" (and affiliated publications), so you can get a sense of the adventures those schoolgirls get up to.  
 
A proportion of them have vague connections to places that were for most British readers 'exotic'. So, alongside Delia and her Golden Keys, we have No 688, Hilda Richards'** "Babs & Co in Egypt" (how I wish that one were available!) which has on its bright yellow cover a gaggle of teenage schoolgirls pointing a flashlight at a rather shocked-looking mummy standing at the entrance to an ancient Egyptian tomb.  
 
You can find a list of "Schoolgirls Own Library" titles here.  I haven't yet gotten more than a few pages into Delia's Quest, but I'm intrigued to see whether any archaeologist characters crop up in it. Based on the cover, I'm hoping so.  At the very least, it'll be an insight into how Egypt (and British tourists' relationship to Egypt) is portrayed in this kind of work.  Maybe that portrayal will surprise me. But I'm not getting my hopes up too much.
 
* a pseudonym – the author was Reginald Kirkham.  See Dennis Bird's list of SGOL authors.
** a pseudonym – the author was John Wheway as per Dennis Bird's list. 

By Amara Thornton

Late last year, I wrote a post about the composer and musician Julia Chatterton, who created and performed music for a one-off matinee event at the London Hippodrome in June 1930 to celebrate Flinders Petrie's 50 years in archaeology.
 
One of the other women credited with contributing to the music for the "Egyptian Matinee" was Kathleen Schlesinger.  At the time, I didn't know much about her, but the event programme noted that she provided a number of replica instruments used at the Hippodrome that afternoon from her own collection. 
 
Schlesinger is known in musical theory circles for her work on recreating ancient music, using instruments and tools that she had specially made based on ancient source materials. Nine years after the Hippodrome performance, she published a book, The Greek Aulos, describing her findings.
 
For decades Schlesinger also held a pioneering research fellowship at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Archaeology.  This department was the earliest British-based training institution for archaeologists – being founded decades before the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London (now part of UCL). It instituted a Fellowship in the Archaeology of Music in 1914.
 
Kathleen Schlesinger was the first Fellow – in fact, Kate Bowen's investigation of the Institute of Archaeology's Annual Reports reveals that the Fellowship was designed for her, and her scholarship promoted by John Garstang, then Professor of the Methods and Practice of Archaeology at the Institute.  The Fellowship enabled her to continue her research on the ancient history of musical instruments, in which she was already well-established.
 
By this stage, Schlesinger was also an experienced lecturer, working as an Extension lecturer for the University of London.  She is to be added to the ranks of women I've written about in Archaeologists in Print who organised and delivered lectures and courses at the British Museum, incorporating collections on display into their curricula.  Schlesinger also created and delivered a set of lectures on the history of musical instruments in the galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In addition, she was featured as a lecturer at the 1914 Children's Welfare Exhibition at Kensington Olympia, discussing musical instruments to accompany a special display at the event. 
 
While she is now known for her work on ancient Greek music and instruments, she had a wide-ranging field of investigation, and her museum lectures sought to appeal to audiences interested in Biblical history (and by extension the archaeology of the Levant, Egypt/Sudan and Mesopotamia) as well.  For these lectures she created models of instruments.  
 
Kate Bowen's detailed research on Schlesinger and her musical collaborator Elsie Hamilton also highlights Schlesinger's role in innovative performances combining music and archaeology before her contributions to Julia Chatterton's 1930 Hippodrome programme. These include, intriguingly, the music for a drama called "Sensa" (the result of a collaboration between two other women, Maud Hoffman and Mabel Collins) which was set in ancient Egypt, and performed in theatres in London in 1914 and 1919.*   
 
In the 1930s, an American musician came to visit an elderly Kathleen Schlesinger in her home in Highgate. He was Harry Partch, and his memory of tea with Schlesinger makes for fascinating reading. She told him about using a British Museum vase as model for her replica kithara, which was made to her specifications by a handy gas-meter man during the First World War out of wood from a crate that had once contained oranges.
 
Today, researchers continue to work on replicating ancient music. Armand D'Angour's article published in The Conversation this summer promised that the mystery of ancient Greek music had now been solved. There is also a large-scale European Music Archaeology Project and there are YouTube videos of Stefan Hagel's performances on a replica kithara.
 
But it's important to remember this sort of research has a long history – and to ensure that the early pioneering music archaeology, performance and lectures of Kathleen Schlesinger are not forgotten.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Bowen, K. 2012. Living Between Worlds Ancient and Modern: the Musical Collaboration of Kathleen Schlesinger and Elsie Hamilton. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 137 (2): 197-242. 
 
Collins, M. 1913. The Story of Sensa: an interpretation of The Idyll of the White Lotus. New York, NY: J. W. Lowell.
 
D'Angour, A. 2018. Ancient Greek Music: now we finally know what it sounded like. The Conversation 31 July.
 
Hindson, C. 2017. Beautiful Pagans: When a Best Selling Author and a West End Actress Made a Spiritualist Performance. In Guy, J. (Ed).The Edinburgh Companion to Fin-de-Siècle Literature, Culture and the Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Lee, B. 2006. Kathleen Schlesinger and Elsie Hamilton: Pioneers of Just Intonation.  

Partch, H. (ed. McGeary, T.) 2000. Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos.Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
  
*The idea for Collins's book Idyll of the White Lotus (on which "Sensa" was based) came to her after seeing Cleopatra's Needle being placed on Embankment in 1878. Collins was very interested in the occult, and spotting the Needle triggered visions of ancient Egyptian priests. Her interpretation of their presence - and through this the inspiration for Idyll and "Sensa" - drew on British Museum Curator Wallis Budge's book Egyptian Magic. For more on Collins, Hoffman, and the creation and performances of "Sensa", see Catherine Hindson's chapter referenced above. 

By Amara Thornton
 
I seem to have a very informal research strand developing this year uncovering archaeologists suffrage activities – see my post on Jessie Mothersole at the 1911 Christmas Bazaar, and my short piece for the Imperial War Museum's WomensWork100 project on Agnes Conway's interests in suffrage. The British Newspaper Archive has come up trumps again. This time, it's Margaret Murray.
 
Just weeks before war would be declared, suffrage newspaper The Vote noted that Margaret Murray would be one of a number of women participating in a "Costume Dinner and Pageant" to be held in the Hotel Cecil on 29 June 1914. 
 
The event was co-organised by the Women Writers' Suffrage League and the Actresses' Franchise League.  Now, unless Murray had a stage career that I'm unaware of (unlikely), it seems highly probable that she was affiliated with the Women Writers' Suffrage League. By this point, she had published several archaeological articles and books, including her popular volume of (translated) Ancient Egyptian Legends in the intriguing "Wisdom of the East" series. That April, Ella Hapworth Dixon's article "The Woman's Progress" in the Ladies Supplement to the Illustrated London News had named Murray as "An Antiquary of Note", partly on the strength of her published work.
 
For the dinner, women (and some men) of the day who supported women's suffrage campaigns were asked to don fancy dress to represent famous celebrities from history, stationed at various tables throughout the event space. Each figure was introduced by Cicely Hamilton, founder of the Women Writers' Suffrage League.  
 
These historical celebrities weren't just British, though British historical celebrities far outnumbered those of other nations and regions.  Egypt, "Asia" (including China, Japan and the Middle East), France, Italy, Finland, the United States were all represented. Murray was the person in charge of the Ancient Egypt table. A review of the event published days afterwards in Vote noted that "Queen Ta-usert" (Twosret), who ruled Egypt in the 12th century BC (and whose jewellery had been discovered in 1908) made an appearance. Whether Murray was actually in costume as Ta-usert/Twosret is unfortunately not stated. But I'd like to think so.
 
In reviewing the event the "Special Costume Diner" of Votes for Women described the memorable fancy dress dinner, which attracted hundreds of attendees, as a "sensation" of mingling with "people who mattered in bygone days impersonated by people who matter today." Of which Margaret Murray was one.
 
References/Further Reading
 
Dixon, E. 1914. "The Woman's Progress". Ladies Supplement to the Illustrated London News[British Newspaper Archive] 18 April.
 
Park, S. 1997. The First Professional: The Women Writers' Suffrage League. Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): 185-200.
 
Sheppard, K. 2012. The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
 
Thornton, A. 2018. Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People. London: UCL Press.
 
The Vote. 1914. "Costume Dinner and Pageant" [British Newspaper Archive] 12 June: 121. 
 
The Vote. 1914. "Women of All the Ages" [British Newspaper Archive] 3 July: 181-2.
 
Votes for Women. 1914. "A Pageant of Famous Men and Women" [British Newspaper Archive] 3 July: 618.
​