The Egyptian Hall has long fascinated me as a venue for archaeological exhibitions.  So I was pleased to discover recently that it housed two early exhibitions of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) – one in 1869 and another in 1873. 

From their office at No. 9, Pall Mall East, the PEF Committee organised these temporary exhibitions to raise public awareness and money for Fund-sponsored work. The PEF had been established in 1865 for the scientific exploration of the Holy Land.  A number of scholars have chronicled the early history of the PEF; highlights of this history include Charles Warren’s excavations tunnelling underneath Jerusalem between 1867 and 1870, and the pioneering survey work of Lieuts. Claude Conder, Horatio Kitchener et al in the 1870s, enabling highly detailed maps of the region to be created.

Using the Egyptian Hall as the venue for these displays seems like an unusually bold choice for the PEF.  Its loud exterior – a flagrantly Orientalised showstopper on sophisticated Piccadilly – housed a wide variety of entertainments. Brief histories of the Hall’s events listings reflect its almost indefinable nature. Themed exhibitions, paintings, panoramas, popular lecturers, magicians, displays of people from foreign lands and 'human curiosities' (the dark side of Victorian entertainment), all found a home in the Egyptian Hall's galleries.  At any one time within the Hall there could be overlapping events.  

Early Victorian artist Benjamin Robert Haydon’s experience sums up the Hall’s atmosphere.  His 1846 exhibition of history paintings was in direct competition with P. T. Barnum’s “Tom Thumb” at the Hall.  H. B. Wheatley recorded Haydon writing: “‘Tom Thumb’ had 12,000 people last week. B. R. Haydon 133 ½ (the ½ a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!”  

This contrast reveals the Hall to be a complex and not un-problematic space, especially for the PEF as a new organisation eager to highlight (and prove) its scientific and cultural credentials while boosting its 'box-office' takings - so to speak.

The dates of the two PEF exhibitions are particularly significant: the first, two years into Warren’s work in Jerusalem, was the first public outing in London of Warren’s finds. The second was three years into the Survey of Western Palestine.  Both showcase the Fund’s desire to reach interested audiences through a unique building in the London landscape.

The PEF’s exhibitions were held in the Hall’s Dudley Gallery.  The Gallery, named after the Earl of Dudley, first housed a selection of the Earl’s pictures that was freely accessible to the public, and afterwards other picture collections.  This art-gallery aesthetic suited the PEF’s needs. 

The Fund reported that over 6,000 visitors wandered through the space between mid-June and the end of August, 1869.  Garnishing the walls of the exhibition were more than 300 photographs of Palestine and Syria taken by Sergeant Henry Phillips.  The images were described in more detail in the short exhibition catalogue.

Complementing the photographs was a large Ordnance Survey plan of the city of Jerusalem. Alongside this, visitors could see cases of material discovered during Warren’s work. Other items (both ancient and modern) relevant to the region were on loan from collectors and travellers as a complement to the Warren finds.

Images of the Holy Land played a prominent role in the 1873 exhibition as well. In addition to 100 carefully curated photographs (available, like this one of Jerusalem, for sale in a variety of packages) – there were nearly 70 water-colour sketches from the artist Henry A. Harper.

The objects and art displayed in these Egyptian Hall exhibitions formed part of a large and varied collection of images of the Holy Land, enhanced over the century that followed, that the PEF still retains today. These images, depicting both ancient sites and (then)-modern life, have spawned books and illustrated histories of the region in a variety of media.  The PEF’s collections have recently inspired Israeli artist Michal Baror to incorporate the Fund’s 19th and early 20th century photographs and casts of objects from Palestine into an exploration of her own identity and practice.  

I’d like to see more people reusing, re-presenting and reinterpreting the PEF’s archives. Take a closer look at the collections - maybe you'll be inspired to breathe new life into the material.  You can start with the Fund’s Flickr page, where you can see some of those images that graced the walls of the Victorian Egyptian Hall.

References/Further Reading
Altick, R. 1978. The Shows of London. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.

Bar-Yosef, E. 2005. The Holy Land and English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Moscrop, J. J. 2000. Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land. London: Leicester University Press.

PEF. [1869]. Catalogue of Photographs and Description of Pottery, &c. Exhibited by the Palestine Exploration Fund. London: Palestine Exploration Fund.

PEF. 1869. Statement of Progress; Publications of the Society. Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (Apr-Jun).

PEF. 1869. Statement of Progress. Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (July-Sept).

PEF. 1873. Catalogue of Water Colour Sketches, Tracings, Models, Photographs and Pottery &c. Exhibited by the Palestine Exploration Fund. London: Palestine Exploration Fund. 

PEF. 1873. Preface. Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (April). 

PEF. 1873. Preface; Report of the Annual General Meeting. Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (July).

Silberman, N. A. 1982. Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799-1917. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The Tablet. 1869. The Palestine Exploration Fund. The Tablet, p 22.

Wheatley, H. B. 1870. Round About Piccadilly and Pall Mall. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

N. B. Special thanks are due to Felicity Cobbing, the PEF's Executive Secretary and Curator.

By Amara Thornton

London – a thriving financial, political and cultural powerhouse.  Oxford Street – a shopping paradise, nearly always packed.  Lately, I’ve been exploring the movement of learned societies around the West End.  My first post was about Egyptian Hall, on Piccadilly, where Flinders Petrie held his 1888 exhibition of antiquities from Hawara, Egypt.  Petrie also displayed objects in the Royal Archaeological Institute’s rooms in Oxford Mansions, a block of flats (now demolished) just off of Oxford Street. 

Oxford Mansions had been built on the site of an 18th century market square, named for the Earl of Oxford.  From the market’s central building vegetables, meat and fish were sold.  The market closed in the 1870s, its building was torn down and the red brick Mansions built in its place. (A brief history of the Oxford Market and an image of the market building can be found here.)

The Royal Archaeological Institute (RAI) moved to Oxford Mansions in the early 1880s from No 16 New Burlington Street, where it appears from Kelly’s 1882 Street Directory that they shared the premises with the tailors H. Güterbock & Son.  The RAI had enough room at New Burlington Street to hold public events - in 1880 the society hosted an “Exhibition of Helmets and Mail” featuring specimens ranging from ancient Greek to a foldable cap of steel bars worn by a French judge in the sixteenth century.  The RAI later recorded that the exhibition met with “remarkable interest and success”, attracting 1200 visitors over the twelve days it was open.

At Oxford Mansions, the RAI hosted several of Petrie’s exhibitions in the 1880s and early 1890s. The objects on display changed from season to season depending on where Petrie had been excavating, so visitors were able to see recently excavated artefacts from the Delta (Lower Egypt) at Tanis (San) and Naukratis; from Lahun in the Fayoum and from further up the Nile at Amarna, displayed just a stone's throw from the shops of Oxford Street.

The RAI moved to No. 20 Hanover Square, off of Regent Street, in 1894.  Kelly’s 1895 Street Directory shows that No. 20 was a hive of intellectual activity – no less that 11 learned societies or specialist clubs had rooms there, including the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, the Japan Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Library Association and the British Gynaecological Society.  There were other societies and clubs dotted around Hanover Square too - the Palestine Exploration Fund was a few doors down at No 24, and the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain at No 3.  

It’s clear from the street directories and other books on London’s past that the city and its institutions were always shifting, always in motion.  The history of London’s learned societies can tell us a lot about changing priorities as well as a changing landscape, particularly for those that are still dependent on subscription and membership for their continued success today.  Public lectures and exhibitions remain a widely used strategy to engage current members and attract new audiences – but for how long? 

References/Futher Reading
Kelly & Co. Ltd. 1882. Post Office London Directory  (Part 1: Official and Street Directories). London: Kelly & Co. Ltd.

Kelly & Co. Ltd. 1895. Post Office London Directory for 1895 (Part 2: Street Directory). London: Kelly & Co. Ltd.

Loftie, W. J. 1883.  A History of London. Vol II. London: Edward Stanford.

RAI [Royal Archaeological Institute]. 1880. Report of the Council 1879-1880. Archaeological Journal 37: 432-434.

UCL [University College London]. 2002.  The Archaeological Record: Flinders Petrie in Egypt. Digital Egypt in Universities. 

Wheatley, H. B. & Cunningham, P. 1891 [2011]. London Past and Present: Its History, Associations and Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

By Amara Thornton

Egyptian House, 170-173 Piccadilly, is the modern vestige of Egyptian Hall, Victorian venue extraordinaire.  It was the site of circus strongman / ‘excavator’ Giovanni Belzoni’s 1821 exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, and, over half a century later, one of many venues for archaeologist Flinders Petrie’s exhibitions of Egyptian antiquities.  In 1888, Petrie held his annual exhibition of archaeological artefacts at Egyptian Hall.  The material displayed came from Hawara, Egypt and included a series of stunning painted mummy portraits from the Roman period. Some of these were subsequently incorporated into the National Gallery's collections (and are now at the British Museum).  Others can be seen at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London.

Thanks to the digital capabilities of Vintique, I turned an average photograph of a completely missable address on Piccadilly into a retro-style documentation of one of London’s lost entertainment venues.  Cheek-by-jowl with Messrs Meskalyne and Cook's magic shows and music hall performances, in 1888 visitors could also feast their eyes on ancient artefacts thousands of years old.