Book review by Tahya 8.21.2024
Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age. Kathleen Sheppard. 2024. St. Martin’s Press. New York.
From the front flap of the book jacket: “The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the so-called Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.
In Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, Kathleen Sheppard brings the untold stories of these women back into this narrative…(that) upends the grand male narrative of Egyptian exploration and shows how a group of courageous women charted unknown territory and changed the field of Egyptology forever.”
Do you have an interest in ancient Egyptian temple sites? Are you intrigued and curious about their excavation and the preservation not only of the architecture, but also the bas reliefs and paintings on the walls? If so, I highly recommend you read this new book by Kathleen Sheppard. It is a fascinating and heretofore untold story of extraordinary women who dedicated themselves to the field of Egyptology back before women even had the right to vote. These women defied convention and paved the way for women to excel in the field both literally and figuratively. They also helped train many of the men who would go on to be lauded for their efforts while the women were not credited, much less celebrated nor remembered, until now.
In the wrong hands this book could have proven to be a very dull, dry accounting of these women. Instead, Sheppard has done a splendid job of breathing life into the stories of numerous trailblazing women gathered from their personal journals and intimate letters. The reader is given a glimpse into the history of the study of ancient Egypt as detailed by women who travelled to this northeast corner of Africa in the late 1800s.
Some of these women first traveled to this country to overcome certain diseases from which they were suffering in the damp climate of England and they were blessed to recover in the dry desert climate of Egypt. Several of them maintained travelogues and diaries. Some documented their experiences amidst excavations, sometimes as supervisors. A few of these women crawled into tight spaces to draw and/or paint replicas of tomb paintings, while others served as financial sponsors of excavations. All were sorely overlooked despite their enormous dedication to research, not to mention their extraordinary contribution to and development of the field of Egyptology.
Back in 2007, I had the good fortune to travel to Egypt (read more at my blog: Memoir & Musings), and among the most impressive experiences ~ second only to my experience at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera ~ was the beauty of the art at the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. I will never forget the breathtaking bas reliefs!
Among the women to whom Sheppard introduces her readers are the Field Director at Abydos Amice Calverley, and her colleague Myrtle Broome, who painstakingly documented that artistry on the walls of the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. Quite frankly, I am now curious to peruse a book about Myrtle’s letters home, which are described as giving a flavor of the life on-site during their eight years there. But I digress… About the work of Calverley and Broome, Sheppard tells us:
The result of their isolated project was four volumes of beautifully rendered copies of the walls in the temple of Seti I at Abydos. … The impact these volumes have had on the preservation of the art at the Temple of Seti I cannot be overstated. Researchers have a glimpse into what the temple looked like one hundred years ago, and even two thousand years ago, with the bright colors and clear lines lending an air of newness to the artwork. Myrtle and Amice, with their training, craft, and tenacity, produced and published some of the best known work on this temple at Abydos, allowing so many others to continue to work to understand its mysteries.[1]
I was also fascinated to read about Caroline Ransom who served as assistant curator for six years (1910-1916) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There she organized exhibits, and published articles and handbooks. She was also responsible for the planning and administration of the remarkable reconstruction project of the 5th Dynasty Tomb of Perneb. It took three years to complete this project, which “comprised 601 boxes of blocks (and) took two months to move (from Egypt) to New York.”[2]
Thanks to the expert research and writing of Kathleen Sheppard we are now able to enjoy an introduction to eleven women whose innovative techniques of preservation and steadfast study of ancient Egypt have uncovered countless treasures from beneath the sands of time.