ANCIENT EGYPT

The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley

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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Six - April  / May 2001

Amelia Edwards - her vision for Egyptology

The contribution of Amelia Edwards to Egyptology in the UK, and world-wide, is well-known. It was mere chance, however, that set her on a path that would lead her to devote the rest of her life to raising awareness of the fragility of Egypt's monuments, and to the practical tasks of gaining the support of influential people and sourcing funding to help in the conservation of Egypt's legacy. Professor Joan Rees, an expert on the life and work of Amelia Edwards, tells the story of this hardy, determined and highly independent woman.

Photograph of Amelia Edwards ©Somerville College

Amelia Edwards (1831 – 92), renowned in Egyptological circles for her major role in founding the Egypt Exploration Society, was not herself a trained archaeologist. She went to Egypt only once in her life (1873/74) and then on not much more than a whim. She and a friend had embarked on a walking tour in France but bad weather drove them to abandon it and to look for somewhere else they might find sun. After some hesitation, they chose Cairo. The journey so casually undertaken was to produce a book, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (first published 1877) which was much-read in its day and has been twice reprinted in recent years (Century, 1982; Darf, 1996). It was also to bring about a complete reorientation of Amelia Edward’s own life and a crucial development in the history of British Egyptology.

In 1873 she was forty-two and for some twenty years she had been devoting her considerable energies and talents to a literary career. As a short story writer she was admired, by among others, Dickens, who commissioned contributions from her for his periodicals and she had made a name for herself with seven novels, two of which have recently been reprinted (Hand and Glove, 1858 and Barbara’s History, 1864, both reprinted by the Rubicon Press, 2000).

In 1873 she published Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, an account of a pioneering tour of the Dolomites which she had made with a woman friend, one Lucy Renshaw (who was also to be her companion on the Nile journey). This book has also been recently republished (Virago, 1986). Yet with all this work behind her and the promise of further literary success to come, when she came back from Egypt Amelia Edwards entirely relinquished her first career and thenceforth devoted herself exclusively to promoting excavation and proper care of the remains of ancient Egypt.

The tombs, temples and artefacts she had seen in the course of her journey had impressed her deeply and she had been appalled by the evidence of plundering and neglect to which they were subjected. On her way up-river she had admired, “in all their beauty and freshness” as she says, wall-paintings which by the time she returned had been irreparably damaged. “Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument great or small,” she goes on and, she lamented, there was no sign of any attempt to put a stop to the depredation. “The work of destruction,” she wrote, “goes on apace. There is no one to prevent it; there is no one to discourage it. Every day, more inscriptions are mutilated – more tombs are rifled – more paintings and sculptures are defaced.” Deploring the situation was not enough; she determined that something should be done to change it and it became the mission of the rest of her life to ensure that change did indeed come about.

On her return from Egypt she began at once to work on A Thousand Miles up the Nile, taking two years to prepare it for publication and haunting the British Museum to tap the knowledge and experience of its experts. The second edition (1889) was brought up to date with the results of more research, for she meant her work to stand scrutiny as a serious account of the history and character of the monuments according to the best contemporary knowledge. At the same time, if, as she wanted, it was to rouse the interest of the general reader, as she wanted, it had to be entertaining as well as instructive and it is, in fact, a delightful book, full of often amusing episodes and descriptions which benefit greatly from her artist’s eye – among her many talents she was a gifted water-colourist and she illustrated her own books. The sureness of touch with which she blends personal response to people, events and objects with scrupulous scholarship is one of her most valuable attributes as a propagandist for Egypt. A successful book, however, important as it was in gaining public attention, was by no means the limit of her ambition, for Amelia Edwards had in mind a far wider project.

To achieve this she needed to persuade men with influence and authority that measures to protect the ancient sites from neglect and the ravages of collectors and thieves were an urgent necessity. The future had also to be safeguarded lest the old bad ways should return. Among those she canvassed was Sir Erasmus Wilson, who brought from Alexandria the obelisk now standing on the banks of the Thames. Samuel Birch, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, was unconvinced by her arguments and her enthusiasm – “sentimental archaeology”, he called it – but R.S. Poole, Keeper of Coins and Medals, supported her. Eventually, by a combination of determination, energy and personal persuasiveness she won her case and, in 1882, the Egypt Exploration Society (originally called the Egypt Exploration Fund) came into being. It has been pursuing its work of promoting and financing excavation in Egypt ever since. It was Amelia Edwards’ brainchild and it was she who brought it to birth.

She and Poole became Joint Honorary Secretaries, a position Amelia Edwards held to the end of her life. In this capacity she wrote thousands of letters, many of them to solicit support and administer subscriptions, and many also to keep in touch with practising Egyptologists, as a result of which she was uniquely well-informed about developments – and personalities. One of her correspondents was Gaston Maspero who became Director of Antiquities in Cairo in 1881 and whose book on Egyptian archaeology she translated from the French. Her mind was at all times vigorous and remarkably well-stocked. As all her writing, fiction and non-fiction alike, shows, she had a passionate love of knowledge, a compelling desire to know and understand as fully as possible whatever subject engaged her interest – and very many subjects did. She had mastered hieroglyphs and, remarkably, in 1889 was the first person to decipher the signs on potsherds found by Petrie in the Faiyum and to identify them as Cypriote, Phoenician, Lycian, Theran, Phrygian, Etruscan and others. Coming late to Egyptology as she had done and trained in a different career, she had become thoroughly equipped to act as communicator and negotiator between professional Egyptologists and also between them and the outside world.

She spared no effort to fulfill this role. She lived from 1864 in Westbury-on-Trym, a village near Bristol (now a suburb), and in the last two decades of her life she transformed herself from the adventure-seeking traveler of early years to a near recluse who spent day and often night too at her desk expending all her talents and her energies on promoting the E.E.S. and its work. In addition to the letters, she also wrote hundreds of articles, among them some based on letters which Flinders Petrie wrote home to his mother detailing the results of his latest excavations. It was arranged that she should write these up for publication, applying to them her skill and experience as a successful writer so that they might capture the interest of the general public. Her triumph in securing the creation of the E.E.S. once achieved, it is, in fact, by the work of her pen, her role as communicator, that her contribution to Egyptology has to be measured. She published one more novel in 1880, Lord Brackenbury, but, that apart, she henceforth put her literary gifts entirely at the service of ancient Egypt.

Her writing and her proselytising brought her American friends and supporters and in 1890 she was invited to undertake a lecture tour of the States. It was a great success for Amelia Edwards had not only many talents and impressive erudition but she also had charm and her audiences were enchanted. On her return, though her health was failing, she put her lectures together as a book, published after her death as Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers. It lacks the liveliness of her earlier work, but it is, as always, rich in thought and replete with the knowledge acquired over the years with so much dedication.

She suffered several falls towards the end of the U.S. tour and also on the way home and underwent an operation, perhaps for incipient cancer. She died in 1892 aged sixty-one when, already in a debilitated state of health, she caught influenza while overseeing the dispersal of a cargo of Egyptian antiquities at Millwall Docks. Her last gift to Egyptology was a legacy for the founding of a Chair of Egyptology at University College, London, the first such in any British University. She took care, by the terms of her will, that the first incumbent should be Petrie and the Petrie Museum in London today is a memorial to both of them, her Egyptological collections being housed there in a specially designated Edwards Room. She lived intensely in the two parts of her life, pre-Egypt and post-Egypt, and she brought remarkable gifts to both but she took most pride in the work she did in the service of Egypt. A Thousand Miles up the Nile she counted as her best book and, as for her efforts to promote the study and care of the memorials of Ancient Egypt, “my work will, I hope,” she wrote, “in a sense, go on for ever.” We may hope so too.

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