An intrepid lady traveller: Amelia Edwards ventures A Thousand Miles up the Nile in 1873.

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 143

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Towards the end of the 19th century, when wives were regarded as the property of their husbands and not expected to have a university education or an independent career, several remarkable women emerged as influential in the field of Egyptology. These redoubtable ladies had to be of independent means, but they also needed to be adventurous and open to new experiences. Perhaps most prominent among them was Amelia Edwards. She was already a published novelist when she and a friend visited Egypt in 1873, so was naturally inclined to record their adventures in writing. Her very detailed account A Thousand Miles up the Nile presents a vivid picture of the Egypt of the day, and introduced the public to a completely new area of knowledge. It became a milestone in the study of Egyptology.

Campaigning

Although this was her only trip to Egypt, Edwards was completely smitten with the country and its peoples, and most importantly was horrified by the condition of the ancient sites, fearing their imminent destruction. This led her to dedicate the rest of her life to campaigning, not only in Britain but as far afield as America, to raise awareness of the situation. She was active in setting up the Egypt Exploration Fund and in raising funds and sponsorship for those working in Egypt to discover and preserve the past. She worked closely with W Flinders Petrie, and their copious correspondence is still held in the Petrie Museum at UCL. These letters reveal Edwards to have been a powerful and determined individual, whose influence would have been hard to resist.

Companions

On her voyage by dahabiya up the Nile, Amelia became friendly with a pair of English ladies whom she called ‘the MBs’. Marianne Brocklehurst and her friend Mary Booth were inveterate travellers who made several visits to the Middle East, collecting artefacts on their way. Marianne’s lively account of their first trip to Egypt is in an illustrated notebook, which is preserved in her native town of Macclesfield. She was determined to share her experiences, and set up a museum to contain her considerable collection. A third independent lady, who accompanied Amelia on some of her lecture tours, was Kate Bradbury, daughter of a cotton magnate who lived in Ashton-under-Lyne. She was particularly interested in textiles and took on the task of cleaning the consignments of roughly packed textiles excavated by Petrie. Correspondence between Bradbury and Petrie is in the archives of several museums. She also worked closely with (and later married) hieroglyphs expert Frank Llewellyn Griffith.

There were many other unsung heroes – wives, sisters, and female friends – sometimes travelling with their relatives into uncomfortable situations on limited rations. They each played an important role in popularising the study of Egyptology.

Hilary Forrest

Hilary is a regular contributor to AE. She is the author of Manufacturers, Mummies and Manchester (2011).