Egyptology

Invitation to Miss Crompton to attend lecture by Howard Carter

A long time ago, before I started working full-time on the Easter island exhibition, there was something of an ancient Egyptian theme going on. It started with finding a wonderful invitation from 1923 in one of the archive boxes. It was addressed to Miss Winifred Crompton to attend a lecture by Howard Carter. Miss Crompton was Assistant Keeper of Egyptology at Manchester Museum. She died on 8^th October 1932 (Manchester Museum Annual Reports 1932-3, p.8). It was largely thanks to her that so much of the Egyptology collection presented by Jesse Haworth was catalogued.

Later I attended a lecture on Mummies and Scanning given by Bob Lyons in the Museum’s Kanaris Theatre.

Bob introducing his lecture about mummification

 

CT scan of Egyptian mummy

 

 

Red shrouded coffins – an association with people who suffered violent deaths?

Egyptian sarcophagus outside a Leeds shop

Celebrity, Beauty and the Aphrodisiac of Power

Roman coins including coin of Cleopatra (centre)

I’ve recently been talking to Roslynne Bell in Classics and Ancient History at the University about supporting  the teaching of one of her classes using objects from the Manchester Museum archaeology collection. There are twenty students in one of her classes and I was momentarily stuck for the last few objects for the students to work with until I remembered the Numismatic collection. A quick conversation with Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics, yielded a trio of historically fascinating coins from Roman history which I thought I’d share with Blog readers. On the left (above) is a De Britan silver denarius of the Emperor Claudius, in the centre is the copper coin of Cleopatra struck in the Alexandria mint,  and on the right is a Britannia as of the Emperor Antoninus Pius.

Coin of Cleopatra

The magical name of Cleopatra brings with it all manner of glamorous associations in popular culture thanks to Elizabeth Taylor and the famous block-buster movie. But the coin above appears to show the famous Egyptian queen with a hooked  nose. Pascal famously wrote: “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” Presumably because she would have otherwise found favour with Octavius. A statue of the queen The Death of Cleopatra (1867) by Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), the first African American and American Indian female sculptor to achieve national recognition, shows Cleopatra with ‘an aquiline nose and a prominent chin of the Roman type’  in accordance with coins, medals and other evidence.

Other brutally realistic Roman coins of the period show Antony in none too flattering a light with a nose like a boxer. That may challenge modern preconceptions based on the film but it did not matter according to the realpolitik of the day. What was important was that Cleopatra was queen of one of the last and richest independent Hellenistic kingdoms and that she had played a blinder diplomatically by lending her support to one of the sides in the  civil wars of the later Roman Republic, thus apparently cementing her position as queen and that of Egypt. Cleopatra (VII) was the last in a long line of Ptolemaic rulers who introduced coinage to Egypt. What we can see but she could not until it was too late was that Mark Antony was not a match for Octavius and his general Agrippa.

Keith and I reflected on this for a minute or two and concluded that it is perhaps the modern preoccupation with celebrity and beautiful people that leads us to expect that famous people should be attractive. In fact as the scandal besetting the French president, Francois Hollande,  seems to show, you don’t need film star pin up good looks in order to rule, nor it seems to have relationships with those who, like Julie Gayet, do enjoy those attributes. The aphrodisiac of power more than makes up for any short-comings in the good looks department, in the ancient  as well as the modern world.

Since writing this some six weeks ago, the UK has been rocked (buffeted?) by its own political scandal this time besetting the UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In yesterday’s Telegraph it was reported that an  MEP, Nikki Sinclaire, had alleged in the European Union assembly that Farage had had an affair with his press officer. Farage denies the accusation. Of course this being the UK the scale and portent of what is alleged to have gone on all seem very low key in contrast to our more stylish cross-channel cousins. In the same way that the Americans had Dallas as a soap but we had Coronation Street, the comparison with Gallic politics seems decidely mundane. Some journalists have doubted whether Farage makes a likely ‘babe magnet’ but again with UKIP tipped to do well in coming local elections maybe it’s another case of the ‘aphrodisiac of power’.

Ultimately we are left with Cleopatra, who was shrewd and intelligent, enjoying the same ‘aphrodisiac of power’. Being beautiful or having a hook nose was not important.

Thanks to Campbell for kindly commenting on this blog.

The Inspiration for Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars?

In earlier blog about a recent ACCES meeting at Manchester Museum I discussed the careers of two northern collectors of Egyptology with links to the North West. One was Aquila Dodgson. The other collector, Thomas Sheppard, was a larger-than-life character (seen holding up the local antiques shop in a cartoon above) who has been described as ‘one of the most successful museum curators of the first half of the 20th century’. Sheppard’s success in creating new museums in Hull was largely down to his collecting activities. He collected practically anything and everything during his 40 year career, including Egyptology. The reason for talking about him at a seminar about  Egyptology in the North West was an unexpected link to the Manchester mummy Ta-sheri-ankh brought to my attention by Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan at Manchester Museum.

Mummy of Ta sheri ankh (courtesy of Campbell Price, Manchester Museum)

Campbell told me that Ta-sheri-ankh came to Manchester Museum via Salford Museum, which had acquired her and her coffins from Newport Museum in South Wales. Sir George Elliot MP (1814-1893) donated the mummy to Newport in 1888, and this is where Sheppard comes in. In the 1930s Sheppard purchased a mummy from Whitby Museum. The museum authorities were rationalising their collection and Sheppard bought the mummy and its handsome coffin for £15. The Whitby mummy had been presented by none other than Sir George Elliot MP who lived at the town’s exclusive Royal Cresent. So both mummies, Ta-sheri-ankh and the Whitby mummy, came from Sir George Elliot originally.

Thomas Sheppard and the Whitby Mummy in Hull in 1935

This common origin may shed light on speculation that it was the mummy from Whitby that inspired Bram Stoker (1847-1912) to write The Jewel of Seven Stars, a horror novel, first published in 1903.  Stoker had an interest in ancient Egypt from contact with Egyptophile William Wilde, the father of Oscar, in Victorian Dublin. Stoker is known to have visited Whitby in August 1890 and on certain websites is said to have stayed with Sir George Elliot. Barbara Belford in her biography of Bram Stoker describes the stay in Whitby in some detail. It provided Stoker with inspiration for part of his Dracula story. But she does not refer to Elliot. So when it is claimed that this was when Stoker saw the mummy now in Hull Museums and that this inspired The Jewel of Seven Stars I ask what is the evidence for this connection with George Elliot?

What is much more interesting to my mind is the fact that in publicity about his acquisition of the Whitby mummy, Sheppard referred to the mummy as being that of an Egyptian princess, although he couldn’t be sure of the translation of her name.

Newspaper cutting referring to mummy as that of a princess

That Sheppard referred in the publicity to Hull’s mummy being the mummy of a princess is interesting but not unusual, as royal pedigrees were commonly given to mummies to add to their attraction. In reality, there is no reason to consider the mummy in Hull Museums – in a plain coffin – to be a princess. However, of the two mummies once owned by Sir George Elliot MP in Whitby, the mummy of Ta-sheri-ankh is the more likely candidate for royalty, with her gilded coffin face, mask and brightly painted coffin. Is it possible that this information somehow got transposed to the other Egyptian mummy, the one that Sir George gave to Whitby Museum, and which was purchased by Thomas Sheppard? Was the claim that the mummy that went to Hull was a princess simply repeated by Sheppard for publicity purposes? That would certainly fit his M.O.

What I am  suggesting is that when Sheppard bought the Whitby mummy there some lingering memory at Whitby Museum of a mummy once owned by Sir George Elliot that was believed to be an Egyptian princess. This is, after all, what underlies the headline of the publicity surrounding the mummy that ended up in Hull. In Hull Museum’s documentation of this mummy it is noted that the mummy was once believed to be a princess, although CT scanning in the early 2000s for a TV documentary revealed it was a male.

Of course the biggest obstacle to the mummy of Ta-sheri-ankh having inspired Bram Stoker is the fact that the latter is said to have visited Whitby in late July/August 1890, when Sir George Elliot had given Ta-sheri-ankh to Newport in 1888. However, Ta-sheri-ankh was a visually stunning female Egyptian mummy, and perhaps Bram Stoker had access to information about her mummy at Sir George Elliot’s residence in Whitby, if that is indeed where he stayed or the residence he visited. Did Bram Stoker visit Whitby at an earlier date but everyone refers to the 1890 visit because that is what inspired some of the Dracula story? I don’t know but if this were the case, it would make Ta-sheri-ankh the source of Stoker’s inspiration, rather than the Whitby mummy, later acquired by Hull Museums. Or could Stoker have seen the mummy later acquired by Thomas Sheppard of Hull Museums at Whitby Museum? We know he used the library in Whitby. Could the Whitby museum authorities at that stage have used information originally referring to Ta-sheri-ankh in their documentation of the mummy they’d acquired from Sir George Elliot?

Is it possible that Thomas Sheppard’s press release about the mummy of a princess from Whitby, then confirms that he was drawing on information transposed from the mummy of Ta-sheri-ankh? If that happened, could not Bram Stoker have had access to the same information?

Sir George Eliot gave Ta-sheri-ankh to Newport, and in time she came to Manchester Museum via Salford. Could Manchester’s mummy then claim to be the mummy that inspired Bram Stoker to write The Jewel of Seven Stars?

Of course we can’t be absolutely sure and any additional information about Sir George Elliot MP and his mummies would be very much appreciated.

Anna and Campbell

Thanks are due to Campbell Price and Anna Garnett who kindly shared information about the Newport mummy and to Paula Gentil, Curator of Archaeology at Hull Museums, who provided the wonderful photograph of Thomas Sheppard with the Whitby mummy. The mask that Ta-sheri-ankh wearing in the photograph has been conserved and can be seen in the Egypt Room in the Discovery Centre at Manchester Museum.

ACCES Meeting at Manchester Museum

ACCES meeting at Manchester Museum last Friday

Last Friday, November 15th 2013, Campbell and Anna kindly invited me to contribute to an ACCES Workshop at Manchester Museum about ‘Egyptology in the North-West: Contextualising your Collection’. There were people there from the Garstang Museum, World Museum Liverpool, Kendal Museum and Macclesfield West Park Museum. I spoke for about 20 minutes about two collectors of Egyptology in the North of England: Aquila Dodgson (1830-1919)  and Thomas Sheppard (1876-1945) of Hull Museums.

Although both are best known for their work east of the Pennines, Aquila Dodgson’s first job was as a Congregational Minister before later switching to a career in textiles in the North West. This financially more lucrative employment provided opportunities to travel to Egypt and to fund the work of researchers such as William Flinders Petrie. As Campbell remarked, “Dodgson’s a mini Jesse Howarth!”.

Dodgson had a collection of Egyptology which was partly dispersed at his death, and so Dodgson Egyptology can now be found in Manchester Museum, Leeds Museums and Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne in Australia. I showed photos of Dodgson objects acquired by Leeds some years ago and Campbell and Anna brought out some of the recently-acquired Feather collection which also includes Dodgson specimens.  It was very useful to confirm that a distinctive type of label with a red border was indeed a Dodgson and not a later collector’s label. If any readers out there happen to have Egyptology labelled in this way, do let us know.

Dodgson Egyptology from the Feather collection at Manchester Museum

Dodgson objects in Leeds Museums (N.B. red border labels)

The other collector, Thomas Sheppard, was a larger than life character who has been described as ‘one of the most successful museum curators of the first half of the 20th century’. Sheppard’s success in creating new museums in Hull was largely down to his collecting activities. He collected practically anything and everything during his 40 year career, including Egyptology. The reason for talking about him at a seminar about  Egyptology in the North West was an unexpected link to the Manchester mummy Ta-sheri-ankh brought to my attention by Campbell. As this is quite a long and involved story I’ll write about this in a separate blog.

Ancient Worlds on Holiday – Egypt in Rhodes

Egyptian statue with Greek legend

I’ve recently been on holiday to Rhodes. Before I left, Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan at Manchester Museum, asked if I’d take a photograph of an Egyptian statuette with a Greek inscription in the archaeology museum in Rhodes Old Town. When my wife, Christine, and I visited the Archaeological Museum we kept our eyes open for the exhibit and I’m pleased to report that we found it (see photo above).  The seated Egyptian statuette fragment is inscribed with letters from the Greek alphabet, which in translation read: ‘….thes dedicated me’. A similar piece in the museum’s epigraphical displays (see below) has the same inscription but this time giving the full name of the dedicatee: [S]myrthes. The museum label says it dates from between 550 and the late 7th century BC.  This statuette was dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis of Kamiros. Campbell suggests that the figure above may originally have represented the Egyptian goddess Isis, but was “re-purposed” as a votive to Athena.

Sometimes referred to as the Rhodian Pompeii: Kamiros

In addition to this piece, someone who appears to have been the same man, Smythes, made an offering at the sanctuary of Zeus Atabyrious on the summit of the highest mountain on Rhodes.  All that survives is the front part of the thighs of a kneeling human figure on which is incised a three line inscription along with the horizontal lines that served as a guide. In translation it reads ‘I was dedicated by Smyrthes son of Syndros’. This second piece is in the Rhodes Museum’s epigraphic section where photography is not permitted.

Rhodes Archaeological Museum

Nor are these pieces the only evidence of Egyptian influence in Rhodes. Another display case in the museum was full of Egyptian faience amulets (see photo below). I should point out that the amulets were found in in burials on the island of Rhodes and they are part of displays intended to tell visitors about ancient Egypt as an exhibition topic, as we do in this country even though the Egyptian antiquities were not found here. Some of them do appear to be somewhat different from the ancient Egyptian amulets excavated in Egypt and shown in the Ancient Worlds displays at Manchester Museum. With some of them there is a certain, what I refer to as, ‘fuzziness’. Not all of them quite carry it off as Egyptian. Were they made for export to the Greek world at Greek colonies in Egypt like Naukratis?

Faience amulets and jewelry at the Rhodes Museum

‘Fuzzy’ Egyptian amulet

I was aware of the support given to the island of Rhodes when the city was being besieged by Demetrius the Besieger in 305-4 BC but the dating of Egyptian material in various grave goods showed that the Egyptian influence on Rhodes went back earlier than the Hellenistic period. Think of Smyrthes above making his dedication in the 6th or 7th centuries. Coincidentally I happened to be reading the second book of  Duncan Sprott’s Ptolomies Quartet: Daughter of the Crocodile (Faber and Faber, 2007). Though fictional it is clearly heavily based upon Classical historical sources. It refers to support given by the Ptolemies after the Rhodians suffered an earthquake that toppled the Colossus of Rhodes and destroyed many buildlings. The Ptolemies helped Rhodes on a number of occasions when the island was in difficulty over the years. When we visited Lindos we saw the bases of the statues set up by the Rhodians  in honour of the Egyptian royal house for the help it had given. Many of the objects dedicated in the sanctuary of Lindos were imported from Cyprus and Egypt. I was delighted when on my return to the Museum Campbell pointed out that the faience hedgehog on display in the Ancient Worlds Egypt gallery was also found on Rhodes. It is the cousin of two hedgehog perfume vessels I saw in the Rhodes Museum.  The two examples shown in the photograph below come from a child’s burial at Kechraki  [T218 (23)] dating from the mid 6th century BC.

Faience hedgehogs in the Rhodes Old Town Museum

It is stunning material and although I’ve focused here on the Egypt-in-Rhodes pieces, there are just as many, if not more, ancient Greek treasures, which I’ll come back to in a future Ancient Worlds blog. We have already featured a slingshot from Rhodes in a previous blog. Incidentally the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes Old Town is well worth a visit and it usually costs six euros per person each for admission but was free on the Saturday that we visited (but very busy for that reason).

Faience hedgehog vessel from Rhodes in the Ancient Worlds displays (accession no.37058)

A Roman soldier from Egypt

Graham Sumner’s reconstruction of the Roman soldier from Egypt whose encaustic portrait is in the Manchester Museum collection

Aquila Dodgson Collection

Thanks to the kindness of a contact at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society the Manchester Museum is hoping to acquire a small private collection of Egyptology. Campbell Price sent me details about the objects and I recognised a name from the past. Some of the collection originally came from someone called Aquila Dodgson. When I was Curator of Archaeology in Leeds some years ago I acquired a  small collection of Egyptology from a Mr Hepper whose family had got it originally from Aquila Dodgson.

Aquila Dodgson

Aquila Dodgson (1829-1919) was Secretary of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and has been described as ‘one of the key players in the history of British Egyptology’ because of his support for people like Flinders Petrie and Amelia Edwards. Dodgson accompanied Sir Flinders Petrie to Egypt in 1891-2 and some of the bead bracelets/necklaces in his collection came from Petrie’s excavations at “Serabit”, i.e. Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai. Aquila Dodgson had strong links with Leeds, and in fact Leeds Museums and Galleries acquired a few items from Dodgson’s collection in 1945 through a gift made by Dodgson’s son Walter.

Mr Nigel Hepper’s collection had come from Dodgson and consisted mostly of ancient Egyptian antiquities included faience amulets depicting the deities Anubis, Bes, Thoth, Taweret, Isis, Horus, Nephthys, Ptah, Osiris and Shu; Wedjat eye amulets and Djed pillar amulets, bead necklaces, some with amulets depicting the Four Sons of Horus; bronze figurines of Horus and Osiris; a Canopic jar lid of calcite (depicting the baboon-headed god Hapy), small alabaster cosmetics pots, a Predynastic black-rimmed jar a small painted wooden figure, shabti (several of which were fakes), a fired clay mould for making a wedjat eye amulet, several ancient Egyptian pots including two 18^th Dynasty jars; a winged scarab, bronze inlay from the eye from a statue, and a group of scarab amulets. Perhaps the most significant item was a wooden shabti of pharaoh Seti I, dated 1405 BC, which was originally collected by Amelia Edwards in 1887.

Mr Hepper published a note on the item in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (vol.86, 2000). Mr Hepper wrote that this shabti was one of the immense number once in Seti I’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings and was collected by Amelia Edwards and passed by her to Aquila Dodgson.

Display of the Dodgson collection in the former Leeds Museums Resource Centre

The Hepper collection was secured for Leeds Museums and Galleries thanks to a £6,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, a £1,000 donation from the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, and money from the museums’ own acquisitions budget.

This is not the first time Aquila Dodgson’s name has cropped up in conversation at Manchester, however. A few years ago, after coming to work in Manchester, I received an enquiry from an Australian researcher called Christine Elias. She was working on material in Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne antiquities collection and, guess what? She had found Aquila Dodgson objects! The University of Melbourne received the Egyptian artefacts from Revd James Dodgson, Aquila Dodgson’s brother. Christine Elias wrote her MA thesis on the collection.

We are now in the process of contacting Christine to let her know that more of this historic collection has come to light.