Ancient Egypt
The scale of ancient Egyptian history is overwhelming. Americans (North and South) wrestle with the consequences of five hundred years of invasion, conquest, and settlement. Europeans argue over what delineates different phases of their history (modern, the rise of the nation-state, phases of the Renaissance, medieval, post-Roman, and so on). Well, that gets you back only 1500 years. Classicists pride their discipline on another thousand years. Egyptians look on, bemused. They go back 6000 years without breathing hard. Ancient Egypt (a deep and long category, obviously) represents a civilization that still fascinates us. Think pharaohs, pyramids, mummies, hieroglyphs, the Sphinx, the Nile, "King Tut." Children and adults love such stuff. I debated with myself whether to be a purist on Ancient Egypt and end my listings with Alexander the Great's conquest and the great era of the Ptolemaic dynasty, but you would miss so much in those 275 years leading up to the pragmatic and unimaginative Romans building their empire on Egyptian grain. I wanted to include the Pharos lighthouse, Alexandria and its library, Cleopatra. So I did, and I will. This page, these offerings, like the rest of Whistlestop, will be carefully curated and vetted and supplemented as I find and list interesting items.
An Artist in Abydos: The Life and Letters of Myrtle Broome
An Artist in Abydos: The Life and Letters of Myrtle Broome
An Artist in Abydos is the first book to recognize Myrtle Broome’s great contribution to the work done during this golden age of excavation in Upper Egypt. In this remarkable account, Lee Young tells the story of Broome, who died in 1978, largely through her letters. An only child and a prolific writer, Broome wanted her parents to know every facet of her life in Egypt. Her frequent letters to them vividly capture life in the villages, the traditions of the local people, the work of artisans, such as weaving and pot-making, and festivals, ceremonies, and music. In fascinating detail, the letters also depict Broome’s living conditions providing us with a personal account of what it was like to be an English, working woman living abroad in Egypt in the 1930s.
Myrtle Florence Broome was born in 1888 to artistically inclined middle-class parents in the district of Holborn in London. Between 1911 and 1913, she studied at University College London under the legendary Sir William Petrie. In 1927 she was invited to join the excavations at Qau el-Kebir as an artist for the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, later traveling, in 1929, to work at the now famous Seti Temple in Abydos for the Egypt Exploration Society. Broome spent eight seasons there, copying the painted scenes in the Temple. Regarded then as one of the greatest copyists working in Egypt, she left invaluable renditions of some of ancient Egypt’s most beautiful monuments.
An Artist in Abydos is an important book celebrating the contributions of an under-recognized woman artist during the golden age of excavation in Egypt.