Joint Spotlight Lecture between the EES and BILNAS
Banner image: Caton-Thompson and Eleanor Gardner in the Fayum.
Since the start of the nineteenth century, European women explorers in North Africa have contributed greatly to our understanding of the archaeology and other aspects of the region. There are various general points that arise from the study of the lives I have selected. First, like British battleships of the early twentieth century, many of them were Intrepid, Illustrious and Indomitable. They camped in harsh and remote deserts, travelled by camel, horse, foot and early motor cars. Secondly, they had a wide spread of personal relationships – conventional family figures who raised families, transvestites, lesbians and spinsters. Some of them travelled with their husbands: notably Baker, Belzoni, Bent, Court-Treatt, Petrie, and Workman. Thirdly, some of them lived to a considerable age – Belzoni, Bent, Brogan, Court-Treatt, Gardner, Ness and Petrie into their eighties, Caton-Thompson, Puigadeau and Senones into their nineties, and Joyce Reynolds into her hundreds. Two of them died young: Tinne was murdered aged only 33, and Eberhardt was killed in a flash flood aged only 27. Some of them carried out important geographical, anthropological and archaeological research, while others were primarily adventurers. Some funded others. Intriguingly, most of them travelled successfully in what were predominantly Muslim countries, and most came from countries where the role of women was at the time often subservient to that of men. They were remarkable indeed.
Winifred Blackman with her medicine chest. (M.H. Tiltman, 1935, Women in Modern Adventure, p. 272).
Rosita Forbes in disguise. (T.C. Bridges and H.H. Tiltman (1927), Heroes of Modern Adventure, Harrap, London, p. 110).
Speaker
Dr Andrew Goudie
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Florence Baker depicted on a camel in the mid-19th Century CE.
