Two women at the Temple of Mut, 1898; drawing by C. D. Gibson
The partnership with Nettie
Who introduced Margaret to Nettie Gourlay? This is intriguing. As Nettie had been one of Petrie’s pupils, then it may have been Petrie. But of all his current and past female pupils, did he propose Nettie? Did he, just possibly, gain some insight into the two women's nature?
It is possible that the introduction may have been made by Lady Jane Lindsay, a family friend; Maggie's account is somewhat ambiguous. She wrote her mother on January 31, 1896, from "Mut" (evidently the Temple itself, as she describes hiring workmen in the letter): "Yesterday morning Jeanie [Lady Lindsay] came with me, and a Miss Gourlay who is going to help…"
This gives too little information. Would it be reading too much into a probably hastily scribbled note to note a difference between "who is going to help" and "who I have asked to help"? In other words, was Nettie, a trained Egyptologist, merely someone who Maggie was told that she needed? The fact that they later became such close friends being coincidence?
Certainly they do not appear to have been close friends at first. It was not until almost a month later, on February 23, that Maggie wrote her mother that: "I found unexpectedly that Miss Gourlay shared my sentiments about [the author Robert Louis] Stevenson… I like her extremely; not the least - not the slightest touch of Schwärmerei [enthusisam] but through interested liking."
Evidently she needed to make it clear to her openly lesbian mother that it was not – yet – Schwärmerei. But it seems to have been by at least May 15, when she wrote her mother again (from Aix-en-Provence, France): "I like her [i.e. Nettie] more and more – I haven’t liked any one so well for years." Interestingly, this letter indicated that Nettie suffered from depression: "I never knew of any one [i.e. Nettie] whose theory of life so disregarded enjoyment – too much I think – and though I don’t suppose she is happy, you couldn’t call her unhappy because in a sense, she is bigger than that."
From the letters it is clear that the time they spent together in Aix, on their way home from Egypt, confirmed their friendship. From then on, every letter Maggie sent to her mother mentions Nettie, and with increasing Schwärmerei. The published letters that she sent to Nettie herself, although carefully chosen and heavily edited, are, quite frankly, love-letters.
The excavation’s first season, 1895
But back to the excavation at Mut. For Maggie, at least, it seems to have been largely a case of learning on the job. To begin her excavations in 1895, she followed a map of the Temple published by Aguste Mariette in 1875 in his book Karnak: étude topographique et archéologique.
Mariette is best known today for his discovery of the Serapeum at Saqquara, and for writing the plot of the opera Aida. Little more than a looter, he is notorious for using dynamite in his operations, resulting in massive destruction of monuments. His map, unsurprisingly, quickly proved to be inaccurate. However, its existence does once again throw doubt on Maggie’s statement that it was unlikely that anyone believed there were no discoveries to be made at the site.
First Gateway of the Temple during the excavation
She began work on January 1, 1895, for a period of five weeks, with four men, sixteen boys and a girl water-carrier, under the control of a reis (foreman), as well as a night-watchman. Supervising them was not easy for her at first, especially as she knew very little Arabic, and had to use a donkey-boy as an interpreter. She felt, indeed, that her main role was to simply pay the workmen.
The wages she paid were 2 piastres, which she said was the equivalent of 5d. (old money) for men, 1½ piastres for boys, per ten hour working day. She claimed that this was the equivalent in purchasing power to the then current British agricultural wage of half a crown a day. (A roughly contemporary rate of exchange gave 97½ piastres to a British pound).
It had become the practice for Egyptologists to pay the workmen baksheesh for any finds made, partly to encourage them to report, rather than conceal and sell objects. But Margaret was not sure quite how much to pay. Flinders Petrie, at the Ramesseum, paid the full black market value of the object. The Antiquities Service work at nearby sites in Karnak, on the other hand, did not pay much baksheesh, increasing security instead. The EEF, at Deir el-Bahri, paid a day’s wages as baksheesh. Maggie and Nettie eventually followed Petrie’s idea, and "roughly proportioned the baksheesh to the value of the find and the opportunities for theft… for certain large finds we gave baksheesh to all the men." It seems to have generally worked; there was only one known theft from the site, of the head of a statue, in 1897.
However, they suspected that other thefts took place, and this did not improve their opinion of their workmen. Again, we have to remember that Margaret and Nettie were Victorians; they did not think like us. They held an attitude of imperialist superiority: "we realised" they wrote "that the Arabs were like naughty children", who had "singularly little method in their work".
On the other hand, they generally attempted to treat their workmen well, paying them themselves, to ensure that the right "proportion of the sum reaches the right person". They were in fact advised to do this, possibly by Flinders Petrie, who always did so. They also replaced any worn coins if asked.
Some of the excavation work took place during Ramadan, especially during the first season. Maggie thought that it was possible to prevent fasting during Ramadan, but did not do so, in order to allow the workmen to continue "such religious observances". (Maggie was genuinely interested in various theologies, writing approvingly about Ancient Egyptian religion). Instead, she allowed a two hour break at mid-day "without loss of wages" on Friday, the Moslem holy day, for the workmen to attend services at the Mosque. The workmen were also allowed "at their own request" to stop work an hour early on each day.
She struggled against ill-health (in fact she had come to Egypt in the first place to convalesce), theft, and the complete unfamiliarity of everything. None the less, she made good progress, going over the part of the temple that had been dug in by Mariette, and noting his errors.
Interesting finds turned up, in particular an important sitting block figure of a royal scribe of Amenhotep II (1427-1400 BCE), called Amenemhet (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo). She also found a statue of Sekhmet, and various other small pieces.
Statue of Amenhet, photos taken by Margaret and Nettie themselves.
Finally she undertook conservation-work, repairing some of the Sekhmet statues with plaster, and replacing them in what she thought was their original position.One of her aims had been to ascertain the date of the foundation of the temple (The Temple of Mut describes how during the excavations they continually sought unsuccessfully for the "foundation deposits", which would have established this). Finally, she dated the temple on the evidence of the statue of Amenemhat being found without any debris being found between it and the floor of the temple. It was a reasonable assumption, based on stratigraphy, to make, especially for the time. However, in fact it would only, at best, provide a date for the last use of the Temple, and then only if the Temple had been a "sealed context", i.e. undisturbed since that time, which it was not.
In fact no harm was done; they were later to find out, following the discovery of another statue, that of Senmut, architect to Queen Hatshepsut Maatkare (1473-1458 BCE) (see below) that the temple was founded considerably earlier, during the reign of Hatshepsut. (In fact most of its construction took place under Amenhotep III Nebmaare [1390-1352 BCE]).
During all their stays at Luxor, Maggie and Nettie stayed at the Luxor Hotel, about a mile and a half away from the Temple. This was as convenient as they could get, although it did mean a donkey-ride commute each day. Besides, the Luxor Hotel certainly offered them the entertainment, and comfort that they could expect; on one occasion Maggie attended a fancy-dress ball there dressed as the Goddess Mut, even down to the Vulture head-dress, worn by all Queens and Goddesses who were mothers. Where she obtained the materials for this remains something of a mystery!
Maggie's brother Fred, incidentally, had also been busy with work of his own in Egypt. Not only had he helped at the Temple of Mut, but he also worked at Alexandria for the EEF, investigating the possibility of archaeological work there. (Some publications mistakenly say that he did this work for the Hellenistic Society).
The Book
The Temple of Mut in Asher was published by the old-established and highly-regarded firm of John Murray, London, in 1899. It is an attractive book, lavishly filled with photographic plates, and a fold-out plan of the Temple. A special hieroglyphic typeface was produced for Percy Newberry's section, which reproduced the hieroglyphs as they appeared, rather than to a standard shape, as now.
The cover design is simple, yet effective, and, interestingly, includes a small piece of Egyptological history in its own right - the drawing of the vulture is by a young Howard Carter, taken from the Shrine of Anubis at Deir el-Bahri.
And yet the book very nearly did not come about at all. Although Maggie enjoyed a reasonably successful, if short, first season, she did not propose to write an excavation-report. She intended to make a new plan of the Temple, and no more.
Indeed, she said in The Temple of Mut in Asher that she "began without any idea of publishing our [sic] work", and this is quite evident from the rather inadequate chapter on the 1895 season of work. Furthermore, she went on to say that she wished to continue without making records: "we began our second season in the same mind".
It should be pointed out, however, that Egyptologists were under no obligation to publish an excavation report (in fact even fairly recent excavations in Egypt have never published excavation reports). The Antiquities Service’s contract with her simply required her to send any portable finds to the Cairo Museum.
However, the second (1896) season was to see the arrival of Nettie Gourlay, no doubt full of Petrie’s urgings about publication. It is also likely that the various archaeologists working in Luxor attempted to persuade Maggie to keep at least basic notes. Yet even so, a publication such as The Temple of Mut in Asher still seems to have been far from Maggie’s mind. In the book she says that she simply wished to record what she was finding at Mut: "unexpected discoveries demanded publication, and the third year added more material". However, "Our idea [even] then was not so much to publish our undertaking as to preserve the names and histories that Egypt had committed to our charge. We intended therefore at first to put forth these results simply for the use of the expert".
Where, then, did the idea of The Temple of Mut in Asher come from? There is no doubt that Maggie, at least, would have been only too pleased to come up with something for a general readership; the Benson family were prolific writers, and Maggie was already a published – and indeed quite popular - author.
In its overall approach and style it seems to have been influenced by other "popular" Egyptological works of the time, such as Amelia Edwards’ Pharaohs, fellahs and explorers (1891), a work which Maggie and Nettie acknowledge that they had read. It also certainly filled a gap; there were so few books on the history of Ancient Egypt available at the time that in 1892 Flinders Petrie had regarded the writing of an up-to-date one for his students a priority. And as we shall see in due course, Maggie and Nettie were to be asked to help write a general history.
The Temple of Mut in Asher is a mixture of excavation-report and general history. Information about discoveries at the temple is scattered throughout the book, as illustrations of points of Egyptian history. This is frustrating for the modern reader, who would expect to read a general history and an excavation report separately, but would not necessarily be so for a contemporary audience; indeed something of the same approach was taken by Amelia Edwards in Pharaohs, fellahs and explorers.
And indeed, as at the time a background knowledge of Ancient Egypt would not be common, it can also be seen as an actual strength of the book in that it places the discoveries in their wider context. (In fact, truly a work of its time, it presupposes Biblical knowledge, but little Egyptological knowledge on the part of its readers).
Furthermore, the book is advanced for its time in giving a detailed site description, as well as (from 1896 onwards) an almost day-to-day account of the work that took place, including various anecdotes. It is, in fact, almost an early blog; and this approach is still used by the current excavators of the site, the Brooklyn Museum, who publish a weekly excavation blog about their ongoing work.
The Temple of Mut in Asher is divided up into five parts: "Introduction"; "History of the excavation"; "The religion of Egypt"; "History" [of Ancient Egypt]; and "Inscriptions". The last part, "Inscriptions", was written by Percy Newberry, and was plainly meant only for specialists.
In her Preface, Maggie described Newberry’s contribution as "the most essential part of the publication". Significantly, however, she crossed these words out in her own copy of the book.
Interestingly, in her own copy of the book, Maggie noted who wrote which chapters. She claimed sole authorship of chapters I-IV, VI-VIII, X, XII, and XIV. Nettie was the sole author of chapters IX, XI, XV, and XVI, which included a description of a statue of Mentuhemat that she and Newberry were later to publish a paper on (see below). Nettie was also the principal author, with Maggie’s help, of Chapter XIII. Maggie and Nettie wrote chapters V and XVII together.
Indeed, it is possible to notice the differences in Maggie’s and Nettie’s writing-style. Maggie’s is very much the rounded, descriptive style of the popular author, whilst Nettie has a somewhat drier, ‘academic’ style, tending to concentrate simply on facts.
A discussion of wages, prices, the value of labour, and the payment of baksheesh (tips) appears in the book. This was in fact one of Maggie's many iterests; four years previously she had published a work on economics titled Capital, Labour, and Trade.
A number of photographers are credited. Maggie and Nettie, as well as Nettie’s father took photos themselves. Others were taken by Emile Brugsch. Some were evidently taken by visiting academics, such as the Dr. Page May who is credited for several photos. The majority, however, were taken by a J.F. Vaughan, who may have had a photography business in Luxor. The quality of photos varies; Vaughan obviously used professional equipment, whilst Maggie and Nettie seems to have used their box-cameras.
They would certainly have been encouraged to use photography by Flinders Petrie, who had in fact been using it extensively during his excavations during the early 1880s.
Indeed, an interest of the book is that it shows how much photos were being used by archaeologists of the time. Brugsch was obviously a trained photographer, using such techniques as oblique lighting to reveal faint details. Several photographs are uncredited, and may have been taken by the Government Antiquities Service as a record, as they are plainly the work of trained photographers, using techniques such the use of three-quarter profiles of statues.
Unfortunately the book did not go beyond a single edition (though it may have had more than one printing, as on some books the vulture design appears in gold) although a facsimile edition is currently in print.
To be continued...
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