Discover Archives.
A Directory of Archives useful for history of Archaeology Research.
The Faculty of Arts at Cairo University is digitising some of their archive, including the reports (in Arabic) of Selim Hassan, a noted Egyptian Egyptologist working at Giza and Professor of Egyptology at the University in the early-mid 20th Century.
Access the reports here. This archive was housed in a sealed room in the site of Abydos, in Egypt, and discovered in 2013. Records relate to the Egyptian Antiquities Service between the 1840s and the 1960s, a critical period for archaeology in Egypt. Importantly, this archive reflects to the work of Egyptian inspectors and guards in the Egyptian Antiquities Service during this period. The project is currently conserving and cataloguing the archive, and preparing a searchable database of the collection.
Twitter: @AbydosArchive Blog: abydosarchive.org/ Further Reading: Shalaby, N., Abu El-Azm, H., Damarany, A., Kaiser, J., Abdallah, H.S., Abu El-Yazid, M., Abd El-Raziq, Y., Baker, F., Hashesh, Z., Ibrahim, W., Minor, E., Regelein, R. and Tarek, A. 2018. The Lost Papers: Rewriting the Narrative of Early Egyptology with the Abydos Temple Paper Archive. ARCE Bulletin [Online]: https://www.arce.org/abydos-paper-archive Abydos Temple Paper Archive Project. Egypt Exploration Society website: www.ees.ac.uk/atpa Covering the work of the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Boston excavations at Giza in the early 20th century. The lives of American archaeologist George Andrew Reisner (1867-1942), his wife Mary Reisner and daughter Mary B. Reisner and their co-workers on site are also represented. The archive is keyword-searchable.
Scope of Collections: Photographs, maps, documents Website: www.gizapyramids.org Email: [email protected] Summary by Amara Thornton, with additional information from Colin Penman, UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records
University College London was established in 1828 in order to provide higher education to (mainly) middle-class students. Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, the other two universities in England at that time, UCL enabled students from any religious background to gain higher education. When the University of London was set up in the 1830s, UCL students were then able to sit for degree examinations at the University of London examination board. In the 1870s women were admitted as UCL students on the same terms as men. UCL had an Archaeology department from the 1880s, and in 1892 Flinders Petrie was appointed the first Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, a post funded by Amelia Blandford Edwards. Edwards' bequest was given to UCL because the College admitted women. UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records holds the records of UCL, including material relating to UCL Egyptology and Archaeology departments organisation, staff and students, as well as the Slade School archives. Scope of collection: Student records, college prospectus, registers, fees books, correspondence, administrative records, plans, photographs. Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collections/records Email: [email protected] Twitter: @UCLRecords Further Reading Hale Bellot, H. 1929. University College London 1826-1926. London: University of London Press. Harte, N. & North J. 2004. The World of UCL, 1828-2004. London: UCL Press. Harte, N. 1986. The University of London 1836-1986: an illustrated history. London: Athelone Press. Janssen, R. 1992. The first hundred years: Egyptology at University College London. London: Petrie Museum. Sheppard, K. 2015. Margaret Alice Murray and Archaeological Training in the Classroom: Preparing “Petrie’s Pups”. In W. Carruthers (Ed.). Histories of Egyptology: interdisciplinary measures. New York: Routledge. Summary by Clare Lewis
The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology originated as a teaching resource for the Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London (UCL). Both the department and the museum were created in 1892 through the bequest of the writer Amelia Edwards (1831-1892). Her bequest included several hundred artefacts, and the collection grew due to the excavating career of William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), the first Edwards Professor of Egyptology at UCL, 1892-1933. In 1913 Petrie sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities to UCL. The collection and library were arranged in galleries within the university and a guidebook published in 1915 although most of the visitors were students and academics as it was not then open to the general public at this time. Petrie retired from UCL in 1933, though his successors continued to add to the collections, excavating in other parts of Egypt and the Sudan. During the Second World War (1939-1945) the collection was moved out of London for safekeeping. In the early 1950s it was brought back and housed ‘temporarily’ in a former stable building, where it remains today. By 2001 the Petrie Museum housed c.80,000 objects. Scope of the collections: The Petrie Museum holds papers of Sir (William Matthew) Flinders Petrie comprising of diaries, letters, drawings incl. watercolours, manuscript drafts of publications, photographs, scrapbooks, some equipment used on excavation, pocket diaries, journals, tomb cards, distribution lists and catalogues. It also includes some material from A.J. (Anthony) Arkell, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Margaret Drower, Margaret Murray, and the Wellcome collection. Website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie Blog: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/category/petrie/ Twitter: @PetrieMuseEgypt Relevant contacts: Maria Ragan, Museum Manager Further Reading Challis, D. 2013. The Archaeology of Race -The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Drower, M. S. 1995. Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. Janssen, R.M. 1992. The First Hundred Years: Egyptology At University College London, 1892-1992. London: UCL. Quirke, S. 2009. Petrie archives in London and Oxford. In D. Magee, J. Bourriau, S. Quirke (Eds.), Sitting beside Lepsius. Studies in Honour of Jaromir Malek at the Griffith Institute Leuven: Peeters. pp. 439-461. Quirke, S. 2010. Hidden Hands: Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavation Archives 1880-1924. London: Bloomsbury. Sheppard, K.L. 2013. The Life Of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work In Archaeology. Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books. Stevenson, A. (ed.) 2015. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology Characters and Collections. London: UCL Press. Summary by Amara Thornton
John Garstang (1876-1956) was a British archaeologist who directed excavations in Britain, Egypt, Sudan, Asia Minor/Turkey, British Mandate Palestine and British Mandate Transjordan. As an Oxford student, he worked first on Romano-British sites under Professor Francis Haverfield. He subsequently became a student under Flinders Petrie's Egyptian Research Account training scheme, and began working in Egypt. He was first Honorary Reader in Egyptology at Liverpool University, and after Liverpool's Institute of Archaeology was set up he became Professor of the Methods and Practice of Archaeology at Liverpool. The Garstang Museum at Liverpool holds records relating to the Institute of Archaeology at Liverpool, as well as records relating to the excavation activities of Garstang and a number of other archaeologists working primarily in Egypt, Sudan and Asia Minor during the 20th century. Scope of collection: Administrative records, excavation records, correspondence, museum records, photographs, lantern slides. For further details see the Garstang Museum Jisc/Archives Hub listing. Twitter: @GarstangMuseum Website: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/archaeology-classics-and-egyptology/garstang-museum/ Pinterest page: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/garstangm/mero%C3%AB-africas-forgotten-empire/ Email: [email protected] Summary by Amara Thornton, with additional information from Nancy Charley, Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society was established in London in 1823 for the study of the science, art, literature and culture of Asia. Members included individuals living in Britain and overseas, networks of contacts helped to feed information about the archaeology and antiquities of Asia, particularly India, from the beginning of the Society's history. A special "Committee of Correspondence" was established for this purpose. The East India Company was an early supporter of the RAS, and branches were established in Bombay, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Hong Kong by 1850. The scope of papers in the Society's Journal is wide - topics relate to history, travels, language and literature, antiquities, peoples and cultures, and archaeology. The RAS was a particularly important venue for discussion and scholarship in Assyriology. Archaeologist Henry Creswicke Rawlinson presented his work in copying and deciphering cunieform tablets in Persia (Iran) at the Society in the mid-19th century. The RAS played host to the 2nd International Congress of Orientalists in London in 1873, the year of its fiftieth anniversary. In 1919, the Society of Biblical Archaeology merged with the Royal Asiatic Society, bringing a further archaeological focus to the Society's remit. By the late 1920s, reports were read by archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson at RAS meetings of excavations in Iraq. Scope of collections: Minute books, films, artwork, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, maps, printed matter and the collection of Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales (including furniture, photographs and papers). See RAS website for further details. The Society also holds a large collection of archaeologist Aurel Stein's photographs. Website: http://royalasiaticsociety.org/ Digital Collections: https://royalasiaticcollections.org/ Blog: http://royalasiaticsociety.org/blog/ Twitter: @RAS_Soc Relevant contacts: Nancy Charley, Archivist Ed Weech, Librarian Links: Centenary Volume of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1923) Regulations of the Royal Asiatic Society Summary by Clare Lewis
Based in the Sackler Library in Oxford the Griffith Institute, established in 1939, is home to an important set of Egyptology resources. The archive evolved from the first Egyptology Professor at Oxford, F Ll Griffith’s (1862-1934) papers and excavation records. Sir Alan Gardiner (1879-1963) donated many antiquarian manuscripts and the archive has continued to benefit from the donation of various materials. The Institute holds, amongst others, the papers of Sir Alan H. Gardiner, Battiscombe Gunn (1883-1950) and Jaroslav Černý (1898-1970) and the records made by Howard Carter (1874-1939) during his excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The archive now consists of over 130 manuscript groups from Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. The digital catalogue includes some transcripts, for example of Flinders Petrie's excavation journals. There is also a microsite for the diary of Minnie Burton, wife of Harry Burton, photographer for Howard Carter in Egypt during the Tutankhamun excavations. The Griffith Institute has also recently acquired the diary of Jenny Lane, who as maid to Lucy Renshaw accompanied Amelia Edwards and Renshaw to Egypt in the 1870s. Scope of the collection Scholarly papers, nineteenth century photographs, paintings, squeezes, rubbings and drawings. The complete original excavation records from the tomb of Tutankhamun form a core group. Website: www.griffith.ox.ac.uk Blog: http://blog.griffith.ox.ac.uk Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/griffithinstitute/ Digital Catalogue: http://archive.griffith.ox.ac.uk/index.php/ Relevant Contacts Elizabeth Fleming, Topographical Bibliography & Archive Assistant Cat Warsi, Administrator & Archive Assistant Further Reading Stevenson, A. 2015. The object of study: Egyptology, archaeology, and anthropology at Oxford, 1860-1960. In Carruthers, W. (ed.), Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. New York; London: Routledge. p. 19-33. Summary by Clare Lewis
The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) was founded in 1882 as the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892), author and Egyptologist, with the assistance of Sir Erasmus Wilson (1809-1884) and Reginald Stuart Poole (1832-1895). It was renamed the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in 1919. Archives, held in the Society’s offices in Doughty Mews, London, relate to the EES from its inception 1882 to the present day. They also include the papers of the Society of the Preservation of Monuments of Ancient Egypt (SPAM), transferred to the EEF when it was wound up in 1910. Scope of the collection: Field notes, object and tomb cards relating to the Society’s excavations and expeditions in Egypt and the Sudan, letters, drawings and paintings, photographs and negatives, maps, administrative archives including minutes, accounts, subscription information, and papers relating to the Society’s publications, particularly the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Website: www.ees.ac.uk Twitter: @TheEES Blog:Collections Highlights ; http://egyptexplorationsociety.tumblr.com Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/egyptexplorationsociety/ National Archives/Historical Manuscripts Commission EES Listing (2000) Relevant Contacts Carl Graves, Education and Public Engagement Manager Further Reading Bierbrier, M.L. (ed.). 2012. Who Was Who in Egyptology, 4th Revised Edition. London: Egypt Exploration Society. James, T.G.H. (ed.). 1982. Excavating in Egypt: the Egypt Exploration Society 1882-1982. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewis, C.E., 2014. Peet, the JEA and the First World War. The Egypt Exploration Society Newsletter, Issue 11 Summer/ Autumn 2014, 8-9. Naunton, C. 2009. The Egypt Exploration Society: celebrating over 125 years of discovery. Current World Archaeology 36 (3.12), 18-24. Naunton, C. 2009. The archives of the Egypt Exploration Society: the current situation and possibilities for the future. Egyptian & Egyptological Documents, Archives, Libraries 1, 133-139. Stearns, W. N. 2000. Reconstructing Egypt's history: the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund. In Schlesinger, Arthur M. and Fred L. Israel (eds), Rediscovering ancient Egypt: chronicles from National Geographic. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. p. 67-89. Spencer, P. (ed.) 2007. The Egypt Exploration Society: The Early Years. London: Egypt Exploration Society. Vandenbeusch, M. 2011. Les premières fouilles de l'Egypt Exploration Fund: Édouard Naville à Tell el-Maskhuta. Bulletin de la Société d'Égyptologie de Genève 28 (2008-2010),141-172. |
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