There will never be another archaeologist like Amice Mary Calverley. She was a plane-flying, war-filming, desert-living Egyptologist, who created stunning drawings of the Temple of Seti I at Abydos.
With the onset of World War II she found herself fighting in a propaganda war against the Axis. However, one of the people who edited her Seti work, Egyptologist Hermann Junker, was aiding the Nazis. He did this even as he was still editing Calverley's work!
Born in Chelsea, London, UK in 1896, her drawings, financed by John Rockefeller Jr., were published in four oversized colour volumes. Her drawings were so good that her editors could find hieroglyphic errors made by the ancient Egyptians, but scarcely one made by her.
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They recognized that she had the rare ability to draw an ancient feature without taking any artistic license – she could make an exact copy
Nazi Egyptology is a complex subject. As Professor Thomas Schneider said, there is no uniform 'Nazi Egyptology' discipline. Instead there are a number of German Egyptologists who were thrown into the academic hole of the Third Reich - who each reacted to it in their own way.
An interesting story that I didn’t put into the article The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology, for brevity reasons, is that of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Bissing was a professor at Munich. He is perhaps most noted for his work at Abu Ghurab, done at the turn of the century, where he excavated the sun temple of King Niuserre.
Professor Schneider writes that Bissing was a deeply religious man who was “torn between his faith and National Socialism, concerned about the increasing number of repressive actions exerted by the Nazis.”
Thomas Schneider is exploring a subject that has never been studied before. The University of British Columbia professor is examining the history of German Egyptology during the Nazi era. The period that lasted from when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 - until he committed suicide in his bunker in 1945.
The research is a work in progress and Professor Schneider continues to receive new archival documents and information. He plans to turn his work into a book length manuscript.
While popular fiction, such as the Indiana Jones trilogy, depicts action packed films about this topic, the real story is far more complex.
Professor Schneider generously took the time to talk about his research with me. He also provided me with detailed written notes, that outline his research, to help me write this story.
Hitler Comes to Power
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"Germany had basically sacrificed, through the NS regime, its academic standing."
Professor of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies - University of British Columbia
Professor Thomas Schneider is a Professor of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver Canada.
He holds a Habilitation, Dr.phil, and MA in Egyptology from Basel University in Switzerland.
From 2005 to 2008 he was professor of Egyptology at Swansea University in Wales. From 2001 to 2005 he was a Research Professor in Egyptology, with the Swiss National Science Foundation.
He has also been a visiting professor at Heidelberg University and the University of Vienna in Austria.
His publications include, Lexicon of the Pharaohs. The ancient Egyptian kings from the earliest times to the Roman Empire and Asian personal names in Egyptian sources of the New Kingdom and Foreigners in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and the Hyksos.
He has two books coming out in 2010. One is The historian and the Egyptian history. An introduction to Egyptology Historiography. The other is The 101 most important questions: Ancient Egypt.
He is also working on a book on German Egyptology during the Nazi era (1933-1945).
There will never be another archaeologist like 
Nazi Egyptology is a complex subject. As Professor 
