Nazis, Rockefellers and the Tomb of Seti I: the Adventures of Amice Mary Calverley Prepare to go Public

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.

To say she lived an adventurous life would be an understatement. For months at a time she lived at Abydos in a house more than 10 kilometres from the nearest town. She took to shooting ethnographic videos of the people in the area, before being declared persona non grata in Egypt, in 1948, after her work rankled the Egyptian government.

She then went to Greece where she shot film of the Greek Civil War and nursed the wounded during the pivotal Battle of Gramos in 1949. The Greeks were so impressed by her that they gave her a commando badge, something she is said to have valued deeply. 

And in case you haven’t noticed – she was a she! She did all this between the 1920s and 1950s - a time when both Western and Egyptian society were still fairly patriarchal.

She lived the last years of her life in Oakville Canada – a town to the west of Toronto, passing away in 1959. Her niece, Sybil Rampen, has been taking care of her remaining artefacts, pictures, drawings and letters. Rampen is working with members of the community to establish a centre that will conserve Calverley’s material and make it available to the public.

She is being assisted by a team from the Society for the Studies of Egyptian Antiquities (SSEA) that is in the early stages of documenting the collection.

From Musician to Egyptologist

Amice Calverley’s early life saw her take on musical studies and a wide array of jobs. Her friend, Winifred Needler, wrote a memorial article after her death in 1959. She said that in her teenage life she studied at the Slade School for Fine

During World War I she worked in a munitions factory. Afterwards she trained to be a nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children, but left before graduating. She then worked as a masseuse at Christie Street Hospital (in Toronto).

She went to New York City where, according to Janet Grower, another friend, writing in 1959,

(She) supported herself as mannequin and dress-designer, and finished up at Wanamaker's Store.

In 1922 she got a scholarship at the Royal College of Music in England.

Working for a time with Vaughan Williams, she set her heart on writing an opera founded on a story by Mrs. de Morgan. It was finished (typically at 3 a.m.) in March 1926. It had many travels, and was given an audition at the Vienna Opera House, but to her grief was never accepted.

Her Egyptology break came when she landed a job as a draughtsman at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. While there she met Leonard Woolley and other archaeologists who encouraged her to develop her skills as an archaeological illustrator. 

They recognized that she had the rare ability to draw an ancient feature without taking any artistic license – she could make an exact copy.

Work at the Temple of Seti I

Seti I ruled ca. 1314-1304 BC and is well known for his building projects and military campaigns. He restored temples, sculptures and reliefs from all across Egypt, built a Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak and a built a tomb, KV17, in the Valley of the Kings. His mortuary temple at Abydos was a grand construction as well. Two vast courts, two hypostyle halls, a “butchery hall,” two Osiris halls.... the features that this temple had go on and on.

It took Calverley more than 10 years of work to record most of it – even with the assistance of her friend, Myrtle Broome. Their work was published in four oversized volumes, with two other volumes remaining unpublished, due to lack of funds.

Now, as you can probably guess, this was a very expensive undertaking. Keeping people at Abydos and publishing four huge volumes of work, requires a substantial amount of money. It would not have been possible, at least on this scale, if it were not for one man - John Rockefeller Jr.

He inherited a vast fortune from his father Rockefeller Sr – who in turn had made his millions through the creation of the Standard Oil Trust - the largest oil refinery firm in the world. The senior Rockefeller had bet correctly that the world was going to need an ever increasing amount of oil as automation gained speed.

While Rockefeller Junior was involved in his family business, he was really more interested in philanthropy. Among his many interests was the study of archaeology. Grants he gave helped to start up the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago – one of the largest schools for the study of ancient Near Eastern language, history and archaeology.

He visited the temple of Seti I during Calverley’s second season of work. At that time the work was going to be a modest affair with the publication of some of the temple’s art.

Rockefeller offered something grander. Winifred Needler wrote that:

He admired the wonderful sculptures of the temple of Sethos I and was deeply impressed with Miss Calverley’s reproduction of them. While there he indicated that he would, under certain conditions, be willing to finance the project.

The funding changed the project, allowing Calverley and Broome to spend a decade at Abdyos, recording the temple in exhausting detail. They were also supported by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) and the Oriental Institute.

It should be noted that the EES conceived, directed and funded the project starting in 1925, two years before Amice Calverley joined. Rockefeller's support helped pay the publication costs - four oversized, full colour volumes, are quite expensive to produce.

“From 28 through to 38 most years she would be (at) Abydos up in scaffolding and doing her work,” said Mark Trumpour, an SSEA member who is helping to record the remaining Calverley material in Oakville. He is also writing an article on her life for on an SSEA publication.

It was exhausting work, nine hours a day out in the desert. But Calverley and Broome did it well, with their volumes receiving scholarly acclaim.

Life at Abydos

By all accounts Calverley relished living at Abydos. She learned Arabic and was interested in the local culture, as well as the ancient. Needler wrote:

Her knowledge of the local country life occasionally allowed her to interpret the ancient scenes and hieroglyphs of the temple in a fresh and truer light. For example, she recognized that the distinctive field shelter built out of cornstalks as a seasonal home for family and animals was a primitive survival of the building represented by a well-known hieroglylph.

Two or three times a week, after about nine hours work in the temple, she conducted a clinic for the people of the village who came to receive sulpha ointment for a baby’s sores, bandages for damaged limbs and simple remedies and advice for score of ailments.

She even envisioned being able to fly a plane into Abydos. Janet Gower wrote in 1959 that:

I think it was in 1935 she decided to take up flying with the idea of having a plane at Abydos. Getting no particular encouragement from the EES, [Egypt Exploration Society] she did not complete her training, though she was thrilled with her solo flights.

My favourite anecdote is that of her Christmas Eve celebrations in 1947. She had pledged to cook dinner for her servants on Christmas Day so her celebration took place on the eve. Calverley celebrated with Needler and four guests, all male, one of whom was a member of parliament. And, according to Needler, she certainly took to local custom:

The bird arrived alive in the morning of the day and according to local custom was paraded for our inspection before being killed and roasted in the village courtyard.

World War II - Amice Calverley vs Hermann Junker

A strange chapter in Egyptian research occurred in the period before and during World War II. It saw Egyptologists Hermann Junker (a committed Nazi) and Amice Calverley be recruited by their respective governments to help spread propaganda in the Middle East.

These two had worked together in the lead-up to the war. Hermann Junker checked the inscriptions that Calverley copied to ensure that they were accurate.

Sir Alan Gardiner wrote in volume four, published after the war, that:

For checking the inscriptions much gratitude is due to Professor Junker who left only the ceilings to be dealt with after the war by Professor Fairman.

There is no evidence that either Calverley or Gardiner knew about Junker aiding the Nazis. In fact, it is only recent historical research that has brought this to light.  

Professor Thomas Schneider, of the University of British Columbia, has been researching the history of Egyptology during the Nazi era. He said that Junker was “deeply involved in national socialism and a member of the NSDAP and other Nazi organizations during the war,”

He was also head of the Cairo office of the German Archaeological Institute. It was funded by the German foreign ministry and Junker’s appointment had to meet the approval of Hitler’s government.

It was used for more than Egyptology. The office was used as “a local outpost that could be instrumentalized for the government,” said Professor Schneider. The Nazis had a number of interests in the Middle East. These included seeking the support of Arab groups against the allies. 

With the start of hostilities in September 1939 the office was closed down, but not before the Nazis had the opportunity to use it to for several years.

George Steindorff was a German Egyptologist who had been forced to flee to the United States because he was Jewish. He wrote in June 1945 that -

He (Junker) used his position and the State Institute to promote Nazi propaganda. The Institute was always available for Nazi meetings, Junker's house was always open to Nazi guests, chiefly Austrian.  Every Nazi found a cordial reception in the German Institute in Cairo.

Countering the Propaganda

By the time the war started Junker has been assisting the Nazis for some time. They recognized the value of propaganda and Hitler met with the Mufti of Jerusalem in 1941. The Mufti was opposed to Jewish settlement in British controlled Palestine. Hitler hoped to create a wedge between the Allies and the Arabs over this issue.

The British knew that they could not have an uprising in the Middle East. They were fighting the Germans and Italians in North Africa, leaving them no troops to spare. Freya Stark, a travel writer who had written extensively about the region, was employed to conduct propaganda efforts – to ensure the Arab population remained on the side of the allies.

Among the recruits was Amice Calverley. Her knowledge of Arabic, and experience living in the Egyptian countryside, made her a natural recruit.

Calverley felt that this could be a one way trip. She arranged for her personal collection of 800 antiquities and contemporary artefacts to be kept together in case she did not return. She wrote in a letter that:

When called on early in the war for special service in Egypt I felt that these collections, which might be irreplaceable, should not stand the risk of being dispersed should I become a casualty.

From the notes that I have seen, it is hard to tell what happened when Calverley arrived for duty. Needler said that she worked in the countryside, raising support among “women in the provincial towns and villages.” On the other hand Gower writes that:

After a long journey by sea, and flight from Durban, she arrived to find she was not wanted. She contrived to visit Abydos and found her people expecting her, having, in their mysterious way, known that their beloved lady had flown over them on her way north to Cairo.

In any event, by the end of 1941 she was on her way to the UK, to analyze photos for the Royal Air Force. She was allowed to work with her drawings of the Seti I temple, while she was off duty.

In volume four Calverley wrote that:

It was indeed fortunate that all the material survived unharmed, both it and those who prepared it were usually within range of bombing action.

Persona Non Grata in Egypt

In 1948 the Middle East was changing quickly. Countries were becoming independent as Britain and France realized that they could not hold onto their possessions in the region any longer. In that year Israel would declare independence, a decision that that would bring its neighbours, including Egypt, into a full-scale war.

In addition, the technological developments of the war meant that the world was getting smaller. Better airplanes meant reduced travel times and the development of helicopters made it easier for people to get into remote areas.

Amice Calverley recognized that changes were taking place, even before World War II. She had a great interest in ethnography, the study of contemporary cultures. Mark Trumpour told me that when she was done for the year at Abydos she would take a trip through Europe, before heading home. She went through many places including the Balkans, Romania and Eastern Europe, collecting traditional clothing and contemporary artefacts. 

After the war she wanted to shoot a film at Abydos. “The slant was going to be how much continuity there was between life contemporary in Abydos and life in Abydos in ancient times,” said Trumpour.

The Egyptian government did not approve. Trumpour said that there are two versions as to what happened next. One is that “the Egyptian government didn’t like the implication that nothing had changed in over 2000 years in Egypt.”

The other, a version that Sybil Rampen heard, is that the “wife of one of the important political figures at the time was interested in doing a film herself.” The Egyptian government, of course, sided with the official’s wife.

In any event Calverley was effectively declared “persona non grata” in Egypt and could not return to Abydos.

“She had pretty much finished her work at the time,” said Trumpour. But, “I’m sure she would have loved to go back.”

Battle of Gramos

Now, most people would have gone home after being kicked out of a country. But Calverley, she was something different. After spending a bit of time on Crete hoping to get the Egyptian situation resolved, she decided to get involved in what we think of as “war journalism.”

Greece at this time was in the midst of a civil war between communists and the national government. Grower wrote that:

In February she took air pictures of Greece under snow from a general's plane, landing during a battle-the first set-back of the Communists, who held much of Greece at that time.

Afterwards:

She returned to Crete and on the boat met a young soldier-musician whose troubles gave her the idea of going back to the front and filming the struggle.

She soon found herself involved in the Battle of Gramos, an area to the north of Greece. As a letter she wrote illustrates, she did a lot more than just filming:

I found myself charged with the entire responsibility of preparing and administering all the penicillin to a flood of wounded which overwhelmed us in the six days of that battle.

This battle would turn out to be one of the war’s last. By the end of the year the communists had been effectively kicked out of Greek territory. The war etched itself in Calverley’s mind. Long after it ended she was trying to raise awareness and funds for the treatment of wounded veterans. 

Rediscovering Amice Calverley

She spent her final years living in the Oakville, a town to the west of Toronto, Canada. She was in poor health but continued working, finishing up the remaining (and as yet unpublished) two volumes of work.

Much of her collection was donated to the Royal Ontario Museum. After her death in 1959 the museum held a special exhibition, of this collection, in her honour.

A few memorial pieces were published, including the ones by Janet Gower and Winifred Needler, which I have quoted in this piece.

Today researchers are in the process of rediscovering material, which had been passed on to her niece Sybil Rampen. This stuff had largely been forgotten by the Egyptological community after Calverley’s death.

Mark Trumpour told me that there are over 100 archaeological items, including many from Ancient Egypt, which have been passed down. These include a mix of amulets, scarabs, moulds, beads and pottery.

One of the scarabs appears to have the markings “Ankhesenamun,” the name of King Tut’s wife. Trumpour cautioned that it could be someone else with the same name, or it could be that someone replicated the artefact, long after Ankhesenamun’s death.

Perhaps the greatest treasures are those that Calverley herself made. The SSEA has discovered three original copies of paintings Calverley made at the temple of Seti I. A picture of one of these is being shown alongside this article.

There are also nearly 200 glass slides. They’re 3 ¼ inches by 3 ¼ inches, fairly high resolution for their time. It seems as if they were shot during the 1930’s. “They're from all over Egypt those slides - they're not just from Abydos,” said Trumpour, saying that they have identified slides from Cairo and Memphis. The SSEA team is in the process of figuring out where everything is from and hopes to get them digitized.

It’s hard to say what these photographs will tell us. Egypt has changed a lot since 1930’s, change that Calverley certainly knew was coming. Might Calverley have saved a last hurrah for us? Taken some photos of things that she thought were going to be different in the not too distant future?  “You never know what you’re going to find in these old pictures,” Trumpour said. 

Sir Alan Gardiner said of Calverley “we shall never see her like again”. Nothing seems impossible of such an incredible personality. 

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About The Author

Owen Jarus (follow me: e-mail or )

Last three pieces by this author:

19 New Objects from King Tutankhamun's Tomb Discovered in New York | 'Unique' astronomical object reveals Ancient Egyptians kept close tabs on the Big Dipper | King Tut suffered 'massive' chest injury, new research reveals

Owen Jarus is a freelance writer based in Toronto ,Canada. He has written articles on archaeology for a variety of media outlets including The Canadian Press newswire (CP), U of T Magazine, The Mississauga News and The Guelph Mercury. Education: BA from the University of Toronto in History, Geography and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations.