Stephen Quirke on Amelia Edwards and The Petrie Museum

Submitted by Prad on Wed, 11/11/2009 - 14:40

Description

Heritage Key enters the Petrie Museum in London to talk to the curator Dr Stephen Quirke, who explains the importance of one of the co-founders of the Egypt Exploration Society - Amelia Edwards. She was dedicated to protecting the Ancient Egyptian heritage from growing tourism by bringing artefacts to Britain, and creating a museum where students could learn from the discoveries. Named after its first professor, William Flinders Petrie, the museum was set up near the only university at the time which awarded degrees to women - the University College London.

Related Heritage ExpertsStephen Quirke

CreditsDr Stephen Quirke, Samantha Newton, Sean Williams

Transcription

She was a Victorian writer, travel writer and we have about a thousand objects in this collection from her own private collection, which she formed with Petrie's help in order to make a teaching collection. She said: “I'm not Egyptologist, I'm not archaeologist, but I want my own bequest, my money to go somewhere, where I could have studied myself.” At that time, in 1892 the only university in England that gave degrees to women was University College London.

She wanted Petrie to be the professor because he was the most energetic worker. She left this clause in her will that the first professor should not be over 40, and Petrie was 39 at that time. And her teaching collection was very much the kind of material someone of the middle-class means could afford at that time.

There's nothing spectacular except the one piece, which is now out of display. This is intended for the cult of the Kings. If they make sure that the king will receive offerings to the statue and the order will be maintained for eternity. So each king had these, because this is a very ritual moment in art history. Mainly the concept of beautiful in Ancient Egypt, the word 'nefer', is about the ideal body, the ideal limits. So the 'nefer' also means the limits.

This is one of the sculptures of the late Twelfth Dynasty, when king Amenemhat III had a particular method of rendering the face. Instead of the even smile the face shows some of the marks of age. You can just see the airlines on the cheeks. The lips are slightly downturn even to the smile, the eyelids are heavy. And that's very unusual.

Youth - not childhood – when they show children tend to be mini-Youths; they don't have proportion of children. And not old age. It's youth that expresses what is beautiful first. Here they've taken off the body, when they have the bodies preserved from the sculptures that perfect, useful bodies, but they've done something different with face. For Egyptian faces, the head is about identity. Like they say in the Book of the Dead, the secret, which is the formula that is inscribed in the Golden Mask of Tutankhamun. So here you have the same idea of the head as a kind of identity, the religious concept, but in a different way.

It was always one of the highlights of collection, there is a photograph of her desk at home before she died, when some of her collection was in her own house, and it's there. So she must have appreciated it. So, none of this would be here without Amelia Edwards.