Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age

by Kathleen Sheppard Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

Overview

The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.



In Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, Kathleen Sheppard brings the untold stories of these women back into this narrative. Sheppard begins with the earliest European women who ventured to Egypt as travelers: Amelia Edwards, Jenny Lane, and Marianne Brocklehurst. Their travelogues, diaries, and maps chronicled a new world for the curious. In the vast desert, Maggie Benson, the first woman granted permission to excavate in Egypt, met Nettie Gourlay, the woman who became her lifelong companion. They battled issues of oppression and exclusion and, ultimately, are credited with excavating the Temple of Mut.



Women in the Valley of the Kings upends the grand male narrative of Egyptian exploration and shows how a group of courageous women charted unknown territory and changed the field of Egyptology forever.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"In this lively, absorbing revisionist account of the golden age of archaeology in Egypt, Kathleen Sheppard brings to brilliant life a now-forgotten network of remarkable women whose work enabled the headline-grabbing discoveries of their more celebrated male colleagues and changed Egyptology forever." - Lynne Olsen, author of Empress of the Nile and NYT Bestseller Madame Fourcade’s Secret War


"Kathleen Sheppard shines a historian’s flashlight into the dark recesses of ancient Egyptian history in Women in the Valley of the Kings. Howard Carter has nothing on the women Egyptologists of her book whose mostly uncredited toil, talent and tenacity helped build the foundations of the discipline. An engaging and evocative work that transports the reader into Egyptian tombs and down the Nile with the hidden heroines of Egyptology." - Heath Hardage Lee, author of The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon and The League of Wives

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160419114
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/16/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	938,110