back. Because most tourists did not attempt the crossing, Edwards and group had the Nile more or less to themselves from there on out.
The silence they gained cast a new spell on Edwards. For her, the weight of history could now be felt more palpably in the sultry air. The imagination could fly a little more freely, soaring, as Edwards would often record, like the falcons of old did overhead. They were also moving toward the most anticipated archaeological site of all: Abu Simbel. Consisting of two massive stone temples built in the thirteenth century BC by the Pharaoh Rameses II as a monument to both his military might and his love for his wife, the queen Nefertari, the site was originally situated on the shores of Lake Nasser.21 It was also physically elusive. Giant sand drifts would sometimes bury the site, leaving it only partially visible to those who had trekked so far to see it. At other times, the sands would blow away to reveal majestic rock carvings and hallowed entrances to painted rooms. Not knowing whether they would encounter the ancient monument exposed or hidden, Edwards was in appreciable suspense.22
Then, almost as if fate had played a hand in brushing aside the dunes and drifts, Edwards found a wonder. It was evening, and her first sighting of Abu Simbel arrived as a twilight dream:
As the moon climbed higher, a light more mysterious and unreal than the light of day filled and overflowed the wide expanse of river and desert. We could see the mountains of Abou Simbel standing as it seemed across our path, in the far distance—a lower one first; then a larger; then a series of receding heights, all close together, yet all distinctly separate. That large one—the mountain of the Great Temple—held us like a spell. For a long time it looked like a mere mountain like the rest. By and by, however, we fancied we detected a something—a shadow—such a shadow as might be cast by a gigantic buttress. Next appeared a black speck no bigger than a porthole. We knew that this black speck must be the doorway. We knew that the great statues were there, though not yet visible; and that we must see them soon. At length the last corner was rounded, and the Great Temple stood straight before us. The facade, sunk in the mountain side like a huge picture in a mighty frame, was now quite plain to see. The black speck was no longer a porthole, but a lofty doorway. Last of all, though it was night and they were still not much less than a mile away, the four colossi came out, ghostlike, vague, and shadowy, in the enchanted moonlight. Even as we watched them, they seemed to grow—to dilate— to be moving towards us out of the silvery distance.23
Edwards spent over a week investigating the site from morning to night and only agreed to depart as the complaints and impatience of her travel companions mounted. She made them promise that they could stop once again on the return home, and they did. Edwards’s enchantment with Abu Simbel was profound; it was also the site of her own archaeological discovery. This was the place where she dropped to her knees in excavation.
The unexpected find was a small, square chamber where sand had gathered in a steep slope angled from the ceiling to the floor, lit by a lone sun shaft, and on every wall were painted friezes in bright unfaded color and bas-relief sculptures. She and the other travelers who excavated by her side correctly surmised that the place had never been discovered. Edwards quickly had the ship crew working like “tigers” and sent someone to the nearest village to hire another fifty hands to help. The excavation was underway and “. . . the sand poured off in a steady stream like water.” When all had been cleared away, Edwards, the Painter, and even the Idle Man gathered in the chamber and got busy copying inscriptions, measuring and surveying the find, sketching the walls, and sniffing around for any further surprises. It was at that moment that the Idle Man lifted a human skull from the sand.
ABOVE : A Victorian lady traveler assisted by local men
Could a tomb be underfoot? Were mummies and papyri and jewels only a shovel scoop away? A smaller skull appeared next, one as “pure and fragile in texture as the cup of a water-lily.”24Everyone must have been holding their breath, hearts racing with the thought of a spectacular, gold-covered, ruby-lit, hieroglyphics-laden find.
Unfortunately, the new room proved to be only an empty basement. All archaeological hopes were dashed. What they had found in the decorated room, however, was apparently a lost library. Even if the discovery wasn’t as grand as the group had hoped, Edwards took special pride in it. It was a turning point for her, the moment when archaeology became not just a subject of study but a personal experience.
Lifting fragile old bones from the earth and brushing sand away from ancient objects were no longer activities that belonged to someone else, no longer the remote and exciting discoveries one read about in a book or newspaper article, actions that seemed exciting yet inaccessible. Edwards could now experience the thrill of unearthing a small piece of history with her own two hands. Archaeology was no longer a dream or a distant desire: it had become real.
With that feeling came a heightened awareness of archaeology’s value and its vulnerability. Shoveling sand, she was dismayed to see that workmen “wet with perspiration” were leaning against the paintings, marring their brilliance and smearing the color. She felt conflicted when the Painter scratched their names and the date of the chamber’s discovery into the ancient walls. That was a normal practice back then, but it nonetheless soiled the purity of the place. As Edwards thought about all the artifacts for sale at roadside stalls, the museum collections where prized objects had been stolen from their place, the common looting, and the slow deterioration and loss of some of the world’s greatest historic sites, she was struck by the unshakable desire to do something about it. A bolt of passion. A call to arms. She would appeal to her readers with a question:
I am told that the wall paintings which we had the happiness of admiring in all their beauty and freshness are already much injured. Such is the fate of every Egyptian monument, great or small. The tourist carves it over with names and dates, and in some instances with caricatures. The student of Egyptology, by taking wet paper “squeezes” sponges away every vestige of the original colour. The “Collector” buys and carries everything off of value that he can, and the Arab steals it for him. The work of destruction meanwhile goes on apace . . . The Museums of Berlin, of Turin, of Florence are rich in spoils which tell their lamentable tale. When science leads the way, is it wonderful that ignorance should follow?25
JUMPING AHEAD eight years, Edwards is a woman out of the field and at her desk. Returned to her life in England, she sits in her personal library, which contains over three thousand books. Littered on the shelves and lined up in tall cases are specimens of Greek and Etruscan pottery, Egyptian antiquities, antique glass, engravings, and watercolor sketches. She’s a matronly woman, robust and smart looking, silver hair swept up and braided on top of her head, eyes dark and intelligent, her features rather beautiful. Outside the wild birds are in a tizzy, and “thrushes drop fearlessly into the library to be fed,” while the robins perch on the tops of high books and at Edwards’s feet as she lies “reading or writing in a long Indian chair under a shady tree” on a summer day.26 She has since her travels along the Nile become a reputable Egyptologist in her own right. Edwards has taught herself to read hieroglyphics—a mighty task. She has also redirected her passion for Egypt’s archaeology into something of a savior’s work.
Passions still simmering, Amelia Edwards was the woman responsible for thinking of, advocating for, and ultimately assembling the Egypt Exploration Fund, which was later renamed the Egypt Exploration Society.27 A powerful organizer, she led the way in promoting research and excavation in the Nile Delta. As the society notes in its own organizational history, “Amelia Edwards, together with Reginald Stuart Poole of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, founded the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1882 in order, as announced at the time in several daily newspapers, ‘to raise a fund for the purpose of conducting excavations in the Delta, which up to this time has been very rarely visited by travellers.’” In asking the public for financial contribution, she enabled a host of new investigations
