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Tea on the terrace takes readers on a journey up and down the Nile with archaeologists and Egyptologists. Travellers such as Americans Theodore Davis, Emma Andrews, and James Breasted, as well as Britons Wallace Budge, Maggie Benson, and Howard Carter arrived in Alexandria, moved on to Cairo, travelled up the Nile by boat and train, and visited Luxor. Throughout the journey, readers spend some time with them at their hotels and on their boats. We listen in on their conversations, watch their activities, and begin to understand that much archaeological work was not done at the field site or in the university museum, as many historians have argued. Instead, understanding the politics of conversation in the social studies of science, the book shows that hotels in Egypt on the way to and from home institutions and excavation sites were liminal, but powerful and central, spaces which became foundations for establishing careers, building and strengthening scientific networks, and generating and experimenting with new ideas. These are familiar stories to readers, but Tea on the terrace presents them in a new framework to show Egyptologists’ activities in a seemingly familiar but unknown space. A mix of archaeological tourism and the history of Egyptology, the book is based on original archival research, using letters, diaries, biographies, and travel guides as well as secondary sources.
9 ‘Trying desperately to make myself an Egyptologist’: James Breasted’s early scientific network Kathleen Sheppard Introduction On Tuesday 30 October 1894, James Henry Breasted (JHB) wrote to his parents back in Rockford, Illinois from his steamship in the Mediterranean: ‘Just think of it! I am within a few hours of the shores of Egypt and will soon be among the scenes I have studied so long. It seems hardly credible. Now I hope to use every moment and hasten back to my homeland and all I love as soon as ever I can’ (JHB Papers, Box 4).1 Breasted’s first
foundations separate from the empire. While gentlemen and officers would go to great lengths for one another, they were bound by the past rather than by hopes for the future, unlike the next network under consideration. The humanitarian network More than either the peninsular or the scientific networks, the broadly defined
why McCoy failed to develop a comprehensive domestic collecting mechanism within Australia. The third section continues the argument by exploring McCoy’s connections with, and reliance on, British natural history dealers. In doing so, this section questions the notions of centres and peripheries in the study of colonial networks. The final section looks at the role of scientific exchanges and McCoy’s attitude to these within scientific networks. This demonstrates that McCoy’s museum was a product of his procurement networks, which
and rookie scientific networks Not a lot is known about the Guthrie Roger who arrived in Cairo in February 1893. He came to work on a project with Howard Carter for Percy Newberry and the London-based Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) in the Delta. Carter had trained with Petrie in 1892 at Amarna, but was not ‘built of such austere stuff’ as Petrie, so he decided to shift his work to a new site and with a new lead archaeologist. 69 In the fall of 1892, he started working with Newberry; in early 1893
Introduction: clusters of knowledge Julia Roberts and Kathleen Sheppard This edited volume is the first to apply scientific network theories to the history of archaeology. As an innovative approach to historiography it takes its place amongst recent studies that have transformed the discipline. Using theories including those of Ludwik Fleck, David Livingstone, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, the authors of the following chapters have taken an unprecedented approach to their subjects: rather than looking at individuals and groups biographically or institutionally
This book, then, attempts to begin a reappraisal of some of the best-known activities of people who worked on major sites whose finds made a significant impact on Egyptology. Many histories of Egyptology mention these hotels, but none centralise them. Some of the people, places, and events I address will be familiar to Egyptologists and devotees of the field, but that is part of the point: I hope to make the familiar new with an analytical shift that privileges the social studies of scientific networks. That is, I hope to demonstrate that where knowledge is created
performed by Western people who were often new to Egypt, new to the discipline, and who needed connections to powerful people and networks to get their careers started, such as they were. By contextualising their activities in these places and spaces, we can analyse these familiar sites and people in a fresh light. The hotels, boats, and other meeting spots addressed here were central to the discipline as peaks on the topography of the scientific landscape and pivotal nodes of scientific networks in Egypt. They were particularly suited for these activities because of the
universally accepted. If it was, it was more by lip service than hard cash. Nevertheless, ambitions to set up international contacts and plug into global scientific networks can be identified in this period. Elite proponents infiltrated government and advocated that the museum was a cultural institution vital to the colony’s yearning to be a nation, an object of value in itself. Along with the
South Wales and the Cape Colony, 1826–1843’ (DPhil., University of Oxford, 2001), p. 179. Works that examine scientific networks in the early nineteenth century include: Roderick Weir Home (ed.), Australian Science in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 ); R. W. Home and S. G. Kohlstedt (eds), International Science and