Caroline Ransom Williams

Caroline Louise Ransom Williams , née Caroline Louise Ransom , (born February 24, 1872 in Toledo (Ohio) ; † February 1, 1952 there ) was an American Egyptologist and classical archaeologist and one of the first women ever in the field of Egyptology.

Ransomware in 1908

Caroline Ransom, from a wealthy Methodist family in Toledo, attended Lake Erie College and Mount Holyoke College , where she received her BA in 1896 . She was particularly influenced by her aunt Louise Fitz Randolph , who taught archeology and art history at Mount Holyoke College. With this she undertook a trip through Europe and Egypt, where her interest in Egyptology was awakened. From 1898 to 1900 she was the first woman in America to study Egyptology at the University of Chicago with James H. Breasted and obtained an AM in 1900 . In the same year she went to the University of Berlin , where she studied Egyptology with Adolf Erman . After her return to Chicago, she received her doctorate in 1905 with a thesis on antique furniture. From 1905 to 1910 she taught as an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College . In 1909 Ransom was only the fifth woman to become a (corresponding) member of the German Archaeological Institute . From 1910 to 1916 she was employed as an Assistant Curator at the Department of Egyptology at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . Here she was involved in the development and publication of the holdings. a. Co-author of the Museum's Egyptian Collection Handbook from 1911. She returned to Toledo in 1916 and married real estate developer Grant Williams. In the winter of 1916/17 she worked on the small Egyptian collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art , and in 1918 the Egyptian holdings of the Toledo Museum of Art . From 1917 to 1924 she worked from her Toledo residence as curator of the Egyptian holdings of the New York Historical Society , which she cataloged. In 1926/27 she took part at the invitation of Breastead in the project of the University of Chicago to research the inscriptions in Luxor and worked on the mortuary temple of Ramses III. in Medinet Habu . In 1927/28 she briefly taught as the first lecturer in Egyptian Art and Archeology at the University of Michigan . In 1932 she published the grave of Per-Neb for the Metropolitan Museum and in 1935/36 she worked on the project to publish the coffin texts in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Publications (selection)

• Studies in ancient furniture. Couches and beds of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1905 ( digitized version ).
• Co-author: Handbook to the Egyptian Rooms. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1911 ( digitized version ).
• The stele of Mentu-weser. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1913.
• The New York Historical Society Catalog of Egyptian Antiquities, Numbers 1-160. Gold and silver jewelery and related objects. New York Historical Society, New York 1924 ( digitized ).
• The Decoration of the Tomb of Per-neb. The Technique and the Color Conventions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1932.

literature

• Lothar Wickert : Contributions to the history of the German Archaeological Institute 1879 to 1929. von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0395-5 , p. 15. 192.
• Morris L. Bierbrier: Who was who in Egyptology . 4th revised edition. Egypt Exploration Society, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-85698-207-1 , p. 581.

Web links

• Caroline Louise Ransom Williams (with picture).
• Barbara S. Lesko: Caroline Louise Ransom Williams (with list of publications) .
• in the Mount Holyoke Alumni database
• Breaking Ground, Breaking Tradition: Bryn Mawr and the First Generation of Women Archaeologists (with picture)