Margaret Alice Murray

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Margaret Murray, 1928

Margaret Alice Murray (born July 13, 1863 in Calcutta , India , † November 13, 1963 in Welwyn , Hertfordshire ) was a British anthropologist and Egyptologist . She was widely known in academic circles for scientific contributions to Egyptology and folklore studies that led to a theory of a pan-European, pre-Christian, pagan religion around the " horned god ".

Youth and education

Margaret Murray was born in Calcutta on July 13, 1863, and was the younger daughter of James Charles Murray and his wife Margaret Carr. Her father's family, who were partners in a Manchester merchant firm , had lived in India for several generations. Her mother came from a religious family in Northumbria and had come to India as a missionary and social worker to improve the living conditions of Indian women.

Murray spent her childhood and youth between India and England, with the exception of a stay from 1873 to 1875 in Bonn , where she learned German. She was tutored mainly from her mother. In England she often stayed with her uncle John Murray, the pastor of Lambourn in Berkshire , and later rector of Rugby, who then worked on her schooling. Through him she got to know ancient history .

Back in India, she completed her first training as a nurse. In 1883 her father allowed her to work as a nurse at Calcutta General Hospital for three months . Margaret Murray was the first woman in India to be allowed to do so. Back in England in 1866, she had to give up her hopes of working as a nurse as she was considered too small for the job due to her small height of only 1.45 m (4ft10). She then worked in the social sector, first in rugby, then in Bushey Heath , Hertfordshire, where her parents settled in 1887 on their return from India.

It was not until January 1894 that Margaret Murray went to University College London , the only one where women could study at the time. She wanted to study archeology , but at the time it was difficult for women to get a diploma in this subject . Therefore she chose the detour via linguistics and anthropology and studied Egyptian hieroglyphs . Perhaps these difficulties were what led her to join the suffragette movement.

Egyptologist - Assistant Professor - Archaeologist

In 1898 Murray took over the teaching of hieroglyphics and Coptic in the beginners classes of the Egyptian department of the University College in London. A year later, Petrie helped her to secure employment as a junior lecturer at the university, although she lacked the formal requirements. She was promoted several times, so in 1909 to assistant lecturer and in 1921 senior lecturer. In 1922 she became a fellow .

After 1914 she practically headed the department while Petrie was in Egypt. Since she didn't earn enough at college, she also gave evening classes and extended her lectures on ancient Egyptian history , religion , language and culture to Oxford . She also cataloged the Egyptian holdings of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin , the Royal Museum in Edinburgh , the Manchester Museum of the University of Manchester and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Discovery of the Osireion in Abydos

In the 1902/03 season, Flinders Petrie had his wife Hilda responsible for the excavations in Abydos . Margaret Murray, whose knowledge of religious texts was important for copying, and the artist Miss F. Hansard for drawing the reliefs were there. The three women took over all the necessary aspects of the company. In the previous season St. G. Caulfeild (Algernon St. George Thomas Caulfield ) had partially exposed the long corridor inside the enclosure wall ( Temenos ). The great mass of sand that had been removed had left a huge furrow like a natural ravine. Petrie gave this site the name "Osireion".

In the tombs of Saqqara

Drawing from the tomb of Sechamka, 5th dynasty in Saqqara

For the winter of 1903-1904, Flinders Petrie had received permission to let Margaret Murray in Saqqara copy those graves of the 4th Dynasty that Auguste Mariette excavated in the mid-19th century and only briefly recorded. After Mariette's death, Gaston Maspero had published it under the title Les Mastabas de l'Ancien Empire . There was a desire that copies of the wall drawings and inscriptions should also be made of the smaller and less known mastabas . The excavations were nominally under the Cairo and Rais Khalifa Museum , so Murray had to hire an Egyptian overseer.

Murray was supported by the experienced draftsmen F. Hansard and Jessie Mothersole.

“We divided the work so that the two artists drew the human figures, animals and sacrificial rituals, while I was responsible for the hieroglyphs and the plans of the graves. It is thanks to the reliable work and skill of the two women that the Egyptian Research Account can now publish the copies from the graves. "

- Margaret Alice Murray : Saqqara mastabas: part I – II

They opened a total of nine graves, six of which had already been sketched by Mariette and three that had not yet been recorded. They copied a grave in the Cairo Museum. Hilda Petrie also helped by copying some of the inscriptions that were in the courtyard of Mariette's house in Saqqara. Phoebe Slater also supported her in completing some of the drawings and RA Yule with the creation of the plans. Murray also thanked Arthur Weigall for his support in many ways in her work, which she was probably very proud of.

The translation of the inscriptions was later carried out by Kurt Sethe and these were published in the second volume in 1937, in which the artist Florence Kate Kingsford , who had already participated in the excavation campaigns in 1905 and 1906, also contributed.

The investigation of the mummies of Rifeh

Margaret Murray (with apron) and Flinders Petrie (left) Dr. John Cameron (right) examining one of the Rifeh mummies at the University of Manchester in 1908

By 1825 the Literary and Philosophical Society in Leeds had already carried out the unwrapping and examination of a mummy . This paved the way for Margaret Murray, who was then the first female director of the Manchester Museum's Egyptian Department, to assemble a group for the study and autopsy of mummies.

Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray believed that only through studies on the object, including the mummies themselves, could the efforts of archaeologists be further developed. Petrie discovered the grave of the "two brothers" in Rifeh in 1907 and the contents of the grave with the two painted mummy coffins from the 12th Dynasty (around 1985 to 1773 BC) went to the Manchester Museum. In the grave of the "two brothers" was a papyrus that was translated by Margaret Murry and published by the Manchester Museum in 1910.

In front of the audience in the large auditorium of the University of Manchester and in the presence of Flinders Petrie, John Cameron and an unnamed lady, Margaret Murray began in 1908 to unwrap the mummies of the "two brothers". This was an important development in scientific investigation because it required an interdisciplinary team. These specialists in the fields of anatomy , chemistry, and textiles carried out a comprehensive study of the mummies.

There was little evidence of mummification from the Middle Kingdom (circa 1900 BC), and the bodies examined showed that there was generally less careful embalming preparation than in the Old Kingdom . The internal organs were removed, but less attention was paid to preserving the body. A layer of resin was usually applied to the surface of the skin and this left the body with insufficient drying out and soon putrefaction . Although a lot of effort has been made with the external appearance of the mummies, there is usually only a small pile of bone inside with little or no evidence of tissue.

The mummies of the "two brothers" were particularly interesting because the difference in their condition was very noticeable. At the time of unwrapping, the mummy of Khnum-night was completely dry, while the remains of Necht-ankh were quite damp and most of the bandages were also wet. The mummy of Khnum-Nacht is a good example of the low level of knowledge about mummification in the Middle Kingdom. There was hardly any tissue and the remnants disintegrated into a fine powder when unrolled. The preservation of his nails had also not received any special measures. The Necht-ankh mummy was better preserved, although the body had fallen to pieces before it was unpacked. The bones were undamaged and in place. There was even some hair. The embalmers had the nails of the fingers and toes wrapped with thread to prevent loss during mummification.

John Cameron carried out the anatomical studies. His analysis of the skeleton showed that Nacht-Ankh had died in middle years, while Khnum-Nacht had died when he was about sixty. "The appearance of Nacht-Anch's skeleton indicated that it was a eunuch." His skull was of a non-negroid type, while the skull of the older priest Khnum Nacht had negroid features.

This work is considered the first interdisciplinary study of mummies and pioneered future scientific mummy openings. In 1979, Rosalie David , the founder of forensic Egyptology, examined the mummies of the "two brothers" with the means available to her 70 years later as part of the Manchester Mummy Project she founded in 1973 at her "Institute for Biomedical Egyptology". She was able to use modern genetics to show that they were neither related nor even looked alike.

1920–1923 in Malta (Borġ in-Nadur)

The area of ​​the megalithic culture (Greek: mega = large, lithos = stone), in Borġ in-Nadur (= “a pile of stones on the hill”) about 1 km north of Birżebbuġa was built in 1920–1923 (some sources write 1922–1927) explored by Murray. Here she found the remains of a magnificent megalithic temple, which probably dates from the last phase of the temple period around 2500 BC. BC, along with a Bronze Age settlement. The megaliths that formed the walls of the temple are now around 50 cm high.

1930–1931 Talayot ​​culture on Menorca

1930–1931 Murray went to Menorca on behalf of Cambridge University , where, together with the Institut d'Estudis Catalans Barcelona, ​​they built the megalithic buildings of the Talayot ​​culture (approx. 850 BC) in Trepucó , about 2 km south of the island's capital Maó , excavated. Tower-like buildings, the talayots , were built from large blocks of stone on an area of ​​around 5000 m² . The blocks were placed on top of one another without the use of any type of mortar. Archaeological finds have revealed that at least seven talayots were originally located here, two of which have survived. The central talayot, with a small window in the upper part, is the largest in Menorca. Two talayots in the remains of the western wall can still be seen. To the left of the settlement is a prehistoric place of worship with a unique taula , a monument made of two large stones in the shape of the letter "T". At the Taula in Trepucó, the supporting monolith is 4.20 meters high and the capital measures 3.50 mx 1.50 m.

Murray became Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the University of London in 1924, a position she held until her retirement in 1935. In 1926 she was made a member of the Royal British Anthropological Institute ( fellow of Britain's Royal Anthropological Institute ). For her publications she received the "Doctor of Letters" (DLitt.) In 1931. In 1953, Murray became honorary president of the Folklore Society.

Ten years later Margaret Murray published her last work at the age of 100, an autobiography entitled My first hundred years , in German: Meine Erste Hundert Jahre . In the same year she died on November 13, 1963 in the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital of Welwyn, Hertfordshire. Her body was cremated in the crematorium of Golders Green in Middlesex .

Murray Witchcraft Thesis

Margaret's interest in witches began around 1915 after she returned from Egypt sick. She chose Glastonbury ( Somerset ) for her recovery and says in her autobiography:

“[…] One cannot stay in Glastonbury without becoming interested in 'Joseph of Arimathea' and the 'Holy Grail'. As soon as I got back to London, I did some careful research. This led to a paper on: 'Egyptian elements in ‹the Grail› romance'. ”

“[…] One cannot be in Glastonbury without being interested in ' Joseph of Arimathea ' and the ' Holy Grail '. As soon as I got back to London, I did a thorough investigation. That led to an article 'Egyptian Elements in the Grail Romance' "

- Margaret Alice Murray : My first hundred years.

Murray's best known and most controversial text, The Witches Cult in Western Europe , was published in 1921. She wrote this book during a period when she was unable to excavate Egypt. There she set out the essential elements of her thesis that there was an extensive underground system of pagan resistance against the Christian Church in Europe. The pagans were organized in a coven or convention of 13 people each who worshiped a male god. Murray considered these pagan religions consistently existent from the Neolithic to the late Middle Ages when the witch hunt began around 1450. Despite the bloody nature of the human sacrifice cult that Murray described, the cult was attractive because of its liberation and equality of women, its open sexuality and its own Resistance to church tutelage and oppression. Murray's ideas can be attributed to a conservative concept of romanticized country living in response to modernism and the horrors of World War I.

Murray's theories have been criticized by historians of witchcraft like CL Ewen, who called them "stale nonsense". Ever since academic reviews were published in obscure journals, critical analysis of Murray's work has often failed. It is generally admitted that Murray's ideas, while well expressed, were the result of the misinterpretation and exaggeration of evidence taken from unconfirmed sources. Murray was also accused of forging some documents.

The classical view of their theories, which prefer selected text passages to support their thesis in the book is Europe's Inner Demons by Norman Cohn found. No historian or scholar has ever challenged Cohn's inferences. Historians such as Ronald Hutton , GL Kitteredge , Keith Thomas and many others reject Murray's ideas. Professor JB Russell's assessment sums up her position: “Modern historical scholarship rejects Murray's thesis with all its variants. The scholars have gone too far in their rejection of Murray's thesis, since many fragments of pagan religion really appear safely in medieval witchcraft. But the fact remains that Murray's thesis is broadly untenable. The argument for the survival of a fertility cult from ancient times through the Middle Ages to the present day is unraveled with sham evidence. "

Criticism of the thesis

Murray's original ideas were strongly influenced by the ideas of the anthropologist Sir James Frazer , who in his work The Golden Branch reported in detail on a world belief of the holy king. Frazer's ideas in this regard did not stand the test of time, and modern anthropologists generally criticize them for being overly reductionist. Murray's sources were generally very limited: “some well-known works by continental demonologists , some writings printed in England, and a number of published records of Scottish witch trials . The much larger amount of unpublished evidence has been totally ignored. ”(Hutton 1991) An example of Murray's dubious methodology can be seen in her concept of the thirteen member coven. She quoted from a few of several thousand Scottish witch trial protocols. While searching for 13-member coven, she excluded or added people to the coven until a total of 13 was reached for each specified group. For example, the 1597 Aberdeen witch trial involved 31 people. Murray only recorded twenty-six of the defendants to make two covens. Murray's thesis of a pagan underground resistance movement against the medieval church seems so implausible because the church worldview was so deeply rooted in society that there was no room for other ideas; the church was taken for granted and not questioned. Evidence from the Middle Ages shows that even the smallest heretical sects were discovered and destroyed. It therefore seems impossible that the secret Europe-wide cult presented by Murray could survive into the 15th century.

Of the English witch trials, Murray preferred, in part, the trials carried out by the self-styled witch hunter Matthew Hopkins , the evidence of which was obtained by dubious means and greatly distorted.

Later writings

Murray's later books were written for a more popular audience, and in a style much more imaginative and entertaining than standard academic work. In the 1933 book God of the Witches , she made the claim that the witch cult had worshiped a horned god whose origins go back to prehistoric times. Murray claimed that the statements made by the witches in the witch trials to worship the devil proved that they really did worship such a god. According to Murray, at pagan assemblies the devil was represented by a priest wearing a horned helmet. Unsurprisingly, Murray's witch cult was not centered on a goddess as in modern Wicca .

Murray was now getting more and more emotional in defense of her ideas and subjecting her opponents to religious prejudice. In her 1954 book, The Divine King in England , she expanded her views on a secret plot by pagans among the English nobility, the same English nobility that provided the highest dignitaries of the Church. For example, the suspicious death of the English King William Rufus was a ritual sacrifice, carried out by Henry I. Her portrayals developed more and more into an entertaining speculation that was not taken seriously by even her most loyal followers, although it was used in novels .

The impact of Murray's thesis on modern academic thought

When viewed benevolently, certain pieces of the puzzle of a surviving pagan religion in European history can be seen. Murray's work drew much attention to this previously hidden story of a pagan religion. Isolated individuals or groups practiced customs and rituals that did not conform to Christian dogma. Signs of this can be traced in church architecture and local customs, legends and sagas. However, the followers basically saw themselves as Christians. It is also difficult to clearly define when a “pagan” or “Christian” belief begins after the popular belief about spirits, fairies, etc. continues to exist in Christian cultures. There have been some academics who, while acknowledging that Murray exaggerated and falsified evidence, have come under the influence of their ideas. Most important of them was Carlo Ginzburg , who discovered in Inquisition protocols that there were hereditary groups of shamans called Benandanti in the Italian Friuli of the 16th century, who were the descendants of an ancient shamanistic group. The statements of the Benandanti followers about this cult that appear in the inquisition protocols are so interesting because their content shows no connection whatsoever to the church's ideas about the witch's sabbath, the devil's pact and belief in demons, which caused the inquisitors to be amazed and even confused. For Ginzburg these are remnants of an old Indo-European shamanism. However, the most important elements of Murray's thesis remain unproven. There was no universal pagan cult parallel to the Christian one in Europe. There are possible remnants of pre-Christian times in local elements of pagan traditions within medieval life, and some pagan deities may have been transformed into Christian saints or seen as fairies and other similar beings.

The legacy of their thinking

Like today's modern books on conspiracy theories, Murray's sensational works were popular bestsellers in the 1940s and believed to be true. Murray's influence can still be felt in popular belief today, but academics have proven errors in Murray's work, which cast doubt on their thesis. Jacqueline Simpson accuses contemporary historians of barely refuting Murray's ideas after they were published. It is alleged that her books led to the formation of Murrayite Covens (small witches' congregation) in the 1930s, one of whom likely accepted Gerald Gardner in the 1940s . Gardner subsequently became one of the founders of Wicca , an influential branch of contemporary neo-paganism . The affectionate phrase "The Old Religion," used by pagans to describe an ancient pagan religion, derives from Murray's theory, although many are increasingly realizing that it should be more accurately called "The Old Religions." Other Wiccan terms such as Coven , Esbat , the Wicca Annual Circle and the Horned God are clearly influenced by or can be traced back to Murray's work.

Their ideas have had a recognized, significant influence on the emergence of Wicca and the re-emergence of a neo-pagan religion. However, Margaret Murray has been criticized by most historians for her tendency to subjectively interpret or manipulate evidence to fit theory.

bibliography

  • The Osireion at Abydos (1904)
  • Saqqara Mastabas (1905)
  • Elementary Egyptian Grammar (1905)
  • The tomb of two brothers (1910)
  • Elementary Coptic Grammar (1911)
  • The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921)
  • Excavations in Malta, vol. 1-3 (1923, 1925, 1929)
  • Egyptian Sculpture (1930)
  • Egyptian Temples (1931)
  • Cambridge Excavations in Minorca, vol. 1-3 (1932, 1934, 1938)
  • God of the Witches (1933)
  • Petra, the rock city of Edom (1939)
  • A Street in Petra (1940)
  • The Splendor That Was Egypt (1949)
  • The Divine King in England (1954)
  • The Genesis of Religion (1963)
  • My First Hundred Years (1963)
  • Murray Books on the Internet Archive

swell

literature

  • Norman Cohn : Europe's Inner Demons. Pimlico, London 1973.
  • Rosalie David: Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt. Penguin, London / New York 2003.
  • Cecil L'Estrange Ewen: Some Witchcraft Criticism. 1938.
  • Marco Frenschkowski : The witches: A cultural-historical analysis ( MarixWissen series ). Marix, Wiesbaden 2012.
  • Ronald Hutton: The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 1991.
  • Ronald Hutton: The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999.
  • GL Kitteredge: Witchcraft in Old and New England. 1951, pp. 275, 421, 565.
  • JB Russell: A History of Witchcraft, Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans. Thames & Hudson, reprinted 1995.
  • Jacqueline Simpson: Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why? In: Folklore. Volume 105, 1994, pp. 89-96.
  • Keith Thomas: Religion and the Decline of Magic. 1971/1997, pp. 514-517.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Today, the departments of the various universities award these fellowships on the basis of academic achievements made so far.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alison Petch: "Margaret Murray was a controversial folklorist"
  2. ↑ Margaret Alice Murray: Saqqara mastabas: part I – II. British School of Archeology in Egypt [BSAE] (Ed.), Bernard Quaritch, London 1905, Chapter I, Introduction .
  3. ↑ Margaret Alice Murray, Kurt Sethe, WLS Loat, F. Hansard, Jessie Mothersole, Hilda (Urlin) Petrie, Florence Kate Kingsford: Saqqara mastabas. Part I-II (= Publications of the Egyptian research account. Vol. X-XI). BSAE / B. Quaritch, London 1905-1937 ( online ).
  4. ↑ From mummy to modern medicine - Developing science - BBC News November 6, 1998
  5. ^ Margaret Alice Murray: The tomb of two brothers. Published by Sherratt & Hughes; etc., Manchester 1910
  6. ↑ Extensive page about the "two brothers" Manchester Museum
  7. ↑ Rosalie David & Rick Archbold: When Mummies Tell. Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2001, ISBN 3899101324 , page 35 ff.
  8. ↑ Rosalie David: The Two Brothers: Death and the Afterlife in Middle Kingdom Egypt. David Brown Book Co., 2007 edition ISBN 0954762231
  9. ^ Photo gallery of Borg in-Nadur ( Memento from November 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ J. Mascaró Pasarius: Las Taulas . Ateneo de Mahón 1983
  11. ^ Archaeological sites in Menorca
  12. ↑ Margaret A. Murray's biography at servinghistory.com
  13. ^ Margaret Alice Murray: My first hundred years. W. Kimber, London 1963
  14. ↑ Some Witchcraft Criticism, 1938
personal data
SURNAME Murray, Margaret Alice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British anthropologist and Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Calcutta , India
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1963
Place of death Welwyn, Hertfordshire (UK)