Mary Cecil, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney

Mary Cecil, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney

Mary Rothes Margaret Cecil, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney , née Mary Rothes Margaret Thyssen-Amherst , (born April 25, 1857 in Diddlingon Hall , † December 21, 1919 in London ) was a British amateur archaeologist .

overview

Mary Rothes Margaret Cecil was the eldest daughter of William Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney and Margaret Susan Mitford, the only daughter of Admiral Robert Mitford , who brought the Alexandria Obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle , to London. She married Colonel Lord William Cecil on September 2, 1885 , a son of William Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Exeter , with whom she had four sons. Their name was after the marriage "Mary Rothes Margaret Cecil". When her father died on January 16, 1909 without a male heir, she inherited the title of nobility Baroness Amherst of Hackney due to a special inheritance regulation in her favor .

Life

Mary, called "May", was the eldest of seven daughters in the family. The Thyssen-Amherst owned properties in Hackney and Norfolk . Didlington Hall Country House has been family owned since the early 1850s. It was about 15 km from Swaffam in West Norfolk. May's father had set up a small museum with Egyptian works of art here, in which there was a Sekhmet statue for each daughter , which originally came from the Temple of Mut in Karnak and was designed by Dr. John Lee's collection at Hartwell House was acquired by her father in 1865. Today they are in the Metropolitan Museum in New York . In addition to works of art, her father also collected rare books and manuscripts .

William Amherst visited Egypt during the winter months since 1860. Lady Margaret Amherst had also acquired knowledge of the history of Egypt in the course of these years and in 1904 published her book "Sketch of Egyptian History from the earliest times to the present day" . In 1871 May accompanied her parents for the first time to take part in the performance of “ Aida ” in the Cairo Opera House . Her father was well acquainted with Ismail Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt , who provided them with his saloon car, which was cooler and less dusty than traditional railroad cars. May's love for Egypt was also shared by her future husband, Lord William Cecil. She had traveled with him to Khartoum .

The Cecils in Egypt in 1901

Howard Carter had been appointed Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt by Gaston Maspero on January 1, 1900 , and had worked for Lord Amherst under Flinders Petrie in Tell el-Amarna in 1892 . Since then he has been in contact with the Amherst family and, if possible, visited them on their Dahabieh in Egypt.

Lady Cecil and her family had set up for the winter in Aswan in 1901 . In her book "Bird Notes from the Nile" she describes how unconventional they lived there. They rented a felucca about nine feet long that could travel in shallow water so they could explore all the bays and sandbars. They slept in tents on land at night. During the day they had their beds on the rear deck - like a divan - under a large awning. The crew included Reis (here the captain), six men and a boy - all Nubians - and an Arab cook. They bought their provisions from the locals along the Nile, with the cow or buffalo milked directly on the ship. During an excursion to the west bank of the Nile, where the bank mountains " Qubbet el-Hawa " (Hill of the Winds) rise about 130 m above the river, they came to the place of Sir Francis Grenfell , commander of the Egyptian army in 1885 discovered a number of graves at a height of about 60 m, which he numbered from south to north, but did not research them further.

Qubbet el-Hawa excavation December 31, 1901–1902

Lady Cecil kept a diary which was later to serve her report. Carter wrote to Lady Amherst from Cairo on August 31, 1902 that the excavations had been very successful and extremely interesting. Maspero would be delighted. He then apologized for having to take away a number of objects for the museum due to his office. Lady Cecil and her helpers uncovered 25 rock tombs from different times. They found remains from the 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th and 26th Dynasties as well as from the time of the Ptolemies , Greeks , Romans and the early Christians . Heads and scarabs made of amethyst and agate , lamps in different shapes, alabaster vases, pottery in countless shapes and sizes as well as a "pilgrim bottle" made of turquoise-blue faience , the neck of which represented a lotus flower with two little monkeys and the inscription "Ptah wishes the owner a Happy New Year ” were among the finds. There was also a bronze dagger, flint-tipped arrows, two shells that were inscribed with the name of Sesostris I and toys. Below was a small wooden doll with movable arms, carrying a basket on its head and a dove in its hand. They also came across countless mummies , some in beautifully decorated coffins, others in cardboard boxes that were painted and labeled. Gaston Maspero visited the excavation to examine the mummies that had been found and gave his consent to the expansion of the area that would then be covered by the concession.

She brought a mummy coffin to England, which was 183 cm long, measured a shoulder width of 53.3 cm and the foot end was 42 cm wide. Inside were coffin texts . Grave 21 and the neighboring graves were damaged by white ants. The tomb contained two coffins, one male and one female. The male coffin disintegrated at the first touch. The other coffin went into her father's collection and was sold by Sotheby’s in 1921 with a few other objects to Michigan, USA. It remained in the collection of Mr. Albert M. Todd until 1932 , who then handed it over to the Museum in Kalamazoo (KPM32.316), which recently rediscovered it in their storerooms. It dates from the Saitic period and is the only coffin of its type and period that has so far been found in the Qubbet el-Hawa cemetery .

Excavations in 1904 and the Aramaic papyrus

The year 1904 was also quite successful in finding finds, although the work on the steep and completely sand-covered slope was quite difficult. Some of the graves CT 25 - 31 were still covered with paint residues. In CT 28 they found a beautifully painted limestone stele and in CT 31 also showed destruction by white ants.

However, another find attracted a lot of attention: a Sebakh worker from Aswan had found papyri in Aramaic script . The site was either the south end of Elefantine Island or the construction site of the new road that was built last winter from the train station to the Cataract Hotel. The papyri date from Artaxerxes I to Darius II and included a lady's dowry. They were so valuable because they were written in biblical script and mentioned both the citadel and the fort of Aswan, as well as a Hebrew court. Lady Cecil bought four papyri and her son William bought some. Six other documents were acquired from Robert Mond , who gave them to the Giza Museum. Carter wanted to have copies made of the papyri and send them along with photos to well-known scholars.

Lady Cecil, although she wanted to bring her father the valuable papyrus for his collection, also left it to the museum. Maspero offered one of the statues from Karnak as "compensation" and sent corresponding photos to Lord Amherst. He decided on the statue of Harbes from the late 6th century BC. With a cartridge from Psammetich (today in the Metropolitan Museum no. 19.2.2.). The texts were translated by Archibald Henry Sayce and AH Cowley from the Bodleian Library in Oxford and published in 1906 under the title "Aramaic Papyri discovered at Aswan" . Robert Mond had paid for the publication. The tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa remained known for a long time under the name "Cecil Tombs" . Lady Cecil published her excavation reports in the "Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte" in 1903 and 1905.

In 1906, her father suffered financial ruin when it was discovered that his family lawyer and longtime asset manager, Charles Cheston, had embezzled much of his money. After his death in 1909, the family owned only £ 341 net. As the now 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney , May 1910 sold Didlington Hall with 7,105 acres of land to Colonel Herbert Francis Smith - her father's Egyptian collection remained, however. She died of breast cancer at the age of 62 and was buried in Stowlaughton Church in Suffolk on December 26, 1919. Since her eldest son William Cecil had died in the First World War in 1914, her grandson William Cecil inherited her title of nobility.

Amherst Collection sold

Howard Carter cataloged the Egyptian collection before it was auctioned off by the family at Sotheby's in 1921. It was the third largest private collection in England. The Amherst Papyri were acquired from the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum also bought several pieces, as did the Cleveland Museum of Art .

Publications

• Report on the work done at Aswan by Lady William Cecil. In: Annales du service des antiquités de l'Égypte 4, 1903. pp. 51–73:
  • I, Tombs Situated to the South of Gebel Goubbat el Hawa.
  • II, Tombs Situated to the North and North-West of Goubbat el Hawa.
  • III, Tombs on the Eastern Side of Goubbat el Hawa, on a Line with Grenfell's Tombs.
  • IV, Tombs on the North-Eastern Slope of the Gebel Goubbat el Hawa, just above the Ruined Coptic Convent of St-George
• Bird notes from the Nile. A. Constable & co., London 1904.
• Report of Work Done at Aswan during the First Months of 1904. In: Annales du service des antiquités de l'Égypte 6, 1905. pp. 273-283.
  • I, Tombs on the North-Eastern Slope of the Gebel Qoubet-el-Hawa above the Coptic Convent of Saint-George.
  • II, Tombs on the Eastern Side of the Gebel Qoubet-el-Hawa South of the "Grenfell Tombs"

literature

• Maurice L. Bierbrier: Who Was Who in Egyptology. Third revised edition. Egypt Exploration Society, London 1995, ISBN 0-85698-125-7 , p. 14 sv Amherst (Baroness) Mary Rothes Margaret Cecil

Web links

• The Cecil Tombs , accessed August 29, 2011
• Sachmet statues in the Metropolitan Museum from the Amherst Collection. Acquired in 1915
• Amhersts of Didlington Hall , accessed August 29, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Cleopatra's Needle" , accessed August 29, 2011.
2. ^ Mary Rothes Margaret Tyssen-Amherst, Baroness Amherst of Hackney on thepeerage.com , accessed August 20, 2015.
3. ↑ Didlington Hall - England's lost country houses
4. ↑ Lady William Cecil: Bird Notes from the Nile. Pp. 7-8.
5. ↑ ^{a b} T. G .H. James; Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun. Tauris, 2001, 2006, ISBN 1-84511-258-X , pp. 95ff.
6. ↑ Lady William Cecil: Bird Notes from the Nile. Pp. 4-5.
7. ↑ Jonathan Elias: Regional Indicia on a Saite Coffin from Qubbet El-Hawa . In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. Vol. 33, 1966, pp. 105-122 (English).
8. ↑ Stele of Shemai, 1980–1801 BC 'Cecil Tombs', no.28 Excavation of Lady William Cecil 1904

predecessor	Office	successor
William Tyssen-Amherst	Baroness Amherst of Hackney 1909-1919	William Cecil