Sara Yorke Stevenson

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Sara Yorke Stevenson

Sara Yorke Stevenson (born February 19, 1847 in Paris , † November 14, 1921 in Philadelphia ) was an American Egyptologist and museum curator.

Life

Sara Yorke Stevenson was born to Edward Yorke and his wife Sarah Hanna Yorke. Her parents had come to Paris from Louisiana in the 1840s . Both came from wealthy families. The mother's family owned a cotton plantation, her father was a plantation owner, cotton trader and banker. When Sara Yorke was 10 years old, her parents went back to the United States and left the daughters in France at boarding school. Sarah Yorke Stevenson stayed in Paris until 1862, when she joined her family, who now lived in Mexico . In Mexico she attended many receptions of the new Empress of Mexico, Charlotte of Belgium , and her husband Maximilian . Their descriptions of the Mexican Empire later gave historians deep insights into court life at that time. In 1867 the Yorke family left the country due to the revolution and went to Vermont . A year later Edward Yorke died and Sarah Yorke moved to Philadelphia to live with relatives. There she met the wealthy lawyer Cornelius Stevenson (1842-1922) know and the couple soon married. Through social life, Stevenson came into contact with a group of intellectuals around Horace Howard Furness and Silas Weir Mitchell . Among the members of the "Furness-Mitchell Coterie" were teachers, anthropologists, writers, musicians and doctors.

Stevenson was a founding member and board member of the Archaeological Association of the University of Pennsylvania in 1889 . Thanks to their commitment, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) was established. In 1891, Stevenson, William Pepper , Talcott Williams and Joseph Coates were selected by the Archaeological Association to set up a department of archeology and paleontology to run the museum. Stevenson was on the museum's board of directors until 1905. She was also curator of the Egyptian Section and the Mediterranean Section from 1890 to 1905. In 1905 she left the museum after the Assyriologist Hermann Volrath Hilprecht had been fired. She started working for the Philadelphia Museum of Art .

An 1892 edition of Anthropological Work in America described Stevenson as “perhaps the only female Egyptologist. Her lectures on Egyptian subjects attracted a lot of attention. ”She was a mentor to Frederic Ward Putnam , who had just started the anthropology department at Harvard University .

In 1892, Frederic Ward supported Putnam Stevenson's nomination to the jury of the World's Columbian Exposition's Prize for Ethnology . In order for a woman to be elected to the committee, the statutes had to be changed. Stevenson has been named Vice President of the Jury. In 1894, Stevenson was the first woman allowed to give a lecture at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology . Their theme was "Egypt at the Beginning of History". In 1898 she went on a research trip to Egypt.

Sara Yorke Stevenson developed one of the first college courses for budding museum professionals in the United States, which she taught at the Pennsylvania Museum and the School of Industrial Art (The University of the Arts in Philadelphia). She is one of the founders of museology .

She has served as president of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia , the Contemporary Club, and the Pennsylvania branch of the Archeological Institute of America . She was also a founder and board member of the American Folk-Lore Society and the American Exploration Society . She was a member of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1895 . Stevenson attended meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1884 and became a Fellow in 1895 . She was also involved in the suffragette movement and established the Equal Franchise Society in Pennsylvania. She served as president until 1910 and then as first vice president until the entry into force of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920, which enshrined women's suffrage in the Constitution.

As a columnist, Stevenson wrote under the pseudonyms "Peggy Shippen" and "Sally Wistar" for the Philadelphia Public Ledger .

Publications (selection)

  • On Certain Symbols used in the Decoration of some Potsherds from Daphnae and Naukratis, now in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania . In: Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia for 1890-91. 1892.
  • The Tomb of King Amenhotep . In: Papers on Egyptian Archeology. 1892.
  • Mr. Petrie's Discoveries at Tel el-Amarna . In: Science Vol. 19; Nos. 480-482 and 510.
  • An Ancient Egyptian Rite Illustrating a Phase of Primitive Thought . In: International Congress of Anthropology. Memoirs. Chicago 1894, pp. 298-311.
  • Some Sculptures from Koptos in Philadelphia. In: American Journal of Archeology. Volume 10, 1895, pp. 347-351.
  • The Feather and the Wing in Early Mythology. In: Oriental Studies of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia. 1894, pp. 202-241.
  • On the Remains of Foreigners Discovered in Egypt by Mr. WM Flinders Petrie, 1895, now in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania . In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Volume 35.
  • with Ferdinand Justi , Morris Jastrow Jr .: Egypt and Western Asia in Antiquity (= A History of All Nations . Volume 1). Lea Brothers, Philadelphia / New York 1905 ( digitized ).

literature

  • Frances Anne Wister, Civic Club of Philadelphia: Sara Yorke Stevenson: a tribute from the Civic Club of Philadelphia. Philadelphia (Pa) 1922.
  • Dumas Malone, American Council of Learned Societies: Dictionary of American Biography. Volume 17, Scribner, New York 1935, pp. 635-636.
  • Ute Gacs, Aisha Khan, Jerrie McIntyre, Ruth Weinberg (Eds.): Women Anthropologists. Selected Biographies . University of Illinois Press, Urbana / Chicago 1989, pp. 344-349.
  • Morris L. Bierbrier: Who was who in Egyptology . 4th edition, Egypt Exploration Society, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-85698-207-1 , pp. 526-527.
  • Alexandra Fleischman: Women Archaeologists in the Early Days of the Museum . In: Expedition Magazine. Volume 54, No. 3, January 2013 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ute Gacs, Aisha Khan, Jerrie McIntyre, Ruth Weinberg (Eds.): Women Anthropologists. Selected Biographies . University of Illinois Press, Urbana / Chicago 1989, ISBN 0-252-06084-9 , p. 344.
personal data
SURNAME Stevenson, Sara Yorke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1921
Place of death Philadelphia