ARCE-PA: Amelia Edwards’ United States Lecture Tour and the Beginnings of American Egyptology by Dr. Kathleen Sheppard

Lecture Information

On a cold November evening in 1889, Amelia Edwards took the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York. The lecture she gave to 2,400 people that night, entitled “The buried cities of Ancient Egypt,” was a success. Over the next four months, Edwards gave over 100 lectures all over the northeastern US, and as far West as Chicago and Minneapolis, exciting interest in Egypt everywhere she went. Alongside her every step of the way was her secretary, assistant, hair and makeup artist, and friend, Kate Bradbury.

Often we talk about Egyptology in the US beginning in Chicago with the Cairo exhibit on the Midway at the World Columbian Exhibition in 1892. Or we say interest in Egypt began when the University of Chicago was founded, with a department and a museum dedicated to the subject, in 1895. Others place importance in the earlier collections, like the Abbott Collection in New York as early as the 1860s. However, using Bradbury’s letters home during the tour, newspaper reports, Edwards’ lectures, and other contemporaneous materials, I argue that it wasn’t wealthy men who started building Egyptological institutions in the US. Instead, the catalyst for widespread public interest in Egyptology in the United States was the initial encounters with ancient Egypt made possible by a women-led lecture tour in the winter of 1889-90.

Obviously these women did not travel a thousand miles on the Hudson River, but they easily traversed that distance in the time they were in the US, speaking to and meeting with influential people across the country. This presentation will outline the journey of Amelia Edwards and Kate Bradbury and the impact they had on Egyptology in the US.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is a Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T in Rolla, Missouri. She earned her MA in Egyptian Archaeology at University College London in 2002, and her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. Her first book was a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray (2013) that focused on Murray’s life and career, both in and out of Egyptology. She has spent her whole career telling the stories of women in Egyptology. Her most recent book, Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (St. Martins Press, 2024) is a grand retelling of the history of Egyptology through the work that women did.