Women built American Egyptology. When Britons Amelia Edwards and Kate Bradbury arrived in New York in November of 1889, the first thing they saw was a still-copper-hued Statue of Liberty. They had arrived for a five-month whirlwind lecture tour, hoping to fan America’s spark of Egyptological interest into flames. Their plan worked. The women toured Egyptology collections, including at the New-York Historical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the next 25 years, American women took up the mantle, building and curating these collections in New York. Dr. Kathleen Sheppard, author of the new book Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (St. Martin’s Press), will take attendees on a tour of New York between 1889 and 1916, shedding light on some of the city’s oldest Egyptological sights. Dr. Sheppard will be signing copies of the new book.

Dr. Sheppard, a Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T in Rolla, Missouri, has dedicated her career to telling the stories of women in Egyptology. 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 2013 book was a scientific biography of the archaeologist and Egyptologist Margaret Alice Murray (2013). Her 2022 book, Tea on the Terrace: Hotels and Egyptologists’ Social Networks, 1885-1925, investigated how Egyptologists traveled and worked their ways through Egypt.