Thompson has done the archival and secondary research for this project very well, as we expect from him. Thompson also talks about my two favorites-Margaret Murray and Caroline Ransom-more extensively than I’ve seen in similar books. She has no entry in the Who Was Who in Egyptology but now has a major papyrological institute named after her in Italy. She took over the Instituto Papirologico in Florence after Girolamo Vitelli died in 1935. For example, Medea Norsa (1877-1952) was an Italian philologist who worked with a number of Italian Egyptologists on Greco-Roman Egyptian history.
The general reader may expect a very masculine story-and won’t be disappointed-but there are women who were influential in Egyptology and he brings them to the forefront in many places. First, Thompson brings women into the conversation, which is a good thing to see in a work such as this. There are a lot of wonderful things (ahem) about this volume. Thompson signposts well with dates throughout, so it isn’t too difficult to follow along. Within each chapter there is overlap with other chapters, which means that you really need to be paying attention to the chronology. It makes sense that the organization is roughly chronological among the chapters. Also, one might argue, it was the period that had an air of the American Wild West about it: adventure, intrigue, scandal, and amazing discoveries. Furthermore, this period, largely dominated by Lord Cromer on the government administration side and Gaston Maspero on the Antiquities Service side, “was one of great field discoveries, important institutional developments, and leaps in knowledge so great…” that one can’t help but call it a Golden Age (5). The immense Egyptological accomplishments of the past one hundred years rest on that mostly sound but occasionally shifting foundation” (xiii). This is called the “Golden Age,” Thompson argues, because “it was during the years between the death of Mariette in 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War that Egyptology experienced what would come to be remembered as its Gold Age and assumed the discipline’s defining characteristics. This second volume picks up where the first left off there is obviously a bit of timeline overlap here, but it’s all necessary for the foundational issues in the book. The first volume, which covered the history of Egyptology from Antiquity to 1881, was fast-paced and instructive (I reviewed it here, for the BHA).
The second installment of Jason Thompson’s Wonderful Things is just as wonderful as the first.
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