In 1902, Margaret Alice Murray got invited to work in the field—finally. Training with Flinders Petrie for the last eight years, she had taught plenty of students in London, but had never been to Egypt to work herself. She spent only one season at Abydos, working in the Osireion, a special temple that no one had yet fully understood. Two years later, Murray’s publication, The Osireion at Abydos upended all previous theories about the site. By 1938, Amice Calverley and Myrtle Broome were leaving Abydos, having spent almost a decade copying the art in the Temple of Seti I. Their own publications, The Temple of Sethos I at Abydos were four volumes of brilliantly painted art from the temple walls, in exacting detail. This talk will detail the ways in which the work women did on site at Abydos in the early 20th century impacted our understanding and reception of one of the most important sites in all of ancient Egypt.

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