Amelia Edwards..

[Who2]

One pioneering woman from Clerkenwell, Amelia Edwards (1831-1892), was recently granted a plaque at 19 Wharton Street. An Egyptologist, Edwards campaigned for the preservation of ancient Egypt. She bequeathed her collection of antiquities to University College London – a plaster cast bust of Edwards is at the entrance to UCL’s Petrie Museum.

She might have gone '1000 miles up The Nile, but she only lived *500 meters away.
or in my book 'just a hop,skip and a jump away !
Now, I never knew that!........

[newcastle]

I loved her travelogue ‘A Thousand Miles up the Nile‘. She was also the inspiration for Barbara Mertz’s / Elizabeth Peters’ character Amelia Peabody.

Her life was somewhat unconventional. A lesbian, she lived in a ménage a trois with a vicar and his wife. The vicar allegedly conducted a marriage ceremony between Amelia and his wife!

[Who2]

She lived with her widowed friend and long-term partner Ellen Braysher,
and the adventurous pair threw Victorian convention aside and travelled abroad as a couple.

Their boat joined a flotilla with another female English traveller,
Marianne Brocklehurst, also travelling with a female companion.
Brocklehurst and Edwards remained friends and Brocklehurst later supported her Egypt Exploration Fund.

Sounds like the *LGBTQIA + girls were having quite a party...
Nice to see that she was buried with her partner..


Ps: I know, I had to look it up, ready ?
*lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transexual, queer/questioning, intersex,allied/asexual/aromantic/agender.
Easy to say, 'but what about us Zoophiliac's ?

Pss: Simona just said "but what about Adam & Eve ?

[newcastle]

I think the dalliance with the vicar’s wife predated her long term relationship with Ellen Braysher.

The two were eventually buried together in a grave which doesn’t leave much of Amelia’s main interest to the imagination.

45B933C7-28B4-4BF5-AE8B-B9FB4D34A4D4.jpeg

The LGBTQ brigade is well represented in the egyptological world....today as much as yesteryear.

One of the most fascinating and openly lesbian archaeologists, was another Egyptologist called Margaret Benson, born in 1865. Benson came from a prestigious family: her father, Edward White Benson, was the Archbishop of Canterbury, her uncle, Henry Sidgwick, was the founder of Newnham College Cambridge and her brother, gay writer E.F. Benson, famously wrote the Mapp and Lucia novels (1920-39).

Her mother Mary and sister Eleanor were also queer and both daughters fell out with their mother due to the fact that they had lesbian relationships (or ‘swarmings’ as Mary put it) with some of the same women.

https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/article/sapp ... rchaeology

Is it something in the air? Does digging up mummy have a kind of reversed- Oedipus effect?

Answers on a postcard......

[Alistair1967]

Also she chose UCL because it was the only college in England which granted degrees to women.