I'm a slave to the Power of Death

I wanted to take a moment to talk about a hero of mine - Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray was a British-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist who was born in India. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career.

Born to a wealthy middle-class English family in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her junior lecturer in 1898. In 1902–03 she took part in Petrie's excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both of which established her reputation in Egyptology. Supplementing her UCL wage by giving public classes and lectures at the British Museum and Manchester Museum, it was at the latter in 1908 that she led the unwrapping of Khnum-nakht, one of the mummies recovered from the Tomb of two Brothers – the first time that a woman had publicly unwrapped a mummy. Recognising that British Egyptomania reflected the existence of a widespread public interest in Ancient Egypt, Murray wrote several books on Egyptology targeted at a general audience.

Murray also became closely involved in the first-wave feminist movement, joining the Women's Social and Political Union and devoting much time to improving women's status at UCL. Unable to return to Egypt due to the First World War, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. Although later academically discredited, the theory gained widespread attention and proved a significant influence on the emerging new religious movement of Wicca. From 1921 to 1931 Murray undertook excavations of prehistoric sites on Malta and Menorca and developed her interest in folkloristics. Awarded an honorary doctorate in 1927, she was appointed assistant professor in 1928 and retired from UCL in 1935. That year she visited Palestine to aid Petrie's excavation of Tall al-Ajjul and in 1937 she led a small excavation at Petra in Jordan. Taking on the presidency of the Folklore Society in later life, she lectured at such institutions as the University of Cambridge and City Literary Institute, and continued to publish in an independent capacity until her death.

Murray's work in Egyptology and archaeology was widely acclaimed and earned her the nickname of "The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology", although after her death many of her contributions to the field were overshadowed by those of Petrie. Conversely, Murray's work in folkloristics and the history of witchcraft has been academically discredited and her methods in these areas heavily criticised. The influence of her witch-cult theory in both religion and literature has been examined by various scholars, and she herself has been dubbed the "Grandmother of Wicca".

I work for the local government, in a desk-based role that is simultaneously really boring and actually quite interesting. It's mostly administrative with some customer service, but also some research and records management. For the most part, I enjoy it. It keeps me busy and - most importantly - it pays the bills.

Sometimes though, I really miss working on a dig. One of my degrees is in archaeology, but I haven't worked on a dig in over a decade. I don't know that I necessarily want a full time job in the field - I'm not built to be working outside and both it and academia would frustrate me too much with the red tape.

Every now and again I have a half-hearted look at related jobs but I'm not brave enough to even apply. There have been a few digs around here lately that have been asking for volunteers and I've been very tempted to sign up but again something has stopped me. I can't even put my finger on what it is, to be able to start to address it and work through it.

I still completely love archaeology - and for those who don't know archaeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Insert joke here about the difference between grave robbing and archaeology. They (we?) have various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. They do this by surveying, excavation of sites of interest, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research.

I always enjoyed the research side of things more than the excavating - yet that's the bit I miss. There's undoubtedly a whole wave of not being who I thought I was going to be, and what I thought I was going to do. A mid-30s life crisis perhaps? Is that a thing? I think I have a lot unpacking to do. But that's not a job for tonight.

I have started re-reading some of my old archaeology books and have just finished reading Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice by Paul G. Bahn & Colin Renfrew. It was a lovely refresh of basics and it's definitely whetting my appetite again. I've also picked up a new copy of Archaeology: An Introduction by Kevin Greene & Tom Moore

For now, I'm going to see where this takes me and try to remove any expectations on myself to do anything other than enjoy it