{"id":860,"date":"2017-11-02T08:27:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T16:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/?p=860"},"modified":"2026-10-18T08:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T15:49:32","slug":"amelia-b-edwards-egyptology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/amelia-b-edwards-egyptology\/","title":{"rendered":"Amelia B. Edwards and Egyptology"},"content":{"rendered":"

A charming blog post, Walk Like an Egyptian<\/a>, talks about the connection between novelist and travel writer Amelia B. Edwards and the development of modern Egyptology.<\/p>\n

After Edwards visited Egypt in 1873 and wrote A Thousand Miles up the Nile<\/a>, she founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, which supported the efforts of Flinders Petrie, the founder of modern, scientific Egyptology. (Howard Carter, who discovered King Tuthankamen’s tomb, was a student of Petrie’s.)<\/p>\n

The blog points out that women novelists and Egyptology go arm-in-arm. For instance, Agatha Christie (Death Comes as the End, Death on the Nile<\/a>) and Elizabeth Peters (the Amelia Peabody novels<\/a>) both spent time excavating along the banks of the Nile. In fact, it’s clear that Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody is based on Amelia B. Edwards, and the action in the first Amelia Peabody book, Crocodile on the Sandbank<\/a> is based on Edwards’ voyage as told in A Thousand Miles up the Nile.<\/p>\n