Not one, but two Nefertiti have recently passed through my hands —as a reader—. Shortly after the hidden pharaohthe novel by Abraham Juárez that has won the Edhasa historical narrative award, I have also read Nefertiti lived here (Dawn, 2022), by Mary Chubb. The two books coincide not only in that Queen Nefertiti appears in both, which is already a theme, but also in that they are the work of both outsiders of the academic and literary world. In the case of Juárez, a simple fan of Egyptology, his novel, his first, was published when the author was already a 67-year-old retired banker, while Chubb (1903-2003), known as “the accidental archaeologist”, she did not publish her delightful chronicle of the 1930s excavations in the ancient pharaonic city of Amarna—in which she participated as a secretary—until 1954. “There was dust everywhere and I used up the last drop of shampoo,” she says in one of its cute passages.
The story of Mary Chubb, who described “the strange business of archaeology” as “that way of living upside down”, is very curious: she got a job at the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) – founded in 1882 by the archaeologist and orientalist Reginald Stuart Poole and Amelia Edwards, the grandmother of Egyptology—just to finance her studies in sculpture at the London School of Art and not because she cared at all about Ancient Egypt. But casual contact with an archaeological object, a piece of enameled tile from which a trickle of sand came loose, sparked her interest and she volunteered to be the secretary for all of the society’s mission at Tell el-Amarna, in the site of the abandoned capital of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. There, at the age of 29, he developed his taste for Egyptian antiquities and archeology to become an indispensable member of the team led by John Pendlebury, that one-eyed adventurous archaeologist who is one of the most interesting characters of the 20th century, and I fall short.
Pendlebury (1904-1941) excavated extensively at Tell el-Amarna for seven years (often, when an interesting find occurred, to the cry of “my Majesty demands beer!”) but his true adopted homeland was Greece. He was Chief Curator of Knossos in the wake of Evans and literally gave his life for his sake. byronica Hellenophilia: sent as a vice-consul and undercover agent to Crete, which he knew like the back of his hand, during World War II to organize the local guerrillas in the face of the more than foreseeable Nazi invasion, he was wounded by German paratroopers and then shot in May 1941 during the great airborne landing and ensuing battle for the island. His grave at Suda Bay near Chania is a place of pilgrimage for spirits sensitive to romantic lives, myself included.
Mary Chubb, a dark-haired, petite (herself described as “neither slim nor sophisticated”), intelligent, and with a remarkable sense of humor inspired by her soft spot for Wodehouse (also HG Wells: she is able to mention the Eloi and the Morlocks speaking of Akhenaten), worked with Pendlebury at Tell el-Amarna during two campaigns (from November 1930 to February 1931 and from October 1931 to February 1932) which appear merged into one in his book. Then, after a pleasure trip to Greece with the Pendleburys, the EES could not hire her anymore (they were always short of money: Egyptology has not changed a bit on that) and the famous Henri Frankfort recruited her for the excavations of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna), in Iraq, about which he wrote his other memorial book, City in the Sand (1957). Back in Britain, in 1942 she was run over by a military truck while she was riding a bicycle and was seriously injured. As a result of the accident she lost a leg. Since she couldn’t go back to the digs, she began to write. She herself explains that she started watching birds during her convalescence, something that can only make her even more sympathetic. She submitted an article about bird watching a Punch and it was published, so he kept writing. and it arose Nefertiti lived here, whose first draft was a collaboration of 15 minutes on the radio in 1951.
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The book is absolutely charming and also has the interest of describing what an archaeological excavation was like in the thirties, when the scientific method still coexisted with some conditions and attitudes of the heroic age of Egyptology. On the internet I have found some old footage of the campaigns, for those who want to have images of that world. Chubb joined the mission as an efficient secretary to the director (Pendlebury, the munir), but ended up doing practically everything, as she herself lists: plasterer, chemist, nurse, draftsman, painter, archaeologist, restorer, carpenter and diplomat. She even contributed the motto of the expedition: “underdig”, dig further down, and dig deeper.
During the long boat trip to Egypt he tried to learn Arabic, but was only able to memorize one word, albanafsaji, violet, and, deplores “there are no violets in Tell el-Amarna” (beautiful title for a poem). In his book, Chubb offers some data on Akhenaten, his time and his capital (some of which are now obsolete) and recalls that the expeditionaries, six of them, including another woman, Hilda, Pendlebury’s wife, were heirs to a long tradition of excavations on the site, including those of Petrie and those of the Germans (Ludwig Borchardt) who found, and looted, the famous bust of Nefertiti. While in Cairo, the author very gracefully describes her visit to the Great Pyramid, which was a nightmare for her as she suffered from claustrophobia but which she does out of pride, clenching her teeth, telling herself that “it was unlikely that the pyramid would choose that Tuesday for the afternoon to collapse”, and considering: “If the others went, so did I”. One of our Mary, indeed. She summed up her experience by stating that she felt “like a raisin in a giant sponge cake.”
Once at the archaeological site, he explains the precarious housing conditions, the character and the clothing of his companions (Hillary wears a pith helmet and a revolver, John a Cretan cape with a hood) and the local workers they hire; the danger of snakes and scorpions (Pendlebury sits on top of one and has a really bad time) and the surprise at the howling of jackals, “like banshees wandering through the ruins, crying for their lost lives and homes.” Mary’s voice is full of humor and irony, but above all there is an intense emotion that makes the book unique. Little by little, we are immersed in the emotion of archaeology, discovering the unique sensation of holding things in our hands that until then had not been touched by anyone other than some sudden Akhenaten, “someone who”, he gets excited, “had probably seen Pharaoh and his wife Nefertiti and their daughters walking through the city”.
Aside from some of the Amarna knowledge mentioned being out of date—we now know that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were not siblings—there are several things in Chubb’s book that may surprise the reader familiar with Pendlebury. One is that it doesn’t mention the archaeologist’s missing eye (he lost it as a child and was wearing a glass one), something he oddly shared with the bust of Nefertiti. The other, which does not describe the scene in one of Pendlebury’s best-known photos, the shocking portrait he took at Tell el-Amarna bare-chested and wearing a large pharaonic necklace found at the site. The former is possibly a matter of post-Edward decorum; the second is easily explained because the image was taken in 1929, the campaign before Chubb came.
Increasingly involved in the excavation, the young woman explains that she has never felt so “gritty, dusty and excited”, an accurate description of field Egyptology. She feels “an electric shock” every time she finds an amulet and is captivated by Amarna’s magic, leading her to climb into tombs despite her claustrophobia. In the royal tomb, “ignominious and profaned”, he observes the paintings with scenes of the death of the little princess Meketatón and is moved: “All these murals were chipped and also destroyed as an evocation of that distant sorrow that somehow lingered in musty air. The campaign culminates with the discovery of the marvelous lintel of Hatiay’s house, of gold ingots that must be guarded with a revolver drawn, and of a beautiful sculptured head in a typically Amarna style, found by Mary herself. The young woman and the team believe that she represents the princess Ankesenpatón (later Ankesenamón), the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and later the wife and queen of Tutankhamun.
That little head (today in the Metropolitan Museum of New York), Chubb was ecstatic, had been forgotten in that burned place of Egypt “while Troy burned, Sennacherib sacked cities, the greatness of Athens reached its zenith and sank; and there he was still when Harold fell at Hastings, and the last Plantagenet died at Bosworth Field.” And, walking alone through the ruins, impressed by the discovery, the culminating moment of the book and of the author’s life arrives: “A cold wind vibrated for a moment like the brush of a tunic and a dress… a faint whisper, like the one with light feet in sandals, until it was no longer heard in the breeze. Then everything was moonlight and silence: only the faint and distant howls of the jackals could be heard, which seemed like the funeral wails of ghosts, of the people who, like the beautiful lady Nefertiti, lived in these places. Mary, Mary, take us with you!
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