Upcoming Lecture

Dahabeahs and steamers are well known as useful in the history of leisured travel on the Nile in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They are also associated with the travel of Egyptologists when they were in country. This presentation will discuss the work of two main American Egyptologists, Charles Wilbour (1833-1896) and James Breasted (1865-1935), their travel on the Nile, and their subsequent impact on the discipline in the US. One might argue that Charles Wilbour was not an Egyptologist, and you might be right. I will talk about his boat, the Seven Hathors, and the ways in which he built a circle of influential Egyptology friends on and around the boat. James Breasted was America’s first university-trained Egyptologist, and by 1907 he was so convinced of the utility of dahabeahs as places to do the science of Egyptology that he had proposed a grant to the Rockefeller Foundation for a custom-built steamer that he called a "floating headquarters and working laboratory." While the boat never came to fruition for him, he was still successful in his ultimate mission in Egypt.

Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S & T in Rolla, Missouri. She earned her MA in Egyptian Archaeology at University College London in 2002, and her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. She has spent her whole career telling the stories of women in Egyptology. Her most recent book, Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (St. Martins Press, 2024) is a grand retelling of the history of Egyptology through the work that women did.

To attend this month's lecture remotely, please click here to enter the Zoom conference: