Mary Brodrick

Mary (May) Brodrick (5 April 1858 – 13 July 1933) was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist who was one of the first female excavators in Egypt. She persisted in her studies despite the initial opposition of her tutors and fellow students and achieved distinction in her field. The Daily Mail described her in 1906 as "perhaps the greatest lady Egyptologist of the day". Early life Brodrick was born at 18 Navarino Terrace, Dalston, Middlesex (now London), in 1858, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Mary Brodrick. Thomas Brodrick was a solicitor and the 1861 census shows the family living within the Liberty of the Close, in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire. Mary Brodrick had sisters Edith and Ethel. A brother, Thomas, born around 1862, died in South Africa in 1888. Brodrick was the first woman to study Egyptology under Gaston Maspero at the Sorbonne, and Hebrew and Semitic archaeology under Ernest Renan at the Collège de France. Neither had been encouraging at first. Maspero had objected, "But we do not take little girls here", and Renan had vowed "I have never taught a woman in my life, and I never will". When Brodrick insisted on attending, Maspero took the matter up with the Sorbonne council who found nothing in the rules to prevent a woman attending. According to Brodrick, Maspero warned her that she would "probably have a very bad time" and indeed when she first attended she found the students to be rough, rude, and smelly. On one occasion they poured ink down her back. Brodrick simply laughed their tricks off and eventually became great friends with them. Career Back in England, Brodrick entered College Hall, London in 1888 where she studied at University College London under Stuart Poole (co-founder with Amelia Edwards of the Egypt Exploration Society) and Peter le Page Renouf. She did not enter for a University of London degree due to her prior studies. She was a member of the Committee of Philology and Literary Archaeology of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago 1893 and did work in America for the Egyptian Exploration Fund. She was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1893 by the College of the Sisters of Bethany, University of Kansas, the same institution that had also awarded a PhD to Amelia Edwards. She lectured at the British Museum and studied Egyptology under Flinders Petrie in 1893–94 and 1894–95. She held the Pfeiffer Fellowship of College Hall from 1894 to 1896.