Janet Gourlay

For the British physiologist Janet Vaughan (1899–1993), sometimes known by her married name of Gourlay, see Janet Vaughan.

Janet Gourlay
Gourlay (left) pictured with partner, Margaret Benson (right) c. 1906
Born
Janetta Agnes Gourlay

30 January 1863
Dundee, Scotland
Died3 March 1912(1912-03-03) (aged 49)
Kempshott Park, Hampshire, England
Alma materUniversity College London
PartnerMargaret Benson

Janetta "Nettie"[1] Agnes Gourlay (1863–1912) was a Scottish Egyptologist,[2] known for her excavation of and publication on the Precinct of Mut, a temple compound on the east bank of the Nile in Egypt. She did her work with her partner Margaret Benson.[3] Her work on the Mut Complex was from 1896-1897.[3] She and Benson would later return to Thebes to work under Percy Newberry from 1900-1901.[4]

Personal life

Janet Gourlay was born on 30 January 1863 in Dundee, Scotland, the eldest daughter of engineer Henry G. Gourlay and Agnes Christie Burrell who had married in 1861.[5][6]She was known to have a disabling illness that other's noticed and sometimes looked down on.[4] People also noticed that she was incredibly shy and soft spoken.[4]

Janet Gourlay visited Egypt once before with her family on a Thomas Cook Cruise in 1890.[4] Gourlay met her lifelong partner Margaret Benson in Egypt in 1896 during the second excavation of the Mut Complex.[5] They were introduced by their mutual friend Lady Jane Lindsay.[3] In conjunction with their romantic relationship, they formed a scientific partnership which allowed the highly educated women to travel and work without needing a man on site to oversee their work.[3][4] During the off seasons, the two would meet up in places such as London.[4] Upon completion of their excavations, Benson’s health began deteriorating, so the two women returned to their respective homes.[2] They kept in close contact via letters.[7] In these, they expressed their devotion, emotions, and happenings to one another.[3] Benson’s health never made a recovery which stopped the two from returning to Egypt for more excavations.[2] Their relationship may have calmed with distance, but they still exchanged letters until Gourlay's death.[8]

On 3 March 1912, Gourlay died in Kempshott Park near Basingstoke.[5][9] She never married.[5]

Professional life

She studied at University College, London in 1893, supervised by Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray,[10] gaining excavation experience to add to her theoretical knowledge. Gourlay joined Benson in 1896 in the second season of excavation at the Precinct of Mut in Karnak, Thebes, in Egypt.[11] The pair stayed at the Luxor Hotel for the duration of these digging seasons.[3] However, after her first season, Gouraly arranged for a more private housing with Benson whose construction in Gurna was oversaw by fellow Egyptologist Percy Newberry.[4] She would push for specific requests like an open doorway between the pair's bedrooms.[4] Gourlay and Newberry would later go on to publish a journal article describing the excavation of Mentu-Em-Hat in 1898.[12] Gourlay and Benson would also publish an incomplete account in 1899.[13] It was published this way, so that the information could be available to others and it would not be forgotten as it previously had been, which they explained in their preface.[14] Gourlay and Benson were the first women to undertake an excavation of this nature and this is also acknowledged in their preface, with the following: "we have to thank M. de Morgan’s liberality for the first permission to excavate given to women in Egypt".[14]

Excavations

Benson's excavation of the Mut Complex originally began on January 1, 1895.[15] Gourlay joined Benson later in 1896.[11] Since Gourlay was university educated she handle most of the correspondence with Newberry who was one of the main heads of the expedition. When they started the excavation they were denied the ability to clear the site but when M. Naville explained their situation they were given permission.[14] Their excavation would go on to span two digging seasons, resulting in three digging seasons total for the Mut Complex.[11] The two women restored and uncovered various pieces of sculptures, heads, figures, and architecture.[14] Notable statuary includes the head of Amun (or Amun-re), the head of Ramesses III, a statue of Ramesses II, the figure of priest Sur, Senenmut, and Bak-en-Khonsu, a statue of Tutankhamun sitting and various other figures.[3][4] One of the most well known figures recovered by Gourlay and Benson was the head of a figure, commonly referred to as the Benson Head.[13] During the excavation, the women focused mainly on finding artifacts and did not focus on mapping the site as much as other Egyptologists.[15] After identifying the items, the pair made an effort to account for religious representations associated with the pieces.[14] Many of these pieces were then sent to museums in Britain or Cairo, or added to their personal collections.[4] During the excavation, they worked with many people ranging from 16 to over 80 boys and from 4 to 17 men.[14] They took into consideration the religious practices of Ramadan for their workers even letting them leave an hour early.[14] The women also worried less than their contemporaries about stealing because of the statues they worked with were so large.[14] In the second season, the pair was able to afford more help as Gourlay's father gave them extra funding along with an anonymous donor.[3] This excavation went until 1897 due to Benson suffering from non-fatal cases of Pleurisy and heart attack.[16]

Gourlay would later return to Egypt on December 13, 1900 with Benson to work on restoring a cleared tomb in Thebes.[4] Some of their work involved documenting wall art in the tomb.[4] Additionally, some of the pair's work was directly overseen by the excavation's patrons Emma Andrews and Theodore M. Davis.[4] They would eventually leave in 1901 at the end of the season.[16] This would be her last trip to Egypt.[4]

Publications

  • Benson, Margaret and Gourlay, Janet. The Temple of Mut in Asher: An account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians, London, John Murray, 1899[14]
  • Gourlay, J. A. with Percy Newberry, "Mentu-em-hat," Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes: pour servir de bulletin à la Mission Française du Caire, 20:3-4 (1898), 188-192.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Weinberg Lecture of Egyptology—For the Love of Sekhmet: Maggie Benson and Nettie Gourlay in the Temple of Mut". North Carolina Museum of Art. 18 December 2024. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  2. ^ a b c "Women in Old World Archaeology". www.brown.edu. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Sheppard, Kathleen (2022). Tea on the terrace: hotels and egyptologists' social networks, 1885-1925. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 148–155. ISBN 978-1-5261-6620-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Sheppard, Kathleen (2024). Women in the Valley of the Kings: the untold story of women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (First ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 72–90. ISBN 978-1-250-28435-8.
  5. ^ a b c d Bierbrier, M.L. (2012). Who Was Who in Egyptology. The Egypt Exploration Society. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-85698-207-1.
  6. ^ "Dundee Courier". 12 December 1861. p. 2 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  7. ^ Benson, Arthur Christopher (1917). Life and letters of Maggie Benson. University of California Libraries. London : J. Murray.
  8. ^ Sheppard, Kathleen (2019). ""Constant Companions" and "Intimate Friends": The Lives and Careers of Maggie Benson and Nettie Gourlay". Lady Science.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ "Hampshire Chronicle". 9 March 1912. p. 7 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  10. ^ Sheppard, Kathleen (6 July 2021). "British Egyptology (1882-1914)". UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. 1 (1).
  11. ^ a b c Peck, William H. "Janet A. Gourlay". Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology. Brown University. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  12. ^ a b Gourlay, J. A.; Newberry, Percy (1898). "Mentu-em-hat". Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes: Pour servir de bulletin à la Mission Française du Caire. 20 (3–4): 188–192. doi:10.11588/diglit.12427.20 – via Heidelberg Historical Literature, Digitized.
  13. ^ a b "sculpture | British Museum". The British Museum. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet A.; Newberry, Percy Edward (1899). Temple of Mut in Asher; an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the. Princeton Theological Seminary Library. London, J. Murray.
  15. ^ a b Hillier, Bevis (6 November 1972). "Egyptian sculpture for auction". The Times. Retrieved 6 March 2026.
  16. ^ a b Sheppard, Kathleen (2022). Tea on the terrace: hotels and egyptologists' social networks, 1885-1925. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-1-5261-6620-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
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