HOW TO TURN YOUR FIXATION ON AN OBSCURE MUSEUM IN ENGLAND INTO ACADEMIC RESEARCH: THE THESIS STREAM

Final Project Reflections | Caitlin McCurdy

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This new Musings column will hopefully illuminate a road rarely walked down, and one I am currently venturing down: the MMSt thesis stream. First, let’s go over some basics. What is a thesis? Why do one? What am I doing? Here we go:

The basic requirements for the thesis stream include all the usual museum studies course requirements, in addition to INF1240 Research Methods or an independent reading course. The thesis itself is worth 2.0 credits, so keep that in mind while planning out your second year or you may end up taking 1.0 credit extra by accident.

The next step is to find a supervisor. Now what I did, was panic email the MMSt director unsure of where to start or how to even ask such a question of my professors. But it need not be a panic-inducing situation, after a quick meeting with the MMSt director, I was quickly pointed in the right direction, and found my co-supervisors Irina D. Mihalache and Patrick Keilty. At the start of Year 2, you submit your thesis proposal, and it is approved by Graduate Committee on Standing in early September. Most of the thesis work is done in the second year (that’s where I’m at). During Fall & Winter of your second year, you got to research, write, research, and also maybe write. More information can be found here

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Photo courtesy of Caitlin McCurdy.

What initially drew me to doing a thesis was an interest in exploring the connections and parallels in the development of three industries/ways of thinking that emerged in the 19th century: Egyptology, museums, and sexual classification. Honestly, it was a trip to England in February of 2018 that I credit (blame) for making me reconsider an Egyptology MA and instead shifting focus to museum studies.
My research centers a case study on the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, a small university museum in London, England based out of University College London. I was entranced by a. the sheer volume of stuff they have and b. the direct ties to Egyptology founding figure and the museum’s namesake, William Flinders Petrie, and how the current museum is grappling with the shift in academic and popular thinking away from glorifying colonizers.

Me at the Petrie, circa 2018. 

Over the last year, this initial curiosity has grown and matured in an actual research framework with methodology and scope. There is a number of ancient Egyptian artifacts that can be considered erotic or lude, I’ve written about a few in my previous column, most notably this Temple Wall of Senwosret. Through research I did in my undergrad, I found that the erotic that was presumed onto these objects were sometime misplaced or a misinterpretation on the part of a modern scholar. Epistemologically, what does this mean for Egyptology as a field and museums as a place for safekeeping knowledge.

Ultimately, the question I am trying to answer is “How does historical knowing function erotically within ancient Egypt?”. Now, what does that actually mean I’m researching? Excellent question, I don’t know. But here’s what I’ve been reading for the last six months.

The foundational texts for my thesis are The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective by Arjun Appadurai and Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds by Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner. Through a Marxist framework informed by these books, I define 19th century Egyptology as a tournament of values, where Egyptian artifacts are reconfigured as commodities, with new meaning and value ascribed to them, which then alters their “biography”. This process effects any meaning making that has occurred since their initial removal from Egypt. So, my earlier question of what does erotic knowing look like in ancient Egypt may be more accurately written as how is this knowledge produced, and who is producing it?

I love a good chart!

Because I’m focusing on erotic artifacts, I knew eventually my research would lead me into the realm of queer theory. I had previously read some Foucault and David Halperin writings on how to historically study sex and sexuality but was unsure where to begin to tie such a framwork into my museological framework. One of my supervisors, Patrick Keilty, referred me to the writings of Elizabeth Freeman and Valerie Traub on erotohistoriography and Pete Sigal’s writings on Ethnopornography, which ultimately became the lens through which I will be studying my selected artifacts from the Petrie.

My current thinking is that colonial knowledge and commoditization create a “Victorian scrim”, raising questions of whose erotic experience is being interpreted, and whose erotic way of knowing is involved in erotohistoriography. Now that I have a framework and direction, my next step is some historical and archival research into the museum itself. This means searching through annual reports, archaeological field reports and various other publications. Wish me luck!

Next in this column, we’ll hear about what other theses the fine folks in the MMSt thesis stream are doing.

Exterior of the Petrie, the pizza shop next door provides a unique olfactory experience. Source

ACT, IDENTITY, AND AN ANCIENT GREEK VASE

Object of the Week | Caitlin McCurdy

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In all my articles for this column, I have shied away from talking about the Greeks and their plethora of erotic and nude artifacts that fill museum’s collections. I find their thousands years history rather daunting to tackle, and the complex homosocial, inter-generational sexual relationships between men that are equally well-documented even more so. But we’re opening that can of worms now, so let’s discuss this little pocket of history through this week’s object: an amphora from the British Museum’s collection, originally from Athens of Archaic Greece, circa 540 BCE.

Front side of an Archaic Greek Amphora (c) The Trustees of the British Museum | Source

Amphorai were typically used for the storage and transport of wine and food. To create black-figure pottery, a slip that turned black during firing was applied to the pottery in the shape of figures and ornamental motifs.

I first came across this artifact in a book called A Little Gay History by R.B. Parkinson. It’s a cute, quick look at same-sex desire across history, and an interesting read to see how this desire has manifested itself in material culture across time and civilizations. Parkinson discusses the culturally approved intimacy of boys & men in ancient Greece, how they were structured by age, and the inclusion of these relationships in scenes depicted on pottery.

Cover of R. B. Parkinson's Book. Courtesy of Caitlin McCurdy

Parkinson works as an Egyptology professor at Oxford University and is a former curator of the British Museum’s Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. He has written on the study of LGBT histories and ways in which to extend this historiography into ancient civilizations which carried different signifiers, gender roles, and meanings from our own. In an essay about his process for writing this book, he emphasized the potential social impact of engaging in the historiographic work. In other essays of his, he also describes the importance of not overextending modern labels and identities when studying behaviours and acts that feel familiar to our current moment, as in their original context they may have served a different purpose. As he states himself, “such historical interpretation is not a purely ‘academic’ matter, and research on such topics has to be irrefutably accurate or it risks a backward step.”

In my personal statement for admission to this program, I wrote that reaching into the past to find evidence of yourself can help legitimize your identity to a present that is looking for a reason to dismiss you. Museum exhibitions can help in this process, and I have had emotional moments in LGBT-themed exhibitions when confronted with effective framing of these artifacts. But it has to be done responsibly.

The treatment of these artifacts by the museums that hold them play an important part in how the public views the artifacts, and the people who created them. By framing the amphora within a context of same sex desire, questions of similarities between today's gay community and the pederastic relationships of ancient Greece come to mind.

Close Up on the British Museum Amphora. (c) The Trustees of the British Museum. Source.

The homosocial relationships between men in ancient Greece are often discussed as being early representations of gay relationships, and having the amphora included in exhibitions about LGBT identities and histories adopts this perspective. Parkinson also frames the amphora as representative in this way. As depicted in this vase, bearded men are courting younger athletic youth, reflecting how these pederastic relationships served a function unique to ancient Greece. When I asked my friend & resident ancient Greece expert Sydney Rodrigues about this phenomenon, she had the following to say:

But when are representations of same sex desires ever a quick conversation?

As my parasocial dream professor Dr. Parkinson wrote, “I myself am not a historian of sexuality, but simply a gay Egyptologist who specialises in Middle Kingdom literature from around 1900–1650 BC.” I currently don’t think of myself as a historian of sexuality, but I think that’s slowly changing as more and more of my thesis is looking into queer theory and applying it to museums and Egyptology. But I am a gay Egyptologist, and the instinct to look at ancient Egypt and find myself there has been present since my 101 essay on Women in Egypt.

I focus on erotic artifacts because I am fascinated by what they reveal about humanity. The two things that are consistent across all cultures, from ancient Greece and Egypt into Medieval Europe, are death and sex. And we know about death: the funerary cult of Egypt, the Catholic rites of 15th century England. But death is also stagnant, it remains buried and preserved, waiting to be uncovered. Sex is elusive, a set of actions rarely depicted in material culture, and even more difficult to preserve through centuries of Western society creating taboos around discussion of such material.

(c) The Trustees of the British Museum. Source.

This amphora is a glimpse into the life of ancient Greeks, both in its use to serve wine and its depictions of a moment of life — relationships between men. Currently, the online collections of the British Museum list the amphora as not on display, but it does have an extensive exhibition history. In 2018–2019 it was included in the Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition titled Desire, love and identity: exploring LGBTQ identities. A decade earlier, in 2007–2008, the amphora was part of an exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London called Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquities to Now. 

I am intrigued by the moment when a gay man wanders into these exhibitions and peers into a display case to see this amphora. Does he see himself reflected back at him? Or is the art style too foreign, the cultural context too different from his own? Do the years of colonial interference alter his understanding of the artifact? This phenomenon is described by Elizabeth Freeman as erotohistoriography, a queer theory concept which is currently taking up a lot of real estate in my brain, and it has huge applicability for museums. Maybe by the time I’m finished this program I’ll have some answers to these questions. But more likely, I’ll continue to study the past, and look for myself there. 

THE PROBLEM WITH MIN: A TEMPLE WALL, A MAN, A MEMBER

Object of the Week | Caitlin McCurdy

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During my undergraduate degree, I spent a lot of time studying one deity, the mysterious fertility/agricultural deity Min. He was of particular interest because his visual depictions often caused confusion, misinterpretation, and in the case of one temple wall fragment — outright censorship. This particular artifact is a segment of a temple wall from Koptos, a site in Upper Egypt and a major worship center for Min. Currently, the wall is housed in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, England. The Middle Kingdom wall depicts Pharaoh Senwosret I in a ceremonial run before Min. Min is shown standing tall before the pharaoh, fully erect.

Temple Wall UC14786 as it's currently displayed at the Petrie Museum of Art and Archaeology. (Photograph courtesy of Caitlin McCurdy)

The reasonings for his ithyphallic depictions have been debated at length. Some argue it demonstrates his, and by extension the pharaoh’s, sexual virility. This line of thinking is supported flimsily by the belief that a type of Egyptian lettuce — also an emblem of Min — works as an aphrodisiac. Without going on too long of an aside, this is not my belief. After doing an independent study project on Min, I believe he serves a more agricultural purpose. That he is always depicted erect, demonstrates more of a metaphorical seeding across the fields of Upper Egypt. 

Artist Depiction of Min. | Source

His presentation has proved to be the largest problem for his treatment in Egyptology museums. Not to mention that it’s basically impossible to consider his presentation as anything less than sexual for the modern viewer. It further complicates the understanding of this deity when one considers that this temple wall was found in 1893, during the height of Victorian morality in England. This time period invoked moral panic around the realms of nudity and the middle class.

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology was founded during the height of Egyptomania in England and during extensive colonial projects in the country. Amelia Edwards, a British author and “collector” of Egyptian artifacts, donated her collection to University College London in 1892, establishing the museum and cementing the legacy of the man who would be its first director and namesake.

William Flinders Petrie, | Source

William Flinders Petrie was a founding figure in British Egyptology during the late 19^th century. There is ample evidence that Petrie allowed his own ideals of British purity and racial hierarchy to inform his work in Egypt. If modern museums are to interrogate their position as objective and neutral caretakers of non-Western artifacts, Petrie set out to do the exact opposite of that. His personal voice and views permeated the exhibitions he created.

The temple wall currently in question was considered a problem immediately upon its arrival in London. Petrie’s solution was to create a label just large enough to cover Min’s erection, and place it directly onto the slab. This was considered sufficient to appease the sensibilities of the university population, who, at the time, was the museum’s only and desired elite audience. Referred to as a museological fig leaf, the label remained where it was from 1893, allegedly into the 1970s.

Min Censored. | Source

The temple wall in the Petrie museum may be an extreme historical example of a curator or director’s personal beliefs preventing an unbiased display from taking place, yet it also highlights the potential pitfalls of displaying an ancient culture from a modern perspective. Egyptology in itself is a colonial institution, its foundation taking place during Britain’s violent imperial actions in Egypt. How do you begin to decolonize an institution such as this? The knowledge of ancient Egypt is informed by a history of unequal contact between a colonial power and the modern civilization living where the ancient once stood. If Min’s treatment in the Petrie museum can reveal anything, it’s that the colonial roots of museums have perhaps prevented some knowledge from being fully revealed because the knowledge contained information considered unacceptable by colonial power’s social mores.