Today is the birthday, in 1863, of Margaret Murray. She was a British Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She was president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely.
Born in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications. she took part in Petrie’s excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple, and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both of which established her reputation in Egyptology.
Murray became closely involved in the first-wave feminist movement, joining the Women’s Social and Political Union and devoting much time to improving women’s status at UCL. Unable to return to Egypt due to the First World War, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God.
Murray’s work in Egyptology and archaeology was widely acclaimed and earned her the nickname of “The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology”. The influence of her witch-cult theory in both religion and literature has been examined by scholars, and she herself has been dubbed the “Grandmother of Wicca”. She died in 1963.
Margaret Alice Murray
R.I.P. Sam Neill
GOOGLY EYES!
Here’s Juice Newton to get you started this morning…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0DK-0fIKCw
