Wafaa EL Sadik and Rüdiger Heimlich
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789774168253
- eISBN:
- 9781617978173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774168253.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This chapter details the author's introduction to a group of American women who wished to finance and undertake an excavation in Karnak. These women include television starlet Diane Smith, painter ...
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This chapter details the author's introduction to a group of American women who wished to finance and undertake an excavation in Karnak. These women include television starlet Diane Smith, painter and art dealer Mary Martin, photographer and writer Audrey Topping, former skeet-shooting champion Betje Carlson, and Gypsy Grave, a director of a private archaeological museum in Florida. They were five power women who had pulled strings to get permission for the first all-female archaeological mission. They set up the private Nile Foundation, for which they collected roughly $100,000 in sponsors' money by way of charity and fundraising events. The concession of the project had been obtained through the American Research Center in Egypt, and the standing committee of the antiquities administration had approved it only with the stipulation that it be strictly scientific.Less
This chapter details the author's introduction to a group of American women who wished to finance and undertake an excavation in Karnak. These women include television starlet Diane Smith, painter and art dealer Mary Martin, photographer and writer Audrey Topping, former skeet-shooting champion Betje Carlson, and Gypsy Grave, a director of a private archaeological museum in Florida. They were five power women who had pulled strings to get permission for the first all-female archaeological mission. They set up the private Nile Foundation, for which they collected roughly $100,000 in sponsors' money by way of charity and fundraising events. The concession of the project had been obtained through the American Research Center in Egypt, and the standing committee of the antiquities administration had approved it only with the stipulation that it be strictly scientific.
