So who was the king named in the text and shown offering to Khnum and his divine family at the top of the stela? Wilbour tried to decipher the indistinct hieroglyphic signs of his name with little success.

Wilbour’s notes on the royal name on the stela. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Charles E. Wilbour Archival Collection [5.1.019, notebook 3C, p. 327]

Wilbour could tell from the grammar of the inscription that it was written in the Ptolemaic Period (c. 300 BC), but how could a king have reigned for 18 years at this time without leaving behind any other traces?

We now know that the king named in the stela is Djoser, a king of the Old Kingdom ( c. 2800 BC): however, as Wilbour correctly recognised, the stela was written 2500 years later. It was probably created as a ‘pious fraud’ by the priests of Khnum, trying to boost their tax revenues and make their temple look older and more important than it was. The theme of the seven year’s famine may actually have entered the Egyptian text from a Biblical source, rather than the other way round: there was a thriving Jewish community at Aswan in the years before the stela was erected, and Wilbour himself would acquire some documents from this community in 1893.

An unusual coincidence in this story is Wilbour’s meeting with Alfred Maudslay, the British archaeologist who was carrying out groundbreaking excavations of Maya sites. In Central America Maudslay had to take and develop photographs deep in the jungle, away from a reliable source of water (a set of his photographs is now in Brooklyn), so photographing the stela for Wilbour would have posed little challenge.

Alfred Maudslay at Chichen Itza, 1889. Brooklyn Museum Library.

The small Western community in Egypt kept an eye out for interesting new arrivals, and Wilbour will probably have had advance knowledge of Maudslay’s arrival at Aswan. It is tempting to wonder what the two men discussed: the differences and similarities between Egyptian and Mayan pyramids? Did Wilbour, a keen linguist, give Maudslay tips on how to decipher the Maya hieroglyphs (something that was not achieved until the 1960s)?

In April Wilbour left Egypt to spend the summer in France. He was still proud of his discovery of the stela, if puzzled by its text. Within a couple of months he had printed some cabinet cards of Maudslay’s photographs: the backs contained his own thoughts on the stela.

Wilbour’s description and analysis of the stela. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Charles E. Wilbour Archival Collection [9.4.004 and 005]

He sent these out to colleagues to arouse interest in this important text. His hopes were realised: within a year the stela had been fully published by the German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch. The famine stela has remained ever since a vital part of the study of Late Egyptian literature and religion.

Wilbour’s role in this episode is key—he discovered the famine stela, translated it, and disseminated it—but he was typically modest in the way he allowed Brugsch to be the first to publish an account of it. Did Wilbour, who never graduated from university, feel that he lacked the intellectual gravitas to do it? Given his background in the murky politics of Tammany Hall, did he feel he should keep a low profile? Perhaps he was just content to have solved the problem to his own satisfaction and felt no need to publish it.

One thing I particularly like about this story is the way it shows Wilbour using the latest technology of the age—cabinet cards—to reproduce the stela accurately and disseminate it as quickly and efficiently as possible. If he were alive today, would Wilbour would have been blogging about his discoveries to his friends?

At the First Cataract the course of the Nile is shallow and full of granite boulders: boats had to be towed through the rapids by the local fishermen (who charged a hefty fee), or a channel had to be dredged for safe passage.

Egypt – Fishermen at the first cataract, Philae. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection (S03_06_01_018 image 2369).

The boulders, however, were the ideal spot for kings to commemorate their achievements. They were the billboards of their day – but inscriptions carved into granite last longer than paper posters, and Wilbour was in his element discovering and copying these inscriptions. One he discovered, however, gave him particular problems:

Elephantine, February 6, 1889

We sailed in half an hour up to the picturesque island of Sehel. …  Thutmose III on a bigger piece of granite says that on the twenty-second day of the ninth month of his fiftieth year [c. 1425 BC], having ordered the cutting of this channel after he had found it boxed up by stones so that no vessels could pass, he rejoicing, sailed up to hew his enemies. The channel’s name was ‘Goodway Usertesen’; now its name became ‘the way made good by Thutmose III the immortal’, and, he adds, the fishers of Elephantine are to dig it out every year. But for many years these fishers have taken good care not to dig it out; they get money for pulling vessels up the way in which the stones seem to have been accumulating ever since Thutmose’s time. The best inscription I found was of thirty-two long lines, and very hard to make out, of a King Kharser, whose name I have never before seen. We rowed back in three-quarters of an hour.

Stela of ‘Kharser’. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Charles E. Wilbour Archival Collection [9.4.004]

Wilbour returned to Sehel the following year, with his family (‘Lottie’ his wife Charlotte, who was advised to stay in Egypt for her health; ‘Linnie’ and ‘Dora’ his daughters Eveline and Theodora; ‘Ned’ Eveline’s husband) and another Egyptologist, Professor Archibald Sayce of Oxford University, who had his own houseboat, the Timsaah (‘Crocodile’). He continued to work on his stela.

P 552 February 9, 1890

… Dr. Worthington and Sayce breakfasted with us; the doctor examined Lottie and reassured us that her lungs were unaffected. … Then came the mail with letters from New Bedford and Compton and Paris and elsewhere and papers from Montana telling of the election of Republican Senators. May they get in.

February 10, 1890

Went to Sehel and recompared part of the stele I discovered last year.. …

February 11, 1890

To Seheyl again in the morning. After noon we went to the west bank, Linnie and Dora to the old Convent and Sayce and I to Pig Rock, where we copied a store of inscriptions and a considerable fragment of a stele. Dora found the top of another. … In the evening Ned and I went to the Timsaah and Mr. A. P. Maudslay, who has worked seven seasons on the Mayan antiquities in Central America, showed and explained to us many fine photographs taken by him at Copan. He with four others of his family are on one of Cook’s new dahabeeyehs [houseboats], the Osiris.

February 13, 1890

…The unknown king of my stele bothers Sayce and me greatly. The character of the inscription puts it in Ptolemaic or Roman time and how a King not a Ptolemy or an Emperor could have reached the eighteenth year of his reign, passeth understanding.

February 16, 1890

…The Osiris came up and Maudslay gave Ned for me negatives, very fine, of my great stela at Sehel.

(adapted from Travels in Egypt: Letters of Charles Edwin Wilbour (Brooklyn, 1936)

The text of Wilbour’s stela told of a seven year famine in Egypt: the country was starving, temples were shut, law and order had collapsed. In a dream the Pharaoh saw Khnum, the ram-headed god of Aswan, who assured him that the Nile would rise again and the famine would end. In thanks, the King promised Khnum’s priests a share of the revenues from the land around Aswan.

For nineteenth century Egyptologists brought up reading the Bible, the Famine Stela was astonishing: it seemed to confirm the tale of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream of seven year’s famine.

Next week, I’ll post the second part of this story, where we’ll see what Wilbour made of this intriguing text and how he tried to make his Egyptological colleagues aware of his discovery.  In the meantime, catch up on our ongoing series of posts about Wilbour, if you’ve missed any.

Wilbour spent his winters in Egypt, working at sites throughout the country from 1880 until his death in 1896. Wilbour travelled from site to site by train, postal steamer, or hitching a lift on the steamer belonging to the Department of Antiquities. By the time of his visit in 1886, however, he had decided to buy a dahabiya (houseboat), which would accommodate him, his visiting family, and his library in greater comfort.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Wilbour’s calling card. Charles E. Wilbour Archival Collection, [9.4.026], Notebook 3A

Travelling by dahabiya was simple: you used the prevailing wind to sail upstream (south), and drifted downstream (north) with the current. This method had changed little over millennia—the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘travel north’ is a boat with its sail furled, and ‘travel south’ a boat with its sail raised.

Wilbour never regretted the purchase of The Seven Hathors: “Greece and Italy are delightful, but the moment when I feel twice as much alive comes to me when the Nile banks begin to slide past the dahabiya from Bedresheyn to Aswan.”

The following excerpts from Wilbour’s letters to his mother and aunt show his acquisition of The Seven Hathors, and its maiden voyage:

Cairo
November 29, 1886

Thursday Arminius the Copt came to my terms about his dahabiya, declared before witnesses that she was mine, and I went over to raise the Stars and Stripes on her. … We have in the house part a space 16 2/3 feet by 54 feet, just nine hundred square feet, and on the deck about seven hundred feet more covered in by canvas. Below I have to stretch a little to reach the ceiling, so there is no danger of Dora bumping her high hat. I think we shall be comfortable and only wish you had an Enchanted Carpet to transport you suddenly to this Land of the Sun.

Cairo
Monday December 13, 1886

They [Wibour’s wife Charlotte (‘Lottie’), their children, Victor, Evelyn, and Dora, and Evelyn’s husband Ned] arrived Wednesday after a bad voyage and ever since Lottie and I have been running about buying the things for housekeeping. You may get almost everything here, but you have to bargain which takes time.

Lantern Slide Collection: Views, Objects: Egypt. General Views\People [selected images]. View 051: Egypt – Market at Kasr-en-Nil., n.d., T. H. McAllister, Manufacturing Optician. 49 Nassau Street, New York. Brooklyn Museum Archives (S10|08 General Views_People, image 9794).

They are all very much pleased with the boat and instead of wanting to wait and see the splendours of Cairo are anxious to be off up the river. There are yet carpenters and plumbers and painters at work, but Victor says that it seems like home. Lottie is already speaking of the things she will put over to do next year and so her occupation in Egypt which was to be for this winter only, seems already growing to be like the English. We go out mostly afternoons to the boat and see the sunset there, which is gorgeous.

Lantern Slide Collection: Views, Objects: Egypt. General Views\People [selected images]. View 088: Egypt – Sunset on the Nile., n.d. Brooklyn Museum Archives (S10|08 General Views_People, image 9831).

… We have held Council over the boat’s name and have concluded to call her The Seven Hathors. It lends itself to hieroglyphic decoration and Egyptians will call her “Seven,” Seba. We find the Seven Hathors on most of the more perfect temples. In the sky they are the Pleiades. Being a wooden boat she would almost float if full of water, but in order to make a life boat I am having four hundred empty petroleum cans sealed up to be put in her holds at its sides. If she should ever fill with water they will lift seven tons and so prevent her from sinking. I have done this so that Lottie might sleep better…
Seven Hathors
December 20, 1886

We came on board Saturday the eighteenth and have not digested our trunks. And yesterday we took on board four hundred dollars worth of provisions, so you see we have a considerable chaos …

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Wilbour’s Notebooks: cover and supply list for the Houseboat. Charles E. Wilbour Archival Collection Notebook 2N, Notebook 2O and Notebook 3C.

Approaching Beni Suef
December 29, 1886

… Lottie has been struggling this far with our belongings and the rear room is beginning to get into shape. The deck is still pretty much chaos… We bought an eight-dollar sewing machine and Dora has been running it today. The Library is still encumbered with many eatables. But the machine begins to work and when we got back from Saqqara Lottie said she was glad to get “home”. It is a pleasure to have a moving house and ours is as big as the one Columbus first crossed in.

Tuesday January 4, 1887

We sailed to Bibbeh, where next morning we visited the Coptic Convent and Ned made a sketch in the Church of it… New Year’s Day we put up our streamer. The blue end of it was a cook’s apron. A Hathor hieroglyphic is applied to it in white and then on the white and red streamers below is a hieroglyphic 7, thus:

Brooklyn Museum. Wilbour Library of Egyptology. Travels in Egypt: Letters of Charles Edwin Wilbour (Brooklyn, 1936), p. 418.

Altogether it is our American colors adapted to our Seven Hathors name. When we get where there are good Pharaonic Hathors to copy Ned will do something for the decoration of the boat. At Minya we hope to find letters, and butter from Isigny in France, sent up from Cairo by post. Hitherto I have not eaten butter in Egypt. Even at Shepheard’s Hotel they do not have good butter…

At the time Preissler made his drawings, Egypt was an inaccessible, mysterious land. Few objects were held in Western museums or collections, and hieroglyphic inscriptions could not be read. Preissler’s drawings are of interest not only because they record objects that may now be lost or damaged, but also because they show how these Egyptian objects appeared to an eighteenth century eye.

J. J. Preissler. Enthroned figure of the god Harpocrates, rear view. Red chalk on paper, c. 1725-1771. Wilbour Library of Egyptology, Special Collections

My favourite drawing shows the back view of a long-haired figure, its right arm bent at the elbow, seated on a falcon-backed throne. It’s hard (but not impossible!) to identify an object just from its backside, and I started to look for other works by Preissler to see if he’d made any other studies of this figure. As luck would have it, the Binghamton Art Gallery has two drawings of the front and side.

(left) J. J. Preissler. Enthroned figure of the god Harpocrates, front view. Red chalk on paper, c. 1725-1771. Binghamton University Art Museum. (right) J. J. Preissler. Enthroned figure of the god Harpocrates, left profile view. Red chalk on paper, c. 1725-1771. Binghamton University Art Museum.

These showed a naked child, holding one hand to his chest, and sitting on a throne shaped like a pair of lions. The Binghamton and Brooklyn drawings show a figure of the child god Harpocrates, and were probably copied from a small bronze statuette, like this Harpocrates now in Brooklyn (not the original of the drawings).

Seated figure of Harpocrates. Bronze, Egypt, Late Period, 664-323 BC. 37.686E, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund.

In Egypt children were shown with a long plaited side-lock of hair, sucking their index finger. Preissler has misunderstood Harpocrates’s gesture, and the curly end of his sidelock has been turned into a horn floating above his hand. His soft, podgy body and his inquiring face are also more Western than Egyptian in appearance. Preissler didn’t make a straightforward copy of a the bronze figure, but turned Harpocrates into a flesh and blood sketch that looks almost like a study from a living sitter. I wonder if he actually arranged a model in the same pose as the bronze, or if this was all done from the original figure?

Thanks to museum displays and over two hundred years of Egyptological research, we’re now familiar with the basic conventions of Egyptian art: we can easily recognize what makes an object look Egyptian. The drawings show Preissler confronted with an unfamiliar, peculiar object from a far-off land, and struggling to understand and describe it. His puzzlement and wonder are still visible—and contagious—nearly 300 years later.