Carol Andrews

One of the most distinctive characters on the UK and Egypt lecture circuit, Carol Andrews has lectured to the SES a number of times. One subject to which she is particularly well suited is the Rosetta Stone: as the only reader of demotic on the staff of the British Museum, she was in a unique position to demonstrate the relationship between the hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek inscriptions on the famous slab - popularly regarded as the key to understanding the Ancient Egyptian language.

It is typical of her stimulating and forthright style that she describes the Rosetta Stone as “actually of rather limited use” in unlocking the mysteries of hieroglyphs. “It was not by any means the ‘open sesame’, although it did speed up progress in their decipherment”, she says.

Not one of nature’s shrinking violets, Carol has been passionate about Ancient Egypt since her childhood in South Shields on Tyneside, when she became a regular long-term borrower from the ancient history section of her local library. “I wrote my first history of Egypt when I was six”, she recalls. “It ran to four pages: Menes, Khufu, Ramesses II, Cleopatra, The End. It was profusely illustrated by the author.”

Carol’s interest continued throughout her school career, but then encountered a barrier. “There was no such thing as a first degree in Egyptology when I went to university”, she says. In the end she decided on Classics, “so at least I could read Diodorus Siculus, Manetho and Herodotus in the original”.

After taking her degree at Westfield College, London University, Carol was able at last to focus exclusively on Egyptology. “I got this amazing qualification called a PADipEg: Postgraduate Academic Diploma in Egyptology, which is quite a conversation piece. Then I did one year on my doctorate, and joined the British Museum in 1971.” It was a particularly exciting time to be there: “I was just in time for the Tutankhamun exhibition. The gold mask was actually sitting on my desk, and I’d only just joined the department! Of course,” she jokes, “everything’s been downhill since then . . .”

As an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities (in the grade of Senior Research Assistant), Carol was the longest-serving academic member of the department: she was there for the best part of 30 years. Her duties included cataloguing and publishing the museum’s Egyptian collection - her 1990 catalogue quadrupled the number of demotic papyri ever published by the department - as well as authenticating artefacts brought in by visitors, and handling postal and telephone enquiries.

As well as the Rosetta Stone and demotic texts, Carol’s range of specialisations include mummification, jewellery, amulets, glass, funerary papyri and shabtis. These provide plenty of variety, but she says that first and foremost “I love the Egyptian language, and there’s hardly any Egyptian artefact that doesn’t have a text on it somewhere.”

Some of the highlights of her career have involved Egyptian texts. “I remember one demotic papyrus with a seal on it; when it was unsealed its text hadn’t been seen since 194 BC. I was able to look at it and know no-one else had read it for almost 2,200 years.”

Carol has visited Egypt nearly 50 times, mostly as a guest lecturer rather than to excavate. In fact her only active dig was a departmental one at the Græco-Roman urban/temple site at Ashmunein in 1982, “which decided me that I’m not a digger. I don’t mind sitting at the top of the hole examining what they bring out but I’ve no desire to do the actual digging.”

Perhaps surprisingly, lecturing was not part of Carol’s job at the British Museum. However, she thoroughly enjoys accompanying and speaking to tour groups in Egypt: “I love the country  and the monuments and the sun; and no matter how many times you go, there is always something you haven’t seen before, even if it’s only a familar sight from a different angle.”

She also enjoys lecturing in the UK, and is pleased to see the healthy growth of regional Egyptology groups. “I think it’s very encouraging. More and more people have been to Egypt and many books have been published. People are interested, and it’s an educated interest. The more the merrier.”

Carol’s future plans include further demotic studies, and a desire to publish some material on shabtis. “Everyone knows I’m a shabti expert - every time a shabti came into the department, I had to look at it - but I’ve not put anything in print yet. I’ve rather stopped writing books, though: they take too much time. I’m going to concentrate on articles now. It was always a standing joke that everyone else wrote articles and I wrote books.” But then, that’s partly why Carol Andrews is such a renowned communicator and populariser of Egyptology: she has always had a lot to say.