Egypt Exploration

Amelia Edwards was a remarkable woman who founded the Egypt Exploration Fund to further the aims of scientific excavation and publication, and to generate public support and enthusiasm for Egyptology. In her will, she bequeathed her library and valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College London; she also left a sum of £2,400 to found the first chair of Egyptology in Britain, at University College London, expressing a wish that Petrie should be appointed. He held this post for forty years. It was a meeting with Amelia Edwards, shortly after his return from Egypt, that inspired Jesse Haworth to give financial support to
the subject, and in 1887, he began to show his enthusiasm in a practical way when he secured the throne, chessboard and chessmen of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, which had been discovered in Egypt in the previous year. The throne was in pieces, but it was skilfully reassembled and exhibited at the Jubilee Exhibition in Manchester in 1887. When the exhibition closed, Haworth presented it to the British Museum.