It was great to read about a new to me subject, I've always been interested in Egyptology but never looked into it. It is a highly controversial subject now with the repatriation of many artifacts being current news.
The book is very well researched and it is apparent that the author enjoys the subject. There were a lot of women mentioned in the book and most of them were heavily intertwined through the extremely small field. She brings a lot of the names of women to the forefront when they weren't noted outside of their tight circle due to men having a larger public face. It was mentioned in some places the colonization of the areas where tourists went, the uninhibited collection of artifacts and transport outside of Egypt but it seems to be a passing thought and not actual sympathy from the author regarding the ravaging of the country's landscape and exploitation of the people.

It is written in a very academic way, feels like a thesis rather than an easy to pick up book. The writing was good even if she flourished the book with assumptions of the women's thought process, discussions and lifestyles. She does lightly touch on the aspect of some women being romantically involved with one another in a way that doesn't make it seem voyeuristic into their intimate lives even if the author had access to their personal diaries. She does go into the tiny details that seem more relevant in a novel rather than one highlighting the successes of women in Egypt.

Over all this had more cons than pros and isn't the easiest read unless one is already into Egyptology.

Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age guides us through the stories of the many women who were exploring Egypt before men (like Howard Carter) arrived and took credit.
There was no one reason why they traveled to Egypt. Some just wanted to travel, some arrived with an interest in Egyptian history. They wrote about their discoveries, leading to more and more women arriving, and to more discoveries.
We should know the names of these women just as we do the men. Amelia Edwards, Maggie Benson, and Kate Bradbury are just three of the many women who did field work. Their stories are for all who are interested in Egypt, exploration, or acknowledgment of women’s contributions to the field of archaeology.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard!

I am an automatic fan of any well executed revisionist history and I've been an Egyptology nut since my teens. So it does me well to read such a great book detailing those women who were quite deliberately omitted from the story of exploration and history. It is so important to show that women were there not just to serve as companions to men and financial patrons, but were active participants as photographers, reproduction artists, explorers and diggers right alongside men who got most of the glory and credit. From curious explorers and tourists that they were expected to be in 19th century to the pre WWII PhDs teaching the next generation of Egyptologists, the women of this book WERE there and their contributions need to continue to be explored and highlighted more and more,

If you are looking for a book that digs deeply into stories of women who were there and did the same work and often more nuanced work as their male peers, look no further.

A fascinating look into the often forgotten and erased women who helped to build the study of Egyptology into what it is today.

This was so interesting! It covered a lot of time, and several different women who all influenced the development of Egyptology as a study, from artists to heiresses to PhD graduates, these women blazed their own paths and pursued their dreams of traveling and learning about Ancient Egypt.

I really appreciated how the author emphasized the presence and importance of LGBTQ women, while also highlighting the role all these white women played in the colonialism against Egypt. It was a bit dry, but well worth the read.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this arc.

For a non-fiction work this book was fairly readable. This book will make modern readers aware of all of the contributions that women made in rediscovering the world of Ancient Egypt. Sheppard shows how these women forged ahead against every single obstacle to make their mark on Egyptology. From their monetary support, their academic work, their artistic abilities, and their written memoirs, these women impacted the course of Egyptology more than anyone in the past has wanted to give them credit for. A tremendous accounting of the strength and courageousness of those who battled to do what they believed in.

Women in the Valley of the Kings written by Kathleen Sheppard was so well written. Any book about impactful women in history gets my attention, but Women in the Valley of Kings was phenomenal.

"Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age", by Kathleen Sheppard was an interesting, well researched book about the role women took in Egyptian archeology and artifacts. Very different culture in that time, both for women and for rules in digging and exploration. Was very detailed in shining a light on this niche. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher. All opinions are my own.

Women in the Valley of the Kings
By Kathleen Sheppard

The next time you walk into a museum, find an artifact label and read it.

Chances are the name of the person who found it or the people whose money acquired it are listed as men. This is especial true in the Gilded Age Egyptology.

What if I told you women and Egyptians were working alongside the men whose names grace labels in hundreds of museums? This book tells,s us about those women and how they worked tirelessly along side men. But were, however, often overlooked.

This book tells a story of these women. It was very interesting learning about all the work they did.

“Enter the women.” - @kathleensheppardwrites

This history is so rich and complicated. It’s a story that needed to be told. I was transfixed by the talent, drive, and gumption of these women, the trail they blazed, and the way they became the backbone of this movement. “They were not women behind the men; they were, however, overshadowed. These women were the physical, financial, and institutional backbone of Egyptology.”

Each chapter will take you on a journey focused on one or more essential women Egyptologists. However, as the chapters go on you’ll find these women all knew each other and were part of each others successes or the reason they loved Egyptology.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I didn’t know I needed all this information until after I finished this book. If you’re looking to the past to light your feminist fire, look no further than this book.

I’m so far behind on my #advancedreaderscopy I’m in my catch-up era. Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress I loved this walk through history.

#2025bookchallengebook1of100
#womeninthevalleyofthekings
#egyptology
#nonfictionbook1of5

So many positives and promise with this, starting with the premise. Who doesn’t love reading about women trailblazers, especially in a setting like egypt, where history is so abundant?

There were si many things I did love and the amount of research done was evident; but the narrative itself fell flat. It often felt more fact than story and I think it could have been both.

Great nonfiction read! I loved learning about the role these women played in the important discoveries in Egyptian Archeology made during the late 19th and early 20th century! I loved all the new information that i learned! This book is definitely easier to get into if you already have some knowledge on ancient Egypt and its archeology!

4 stars. Have read other books on Egypt archaeology adventures of the late 19th and early 20th century; this book matches up to those others. Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard is a captivating exploration of the often-overlooked female figures in Egyptology. Sheppard masterfully weaves together historical research and compelling storytelling to shed light on the women who contributed significantly to the field, yet have remained in the shadows for too long. At times it may feel a bit academic to some, but I really enjoyed it.

DNF @ 43% - I have a degree in Anthropology with a huge interest in Egyptology so I was really excited to read this one. Unfortunately this book reads like a very dry textbook and not written in a linear order, which made it difficult to follow at times.

I absolutely enjoyed this book. Having a natural curiosity of Egyptian times, I was drawn to the book title. Understanding women who have been overlooked in history is another area I like. Both come together perfectly in this book. So little was documented during this time of exploration do to men not caring or thinking it was important beyond the artifacts found. This text teaches us writings from women who were there for health issues or relaxation jumped started an area of exploration and eventually education/careers for other women in Egyptology. For me the real excitement of the book was learning that the first woman to earn an Egyptology degree was from my hometown and yet I knew nothing of her. This was disappointing at first but gave me inspiration to share her story and recommend this book to others. The book is written in a format that is by person so some stories have overlapping pieces as these women crossed paths and became friends, supporters and colleagues. I love that casual observations made by these women have become a bedrock of what happened, who was involved and snapshots into life during these times. I highly recommend this informative and easy read.

Thank you for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.
I am an armchair Archaeologist and this book was outstanding!!!

Finally , the women get their story.

Sheppard takes the best cues from narrative nonfiction for her collective biography and rewards us with a dense but wonderfully readable spotlight on women Egyptologists in the 19th and 20th centuries. Several women each get her time in the sun, but the overarching story shines light on the immense uncredited contributions of European women, local laborers, and native experts in the rapidly formalizing field. Give this one a well-deserved display nudge and it will fly out of academic and public libraries with a healthy history fandom. I received an eARC from the publisher, but later purchased a hard copy because it's that good.

There's a reason workers are called that. They do the many practical tasks that make discoveries whose credit is assigned to some colonial "master" for the purpose of making "history"; never have I typed his story with more bilious growling.

Kathleen Sheppard does a lot for my mood by not focusing on the colonial "mistresses" shall we say without some acknowledgment of the role of the normally so unacknowledged as to be invisible workers. There is a kind of grim humor in these men and women vanishing into the role of shabtis. I don't know that this term, or even this concept, had made it into Egyptology by the time Author Sheppard writes about (c.1880–1930). I found it...ironic.

Now, to be clear, none of the women under discussion were free of colonial mentality, some more than others. As people experiencing a pretty dramatic regime of prejudice themselves, with belittlement, credit-grabbing, and harassment their daily lot, one would like to imagine they would be sensitized to the issue of discounting another's labor based on irrelevant externalities. Alas, real life seldom shows a smooth face to the future.

One thing I was surprised to learn was that not all the men working in Egyptology were abusive in the various ways it was possible for them to be. Few of them hurdled even that low bar, but it was positive that a few did. I myownself wonder if the utter novelty of learning about the ancient culture and its rules, its people, and its existence in relation to its peers for the very first time in thousands of years didn't have some damping effect on them...can't lord it over others when you yourself know so very little. I know it will surprise no one that many tried the tack anyway.

Author Sheppard took time to delve into lives of some women more than others, which is down to survival of records...look at the notes. I'm also unsurprised at the presence of many of my lesbian siblings in these ranks. If there's a place people can be found doing hard, intellectually rigorous work, my siblings will be there and in the forefront as often as not. In dealing with these women's personal lives Author Sheppard is without period-appropriate coyness or reticence, thank goodness. The world has changed for the better in so many ways since the time we're discussing. This is a huge one: Being queer is fairly unremarkable now. It's this reality that makes the hate-filled control freaks so damn mad.

What that leads me to is, in fact, the source of my missing star on the book's rating. It's a terrific breeze of openness and transparency to have the lives, not just the work, of figures from the past openly discussed. It's inevitable that some deeply uncomfortable details emerge, like one woman's husband getting physical with her when she was twelve and he twenty-three, tolerated by her mother in full knowledge of it because she fancied the man herself. *ew* But these are all presented in a way that I found more than a bit irksome. Nothing like an internal chronology of a woman's life is followed, only the general structure of chapters being about one woman in the main, and other women's entries and exits from her story are handled as they arise not placed aside as references to that other woman's chapter (eg, "See chapter 77, page 666"). The narrative thrust of following one story is thus squandered in Wikipedia searches and/or note-taking. It does leave me a bit bumfuzzled as to who in the publishing house signed off on such an organizational idea.

It's a genuine complaint, but the truth is most of these women were unknown to me at all, even as names, so honestly I'd've been doing that searching anyway. In a few hundred pages about one of the most explosive developmental regimes in the entire course of historiography and archaeology as disciplines, and the birth and exponential growth of Egyptology, this was going to be the case.

So don't take this as code for "avoid this read" but as an urging to do the opposite. Get this book and start appreciating that, when our parents, grands, and greats were kids, Humanity was first learning about the people of the distant past in their own fragmentary words, and from their own uncovered material possessions. Author Sheppard has brought the palpable excitement of the women who were there, whose presence and guidance made much of the progress we now stand in top of to look still deeper into the past from the mountains their work made.

It was a flawed, slightly disorganized book, but so was the story its subjects were busy living. A strong recommendation for a self-gift to enjoy on #Booksgiving.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Egypt is not a topic I read a lot about, so I learned a lot from this book, but most importantly, I loved seeing that women were as influential as they could for the times.

The history of Egyptology often focuses on rich white men doing their rich white men things. But what often gets overlooked is the presence of women during the Golden Age of Egyptian archaeology (in relation to Western antiquarians). The author discusses some of the earliest European women who travelled to Egypt and became involved in excavations.

This work was wonderful, because many of these women played a massive role in twentieth century Egyptology but were rarely recognized the way they would have been if they were male. The author pointed out that much of what they did was deemed boring or tedious, certainly not the news-worthy opening or raiding of tombs, but that without their documentation and background work, much of the context and important information would have been lost. I also loved the fact that the women’s field journals and paintings/drawings of the tombs were much more detailed and useful than the men’s generally were (something I find especially relatable as an archaeologist) or even the photographs.

The author uses the women’s travelogues, diaries, drawings, and maps to inform her research for this work. I do think the scope of this work was a bit too broad, though. Rather than simply focusing on the women’s time in Egypt, there is an almost overwhelming amount of information included about their general lives, romance, loves, and other information that wasn’t necessarily relevant. With the number of women included in this work, there were many times when the information was more overwhelming than informative. The work also wasn’t set up in the most accessible manner, with chapters following a woman’s entire life but then the same woman being mentioned in new ways in following chapters due to overlapping timelines.

Overall this was an informative and well-intentioned work, but I do think the execution was lacking. Some additional editing and reworking probably would have gone a long way to helping this. My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.