Sir

In your 100 Years Ago column you reprinted a report on archaeological digs carried out in Egypt in the 1890s by a Miss Benson and a Miss Gourlay (Nature 398, 469; 1999). The Miss Benson referred to was Margaret (“Maggie”) Benson, daughter of an Archbishop of Canterbury who had died a couple of years before the article's original appearance. One of her brothers, E. F. Benson (already a best-selling author with his novel Dodo, and later to write the popular Mapp and Lucia novels), spent time each winter assisting at these excavations.

The ladies unearthed more than 200 statues, most of which went to Egyptian museums, apart from a very few items (undoubtedly those considered the least valuable and interesting), which the Egyptian government presented to their finders in recognition of their considerable contribution to the history of the XXVth and XXVIth dynasties.

It is galling that the Nature writer would never know that just a handful of what he so disparagingly dismissed as “no very startling discoveries” were to change hands for huge sums of money in the twentieth century. In 1972, six of Miss Benson's statues were sold in London for a total of £114,000. And the head of Amun, which sold for 17,000 guineas in 1972, was the top lot at a Christie's auction in 1991, fetching more than £0.5 million.

The reporter's patronizing tone towards women has to be seen in the context of the day, but doesn't it bring home the attitudes with which intelligent and enterprising women had to contend a century ago?