Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

A countrywoman of Mrs. Jameson and her contemporary, who also deserves an honorable place in the literature of archæology, is Louise Twining. Although inferior in intellectual attainments and literary activity to the accomplished author of Sacred and Legendary Art, her two works on Types and Figures of the Bible Illustrated by Art and Symbols and Emblems of Early Mediæval Christian Art have given her a well-deserved reputation on the Continent as well as in the British Isles. The latter volume Mrs. Jameson herself declares in her Legends of the Madonna to be "certainly the most complete and useful book of the kind which I know of."

A third woman who has won fame for her sex in the island kingdom in the domain of archeology is Miss Margaret Stotes. Her activities, however, have been chiefly confined to the antiquities of Ireland, on which she is a recognized authority.

The notable part she took in editing Lord Dunraven's great work, Notes on Irish Architecture, established her reputation on a firm basis. Among her other important works are Early Christian Art in Ireland and Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language, chiefly collected and drawn by George Petrie, one of the annual volumes of the Royal Historical and Archæological Association of Ireland. This work has justly been described as an epoch-making contribution to Christian epigraphy and to our rapidly developing knowledge of Keltic language and literature. The learned Dr. Krauss, than whom there is no more competent judge, in referring to this splendid performance, does not hesitate to affirm, "No man could have done better than this brave college girl, whom I would wish to greet across the Channel with a cordial Macte virtute."

The women archæologists so far mentioned, with the exception of Queen Caroline Murat, were conspicuous as writers rather than active investigators in the field. There have been, however, quite a number who have won distinction as "archæologists of the spade"—women who, either alone or with their husbands, have superintended excavations in different lands, which have yielded results of untold scientific value. Among the most conspicuous of these are Mme. Sophia Schliemann, Mme. Dieulafoy and the enterprising Yankee girl, Miss Harriet A. Boyd.

Of these the first named is the wife of the late Dr. Henry Schliemann, who immortalized himself by his famous excavations at Troy, Tiryns and Mycenæ—enterprises which solved for us the great problem of nearly thirty centuries and demonstrated in the most startling manner "the truth of the foundations on which was framed the poetical conception that has for thousands of years called forth the enchanted delight of the educated world." During his meteoric career as an archæologist, Schliemann was able to realize the dreams of his youth, and succeeded in unveiling the mystery that had so long hung over Sacred Ilios, and to give the heroes of the Iliad a local habitation on the rediscovered Plain of Troy. And his glorious achievements we must credit largely to that brave and devoted woman—his wife—who was ever at his side to share in his trials and labors and to raise his drooping spirits in hours of depression, or when hostile criticism treated him as a visionary in the pursuit of a chimera.

Mrs. Schliemann is a Greek lady who was born and bred under the shadow of the Acropolis and a worthy descendant of those proud Athenian women who wore the golden grasshopper in their hair as a sign that they were natives of the City of the Violet Crown. She was not only dowered with intellectual gifts of a high order, but she was also her husband's most congenial companion and sympathetic friend in all his literary work, while she was his very right hand in those glorious enterprises at Hissarlik and Mycenæ, which secured for both of them undying fame.

Dr. Schliemann was the first to attest the never-failing assistance which he received from this noble woman who, as he informs us, was "a warm admirer of Homer" and "with glad enthusiasm" joined her husband in executing the great work which he had conceived in his early boyhood. Usually they worked together, but at times Mrs. Schliemann superintended a gang of laborers at one spot while the Doctor was occupied at another in the immediate vicinity. Thus it was she who excavated the heroic tumulus of Batieia in the Troad—that Batieia who, according to Homer, was a queen of the Amazons and undertook a campaign against Troy.[220]

Mme. Jane Dieulafoy is noted as the collaborator of her husband, Marcel Dieulafoy, in the important archæological mission to Persia that was entrusted to him by the French government. The results of this mission, in which Mme. Dieulafoy had a conspicuous part, were published in Paris in 1884 in five octavo volumes.

It was during this expedition to the ancient empire of Cyrus and Artaxerxes that this indefatigable couple became interested in the ruins of Susa, the ancient capital of the Persian kings. On their return to France they succeeded in securing money and supplies for conducting excavations among these ruins which, in the end, yielded results which were, in some respects, as important as those which rewarded the labors of the Schliemanns in Greece and Asia Minor.

So completely had Susa—the City of the Lilies—been buried and forgotten for nearly two thousand years that even its site was almost as much a matter of dispute as was that of ancient Troy. And yet it was one of the greatest and richest cities of antiquity—the city of Esther and Daniel, the city of the mighty Assuerus who reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces—the city where the great Alexander celebrated his nuptials with Statira, the daughter of Darius, with a magnificent festival at which, according to Plutarch, "there were no fewer than nine thousand guests, to each of which he gave a golden cup for the libations."