Nefertiti Lived Here

In 1930 Mary Chubb joined an expedition led by archaeologist John Pendlebury to the site of Tell el-Amarna, the remains of Akhetaten, the ephemeral capital founded by the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten (husband of Nefertiti, father of Tutankhamun). There, in addition to the administrative tasks that were initially assigned to her, she had to act as a "plasterer, chemist, nurse, draftsman, painter, archaeologist, restorer, carpenter and, above all, diplomat!". Nefertiti Lived Here (1954) is her retelling of "her share of dust and heat," her love of her work, and her romantic evocations of historical events, which seem to play out before her. It is also the exceptional chronicle of daily life in a British archaeological camp in the 1930s.