STARS OF EGYPTOLOGY
Tim Kendall has spent most of his career involved in Nubian archaeology. He received his PhD from Brandeis University in Mediterranean Studies. During his distinguished career he was Associate Curator of the Department of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. However, he is best known for his excavations at Jebel Barkal in Sudan. From 1986 to 2015 he directed 29 seasons at the holy mountain. He has written numerous articles and books on ancient Nubian archaeology.
(Photograph above) Dr Tim Kendall with a statue of King Aspelta in the Boston Museum. He came across the fragment of a nose in a box of stray stone bits in the museum’s basement during Spring of 1994. The statue was discovered at Jebel Barkal by Reisner in 1916.
When did you first become interested in ancient history?
I don’t really remember a time when I was not interested in ancient history! As a child I loved the Greek myths and Aesop’s fables. When I was about 10 years old my great-aunt sent me a book for Christmas, called Lost Worlds: The Romance of Archaeology by Anne Terry White (NY: 1941). I devoured it – and still have it. Chapters were about Heinrich Schliemann at Troy; Arthur Evans at Knossos,; Champollion and the decipherment of Egyptian; Mariette and Petrie; Carter and the discovery of Tutankhamun; Botta and Layard in Assyria; Rawlinson’s decipherment of cuneiform; Woolley and the royal tombs at Ur; Stephens and Catherwood discovering the Maya, etc. I think by the time I was 12 I was pretty well-read and dreamed of becoming a character like one of these. In middle and high school I always took Latin.
What qualifications do you have?
I went to Oberlin College in northern Ohio (graduated 1967) and majored in Classical Archaeology, in which I studied Latin and Greek literature and Greek and Roman art and architecture. During my senior year I did a special reading course in Assyrian history, which sparked my interest in Assyriology and led me to apply to grad school at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. There I pursued Mesopotamian history and Akkadian language studies and took an introductory course in Egyptian history. After two years, though, I felt I was becoming a bit too specialized and also longed to be in the Boston area, so I transferred to Brandeis University, which then had a broader program called Mediterranean Studies, in which one could study both Assyriology and Egyptology as well as the archaeology of the entire E. Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds (as far east as the Indus). In 1974 I graduated with a Ph.D., having written a dissertation translating and analysing about 350 cuneiform tablets having to do with the arms, armour, chariots and military organization of Nuzi, a N. Mesopotamian town of about 1500 BCE.
What positions have you held in your career?
Soon after graduating I applied for and received an assistant curatorial position in the Dept. of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. My key role there was as the resident “expert” in Ancient Near Eastern Art, although I had much to learn “on the job.” Since the work of the department was almost exclusively Egypt-related, I spent more and more time involved in Egypt-related projects and so acquired expertise in Egyptology largely by doing it – quite far beyond my actual formal training. In the summer of 1975, I made my first trip to Egypt and worked as an epigrapher, copying reliefs and inscriptions in the Old Kingdom tombs at Giza. (That’s where I first met Zahi Hawass, who was then Inspector “of the Pyramids.”) I remained at the Museum for 25 years, ultimately becoming an Associate Curator of the Department.
What was the appeal of Nubia for you?
I knew nothing about ancient Nubia until I began working at the Museum of Fine Arts. Between 1914 and 1924 the MFA had co-sponsored (with Harvard) the excavations of George A. Reisner at the major city sites and royal cemeteries of ancient Kush in N Sudan: Kerma, Napata, and Meroe. In those days, the authorities (British) allowed Reisner to bring back to the Boston Museum the major portion of his finds – tens of thousands of objects and archaeological samples, with a number of real masterpieces. In the 1970’s most of these objects still remained in storage. When in 1976-77 members of the Brooklyn Museum staff came to Boston to plan their ground-breaking exhibition “Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia and Sudan,” I was asked to help them locate and choose objects. The exercise proved a revelation for me. Here was an advanced “black African” civilization that was then little known to the general public, and which up to that point had been largely ignored as a scholarly discipline. The Brooklyn show, which opened in 1978, was a turning point, which inspired much new national and international interest in the ancient cultures south of Egypt.
In 1980, when I was asked to organize a small exhibition for a local museum (in Brockton, MA), I proposed a show utilizing the Nubian material in MFA storage. This resulted in the conservation of many spectacular objects and a show (and catalogue) called “Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile” (1982). Later in 1982, I received a sabbatical and used it to travel to Sudan to visit the sites formerly excavated by Reisner. Then in 1986 I received a permit from the Sudanese authorities to continue excavations at Jebel Barkal, the “holy mountain” of Napata, the great cult center of ancient Kush. From that point on, I drifted away from the Ancient Near East and made the Sudan my specialty. Its appeal was that its civilization was then still virtually unknown, and the region was still so little explored archaeologically, I felt that here I could make a major contribution.
In the mid-1990’s the Boston Museum decided to install a major gallery of ancient Nubian art, which I helped to conceive, and in 1994, I was invited by the Smithsonian to organize an exhibition of Nubian works for a long-term loan exhibition for the National Museum of African Art. The show focused on the ancient city of Kerma, and I wrote a catalogue entitled: “Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush, 2500-1500 B.C. The Archaeological Discovery of an Ancient Nubian Empire.” (1997).
Tim Kendall and Susanne Gaensicke uncovering a ram-headed column capital in the palace of Aspelta at Jebel Barkal in 1989. In 2007 their team excavated the level and discovered the king’s throne room. It had been destroyed by fire, probably in the attack of the army of the Egyptian king Psamtik II in 593 BC.
Can you explain a bit about your management of the Jebel Barkal project?
Reisner excavated at Jebel Barkal between 1916 and 1920. His work, though, remained incomplete and was never fully published, so, as a member of the Boston Museum staff, in 1986 I applied for a permit to resume work there. At first the project was small scale and limited to epigraphic work. This was because I could not take more than three or four weeks at a time away from my job, and second, because funding was so limited. Then in 1988 I received a substantial grant from National Geographic in exchange for an article in the magazine (which appeared in the Nov. 1990 issue). After I left the Museum in 1999, I was able to plan longer seasons with a larger team, and I was able to secure larger donations. By 2013, like many teams working in Sudan, we were funded with extremely generous grants from Qatar. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/qatar-gives-135-million-sudan-archaeological-projects-180950292/
Can you explain why you undertook rock climbing to scale Jebel Barkal? What motivated you to attempt something so dangerous?
One of the stories in my great-aunt’s gift book was about Henry Rawlinson’s climbing of the great rock at Behistun in Iran, 100 m high, to copy the inscription of Cyrus. At Jebel Barkal there was a similar mysterious inscription on the summit of the 75 m high pinnacle on Jebel Barkal, which no one had ever recorded except what could be discerned by telescope. Since the rock was so eroded, the text was not clear even with the telescope, and climbing the rock seemed the only way to solve the mystery. I found the challenge irresistible. In the end, climbing up there revealed not only a text, but also evidence of an extraordinary ancient engineering feat. It also led to the discovery of an ancient astronomical alignment that explained why Taharqa built his pyramid at Nuri, 10 km distant (but still visible from the summit of the mountain).
Do you have a new project or book coming out?
I plan to have a new website launched hopefully by the end of summer 2020 with a summary of all our finds (and with pdfs of all earlier publications) (www.jebelbarkal.org). There will also be a new tourist guidebook published in 2121 and a final publication in 2025.
My understanding is that you are involved with the Far Horizons travel group. Can you explain a bit about it and what people might expect if they travel with you?
Far Horizons has asked me to lead one of their tours to Sudan in February 2021. Since I have not done this before, I am not sure yet quite what to expect, but I imagine the participants will be a group of very interesting and highly interested people, and I look forward to sharing with them my love of Sudan and the latest published data from all the expeditions that work there.
Finally, what advice would you give those aspiring Egyptologists who wished to turn their interest into a career?
I would say that undertaking a graduate program in Egyptology (or Assyriology) is one of the most exciting and satisfying intellectual journeys one can make. Given the limited number of permanent jobs in the field, however, a certain amount of luck is required to actually land a job that can allow one to make a career of it. When I think of the many fellow students and colleagues I have had over the years, who never got permanent jobs, yet who possessed talents far beyond my own, it makes me realize how fortunate I was to have a life in which I could actually do these things.
A photo taken by the National Geographic photographer Enrico Ferorelli in 1989, showing Tim Kendall and alpinist Paul Duval (holding a Nat. Geo flag) on the summit of the Barkal pinnacle. The Kushite king Taharqa had carved a panel of inscription on the rock, just behind and below the duo. Small bronze nails still in stone indicated that the text had been covered in gold sheet.
Thanks for a great interview. Impressive scholarship! Below are some links to Dr Kendall’s documentaries and books.
(All photographs were provided by Dr T Kendall and shown with his permission.)
Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush 2500-1500BC is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Kerma-Kingdom-Kush-2500-1500-B-C/dp/0965600106
