A Citizen of Nowhere: Jaroslav Cerny, Egyptologist 1898-1970: a Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Griffith Institute Publications) 9789042949911, 9789042949928, 9042949910

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THE GRIFFITH INSTITUTE University of Oxford

A C I T I Z E N O F N OW H E R E Jaroslav Černý, Egyptologist (1898–1970): A Journey through the Twentieth Century

BY

HANA NAVRATILOVA

PEETERS

A CITIZEN OF N O W H E R E

A CITIZEN OF NOWHERE Jaroslav Černý, Egyptologist (1898–1970): A Journey through the Twentieth Century BY

HANA NAVRATILOVA

PEETERS l e u v e n – pa r i s – b r i sto l , c t 2023

Research for this publication was supported by the Anglo-Czech Educational Fund, the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, the Czech Science Foundation grant GA ČR 17-22085S, Habitus českých vědců v letech 1918–1968: příklad dvou generací (Habitus of Czech scientists in 1918–1968: example of two generations), the Griffith Institute, and Wolfson College, University of Oxford. The publication was supported by Mrs Anna Allott, The Lorne Thyssen Fund of Wolfson College, University of Oxford, The Griffith Egyptology Fund of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, and the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East.

Cover illustration: Černý in his garden at 2 Linkside Avenue, Oxford, the 1950s; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.94A. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-429-4991-1 eISBN 978-90-429-4992-8 D/2023/0602/25 © 2023, Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium © 2023, The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St John Street, Oxford OX1 2LG, United Kingdom Illustrations © The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford; IFAO, Cairo; The Czech Institute of Egyptology, Prague; The National Museum, Prague. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval devices or systems, without the prior written permission from the publisher, except the quotation of brief passages for review purposes.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Aurora Morcillo (†2020), historian who believed in biography, and Peter Michael Neumann OBE (†2020), mathematician who believed in history of knowledge. It would have never happened without the custodians of Černý’s legacy: Jaromir Malek, John Baines, Richard Parkinson, Miroslav Verner, and Jiřina Růžová.

It is, therefore, a great source of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be possible to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his. From boyhood I have dwelt on foreign soil and I know with what grief sometimes the mind takes leave of the narrow hearth of a peasant’s hut, and I know too how frankly it afterwards disdains marble firesides and panelled halls. Hugh of Saint Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor (translation Jerome Taylor; Hugh 1991: 101)

Table of Contents List of plates Note on plates Note on the transcription and translation of documents Note on e-resources Abbreviations Foreword Author’s preface and acknowledgments Life-writing Egyptology Transnational voice Acknowledgements

xi xiii xv xv xvii xix xxiii xxiv xxxi xlii xlv

Prologue: 29 May 1970

1

Introduction: on strangers, passports, and modernity

3

BOOK I

A son of respectable parents

13

1897–1898 14 La Belle Époque 14 Bohemia 27 National history and nationalist myths in 1897–1898 31 1898–1904 An imperial and royal revenue officer and his family 35 1904–1917 Schooling 48 1917–1923 From monarchy to republic 70 1917–1919 A university fresher in Prague 71 1919–1922 The student and trainee clerk 99 The concept of an historical study: dissertation in 1922 and developing a personal research archive 115

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BOOK II

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Portrait of an Egyptologist as a young man

1923–1927 An independent scholar 1926 At Deir el-Medina for the first time 1927–1929 Presidential patronage The crisis years 1929–1935 1929 ends 1930–1932 Between Egypt and Prague 1932–1933 Adjusting expectations 1934 A new professional relationship 1935–1938 On the trains across Europe 1938 Ostraca and other projects BOOK III

Fortunes of war

1939–1943 Cairo 1939 The gathering storm 1940–1941 Adapting 1942 The Flap 1943 Recovery 1944–1945 London 1945 ends: between London and Prague Grammar in the making BOOK IV

Professor in rationed Britain

1946–1949 New job, new household, new borders 1950–1951 The personal crisis 1952–1955 Becoming an institution The archaeology of survey and rescue operations: CEDAE and UNESCO and research infrastructures: Topographical Bibliography and AEB Tying loose ends The archaeology of survey and rescue operations: CEDAE and UNESCO Research infrastructures

131 131 159 178 205 205 209 224 231 249 268 286 297 297 297 311 341 369 381 402 409 419 419 473 521

552 552 555 558

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK V Non-aligned in a divided world? 1956–1958 The new Egypt 1959 The UNESCO campaign begins 1960–1964 Final years of professorship and the Nubian campaign Epigraphy, the research process, and Coptic BOOK VI

Returns

1965–1966 Professor emeritus and return to graffiti 1967 A guest in Prague 1968–1969 New barriers, new openings 1970 Unfinished synthesis: workmen to artists BOOK VII

Legacy records

1970–1973 Aftermath of a passing 1974–1992 Memories

IX

563 563 598 610 633 639 639 645 654 669 675 685 685 696

Epilogue: Of artefacts, books, and letters

703

Plates Archives References Index

719 743 745 813

List of plates Plate 1. Jaroslav Černý’s parents engaged: Anna Navrátilová and Antonín Černý before 1896; studio photograph; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 2. The officer, his wife, and his heir: the Černý family around 1900; studio photograph; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 3. Přemysl Šámal; portrait by Ivan Mrkvička; after Zlatá Praha 42 (1925): 23–24. Plate 4. Cyrill Dušek; official portrait, bequest of the Dušek family; Prague, National Museum archive, Collection Cyril Dušek, photographs, box 13, inv. no. 574. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 5. Egypt, possibly late 1920s, early 1930s: Černý and other members of the expedition of Deir el-Medina during leisure time (possibly at Suez); photographer unknown; Cairo, AIFAO, nb 2004 01765. © IFAO. Plate 6. At work in Western Thebes: Deir el-Medina in the 1930s, Bruyère and Černý and others, unnumbered, Archives Bruyère, Box 19, Maison et équipe vers 1935; the crew are seated on the dig house veranda; photographer unknown; Cairo, AIFAO. © IFAO. Plate 7. Černý with Tomáš Masaryk in Egypt, 1927; probably photographed by a member of Masaryk’s entourage; Archives of Prague Castle, Fonds Masaryk in Egypt; Prague, National Museum archive. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 8. King Fuad I in Prague; news record; National Museum archive. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 9. The Salon of Madame Baum, with Černý and Mrs Irena Foit, 1934; Bequest Baum, no. I.374; photographer unknown, possibly František Vladimír Foit; Prague, National Museum. © National Museum, Prague. Plate 10. Deir el-Medina in the 1930s, Bernard Bruyère’s notes, 1933–1934; Cairo, AIFAO, unnunmbered, Archives Bruyère, Box 19, Maison et équipe vers 1935. © IFAO. Plate 11. Czechoslovak legation in Cairo with Černý and the Šámals on the entry staircase of the legation villa; photographer unknown; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague.

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LIST OF PLATES

Plate 12. Černý with friends and colleagues at the IFAO; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Collection Clère, Clère Mss. 27.5.1.1.1. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 13. Evening at the Cairo legation, 1930s; Černý in the top row, centre; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology; unnunmbered; photographer unknown. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 14. Marie Sargant in the 1950s, photograph probably by a family member; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott. Plate 15. Fursecroft Building, George Street/Brown Street, London; photograph by the author, 2017. Plate 16. 2 St. Michael’s Terrace, London; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott. Plate 17. The Cruciform Building, the UCL University Hospital. © Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons. Plate 18. Beckenham; the front of the main hospital building; photograph by the author, 2017. Plate 19. The wedding; official wedding photograph; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott. Plate 20. 2 Linkside Avenue, North Oxford; photograph by Jaromir Malek, before 2010; courtesy Jaromir Malek. Plate 21. Černý in his garden at 2 Linkside Avenue, Oxford, the 1950s; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.94A. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 22. Černý with Sir Alan Gardiner, probably presenting him with a copy of the Turin Canon, photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.39.19. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 23. Marie Černý on board in Nubia; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series, 101.141 (also Černý Collection 50.60.4A–C). © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 24. Černý with Alan Gardiner at The Queen’s College (?), the 1950s; photographer unknown; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, unnumbered. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 25. ‘Chasse aux graffiti’, Aziz Sadek, Marie and Jaroslav Černý, and team; Archive of Cynthia Sheikholeslami and Aziz Sadek, courtesy Cynthia Sheikholeslami.

LIST OF PLATES

XIII

Plate 26. The epigrapher at work; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series, 101.15. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 27. The Queen’s College Governing Body; photographer unknown, photograph from the Allot-McIntosh gift; unnumbered; Prague, the Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 28. Prague 1967, visit to the historic Chancellery building of Charles University; photograph by Milan Zemina; unnumbered; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 29. With the Czechoslovaks at dinner, 1967; photograph by Milan Zemina; Prague; unnumbered; Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 30. Černý with Zbyněk Žába at Abusir, 1968; photograph by Milan Zemina; Prague; unnumbered; Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology. Plate 31. The last spring in Deir el-Medina; Oxford, Griffith Institute Archive, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.2. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Plate 32. Černý’s glasses, photograph by the author, 2017; Oxford, Griffith Institute Archive, Černý Collection 50.7. Plate 33. In the garden of Sennedjem: the Černý headstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, North Oxford; photograph by the author, 2019.

note on plates Individual plates are not cross-referenced in the text as they are relevant for more than one section of the narrative.

Note on the transcription and translation of documents Archival documents were transcribed to adhere closely to the originals; minor typographical errors were corrected but peculiarities of style or punctuation have been preserved. Variant writings of transcribed words from Egyptian or Arabic (e.g., Efendiya vs. Effendiya) have been retained. This book contains a number of quotes translated mainly from Czech and occasionally German and French originals. Černý’s correspondence with his colleagues and pupils was multilingual up until the late 1940s, when he opted mostly for English. Translations were provided by the author unless otherwise stated.

Note on e-resources Websites and e-resources were verified at the time of manuscript submission (June 2022), unless otherwise stated. A handlist of Černý’s correspondence and correspondence statistics data are deposited in the Oxford Research Archive (ORA).

Abbreviations AAVCR ACEGU AČNB AEB AEES AIFAO AKPR AMSANO AMZV ANM ANpM ASAE AUTGM BIFAO BphW FERE GIA IFAO JEA JNES KRI LÄ NAP ODNB OI OUA PM

TNA

Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague. Archive of the Czech National Bank, Prague. Annual Egyptological Bibliography. Archives of the Egypt Exploration Society, London. Archive of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo. Archive of the Office of the President, The Prague Castle, Prague. Archive of the Ministry of Education etc., National Archives, Prague. Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Prague. Archive of the National Museum, Prague. Archive of the Náprstek Museum, National Museum, Prague. Annales du Service des Antiquités d’Égypte. Archive of the Masaryk Institute, Prague. Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale. Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift. Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, Bruxelles. Griffith Institute Archive, The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford. Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Le Caire. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Kitchen, K.A. 1968– Ramesside Inscriptions. Historical and Biographical. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell Ltd. Helck, W., Otto, E. & Westendorf, W. 1972–1992. Lexikon der Ägyptologie. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. National Archive Prague. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, University of Oxford. Oriental Institute (used here mostly for the Prague Oriental Institute). Oxford University Archive, Oxford. Porter, B. & Moss, R. et al. 1927– Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings, Oxford: The Griffith Institute. The National Archives, Kew.

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UCL UPMAA Wb

ABBREVIATIONS

University College, London. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Erman, A. & Grapow, H. 1926– Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs.

Foreword Egyptology is in many respects an unusual branch of learning, and outstanding Egyptologists are remarkable scholars. One of its main difficulties is the wide range of knowledge concerning ancient Egypt that is required to deal with individual subjects. An Egyptologist may specialize in a particular aspect of Egyptian civilization—say the language—but in order to understand and deal satisfactorily with problems encountered in a written source he or she has to possess good knowledge of several other features of the subject, such as religion, the organization of society, agricultural practices, and others. This means that, unless they specialize very narrowly, scholars in this subject mature slowly over a long period of time. Another interesting characteristic of Egyptology is its international character. There are, as a rule, only a limited number of Egyptologists in each country and this means that close cooperation between scholars of different nationalities is a necessity. The Egyptologist whose detailed biography is the subject of this book is the Czechoslovak scholar Jaroslav Černý. His knowledge of Late Egyptian was superb but his mastery of several other topics closely associated with it, such as the minute details of life in the workmen’s village at Deir el-Medîna and the writing on hieratic ostraca associated with it, were equally impressive. He was also able to deal most satisfactorily with problems one did not immediately associate with him, such as the study of Egyptian religion. I was, of course, familiar with Černý’s publications but I knew him personally only in the last few years of his life. My knowledge was mainly due to his involvement with the Topographical Bibliography, at the time when it was edited by Rosalind Moss. I joined the team in the late 1960s, and because there was no available place for me in the small Bibliography room, I came to occupy a seat in the Griffith Institute library, across the corridor, next to an ancient-Egypt inspired book-cradle with the massive

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volumes of Richard Lepsius’s Denkmäler. Černý had a superb library of his own but there were publications he needed to consult in the Griffith Institute, and so every morning he took a bus from his house in North Oxford and arrived in the Institute around 10:00 am. There was another important reason for this regularity. Moss would have a number of Topographical Bibliography questions, mainly the readings of unusual names, ready for him. And so for about thirty minutes every day Černý helped her with queries that she had carefully written on small pieces of paper. He was a staunch supporter of the Topographical Bibliography and this helped me enormously when the time came and I was offered the editorship of this project. Two other Egyptologists extensively used the Griffith Institute library at that time, Schafik Allam and Sarah Groll. When Černý finished dealing with the daily quota of Topographical Bibliography queries, at about 11:00 am, he, Sarah, Schafik and myself retired to the common room of the Oriental Institute—or the Randolph Hotel across the road if the common room was not available—for coffee. Egyptology was the main topic of the fairly light-hearted but extremely well-informed discussion. These informal seminars were quite short and lasted for less than an hour, but for me they represented an invaluable introduction to the subject. And even after Sarah and Schafik left Oxford, Černý and I continued our daily meetings. Černý was Czechoslovak-born but Czech was not the language used in our conversations; only English. The reason for this probably was that he did not wish to be misunderstood by others and, quite logically, there was no need to switch to another language when we talked to each other. Černý did not apply for naturalization and so, although living abroad, remained Czechoslovak throughout his life. Sadly, I was the first person who was told about his death. One morning the telephone rang in the Griffith Institute and when I picked it up, it was a very distressed Marie Černý, who said that Jaro had died on the way to the library and that a policeman had just been and told her. Černý had suffered a heart-attack on the way to the bus stop. I, of course, immediately went to see her and did my best to console her but, sadly, that was the end of this exceptional Egyptologist and there was

FOREWORD

XXI

little one could do. I was very fortunate to have been able to spend several years with Jaroslav Černý and my Egyptology benefited enormously. His contribution to the subject will last for ever. Jaromir Malek Oxford, June 2022

Author’s preface and acknowledgments Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. J. R. R. Tolkien1

When a book bases its title on a much-discussed soundbite,2 it cannot claim to be without an agenda. As with most biographies, this one has the overt agenda of presenting its protagonist, because the biographer believes their voice should be heard. But why do I have confidence that the voice of an exiled Egyptologist should be heard? And if it should be heard, what are the covert agendas it carries? My first encounter with Jaroslav Černý and his work (the two appeared inseparable to me) was that of an Egyptologist and historian reading the publications of another Egyptologist. However, his presence loomed larger than a name on the spine of a book: The books I read at my university were touched by his hands, marked with his pen; the institute where I studied had retained its capacity to be a reputable place of research largely because Černý bequeathed it his library. Later, I used his papers at the Griffith Institute Archive in Oxford. I met people who had met him. I heard stories about his work discipline, the helping hand he offered to others, his foibles that appeared endearing. People who enjoy irony might say these were suitable conditions for the veneration of a disciplinary saint, but while 1

The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 1; first published 1954. The phrase ‘citizens of nowhere’ was used by then-Prime Minister Theresa May in 2016, in the context of Brexit, and served as the starting point for a discussion on European identities by Marsili and Milanese 2018. 2

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I have professional respect for Černý and have made frequent references to his published and unpublished work, I have not been led down an apologist’s trajectory. This is no hagiography. As I proceeded along my academic trajectory of Egyptologist and historian, his presence reappeared. This time, he was a man of the twentieth century, with all the complexities and controversies that living in that fast-paced, exhilarating, and difficult century might entail. Yet the man remained obscure; he was guarded about his private life. Even his professional life was reserved, for he lacked the brash showiness that might appeal to those beyond the ivory-tower world of academic diligence. Some might say these were suitable conditions for a ‘behind the façade’ project, unpacking and deconstructing the man behind the disciplinary myth. But the realisation that the man was a complex, if imperfectly known, human being has not set me on an iconoclast’s trajectory either. This is not a demolition. Eventually, as histories of Egyptology unfolded before me, so too did a new perspective on Černý. It was inspired by my growing interest in the pursuit of life-writing as an inclusive form of historiography, by the intricate role of Egypt and Egyptology in modern history and cultural memory, and by a wish to appreciate the transnational lives of ‘citizens of nowhere’. Life-writing Learning the rules without being bound by them was the secret. George Jonas3

There is a long history of setting historiography and biography—life-writing—apart and then bringing them together again.4 Is biography a relevant approach to the history of scholarship? Some markedly opposing views on the subject have been expressed. R. G. Collingwood reasoned against biography in the 1930s and 1940s,5 although his opposition targeted mainly sensationalist biographies, where details of a subject’s private life 3 4 5

Jonas 2006: 47. Renders and de Haan 2014. Kindi 2012: 44–59.

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garnered more attention than their ideas. The position of biography has been the subject of debate ever since. In 1966, Jacob Gruber argued for an intellectual history that could be well illustrated with the help of comprehensive biographies. In the 1990s, Douglas Givens and Tim Murray upheld that a biography, where the history of archaeology was concerned, and if it manages to achieve a proper balance between detachment and affinity, is capable of producing contributions to discerning historiography.6 Some historians of science in the 1990s assessed that ‘recent developments in the history and sociology of science show a … dismissal of the authentic and central role of individual passion, personality and achievement in science.’7 A still more recent Companion to the History of Science has social constructionist leanings, yet it recognizes that ‘more traditional biography has hardly disappeared from the history of science.’8 Further, the concept of a life-story is pitted against the system described in Michel Foucault’s deliberations: ‘How much are the subjects responsible for scientific discourse determined by conditions that “dominate and even overwhelm them”?’ Foucault’s aim was to explore the discourse of science ‘not from the point of view of the individuals who are speaking, nor from the point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying, but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the very existence of such discourse.’9 Evidence has been presented to the effect that biographies (and by extension the broader areas of life-writing)10 can be revealing, but that they can result in partisanship by being too focused on individual experience, and thus diminishing any analysis. The clash between an alleged emphasis on personal and private aspects and on intellectual processes and social structures has wider implications. Is scholarship to be studied as a social enterprise or as an individual one? Or is this dichotomy artificial and therefore pointless? And what about the diversity of perspectives

6

Givens 1992: 51–66; Murray 1999: 869–888. Shortland and Yeo 1996: 12. 8 Lightman 2016: 39. 9 Elden 2001: 100, quoting Foucault’s The Order of Things. 10 References: Sanders, n.d.; Lee 2005. 7

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and voices that may characterize both the social and the individual narrative? Even in life-writing, one side of a story might be redacted; one life might be validated at the expense of another.11 The histories of any discipline can be written from contrasting points of view and with diverse agendas, each validating or silencing the other: a narrative of progress, a critical narrative, an agnostic narrative, and so on.12 Even critical thinkers such as Foucault have a ‘prejudice’ sui generis, because they critique a social or political structure they found problematic in their presents.13 And yet excellent histories and ‘many well-established historical specialisms today have their origin in an explicit political need: one thinks of labour history, women’s history and African history.’14 It is tempting to build a functional but partisan narrative, but partisanship tends to become exaggerated, and such stories often concern non-existent grandeur, overstated heroism, and nationalist brinkmanship. They might be undertaken with better intentions than those prompted by exclusivist or jingoist narratives, yet taking sides in history, evaluating one story at the expense of another—even with the best of intentions—can create one-sided narratives, even narratives of victimhood where the victim is a nation, or a gender, or a community. Timothy Snyder characterized misrepresented or highly selective readings of the past, especially the exaggerated ones, as ‘anti-history’ that ‘is concerned with the past, but in a self-absorbed way, free of any real concerns with facts’; they eat away the tissues of critical thought, and render society more fragile, leaving it with narratives of victimhood or ‘longing for past moments that never really happened.’15 And yet, ‘to assume a stance of strict moral neutrality is not rationally possible for historians (or for anybody else dealing with real human affairs).’16 Eric Hobsbawm added that this 11

Lee 2005: 7, 132–136. In Egyptology, Elliott Colla outlined the narrative options in Colla 2007; the analysis was developed further by Bednarski 2019. 13 Hoy 1986. 14 Tosh 2010: 22. 15 Snyder 2017: 121. 16 Cracraft 2002: 291, quoting Isaiah Berlin. 12

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difficulty is particularly intense for historians of the twentieth century, as ‘no one who has lived through this extraordinary century is likely to abstain from judgement. It is understanding that comes hard.’17 The relevance of judgement depends on how it is executed, and an analytical perspective has to see any judgement as ‘a specifically political ability in exactly the sense denoted by Kant, namely, the ability to see things not only from one’s own point of view but in the perspective of all those who happen to be present.’18 At a risk of a dizzying Rashomon effect,19 named for the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name, it would appear that a plurality of voices ought to be heard within any narrative, even those of atrocities as the voice of a perpetrator might lend context to the making of an inhumane system. ‘We have to read about the heights to which saints and men of genius have attained, and we must likewise know the depth to which the criminal sinks’ is the lyrical recommendation of a fervent Egyptian believer in the purpose of (auto)biography, Salama Musa.20 A recent example of a non-fiction book on the Holocaust by Laurence Rees,21 who uses elements of life-writing, achieved a powerful impact by including ‘eyewitness testimony from survivors, perpetrators and bystanders.’ One of his reviewers, Joseph Cronin, added that as a result ‘I’ve read accounts of these events before in more scholarly texts, but none made me consider what it must have felt like to be there.’22 Two historians of that particular era, Saul Friedländer and Nikolaus Wachsmann, have opined that the historian’s voice can and must try to do the same.23 Friedländer, in particular, achieved an emotional and intellectual impact, combinining the poignancy of life-writing (including an autobiographical aspect) with analytical complexity and an ethical message; about the genocide, but also about historiography.24 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Hobsbawm 1994: 5. Arendt 1961: 221. See Anderson, R. 2016: 249–269, and Davis, Anderson, and Walls 2015. Musa 1961: 5. Rees 2017. Cronin 2017. See Wachsmann 2015; Wachsmann et al. 2012. Kansteiner 2012: 208–218, 220–222.

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The dominance of the history of political thought over intellectual history may also be productively challenged. Even though we accept ‘the importance of the contribution made by historians of political thought… to the development of a properly historical approach to intellectual life of the past’, ‘some re-balancing of attention seems desirable.’25 Some current histories have successfully captured the continuum between history of science, social and political history, and individual biographies, for instance a recent historiography of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.26 Here, the importance of telling a complex story is particularly accentuated, as many voices were kept hidden for a significant period, complicating the understanding of—and the density of the response to—the catastrophe. Along with political thoughts, paradigms of nuclear research, the machinery of propaganda, and individual psychology, lived experiences have an important role in that narrative, including experiencing the radiation sickness that inevitably followed the event. Biographies, assumed to be one-man or one-woman shows, are regularly regarded as unsatisfactory for the comprehensive purposes behind such histories.27 But this is a missed opportunity: a rich, nuanced historiography of knowledge-making may well be a process that is methodologically more inclusive than combative. As the Chernobyl example shows, biographical perspectives can help to achieve this desirable comprehensiveness. Curiously, a comparison between disciplinary historiography and ordinary politics may offer a perspective: ‘To be a dissident means to criticize, to point out contradictions between what was said and what was real, to analyse falsehoods of language, to chart offenses against human and civic rights, or to organize protests. All these activities meant more or less taking things apart. A politician must of course take things apart but at the same time, he must build something new; he must have a goal.’28 ‘Tearing 25

Whatmore and Young 2016: 17. Plokhy 2018, framed as a biography of the disaster, also made ample use of Aleksievich 2006, with life-writing embodied by the mediated voices of the survivors. Compare ‘Biographies drive Plokhy’s narrative,’ Brown 2019: 1027. 27 As in Carruthers 2015b; Bahrani et al. 2011; Brusius 2015. 28 Havel 2008: 57. 26

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things down for no reason’ does not help.29 Unlike totalitarian regimes, where dissidents are necessary and genuine politicians don’t exist, disciplinary histories are a sphere where dissidents can turn into politicians and vice versa. Life-writing, when accepted as a part of the historical process, eventually allows for both taking things apart, including from a personal perspective, and for building something new. This results in a more inclusive narrative, where different perspectives meet. If, then, scholarship is to be studied concurrently as both a social and an individual enterprise, how to achieve a narrative, or a dialogue of narratives,30 where as many voices as possible are heard, and where historical recovery, not suspicion, is the main goal?31 The bipolar assessment of life-writing, limited versus revealing, may ultimately be considered insufficient for this kind of history-writing. Instead, life-writing, or biography, may serve as ‘corrections’. ‘This is not intended to mean the mere rectification of a mistake,’32 but a recognition that past human experience cannot satisfactorily be compartmentalized into large and small stories, into institutional and social structures, or into individual lives. Historians may do so for practical reasons in a specialist study (and in so doing should acknowledge both the practical needs and the limits these needs have set on the study), but in life-writing multiple perspectives are merged into a single historical interpretation of past experience. The challenge is getting the balance right among the paradigms, structures, and individual agency—including individual voices.33 Life-writing extends beyond an historian’s interest to encompass a broader intellectual responsibility for the concepts of society and humanity that it implicitly promotes, and for the narrative ‘spaces of possibilities’ that it explicitly offers.34 To what extent is it possible to accept as constructive the anti-humanism of Foucault, or even of Nietzsche? For them, historically29

Havel’s discussion with Karel Hvížďala, Havel 2008: 57–58. Meretoja 2018: chapter 7. 31 Thus Paul Ricoeur; see Scott-Baumann 2009: 153. 32 Renders 2017: 32. See also Hamilton 2016: 1–23, edited and republished in Renders et al. 2017: 15–30. Compare also Ghobrial 2019. 33 Murray 1999: 869–870. 34 For spaces of possibilities see Meretoja 2018: 2 and Chapter 3. 30

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situated human stories and values rooted in storytelling are of little importance next to structures of power. And yet, even for Foucault there was ‘the role of human resistance to power,’35 and this resistance would come from individuals. History is a specific way of storytelling, and ‘storytelling has ethical potential in its capacity to expand our sense of the possible,’36 including what is possible for each of us as individuals and social beings. Some historians and anthropologists might suggest that social structures are to blame,37 and that restrictive discursive spaces create tyrannies. It would follow that in some, more humane social structures, people’s characters might be portrayed as less fallible, or at least less prone to be warped. Alternatively, other historians might recognize and emphasize personal, individual agency,38 and therefore responsibility. The recognition of responsibility, however, means that any individual must constantly ask themselves uncomfortable questions about whether they acted well, even when circumstances were difficult;39 whether they managed, for example, to avoid entrenched stereotyping on the basis that they ‘should have known better.’40 To what extent does ‘epistemic bad luck’ apply?41 These are issues that concerned Černý’s peers,42 and have been both asked and avoided, and eventually handed down to succeeding generations as the dual challenge of historical and social responsibility.43

35

Soper 1986: 140. Meretoja 2018: 90. 37 Taylor 1986: 67–102. 38 Elder-Vass 2010: 87–114. 39 There is a vast literature on the subject, from psychological studies to memoirs of prisoners of war (Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits) to analyses; an interesting example is Sanders 2010. 40 Compare Ciurria 2013: 179–193. 41 Fricker 2007: 33, 100–103. An answer to that question has been offered by Ciurria 2013. 42 Echoed also in questions of meaningfulness and responsibility investigated by his contemporary Viktor Frankl: Frankl 1955: 16–26, but see Landau 2019: 379–386. 43 Tillmanns 2009. 36

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Egyptology … The present wants both to patronise the past by adjudicating on its political acceptability, and also to be flattered by it, to be patted on the back and told to keep up the good work. Julian Barnes44

Jaroslav Černý’s life was closely tied to his work in Egyptology, and to the social position of being an Egyptologist. Egyptology is historiography covering over 3000 years of history, and is itself subject to 200 years of dynamic interpretation.45 There is a need for histories of Egyptology, for seldom has an historical period had so strong a pull, and its research been subjected to comparably fervid re-readings. Histories of Egypt and of Egyptology are a fine laboratory for the historiographer.46 Egypt has long fascinated the world outside its borders, beginning with its reflections in the ancient world and continuing in modern Europe and modern Egypt. Its reception reaches far beyond the Mediterranean basin; beyond the former extent of the Roman Empire. Many attempts at explaining this fascination, or explaining it away as Western imperial ambitions and the strategic location of the country, have been undertaken, but no single line of enquiry seems fully satisfactory, even if the lines complement each other. Egypt embodies strong cultural capital and what has been said of one of its kings, Akhenaten, namely that ‘different interest groups compete for the right to present him,’47 could be said of Egyptian history in general. General interest and specialist interest in Egyptian history not only exist side by side, but interact and create protean social- and cultural memory phenomena.48 In histories of scholarship, there is a marked tendency to regard scholarship itself as a systemic part of wider ideological 44

Barnes 1984: 130. To name several recent comprehensive works (chronological or otherwise): Bednarski, Dodson and Ikram 2020; Navratilova et al. 2019; Thompson 2015–2018, Gertzen 2017a; Carruthers 2015b; Bickel et al. 2014. 46 Compare Gertzen 2020. 47 Montserrat 2000: 11. 48 See also Moser 2015. 45

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projects, and to be co-responsible for their failures.49 It would be irresponsible to omit this aspect, but evaluation requires the ability to see nuance, which is essential when analysing assumed, imagined or proclaimed political or social allegiances. People who lived—as many Egyptologists did—within the framework of an historical period marked by colonial aspirations and developing modernity were exposed to and contributed to, but also responded to and resisted, a number of socio-cultural systems. Even systems of biopolitics can be ‘inhabited … submitting to them, escaping them and manipulating them.’50 The vision of knowledge as a handmaiden to structures of power and a consolidator of hierarchies and inequalities is limiting, reductionist, and omits both structural aspects and individual agency, preferring instead a methodology of suspicion and antagonism.51 But there appears to be more at stake. Conservative critics of some Marxism-inspired and later postmodern thought systems have been very vocal in pointing out, as Roger Kimball did, arguments that aim at ‘undermining the priority of Western liberal values in our educational system and in society at large.’52 Though Kimball’s rhetoric may not hold universal appeal, issues surrounding the devaluation of scholarship and its achievements just because they originated in the West are genuine, and have been noted by thinkers of many persuasions. Bruno Latour observed in 2004 a general ‘againstness’,53 which might easily be utilized against any focused pursuit of knowledge.54 Egyptology has been cast as a product of the colonial age, or indeed as a constituent part of the ideological project of imperialism.55 Early practitioners and their supporting institutions 49

Brusius 2015. Biancani 2018: 7. 51 Gramsci 1971: 12. By extension, Gramscian interpretations entered the debate as inspiration for Edward Said and his ‘Gramscian notion of culture as part of the ideological weaponry of imperialism’; see Chrisman 2003: 59. Compare Quirke 2007, or Langer 2017a, b. 52 Kimball 1991: 5. See Lee 1995: 571. 53 So Felski 2011. 54 Latour 2005: 227 and 231. 55 Langer 2017a, Langer 2017b; and—at a first and brief glance—Doyon 2013–2014, though the latter is a more thorough, insightful and complex analysis. 50

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were based mainly in Europe, and their activity in Egypt coincided with Western expansionism. The practice of research itself has been debated as an invasive element of Western domination; as the imposition of an epistemological framework that offers no participation for those upon whom it was imposed. ‘Said’s analysis of the construction of intellectual imperialism and the power relationships that it engendered is a significant contribution to the history of ideas… that cultural imperialism is defined as the ability of the West to study, describe, and analyse the Middle East, especially at a time when the Middle East was unable to take a reciprocal approach toward the West.’56 But is it really so simple? One advocate of the UNESCO Nubian campaign, André Malraux, noted in the early days of UNESCO that the ‘will to discovery and to awareness’ is a quintessentially European value.57 This position is worth examining. It describes an important—though not exclusively European—value, but nevertheless recognizes Europe as a contributor to human endeavour. Jürgen Osterhammel proposed a nuanced view.58 First, he acknowledged that: From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, the arrogant conviction of European scientists about the all-around superiority of their own civilization is truly astounding. The assumption seemed, however, to be borne out by major successes in the study of other cultures—successes that were not without an eminently practical side, since anyone with good maps, linguistic competence, and knowledge of the morals and customs of others finds it easier to conquer, govern, and exploit them.

But the overall results present a more ‘mixed balance sheet’: It is doubtful how useful this knowledge actually was, and how much it served practical purposes. Attempts to place colonial rule on a scientific foundation became a policy objective only after the First World War, and then the key experts were economists, not ethnologists.

56 57 58

Thompson 2010: 694. Droit 2005: 53. The following quotes are all taken from Osterhammel 2015: 819–820.

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Researchers often found themselves among the critics of twentieth century forms of colonialism, and among those who developed strong ties to the countries, communities and environments they studied. ‘Certainly, there were many individuals who identified strongly with the imperial project and sought to further its aims through their own work. However, at the same time, there were many others who made regular use of the networks of empire while following aims little if at all connected with imperialism or imperial identity. Rather, their movements and collaborations were dictated primarily by what they perceived as the particular interests of their discipline or field of research. Such motives frequently caused them to operate within the boundaries of the empire, but equally led them to participate in extra-imperial networks if the need arose.’59 The memories of empire are complex, on all sides,60 as they do not fall neatly into categories of colonizers and colonized.61 Eventually, It is not easy to find evidence that colonialism suppressed the knowledge of indigenous peoples about their own civilization. The academic revival of Indian traditions was in principle a joint European-Indian project, and it continued without interruption after independence came in 1947. In noncolonial countries such as Japan, China, and Turkey—to take the example of historiography—the encounter with Rankean critical methods led to a pluralist approach to the past and a more discriminating attitude toward the cultural heritage. In the nineteenth century, therefore, Western academic study of other cultures, in spite of all the annoying arrogance that came within it, was not just a destructive intrusion into vibrant non-European cultures of scholarship but also a founding impetus for the globalized human sciences of the contemporary world.62

The history of knowledge-making should not be reduced to the history of its selectively interpreted political or social circumstances, which would delegitimize knowledge as routinely tainted. Yet ‘there is clearly considerable scope for studying its 59

Ellis 2017: 142. A compact and rich, if one-sided, outline of the legacy of empire can be found in Gildea 2019. 61 Compare Thomas et al. 2018. 62 Osterhammel 2015: 820. 60

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sociological and political aspects in a rigorous and responsible manner.’63 Seen in this context, the history of Egypt’s history is a fascinating narrative of cultural encounters which should never be reduced to a history of political calculations,64 even though the latter certainly played a part in the coeval influential struggle for national identities, and had obvious and significant impacts on social and economic contexts. As the concept of heritage developed in the nineteenth century, ancient Egyptian heritage was claimed as a part of European cultural identity, and it was only toward the end of that century that modern Egypt systematically approached its own historical heritage, as it formed its own national identity.65 At this time, the antiquities in Egypt were largely administered by Westerners, and Egyptology tried to make itself relevant, though not exclusively so, to European or American societies that were increasingly dominated by nationalist discourses. Egyptian workforces were essential for the acquisition of antiquities,66 but ultimately the decision-making process was in hands of the Egyptian-Ottoman elites, who were in turn influenced by foreign governments. Recently, a narrative has been established that regards archaeologists in Egypt as lacking interest in local conditions, or sanitizing their workplaces by imposing models of control aimed at patronizing the Egyptian population. It has even been suggested that ‘the lack of interest in the social landscape within which Egyptological research takes place is surprising.’67 Yet the personal documents, including correspondence, of many Egyptologists offer a rather more nuanced picture, as Černý’s letters demonstrate. Critics of nineteenth and early twentieth century geopolitics have summed up the situation as planned disinterest in involving

63 Boghossian 2006: 113. There are well-articulated arguments for this approach and its nuances in Egyptology: Reid 2002: 10; Gertzen 2017a: 144–151. 64 The reductionist approach as demonstrated by Langer 2017a and 2017b is a somewhat problematic example of such reductionism, although several papers in his edited volume Global Egyptology: negotiations in the production of knowledges on ancient Egypt in global contexts, are rather more inclusive and balanced. 65 Wood 1998. 66 Georg 2019, 2018. 67 Spek 2011: 31.

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Egyptian professionals in Egyptian matters, and the appropriation of the Egyptian past.68 The situation was more complex than a simple imperial game which led the French and British to compartmentalize the various areas of Egyptological work, but the political framework was influential. The world wars all but eliminated the presence of German Egyptological institutions in Egypt, and indeed Černý’s own position at the IFAO, and as member of the Deir el-Medina team, would not have been possible without political intervention at the highest level. Still, the distrust of Egyptian colleagues, whether explicit or implicit, whether of educated scholars or simple field workers, was manifest in the Egyptological mainstream. There was, for example, a notable and mutual lack of understanding of the intellectual backgrounds of European and Egyptian scholars. Each side was critical of the other, publicly in newspapers and privately in correspondence,69 and it seems there were few attempts to find common ground, which would have required compromise. Egyptologists born and trained outside Egypt have traditionally had more opportunities to study archaeology, history and languages than their Egyptian-born counterparts, though these opportunities vary greatly by region.70 But this does not necessarily mean that they have received training in all aspects of intercultural compatibility. Their Egyptian colleagues were and are ‘at home’ in Egypt, but access to training, libraries and work opportunities has typically been more limited, and they often face being assessed by their external counterparts without much understanding of their societal context. The situation has changed, and improved since Černý’s time, but some aspects remain, and the portrait of Egyptology as a discipline at the crossroads of politics and culture is, fittingly, at least as complicated as the facts it strives to show. Intercultural communication is ideally based on mutual respect, free from the anxieties of miscommunication and misunderstanding, but that ideal is seldom, if ever, achieved. Analysing 68 69 70

Reid 2002: passim. Donald Malcolm Reid has a flair for finding these; Reid 2015: passim. Rocha da Silva 2019: 127–146.

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why there has been limited shared grounds for communication between public intellectuals in Egypt and Egyptian and international Egyptologists is challenging, but directly pertinent both for an understanding of Černý’s time and present-day concerns. But a simplistic answer, pointing the finger of blame at ‘imperialism’, is unlikely to be a full explanation, even if historical Ottoman and British politics contributed to a defensive articulation of Egyptian national identity, and even to a sense of danger to Egyptian national well-being that, in turn, resulted in intellectuals from outside Egypt being alienated. The vicious machinery of ‘us vs. them’ is still whirring, and nationalists remain willing to perceive dangers to their own cultural and political projects. The resulting model, the alienation of one party by the perceived self-interest of another, has been endlessly repeated across the world in diplomacy, art, and intellectual endeavour. Modern scholars are not immune to this tendency, and are all too often complicit in divisive narratives: the ‘impulse thus to sunder all the peoples of the world into belligerent collectivities has existed as long as humanity itself, and in our own day the easy recourse to such polarized thinking by many political leaders and public figures, and by pundits and commentators, is further exaggerated by an increasingly strident media. It has also been underscored by some historians who have been more concerned to legitimate the claims and urge the merits of one collective identity over and against any (or all) others than to take a broader view of the human past.’71 Current historians are nonetheless coming to recognize that one-sided stories are often—but not always—told by the jingoist, the imperialist, the privileged. David Cannadine is among the most eloquent proponents of an ‘undivided history’, and is one of the few who ‘does not confine his criticisms to those historians who have wielded their pens in service of the mighty. Oppositional historians are castigated, too: both the Marxists of the 1960s and 1970s, and feminist and post-colonial historians in more recent decades, stand accused of peddling exaggerated dichotomies of class, race and gender, and overstating the significance

71

Cannadine 2013: 5.

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of “difference” and subjugation.’72 A narrative based on division does little to help remedy perceived or factual injustice, or to build a constructive conversation. There are unspoken, and almost ironic elements in critiques of ‘Western’ Egyptology. For example, Egyptological works, particularly early efforts, were always constituted locally, and no amount of imported scholarship would have gotten very far without a local workforce and local expertise. Whether these were sufficiently acknowledged or their contribution properly articulated is another matter, and partially related to a second element, which is that the West is under an obligation to be very good at intercultural communication—which paradoxically implies having the necessary intellectual tools for the task. It is easy to fall short of unstated expectations.73 Western training in history, anthropology, or indeed ethnography does not automatically translate into the psychological ability to deal adequately with structurally complex cultural situations under the pressure of work and physical discomfort. This is human psychology in all its intricacy, or its simplicity. Dissension in Egyptology were bridged only gradually, in the second half of the twentieth century, and none too easily.74 Artefacts lie at the intersection of public opinion, professional concern, and political intrigue, and are important protagonists of this story,75 but there is still much to be said about personalities and struggles of non-Egyptian and Egyptian Egyptologists, and about the Egyptian public opinion of both. The ‘post-colonial’ discourse, however, is not always helpful in a nuanced discussion; on the contrary, its reductionist impact is increasingly being recognized.76

72

Priestland 2013. For an assessment of the complexity of this situation, see Wendrich 2018. 74 Reid 2015. 75 As addressed by Colla 2007, and repeatedly by Donald M. Reid. 76 ‘Even if the imperialist setting, European intellectual background, and exploitative character of—some—Egyptological endeavours cannot be denied, I would hesitate to attach the label “colonial discipline” to Egyptology’; Gertzen 2020: 202. 73

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Egyptology has more recently been characterized as harbouring the potential to harness the transnational character of its research, and its development as a comprehensive global enterprise covering a major chapter in the history of humanity.77 The variety of disciplinary approaches inherent within Egyptology has led to a proposition that considers the discipline to be an ‘area study’, open to a comprehensive and reflective plurality of methods.78 Černý’s personal story as a researcher reveals the complex history of Egyptology, as a fusion of individual, institutional, intellectual, and geopolitical trajectories that eventually lead to how we conceive the history of science. And, returning to the topic of the previous section, how life-writing contributes to how we regard the history of science.79 ‘Individual responsibilities, decisions and personal choices must be highlighted, their defects and (negative) consequences clearly pointed out and—ideally—lessons for the future should be drawn from critical analysis.’80 Biographies thus conceived also have the capability to ‘resist (political) appropriations,’81 by drawing attention to the actual complexity of a life and work. The lives of many Egyptologists overlapped that of Černý, and their private, political and professional experiences were also shaped by the twentieth century. His American contemporary and fellow Egyptologist, John A. Wilson, born in 1899, noted that ‘we babies were born into one of the most interesting times in world history.’82 The word ‘interesting’ has, in retrospect, a somewhat portentous flavour. For Egyptian Egyptologists, the road to both professional opportunity and professional recognition was long. For continental European scholars of Černý’s generation, and of his teachers’ generation, political turmoil, exile and war were lived experiences, not an interesting observation 77

Rocha da Silva 2019. Baines 2011: 573–574. 79 On life-writing in Egyptology: for a survey of the matter, see Navratilova 2019; on the acute need for a close reading of sources, see Gertzen 2020. 80 Gertzen 2020: 203. 81 As noted by Tore Rem in the panel Art & Action: Authorship and Authority, organized by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, Friday 25 September 2020, 3.00–4.30pm. 82 Wilson 1972: 4. 78

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from afar. The peregrinations of German Jewish and German anti-Nazi Egyptologists and Orientalists are becoming increasingly well known, and no one reading the j’accuse letter by Georg Steindorff (1861–1951) can miss the pain and anger his experience engendered. Černý’s friend Louis Keimer (1892–1957) changed his nationality twice,83 first to escape the Nazi regime and then to evade enforced loyalty to the Communist regime. Vladimir Golenischeff (1856–1947) had to leave Russia and led a transnational existence between France and Egypt. Another, more eccentric Russian, Vladimir Vikentiev (1882–1960) followed suit. Yet another friend of Černý’s, Georges Posener (1906–1988), was a son of a Russian émigré family and survived the Second World War in hiding, as an escapee prisoner and insurgent— while still publishing in Egyptology.84 The Cold War period that followed was no less ‘interesting’, with grand political dramas reflected disastrously in personal lives, though sometimes tragicomically. Posener recalled that when he visited Moscow in the 1960s as a guest of a congress, he had intended to visit Yuri Perepelkin (1903–1982).85 The distinguished Soviet Egyptologist could not face meeting a man from the other side of the Iron Curtain and, beating a hasty retreat, jumped out of his office window. Perepelkin’s self-defenestration sums up both the cruelty and the absurdity of Hobsbawm’s ‘age of extremes’. Černý’s lifetime covered a pivotal developmental stage for Egyptology, which was—as with many other disciplines—balancing two long-time dichotomies: scholarship as a national asset, and as a transnational enterprise.86 If there is a need for all actors who sought ancient Egypt to be allowed more comprehensive voices, and to place the discipline itself in a context that allows more comprehensive development,87 then biography is an opportunity, and one that is able to focus on practical lived experience; on the bricolage of Egyptology. The biographical perspective is an opportunity to grasp the complexities of the individual strategies employed by individual practitioners. 83 84 85 86 87

Lehnert 2007 and Oerter 2010a. Yoyotte 1988: vii–xv. A recollection told by Miroslav Verner; personal communication, April 2020. For which see Wagner 2008 and Fox 2016. Discussed in Quirke 2013.

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This does not mean omitting the subject’s full voice and agency, even if it complicates neatly packaged and fluent narratives. It is not only in political rhetoric that we need to ‘reconcile memories.’88 Lived experiences have created shared histories, lieux de mémoire, and ‘the multiethnic and multicultural reality of contemporary life. A transcultural view allows for this reality, provides a lens through which we may comprehend “the sheer plethora of shared lieux de mémoire that have emerged through travel, trade, war, and colonialism”.’89 The situation of Egyptology is decidedly not that of an ‘imperialist’ import: ‘a wideranging definition of Egyptology could be: a multidisciplinary area—or regional study, actually predating the Napoleonic expedition, including both natural sciences and the humanities as well as European and non-European practitioners.’90 If ‘Western’ input is believed to have taken a mantle of authority in Egyptology for significant parts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then the same can be said for another area of international activity, the developmental projects in the Middle East that have also been cast as Western imports perpetuating local inequalities. In scholarship, as in developmental work, an authors’ vision of development is entangled with their personal lives and world view. ‘The use of personal narrative invokes a sense of commitment and sacrifice that transcends the mundane view of development as mere “project work”… this intertwinement lends credibility and authenticity to the discourse of development.’91 If we substitute development for ‘knowledge making’, the quote may perhaps still be applicable. A final caveat comes to mind here—namely that history and biography cannot avoid using multiple gauges of truth. ‘The truth of charity is different than the truth of criticism. To call forth the best in ourselves and others requires both, but they cannot be practiced in the same moment.’92 But perhaps they 88 As put by Emmanuel Macron, quoted by Gildea 2019: 251. Compare also Meretoja 2018 regarding a dialogicality of narratives and a search for a space ‘in-between’, inspired by Hannah Arendt and David Grossman. 89 Rapson 2012: 132, quoting Erll 2011. 90 Gertzen 2020: 202. 91 Obeid 2012: 154. 92 Snyder 2012: xvii.

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can be included in the same book. The truth of criticism will inevitably expose political games, the penetration of political and economic interests, and the academic argumentation that was constructed to buttress or at least excuse them. It will also expose both the hidden and self-imposed conceptual limitations of knowledge-making placed on and by scholars. The truth of charity ought to expose, no less vividly, enjoyment and curiosity; a fascination with the ancient, a fascination with the exotic even; a wish to deepen and broaden the understanding of an ultimately shared human past, inspiring and inspired by a tireless pursuit of knowledge. In the end, both criticism and charity should be deployed to characterize scholars and the societies in which they lived.93

Transnational voice … Rootlessness—a diasporic world-sense—is complicated. It creates irreducible people… Diasporic world-sense means living in several places at the same time, and being fully present in all of them. Aleksandar Hemon94

The narrative in this book cannot avoid the politically sensitive aspect of transnational existence. Černý can certainly be cast as a typical ‘citizen of nowhere’, as for the last decades of his life he was effectively a stateless migrant, and depended on his position as a member of a network of elite international academics. The dichotomy between the conventional understanding of a dispossessed exile and of a member of an international elite is evident, yet Černý—and other transnational academics—can be defined as both because agency and experience defy strict categories. Alleged ‘citizens of nowhere’ have much in common with both ‘international elites’ and those whom Theresa May called the ‘people down the road’.95 They are often the ‘people down the road’, only their road, as Tolkien put it in the quote 93

Compare Fitzenreiter 2007 and Gertzen 2020: 203. Hemon 2017: 16. 95 Theresa May saw local and international identities as opposites in her speech at the Conservative Party Conference, 2016. 94

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that opens this preface, ‘joins some larger way, where many paths and errands meet.’ Labels such as ‘migrant’, ‘of nowhere’, ‘rootless’, and so on are regularly used to address the status of thousands, perhaps millions, of people—whether they are dispossessed and displaced or, paradoxically, an international elite of globally mobile professionals. The twentieth century has seen people raided, displaced and killed on an industrial scale, not to mention the other fates meted out to millions during world conflicts. The twenty-first century appears to be repeating this pattern. Yet migrant ‘elites’ are often targeted as being complicit for using their networks’ economic, social, or political capability and privilege, and of acting without responsibility toward local populations.96 Labels are not only insufficient, devoid of any meaningful characteristic, but are essentially debasing, feeding into a dehumanized image of either an impoverished swarm or of scheming plutocrats. Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda notably used both images in the drive to the Final Solution. Nationalist acrimony, labelling, and the resultant dehumanisation of ‘others’ proliferated in the twentieth century, and has continued into the twenty-first. Within research, a bias toward the ‘national state as the quasinatural unit of analysis’ in the study of transnationals—whether they are outcasts or privileged—is noticeable.97 Historians are asked to counterbalance this bias, which stems from the legacy of of their own discipline’s recent history: For some years, historians have been pointing to the significance and implications of history’s complicity with the nation state. History as a professional discipline was constituted to serve the business of nation building, and has accordingly very often seen its task as providing an account of national experience, values and traditions, thus helping to forge a national community. The question historians are now asking is: has history as handmaiden to the nation state distorted or limited our understanding of the past? And if so, can a transnational approach help develop new and more adequate forms of historical writing?98

96 97 98

Compare McKenna et al. 2015. Faist 2012: 54. Curthoys and Lake 2005: 5.

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Transnational spaces are intended to avoid both nation-state primacy and the concept of borderless worldwide networks. ‘For alternative social contexts to the national state, transnational social space is an available conceptual tool which can serve as a point of departure for moving beyond methodological nationalism.’99 Although ‘transnational social spaces’ are more often associated with families, or entrepreneurship,100 crossborder academic organizations and formal and informal research networks—including the ‘invisible college’101—also form a transnational space. The appeal and intricacy of the transnational voice goes even further, to an individual level within each transnational group, for these are diverse individuals with diverse strategies and levels of integration within their communities of choice; May’s ‘people down the road’. Any study of transnationals should avoid seeing them ‘above all as members of an ethnic group’, in which ‘their roles as workers, professionals, parents, children, lovers, and members of associations or local communities are not considered sufficiently.’102 They also cannot be seen only as members of a transnational professional group without acknowledging individual characteristics and relationships. Although ‘groupism’ has been widely critiqued in the context of ethnicity studies,103 it is all too readily applied to professional or even political ‘groups’, and overcoming the notion still proves challenging. A Citizen of Nowhere is a transnational biography of a scholar who defied a world hidebound by borders, passports, and increasingly by a multitude of tribalisms. Černý contributed to a burgeoning transnational social space that focused on research in Egyptology. As a scholar, he believed in the study of history bona fide, thought its ancient Egyptian chapter fascinating, and tried to understand it as well as he could. He saw his work as serving a cause—the cause of building knowledge for humanity—without claiming a final word. He thought it better to give space and voice to the people of the past over the voice of the 99

Faist 2012: 55. Compare Faist and Özveren 2004, Bauböck and Faist 2010, and Faist 2012. 101 Wagner 2008. 102 Faist 2012: 52. 103 Brubaker 2002: 163–189. 100

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researcher, and did so, again, as well as he could. He was not infallible, and he was not a humanities- or social sciences polymath. The value of his legacy, such as it is, is enhanced by his belief in cooperation across boundaries, and in connecting as well as opening up the epistemic communities to which he belonged.104 Yes, narrating his story has a larger agenda: that histories of connections are legitimate and that ‘lessons in reconciliation’ are possible.105 Historians carry responsibilities, whether they want to tell an ‘accurate mess’ or an ‘elegant untruth’,106 whether they want to build narratives of conflict and negativity, or whether to tell about conflict whilst exploring the ethical potential of dialogic storytelling.107

Acknowledgements In thanking the learned people named, I should stress that none of them is implicated in what has resulted. For that I am alone responsible. John Gwyn Griffiths108

A volume that took over seven years to write will inevitably accumulate a long list of acknowledgements. I would like to thank all the institutions and archives that allowed me access to their documents. All the archives in the reference list at the end of this book have played an inimitable role in its making. Recurrent help in discovering and accessing relevant documents was received from a number of institutions in Egypt, Europe, and the United States. These are: Archive of the Office of the President, Prague Castle (AKPR); Archive of the Masaryk Institute and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AAVCR); National Archive Prague (NAP); Archive of the National Museum (ANM); collections and archives of the Náprstek Museum (ANpM); Archive of the Czech National Bank (ACNB); Archive of the City of Pilsen (AMP); 104 105 106 107 108

See Haas 1992; Haas 2008. Fletcher 2017: 173. Judt 2012: 270. Meretoja 2018: Chapter 7 and p. 109. Griffiths 1970: xvii.

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Archive of the City of Prague (AHMP); Archive of the Charles University in Prague (AUK); Archive and Registry files of the Czechoslovak and Czech Institute of Egyptology (ACEGU); and Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague (AMZV); Archive of the Security Services (ABS); the Slaný town and regional museum archives; The Blansko regional archive; Brown University Library and Archives, Providence, RI; Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen; Archive of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum; The Griffith Institute Archive, University of Oxford (GIA); The National Archives, Kew (TNA); City of Oxford; Bethlem Royal Hospital, Beckenham: the Museum of the Mind; The Archive and Library of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo; Archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Egyptian Art; Archive of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; The Hoover Institution. Although this list of archives may already seem long, a caveat is required: there are still further archives that may need to be accessed if the networked history of Egyptology, of which Jaro was but a node, is to be studied further. Notable are the UNESCO archive in Paris, the CEDAE archive, and the archive of the Ministry of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Cairo. Warm thanks are due chiefly to archive staff and librarians, as well as to directors and administrators. Your help is greatly appreciated and I cannot thank you enough! In what is a very much incomplete list, I would like to express particular thanks to Jaromir Malek, Vincent Razanajao, Anne-Claire Salmas, Francisco Bosch-Puche, Elizabeth Fleming, Catherine Warsi and Jenni Navratil (Griffith Institute), Laurent Bavay, Laurent Coulon, Nicolas Michel, Frédéric Abécassis, Cedric Larcher, Mazen Essam, Mervat Doss, George Habib, and Agnès Macquin (IFAO), Alex Pezzati (UPMAA), Foy Scalf, Joseph Brett McClain, and Jeff Cumonow (Chicago House and Oriental Institute, Chicago), Eva Gregorovičová and Helena Klímová (National Archive, Praha), Michael Riordan (Queen’s College, Oxford), Tom Davies and Madeline Evans (The Churchill Archives, Churchill College Cambridge), Jiří Honzl (Náprstek Museum-National Museum, Prague), Julie Tomsová (The Hrdlička Museum of Man),

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Morena Stefanova (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Susanne Rieß-Stumm (Karl-Eberhardts University, Tübingen), Sarah Patton (Hoover Institution), Jakub Kunert and team (ACNB), Suzie Walker-Millar (Museum of the Mind), and Paul Jordan (Brown University Library and Archives). Parts of the research behind this book were generously funded by the Anglo-Czech Educational Fund and the programme of actions spécifiques of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo, in particular Action spécifique 17428, Černý. The research and publication projects of the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African, and American Cultures (a division of the National Museum in Prague) enabled access to the Černý Collections and supported their new editions. In its final stage, between 2017 and 2022, my work had a dual academic home at the University of Reading and at Wolfson College of the University of Oxford. Publication funding was generously provided by Mrs Anna Allot, the Lorne Thyssen Fund, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, the Griffith Egyptology Fund, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, and the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East. I would like to sincerely thank the Griffith Institute Editorial Board for accepting the book for publication in the Institute’s series, and to the Peeters Publishers team for making it happen. In the editing process, the role of a copy-editor is irreplaceable: this book is fortunate to have had R. Gareth Roberts as its copy-editor. The following lines are dedicated, with earnest thanks, to many who are colleagues as well as friends, and whilst they may be listed here in their professional capacity, it was often both their expertise and their friendship that made a difference. The Allott family, and in particular Anna Allott. Anna has shown an unwavering kindness and interest in the project. She was the principal oral history witness, the family historian who allowed a stranger access to family memories, and the patient listener to innumerable musings when a biographer with a fraction of her life experience tried to grasp the lives of her mother and stepfather. The concept of the biography and its contents owe much to the first concise biography of Černý, The Scribe in the Place of Truth by Jiřina Růžová, which contributed much-needed perspective.

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As the librarian of the Jaroslav Černý Library, Jiřina offered many unique insights into the intricate world of libraries. Her acumen for nuance regarding the personal and institutional history of Czechoslovak Egyptology is unparalleled. The history of UCL and Černý’s role in it were investigated by Rosalind Janssen, who became a much-valued mentor to me, and a mediator of her late husband’s recollections of his own mentor, Černý. Miroslav Verner, Fayza Haikal, Peter M. Neumann, Georges Castel, Hermann Bell and, as always, Jaromir Malek generously shared their recollections of Černý. Harry James gave the gift of his memories during a walk in Old Town, Prague, in June 2006, well before the idea of this biography was conceived. It was a memorable afternoon. José-Ramón Pérez-Accino hunted for the Černý graffito in the Theban mountains, and Deborah Sweeney recalled treasured memories of and about Sarah Israelit-Groll. Jason Thompson provided advice and kind words. Peter der Manuelian, way ahead on the biographer’s trail, gave essential guidance as well as incredible snippets from the Harvard University archives. Aidan Dodson, Andrew Bednarski, Thomas Gertzen, Clare Lewis, Cynthia Sheikholeslami, Richard Parkinson, Amr Omar, Marleen De Meyer, and Cédric Gobeil have been always available to talk about the history of Egyptology and Egypt. Delphine Delamare’s enthusiasm for studying Egyptology as a transnational project was a great encouragement, and her forthcoming dissertation will offer new insights. Johanna Holaubek, Ernst Czerny, Adéla Jůnová Macková, Libor Jůn, Hana Havlůjová, Wolf Oerter, Pavel Onderka, Lucie Storchová, Lucie Vendelová Jirásková, Vlastimil Vrtal, Hana Vymazalová, and Radek Podhorný have been companions in the quest for the history of Oriental Studies in Central Europe. Alison Hobby, Susanne Woodhouse, Diane Bergman and Dag Bergman, Janice Kamrin, and Steve Vinson were always there to discuss research infrastructures in all their variant guises. Miranda Lewis provided many insights into cultures of knowledge and the ‘republic of letters’. Among my many colleagues, who kindly discussed the diverse areas of Egyptological interest surrounding Černý, I would like to thank in particular Dieter Arnold, Adela Oppenheim, Chloé

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Ragazzoli, Stéphane Polis, Nathalie Sojic, Julia Hamilton, Nico Staring, Ursula Verhoeven-van Elsbergen, Ladislav Bareš, Dana Bělohoubková, and Khaled Hassan. I am all too aware that a complete list would push the word-count limits yet further. At the Department of Classics at the University of Reading, Emma Aston, Rachel Mairs, Ian Rutherford, Amy Smith and the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology team offered a sympathetic ear and helpful suggestions. From 2017, I had the opportunity to enjoy the most stimulating environment of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College. Hermione Lee, Kate Kennedy, Katie Collins, Mark Lee, and all the participants in teatime talks, research fora and OCLW events created a unique atmosphere where life-writing could develop and thrive. During the 2020 Covid spring and 2021 Covid winter, the ‘OCLW weekly’ writing group meetings had to move online, but remained a lifeline. I would like to thank all the participants, especially Tamarin Norwood, Lizzie Wingfield, Richard Walker, Kate Elliot, Oge Nwosu, Helen de Borchgrave, Ian Hembrow, Rebecca Gowers, and Penelope GardnerChloros. Aurora Morcillo, to whom this book is dedicated, said the right words at the right time. Mark Pottle elucidated why it matters to present a scholar’s life and work simultaneously—and to talk about the archives. Julie Dresvina and the participants of ‘Thanks for Typing’ workshop brought a wealth of perspectives on female lives and accentuated why the ‘supporting’ cast in history should instead be recognized as an ‘all-star’ cast. When the text was in its last stages of development, several people, already sympathetic throughout the research and writing process, stepped up their friendly and professional efforts. Thomas Gertzen, Donald Reid and Jason Thompson all generously dedicated their time, attention and efforts to provide a much-needed critical eye, with a great sense for detail and for the overall picture. The book would have been poorer without them; that being said, any errors are my own. Alison Hobby and Jaromir Malek (yet again) provided personal perspectives on Černý, which have been irreplaceable. Time and again, Francisco Bosch-Puche, Elisabeth Fleming, and Catherine Warsi went not an extra mile but an extra league in providing access to archive materials.

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could always expect the right blend of warm reception and healthy irony from my parents, Eva and Oldřich, and a sustained supply of fantasy and science-fiction quotes from Dana Šramková. Some parts of the research and writing enjoyed the generous support provided by grants, but others had received no funding at all and were written in my spare time, or on the margins of other projects. Some setbacks were as inevitable as they were essential. People who did not believe in the project were also important to it in their own way. A major impetus to pursue the biography was provided by one anonymous reviewer in a related grant application, who pronounced it ‘lacking in intellectual depth.’ Rejections and dismissive comments made the work more difficult but the author more determined. Constructive criticism, however, made it easier and perhaps better. Thanks are due, in a more general sense, to all those who make Egyptology and transnational lives possible—not the least of whom are those who drive and service the trains and who pilot and maintain the planes. Parts of this book were written en route, at airports and railway stations, and it felt appropriate; Heathrow Airport and Paddington Station loom large in the writing of memories. Serendipitous circumstances may be thanked too, for allowing the author to unexpectedly follow the trail of the protagonist. During the Covid-19 pandemic I took a supplementary role at the University of Oxford, as a lateral flow-testing operative. The place was St. Luke’s Chapel, formerly the hospital chapel of the Radcliffe Infirmary. The circumstances were dire but the esprit du corps was heartening as it often is during a ‘war effort’, when it struck me: Černý, who had been pronounced dead in the Radcliffe Infirmary, might have temporarily been laid out close by. His story suddenly felt more real. Finally, a few unsatisfactory words of appreciation for some of the places and sensory experiences that stimulated the writing process. The evening scent of the garden, and the morning scent of beeswax in the library of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale; the hazy view over the Theban hills; the atmosphere of Prague cafés (still pervaded with nicotine smoke until 2017); and the whisper of trees in Oxford on a spring day. And coffee.

Prologue: 29 May 1970 Late May of 1970 was the driest for over a decade, with only a few thundery showers providing some much-expected moisture. On the 28th, an intense storm passed over parts of Oxfordshire. The following morning was bathed in sunshine. Just at the end of the rush hour, a neatly dressed man in his seventies stepped outside a house on Linkside Avenue in North Oxford. The fragrance of coffee and a morning cigarette lingered around him. His face was lined with wrinkles, but had a kindly expression that children warmed to. He paused on the pavement, admiring the beauty of fresh green leaves and then retraced his steps to ring his own bell. A lithe woman with shiny white hair opened the door. ‘Have you forgotten anything, Jaro?’ ‘Not at all, Marie, but I wanted to say goodbye once more.’ They smiled and touched hands and Jaro turned away to continue his journey. As professor emeritus he was not expected to rush any more, and yet there were so many urgent matters on his mind. He walked slowly, aware of the weakening eyesight that had blighted his life for some time. He was no stranger to hospital visits, surgeries, or the lifelong sentence of wearing glasses. But his inner vision was anything but myopic. He thought of the friends that he was to meet at the university, and of the book that had been growing in his mind for almost fifty years. It had been a long journey, and it had taken many detours, but the first volume was nearly written, and there were two more to follow. His protagonists, artists of ancient Egypt, would become as alive to his readers as they had become to him. And yet, even when he was most involved in his opus, he looked forward to questions from students, colleagues, and many queries from another indefatigable lady with shiny white hair—his rotund and energetic friend Rosalind, whom he was on his way to see. What an idea she had—an imaginary map of Egypt with all the monuments described, accompanied by bibliographies. Bibliographies … it

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PROLOGUE: 29 MAY 1970

was good for people to know quickly and reliably what was going on in their subject. He himself had collected a huge number of books, but it seemed that no single library could encompass all that was going on in his area of interest now. It was no longer possible for any scholar to be a polymath of his discipline. People needed to talk to each other, to exchange knowledge, to connect, to work together! He knew that achieving these ideals was not easy, and some might have thought him naïve; but that was no reason to give up on what mattered to develop his discipline. So much to do. The fresh spring air was caressing his face, a change after the dry desert air he had been breathing in Egypt just a few weeks ago. So much to do but he did not feel particularly energetic that morning. He looked around carefully before crossing the road to the bus stop. A small queue was forming to await the red double-decker. Jaro was lost in thought, but not enough to miss a smiling young woman on the other side of the road. Well, he thought she was smiling. He did not always trust his glasses to enable him to see everything. So much to do. He was aware of his ill health, but hoped that perhaps it was better than he thought. Then a sharp pain came. It felt as if his heart was about to burst out of his chest. Jaro collapsed gently, dropping his briefcase. A bystander tried to slow his fall, but Jaro did not realize that. So much to do … he did not see himself at the end of his journey yet. But the pain did not go away, and when it finally began to dissolve, it was supplanted by darkness. An ambulance was eventually called, and dashed along the road toward the city, to the Radcliffe Infirmary. In the meantime, a young policeman took care of the documents from the briefcase. They told the man’s full name and address. It was not far from the bus stop. Again, the lady of the house went to answer the bell. The young man in front of her was not very articulate; he was too shocked. But he managed to deliver his news. Marie did not remember later on whether she thanked him or not. But dazed as she was, she found her way to the telephone in the hall and called first the hospital and then the Griffith Institute. A familiar voice answered the institutional phone, with a slight accent rather like her husband’s. Marie brought herself to say ‘Jaromir, I am afraid my husband is dead,’ unwilling to believe her own words as she uttered them.

Introduction: on strangers, passports, and modernity The present era has no monopoly on virtue. We owe it to our forebears to examine their motivations. Michael Portillo109 You must not sneer at history, for history is you. Herbert Leslie Greener

Jaro, Marie, and Jaromir: who were these apparent strangers with peculiar names, who yet settled in Oxford? They all came from a country that is, at the time of writing, no longer on the map, and used to be called Czechoslovakia. It has been declared a ‘state that failed.’110 Critical observers have made the point that ‘the country was too big to be a Czech national state, and too small to be a miniature Habsburg empire.’111 Yet to view its history as a catalogue of failures is as misleading, if not more so, than viewing it as a paragon of democracy that Tomáš Masaryk envisioned in 1918. Its interwar aspirations were liberal and democratic, and inspired the loyalty of many, if not all, of its citizens. But the twentieth century witnessed no less than three major waves of emigration from the country, mostly toward the West, and often of those who were faithful to the idea of a free, democratic society that wasn’t found at home—including the three strangers in Oxford. The three Czechoslovaks came to Oxford in the wake of turbulent episodes in the twentieth century, and accepted living in the United Kingdom as a part of who they were, although each articulated their formal ties to Britain differently. Jaro and Marie

109 110 111

Portillo 2020. Heimann 2009. Lukes 2011: 893.

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INTRODUCTION

concluded their lives in Oxford, after what their friends called ‘long wanderings’. For Jaro, the peregrinations were both enthralling and demanding, taking him across Europe, the Mediterranean, and even the Atlantic, but ultimately across the borders of ideology and jingoism. Marie also had to adapt to professional and personal networks in several countries, but as a woman she had to answer challenges particular to her gender, of being a highly educated female professional who changed her career prospects several times, reframing her personal life with each change. From a personal perspective this seems onerous, but from the perspective of their time, travel, exile, and the establishment of new lives in a succession of countries, and responses to changing perspectives on gender and profession, were not remotely exceptional,112 even if each individual lived experience tells a unique story. For many in the twentieth century, travel and exile occurred against the backdrop of, and in spite of, the growing systemic influence of nationality and citizenship. ‘If nationality was an increasingly potent mantle before the First World War, it was not yet indispensable. Nationality was enshrined as a universal category only during the interwar period.’113 Nonetheless, ‘in the nineteenth and twentieth century, even as national and imperial boundaries grew more and more rigidly drawn, millions of men, women, and children established connections across such boundaries’.114 As nationalism became the accepted basis for politics and identity, it became necessary to explain the peripatetic life in its many guises—its freedom and loss, its sense of ‘longing for belonging’—because borders and differences were emphasized, and having more than one identity became a challenge.115 The years bracketing Jaro’s and Marie’s lives, 1898 to 1970 and 1899 to 1991 respectively, mark a succession of political and social transformations, from heights of colonial empires to the

112

Osterhammel 2015: 117–165. Hanley 2017: 282. 114 Irie and Mitter 2010: xi. 115 As noted in the conversation by Sir Tim Hitchens, Elleke Boehmer, Nayanika Mathur and Jacob Dahl, 19 November 2020, Wolfson College online event. 113

INTRODUCTION

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Civil Rights movement, and from national revivals to the fall of Communism. Maps of the world from the years of Jaro’s birth and his death, even more so at the time of Marie’s death twentyone years later, reveal fundamental political changes. States appeared and disappeared, as did political ideologies. The dynamics of national histories in Jaro’s land of origin, then known as Bohemia, and in the country he studied, Egypt, offer some intriguing parallels in terms of national revivals. Both regions knew a longing for the past alongside developing modernity; their communities searched for a functional ‘modern’ society that would find its place in a politically and economically competitive world, but without losing its identity. ‘One of the central problems of the Arab intellectual thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was how to be modern while maintaining the historical specificity of cultural identity.’116 Egypt in particular found a way to define its national identity in opposition to both the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire that supplanted it. Salama Musa discussed a ‘new force’ for Egyptian national revival in the early twentieth century, Ahmad Lutfi as-Sayyid: ‘In the newspapers he defended one very simple axiom, namely that Egypt must be for the Egyptians, not for the Turks or the British.’117 But who were the ‘Egyptians’? The Czech issue with modernity had a different but comparable trajectory to that in Egypt, led by the new elites that arose after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and debated the acceptance or rejection of ‘foreign’ influence in their formulation of a new nation-state structure.118 Public discussions on tradition, nation, and modernity were held in a climate of opposition to the idea of multinational empires and their perceived or attested inequalities. Patriotic, and to a certain extent nationalist, postGreat War Czechs strove to be defined and accepted as Europeans, yet to maintain their historic role on the world stage.119 They also offered a rather narrow definition of who was ‘Czech’.

116 117 118 119

269.

El Shakry 2007: 12. Musa 1961: 43. Štaif 2005: 112–143. Art and architecture became particularly strongly contested, see Wood 2010: 258–

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INTRODUCTION

Studies outside the confines of Bohemia, and translations of major non-Czech literary works, became vehicles of a national revival,120 mirroring the experiences of Egyptian intellectuals who studied abroad and the vectors of translators’ schools in the era of Muhammad Ali. A further, if more distant parallel of the two national revivals was the summary dismissal of the ‘imperial’ era, whether Austrian or Ottoman or British. This shared opinion left a legacy in historiography; historians often favour nationalist revivals, so that writing balanced histories of empires is a challenge. The historiographical focus has been—and continues to be—on their shortcomings. In the political and social sphere, much of what was articulated in the nineteenth century came to be realized as open conflict, disintegration of ideas, or their fulfilment: international competition; colonialism; decolonization; the secular state; the welfare state; socialism; the promotion of equality between men and women; new forms of dictatorship; authoritarian regimes buttressed by new technologies. The change was fast. ‘The entire history of modern imperialism, so firm and self-confident when Queen Victoria of Great Britain died, had lasted no longer than a single lifetime—say, that of Winston Churchill (1874–1965).’121 Even the understanding of time and space changed in this new era. Times of war brought a sense of urgency but much of wartime was spent waiting—in queues, in shelters, in camps. Yet there was a sense that the whole world was rushing into action. Days were spent in new and unfamiliar activities, with time broken into the hasty units mandated by the factory, the office, the conflict. After the Second World War, many people wished to catch up with all the things they missed; they tried to slow down the pace, to revive domesticity, to catch time. But there was to be no return; the industrial world had won. The political scene on either side of the Iron Curtain was governed by what could be produced in planned units of time; the numbers of units that could be churned out by factories mattered. The pace and impact of change prompted new thoughts about culture,

120 121

See the case study of Jungmann translating Milton: Tobrmanová 2018. Hobsbawm 1994: 7.

INTRODUCTION

7

historical continuity, and the protection of cultural and natural heritage that was endangered by what looked like the ruthless pace of progress and modernity. The 1950s and 1960s saw a plethora of technological advances, including those of the so-called space race, and international cooperation in research projects, including a rescue campaign in Egypt and Sudan, which promised that technology would open new choices and new possibilities. The world had always been connected, but it now seemed to shrink. It came to be defined by an interconnectedness that eventually reduced intercontinental travel from months to weeks to days to hours. Intercontinental journeys are now little more than jet-lag inducing moments. Domestic spaces and family relations could not stay untouched as the world changed around them, whether in terms of relationships, structures of economy and power, or the objects of everyday use. Many British inventions from 1890s to the 1990s declared that they’d make everyday lives easier,122 such as the electric vacuum cleaner (1901), the toaster (1919), mechanical television (1925), antibiotics (1928), the jet engine (1937), the automatic electric kettle (1955), the collapsible buggy (1965), the bagless vacuum cleaner (1983), the world wide web (1989), and even the wind-up radio (1991). Many other inventions were mass marketed or made widely accessible through mass production. But change was not all in the name of progress, although progress had been and remains a long-established narrative. The world, still believed to be on a mission of progress in the interwar years, had changed profoundly by the 1950s. Zara Steiner offered an apt description of an interwar age that went from cosmopolitanism to nationalist and totalitarian carnage—‘The lights that failed.’123 The Great War was a bloodbath, but its successor truly revealed the incredibly dark aspects of what did it mean to be human, including a mechanised system of extermination and genocide enabled by a seemingly mundane power, the power of ‘heedless conformity’. ‘Other forces were at work besides conformism. But without the conformists, the great atrocities would 122 https://www.historiansforbritain.org/top-15-british-inventions-changed-worldforever/ (accessed 10 February 2019). 123 Steiner 2005.

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INTRODUCTION

have been impossible.’124 The dangers of a technocratic conformist society were evident on both sides of the political divide that characterized the Cold War.125 After the Second World War, the belief in modernising of the world took flight. ‘After World War II, a triumphant liberalism which emphasized support for the development, extension, and defence of democratic values to “underprivileged” societies and groups both in the United States and abroad, provided the guiding values for domestic and foreign policy.’126 Socialist modernity was promoted on the other side of the Iron Curtain. ‘Soviet and Third World socialist states engaged in their own variant of globalization through deepening ties of trade, technical and military aid, and cultural exchanges.’127 Both ideological blocs were supported by the modern idea that the nation state was the fundamental unit of diplomacy. Nation states were territorially and culturally discrete, were the anthesis of ‘traditional’ colonial empires, and could be utilized either directly or indirectly by both of the major powers of the Cold War era. The USA and the Soviets were equally interested in promoting their own hegemonies at the expense of British or French imperialism. Objectively, Jaro and Marie Černý in May 1970 were only two among many who had lived through two devastating wars, and who had needed to adapt to a world that became more compact and more accessible while simultaneously becoming more divided and factionalist, more prone to antagonism. When Jaro and Marie were children, some intellectuals of their day were convinced that only a tyrant could ask his subjects to carry a barbaric thing called a ‘passport’.128 A decade before Jaro’s death, Salama Musa recalled, in a slightly idealized but in essence accurate retrospect, that ‘there were in those days no obstacles to travelling … from Cairo I might travel to Paris, London, or Berlin as freely as to Tanta or Asyut.’129 The only barrier would have been financial. 124 125 126 127 128 129

Snyder 2017: 50. Cherniss 2014. Lee 1995: 560. Pula 2019: 23. Hirst 2002: 61. Musa 1961: 60.

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Regarding the interwar period—which for Jaro and Marie was still a world of relative freedom—Italian diplomat and antifascist activist Egidio Reale remarked that if a man were to awake ‘from a slumber of some years’ he would ‘find that he can talk on the telephone to friends in London, Paris, Tokyo, or New York, hear stock market quotations or concerts from around the globe, fly across the oceans—but not traverse earthly borders without stringent bureaucratic formalities in the course of which his nationality would be scrutinized closely.’130 In their later lives, after the Second World War, while it was technically possible to travel from Prague to London in a matter of hours thanks to the jet engine, it was not easily done due to a systemic political barrier known elegiacally as the Iron Curtain. The new borders created after Second World War grew increasingly impermeable throughout their lives.131 By the time Jaro and Marie had reached their mature years, passports became a defining feature of an individual’s life, and remained so even as Marie’s time was ending, despite the fall of the Iron Curtain from 1989 to 1990. The Černýs escaped the worst deprivations of their century, but being survivors of a sort was still a challenge. The dehumanisation that characterized their time was not limited to evident atrocity. It had, and still has, a more insidious face—the technocratic society in which a stamped passport means more than an individual’s life. Inhumanity in war eased open the doors of inhumanity in peace, a less bloody but in some ways more intrusive form masked in a sense of security, and pervasive in both technocratic and authoritarian states. Isaiah Berlin observed in 1950: ‘Growing numbers of human beings are prepared to purchase this sense of security even at the cost of allowing vast tracts of life to be controlled by persons who, whether consciously or not, act systematically to narrow the horizon of human activity to manageable proportions, to train human beings into more easily combinable parts—interchangeable, almost prefabricated—of a total pattern.’132 130

Paraphrased by Torpey 2018: 122. Generally speaking; individual border practices were diversified; for an introduction see Oates-Indruchová and Blaive 2015. 132 Berlin 1950: 377. 131

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INTRODUCTION

This remains as true at the time of writing as it did seventy years ago. The danger of manageable proportions (and populations) is only heightened by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, and the same danger holds true for writing history—we might easily slip into the habit of writing histories that are inhabited by beings composed of manageable parts: gender identity, professional network, colonial paradigm, nationality. It is obvious— yet too often ignored—that a human being is more than a sum of their parts. One might consider what was said about Jaro’s contemporary Berlin, namely that history is ‘a practice that should be, as was the man himself, at once tolerant, compassionate, cosmopolitan, and free.’133 In many respects, Jaro and Marie’s stories are just two voices among a chorus telling the fraught history of the twentieth century, the ‘age of extremes’.134 But they are worth telling. One good reason is that most human stories are worth telling, and any hierarchy of biographies that separates ‘exceptional’ people from ‘ordinary’ may be disingenuous. Another reason is that it is also a story that involves two strong personalities who coped with political adversity, health issues and their own doubts, to reach meaningful resolutions. Although Marie enters the scene of Jaro’s life relatively late, she was more than a workforce to be ‘thanked for typing.’135 She ultimately cast herself as a professorial wife, but inhabited this role in an individual style. Neither member of the dynamic Černý couple was always a perfect communicator, nor were they necessarily likeable through every single minute of their lives (as a modern social media persona is typecast to be); in fact, they found out that the pressure of fabricating a pleasing persona at the expense of one’s own concerns proved impossible.136

133

Cracraft 2002: 298. Thus Hobsbawm, who gave this name to his book on the ‘short twentieth century’. Judt 2012 saw that century from the different perspective of intellectual history, touching passim the question of allegiances to extremes. 135 The definition is taken from the inspirational workshop at the History Faculty, University of Oxford, in March 2019 named Thanks for Typing. With thanks to the organizers, especially Juliana Dresvina. 136 On coeval pressures of such fabrication, see Fromm 2001: 210; this book, The Fear of Freedom, was first published in 1942. 134

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But they had a vision of what they would like to achieve with their lives, what their values and purposes were. Theirs is a story of partnership, but one that they built very much on their own terms, not in some unavoidable accordance with prototypes proffered by contemporary political or lifestyle expectations. As historians or life-writers, ‘how do we maintain their identities as acting, sentient human beings whose choices can influence structures (and indeed ultimately alter policies)?’137 Theirs was the unconventional conventionality of an ostensibly ‘bourgeois’ middle-class couple in a garden suburb, who crossed the stifling boundaries of their century.

137

Brettell 2002: 431.

BOOK I A son of respectable parents A remarkable process of restructuring was going on in sleepy old Austria … As everyone knows, it is a thousand times easier to reconstruct the facts of what happened at a certain time than its intellectual atmosphere. Stefan Zweig138 Kakania was an empire based on a dynasty with its roots deep in the Middle Ages, with a claim to a supreme authority in Central Europe even outside its own family domains, and with very important and intimate links to religion: it was the defender of Europe against the Turkish infidel and, at the same time, the champion of the CounterReformation against the heretic. It called itself ‘Apostolic’. Though one language happened to be dominant in Central Europe and was naturally the language of the imperial court, the Empire was not an ethnic empire and did not have very special links to any one ethnic group or language. Rather, there was a certain ethnic division of labour within the Empire, or perhaps one should put this the other way round, and say that the division of labour was accompanied by cultural-linguistic differentiation. The nineteenth century in effect pulled much of the ideological ground from under the feet of this polity. Ernest Gellner139 Nationalism—which everybody in the 19th century thought was ebbing—is the strongest & most dangerous force at large to-day. Isaiah Berlin140

138 139 140

Zweig 2011: 80 and 228. Gellner 1998: 30. Berlin 2002: 347, probably written 1981.

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1897–1898 La Belle Époque To begin, we must go back to 1897 and 1898, to the Age of Empires and a young Albert Einstein, of national revivals when the Gibson Girl was the fashion icon, of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee but also of the Fashoda Incident. The Belle Époque might easily be viewed with nostalgia, but the sense of wistful longing it has inspired is not entirely without reason. It was a dynamic, cosmopolitan age, certainly not an easy one to live in for a large percentage of humanity, but one that can nevertheless be considered as opening new horizons, especially in and for Europe. Other parts of the world were confronted with Western ways of trade, politics and war, but influence was not a one-way flow. The long nineteenth century of empires intensified connections and brought the world together, but it also divided and categorized the world into continents, nations, and cultures.141 ‘Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about.’142 One of the reasons for this insistence was the rise of the restrictively-defined nation state as a form of a human community, with which people fearful of being uprooted from their traditional communities in a newly industrialized world could identify. Ernest Gellner suggested that nationalism ‘injected the nation-state in its powerful late-nineteenth century manifestation as the force which counters the disturbing effects of spiralling industrialisation and prevents industrial society from disintegration, if not explosion.’143 141 142 143

See also Osterhammel 2015. Said 1994: 407–408. Hennessy 2007: 67.

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Among its results ‘many of the forms and institutions of current cultural life are inventions of the nineteenth century: the museum, the national archive, the national library, statistical science, photography, the cinema, recorded sound. It was an era of organized memory, and also of increased self-observation.’144 Puzzlingly, the multinational empires of the industrial age did not offer the obvious counter-initiative of supranational identities, which could be efficiently articulated and inclusively promoted in political theory and the practice of governance, and which might neutralize the rise of a narrowly conceived ‘nation’. The class-based ‘ornamentalism’ of the British Empire did not quite fulfil this role, as its ‘heightened ostentation’ alienated the emerging new elites.145 ‘The two great liberating political movements of the nineteenth century were, as every history book informs us, humanitarian individualism and romantic nationalism. Whatever their differences—and they were notoriously profound enough to lead to a sharp divergence and ultimate collision of these two ideals—they had this in common: they believed that the problems both of individuals and of societies could be solved if only the forces of intelligence and of virtue could be made to prevail over ignorance and wickedness.’146 It was an increasingly liberal age in the West, an age that fuelled the idea of a civilizing mission. The ‘white man’s burden’, assumed by those who sought to ‘civilize’ the world, has been subjected to many critical readings, and indeed was even considered problematic at the time. The notion was satirized by the pens of politicians such as Henry Labouchère, or of cartoonists like William H. Walker, who depicted figures of colonizers carried aloft by their less-than-happy subjects, who did not appear to feel ennobled by the exercise.147 On occasion, there was even doubt as to who was civilizing whom in this dialogue. ‘In certain contexts and situations, the British did regard the dark-skinned 144

Osterhammel 2015: 3–4. See Cannadine 2002: 141, 149; this ornamentalism, in practice, largely ignored the nationalist, socialist, and other impulses that formed in colonized regions. 146 Berlin 1950: 354–355. 147 ‘The White (?) Man’s Burden’. A satire of Rudyard Kipling’s phrase shows the ‘white’ colonial powers being carried as the burden of their ‘coloured’ subjects. First printed in Life, 16 March 1899. 145

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members of their empire as more admirable, more important and more noble than white men.’148 And yet, while the imperial mission was believed, if not universally trusted, to be evidence of Western progress, ideas of equality and the welfare state were also starting to form. Hopes were high. John Maynard Keynes noted in his Economic Consequences of Peace (1919) that for a European living before 1914 ‘the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent in this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalisation of which was nearly complete in practice.’149 Keynes offered a Eurocentric view, and an optimistic one, but it was offered soon after the Great War, after which it became increasingly clear that the ‘serpent’ was multiheaded and, especially with its nationalist, racist, and militarist heads, was far from receding into the role of an ‘amusement’, but was soon bound to exercise greater influence than ever. The Great War, as the First World War was then known, was not unlooked-for, but rather was the inevitable product of the economic and political histories inherent in nineteenth century European imperial systems. In the aftermath of the conflict, even non-elite Europeans were able to see that the system was flawed. But this knowledge could not wholly eradicate the memories of the pre-war years. Hence, most of the nostalgia later lavished on the fin-de-siècle contains elements of historical material and intellectual development, interwoven with a desire to revisit the ‘good old days’; the visual characteristics of the fin-de-siècle and its aestheticism and legacy. The nostalgically-viewed Belle Époque was also a time of expanding public spaces and public self-awareness, especially for the growing middle class in urban centres, in which intellectual or artistic elements were accessible to an increasing number of people, including spaces both actual (universities, galleries,

148 149

Cannadine 2002: 125. Quoted by Sked 2016: n. 5.

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museums, hotels, banks, coffee houses)150 and virtual (newspapers and other periodicals). Modern urban culture has been linked to the development of modern public discourse,151 because the bourgeois spaces of a fin-de-siècle city were places of both unconventional and highly conventional sociability. Ideas originating in the urban West began to influence cityscapes across the world, to create hybrid cities that defied simple dichotomies. Cairo of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a case in point, with its Westernized and traditional quarters being built and inhabited side-by-side, connected by boulevards and even tram lines.152 Public spaces were both an extension and a counterpart of private spaces, and some were gendered: a typical Western coffeehouse was, like a pub, or indeed a Middle-eastern tea- and coffeehouse, a predominantly masculine space.153 Both public and private spaces had to possess certain visual qualities that appealed to bourgeois sensibilities, though they need not have been uniform. Qualities were to be debated, adjusted and developed in public. In European spaces, and beyond, there was a sense of possibility, fuelled by technological advancements and the impression of a connected world. A traveller who crossed Europe in the early 1900s would have noticed visual differences in the appearances of cities, but if they visited only cities they would also have noticed much they had in common. The world has always been connected, but Hobsbawm’s ‘long nineteenth century’ developed new ways of bringing the distant into the familiar, by imperial trade routes, political ties and technological developments. New inventions brought speed and volume to trade as well as to war.154 And, especially after 1848, much of the world opened its borders to migration, helped by new technologies used in transport. It was a strongly global world of commercial liberalism. ‘The world 150

For the culture of the coffee house, see Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Shaw-Miller

2013. 151

Habermas 1989, see also Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Shaw-Miller 2013: 1–8. Reynolds 2012a, 11–13, 19–20 and passim. See also Volait 2005 concerning city fabric and style. 153 Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Shaw-Miller 2013: 9–31. 154 Kern 2003 [1983]. 152

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created by commercial liberalism was unlike the world of today, which is controlled by borders, passports and visas that in the nineteenth century were regarded as devices of barbarous regimes like the Tsars,’155 but even so, ‘in 1900 200,000 Russians spent on average eighty days abroad.’156 The memory of these days lingered; travel in Europe and even beyond used to be easy.157 This is of course a relative statement, for even after the mid-nineteenth century there were many categories of people across the world whose liberty to travel was limited, or at least qualified.158 Europe in 1898 was all that: oppressive and free, open and civilized but also nationalist and racist, liberal but not necessarily democratic. An amalgamation of cultures and arts from across the world (with varying degrees of sensitivity) that devoured the resources taken from its colonies. United by the railway, the bank, the hotel and the coffeehouse, but deeply divided by politics, greed and expansionism. It was a period of stability and security and at the same time of dynamic change. Everyday life was affected by the pace of change, yet also developed the hierarchy of an ideal bourgeois life. Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday reveals a firm social framework that moulded its occupants, yet this was not a time of placid masses, content with their place in the world. This was also a time of aspirations, individualities, very individualistic entrepreneurs, and idiosyncratic and imaginative artists. The end of the nineteenth century was far from a mysterious twilight age, except perhaps where dreaming decadents are concerned. Any year between 1878 and 1914 might be a dynamic, tragic, or decisive year, and the year of Jaro’s birth was no exception. Beyond the borders of the Central European Habsburg monarchy, there was a world to be negotiated. *

*

*

155 Hillier and Rooksby 2002: 61. For the history of the passport, and for the First World War marking the end of the relative freedom of movement of persons between states, see also Torpey 2018, 2001, and Lucassen 2001. 156 Sked 2016: 28. 157 Zweig 2011: 150. 158 Lucassen 2001: 235–239.

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A number of important people were gone in 1898. William Ewart Gladstone died in that year, as did Otto von Bismarck. Many notable events occurred. On the first of January 1898 the City of Greater New York was established. In spring of that year Emile Zola wrote his letter J’accuse…! defending Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The Spanish-American war was raging. Oscar Wilde settled in Paris, after a brief reunion with Alfred Douglas. In August, Eldon Gorst, in many ways the second most important person in the British administration after Lord Cromer, was made financial adviser to the Egyptian government.159 In September, Herbert Kitchener won the Battle of Omdurman, a British success that was soon followed by another demonstration of power during the Fashoda Incident, where the French intention to establish a position in the southern Nile regions was very effectively frustrated, again by Kitchener. Tensions were rising in South Africa, to erupt in 1899 in the Second Boer War. In China, the Empress Dowager Cíxī staged a coup that brought her and her conservative faction to power. The British Antarctic Expedition set out in August 1898. In December, Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of radium. All of these events opened the door to new possibilities, but also held the potential for use by new political systems, with farreaching consequences for complex geopolitical relations. David Levering Lewis noted that ‘The players in the tragedy of 1914 found their scripts revised by Fashoda.’160 *

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Understandings of this complex period—from Jaro’s birth to the present day—are changing, and in complex ways. The imperial expansion that shaped the world—and Europe itself—in the late nineteenth century was at a nexus of politics, culture and trade, and the history of that expansion, especially the history of multinational empires such as the Austro-Hungarian, has been the subject of multiple revised and revisionist readings.

159 160

Hunter 2007. Lewis 1988: 229.

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The complexity of historical re-reading is highlighted by historical research embedded in the institutional, state-backed research structures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which were acutely observed by H. G. Wells: ‘Time was when inquiry could go on unaffected even by the scornful misrepresentations of such a powerful enemy as Swift, because it was mainly the occupation of men of considerable means. But now that our growing edifice of knowledge spreads more and more over a substructure of grants and votes, and the appliances needed for instruction and further research increase steadily in cost, even the affectation of a contempt for popular opinion becomes unwise.’161 This 1894 statement has kept much of its validity. The development of knowledge-making has been anything but whiggish, and that trajectory can readily be turned into subservience to whatever the grant-giver should want. The impression of the technological boom and institutional growth of the late nineteenth and all of the twentieth century as a wholly beneficial one can easily mask a complex reality. And nation-states have become increasingly potent grant-givers, interested in promoting their identities and agendas. *

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*

The picture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Belle Époque is particularly rich, encrusted like a multi-layered Dobos cake—which, pertinently, was allegedly first presented by its inventor to Emperor Franz Josef I in 1885.162 To continue the coffeehouse metaphor, late nineteenth century Austria-Hungary might easily be moulded into a series of tempting pictures resembling those on a chocolate-box lid. The lavish uppermiddle-class domesticity of late Victorian Britain was shared across the continent, the well-to-do luxuriating in sumptuously upholstered, richly furnished interiors with historicising elements, occasionally and tentatively enriched with objets d’art from the Art Nouveau or Aesthetic movements.

161 162

Wells 1894: 300–301. See Goldstein 2015: 223–224.

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An 1870s view exemplifying this domesticity can be seen in At the Visit, by Parisian Bohemian Václav Brožík (1851–1901), which shows a similar interior decorative programme to James Tissot’s (1836–1902) 1877 painting Hide and Seek.163 Both paintings were concerned with fashionable ladies and refined home comforts, and show exotica either bought or perhaps brought home from a trip abroad: Brožík’s ladies in At the Visit sit in a drawing room orientalized by a scatter of embroidered velvet cushions on the floor.164 Another pair of visitors in Brožík’s Visit to the Studio admire a painting,165 whilst chinoiseries and other exotica act as counterparts to the rich furnishings in the scene. Some decades later, at the turn of the century, similarly furnished spaces were still very much in evidence. An affluent intellectual’s family did not necessarily follow experimental fashions, but could have ‘lived amid solid Victorian comfort, with their embroidered tablecloths, plush-covered chairs, framed photographic portraits, and a profusion of oriental rugs.’ Such was the flat of Sigmund and Martha Freud in Vienna, infused with ‘a wholly unapologetic eclecticism’.166 In architecture, Art Nouveau and harbingers of modernist tendencies were slowly emerging, but Neo-Renaissance and NeoBaroque styles still dominated. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it was accepted practice to build a Neo-Gothic church and a Neo-Baroque theatre, or a Neo-Renaissance university, along the same promenade, as on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, using historical styles as if chosen from a pattern book. History was the pattern book; the whole world was a book of art styles to be used as desired. One actual pattern book, the Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, inspired artists ranging from established academicians to those on the fringes of the avant-garde. The latter included artists from the Beuron school of painters who merged ancient Egypt, the Aegean and early Christian art into a powerful style that challenged the mimetic academician painters just as poign163 Hide and Seek, Oil on wood by James Jacques Joseph Tissot, c. 1877, The National Gallery, London, 1978.47.1, Chester Dale Fund. 164 Mžyková 2001: 503. 165 Mžyková 2001: 215. 166 Gay 1988: 165.

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antly as their contemporary Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) did. Some artists of the age managed to appeal to both conservative and radical elements. Vienna boasted Gustav Klimt, who received an Order of Merit from the Emperor in 1888 for the highly decorative bourgeois Burgtheater paintings, and particularly for the ‘group portrait of the Viennese élite’ captured in the theatre’s auditorium.167 As Carl Schorske put it, ‘Klimt rose to fame in the service of the bourgeois culture of the Ringstrasse.’168 He then shocked the Viennese in 1894 with his sketches for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, which the public—including some among the academe—deemed ‘pornographic’. In Klimt was condensed the generational revolt that created fantastic tensions between the art styles of the late nineteenth century. Much of the art, pomp, and circumstance of the age was to be enjoyed in the cities of the monarchy. The metropolitan cityscape gradually came to be on show both day and night, with stuccoed and painted promenades and tempting shop windows. Historicist and modernising concepts competed for acceptance (and funding), and Vienna’s Ringstrasse became a hotly debated topic for both sides. For historicists like Camillo Sitte, the promenade was already lacking in aesthetic qualities and picturesqueness, although Sitte ‘had little quarrel with the individual monumental buildings.’169 A modernist, Otto Wagner, set out an agenda of traffic and hygiene, and as if in a response to Sitte’s concept of a picturesque city promoted the idea of plain, functional, and uniform architecture, monumental in its simplicity. Wagner was Art Nouveau, in its Vienna Secession incarnation. Whichever aesthetic view one ascribed to, Vienna in the late nineteenth century was the city one wanted to be seen in, and its social stage was steadily growing. Gas light, itself widely available only from the 1850s, was gradually being replaced with electric light, although the two would coexist into the twentieth century.170 These were inventions that the coming century would take for granted, as were other contemporary novelties such as the rapidly 167

Schorske 1980: 212. Schorske 1980: 209. 169 Schorske 1980: 63. 170 Not to discount the reinstallations and renovations of gaslights in a number of modern metropoleis, from London to Prague. 168

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spreading railway network and the telephone. The speed and availability of communications and the new ways that work and leisure were organized changed the way people subsisted, connected, and experienced their lives. There came an era of precisely arranged and measured time, where Mr Scrooge could berate Mr Cratchit for a few minutes’ delay in the office;171 and this would have been as credible in Vienna as it was in London. And yet this was also an era of a leisured class that invented new forms in which to mould existing principles of prestige and social display. The nineteenth century was captivated by its own inventiveness along with that of the past, enamoured with illustrations spread via lithography and eventually photography. As Jacques Le Goff later suggested, photography ‘revolutionizes memory.’172 The epistemology of nineteenth century scholarship embraced (but was not limited to) encyclopaedic efforts, striving with a desire to map and thus orientate knowledge. It found an ideal tool in photography, notably in form of large-scale surveys or photographic atlases produced for numerous scholarly disciplines. ‘Part of the nineteenth century impulse to map, control, and render a wide range of phenomena visible as spectacle, the photographic surveys were born of the productive interaction of epistemological frames and technological possibility.’173 But the new, visually enriched world was also there to be enjoyed, to be savoured with a sense of yearning, and nowhere more so than in accounts of distant places or exceptional events one could not visit: ‘at the intersection of the Romantic yearnings of the early nineteenth century and the positivist desire to see and know the world.’174 Political and social spectacle was embraced. Pageantry intensified, or rather was re-introduced. Edward VII, another scion of this age, had a strong sense of ceremony that served as a specific realm of memory, and rebuilt the British monarchy’s current forms of pageantry to be open to the public gaze. His mother’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was an opportunity to orchestrate state, public and private celebrations on a grand scale. 171 Already in evidence several decades earlier, in the 1840s, as A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843. 172 Le Goff 1992: 89. 173 Edwards 2012: 3. 174 Teynard and Howe 1992: 134.

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Ceremonial activities were not centred only on duty, responsibility, or a sense of commemoration as represented by coronations, openings of parliament, or state funerals. The AustrianHungarian court of Franz Josef I planned its social season with great attention to detail, and was famous for banquets, audiences, and grand balls. No pictorial presentation of the decadent Danube monarchy would be complete without Viennese ballrooms and the whirl of waltzing dancers, of dashing officers and ladies in low-cut and wasp-waisted evening gowns, with a froth of petticoats, shimmering jewellery, and a blend of femme-fatalemeets-Gibson-Girl poise. And a soundtrack universally connected with Johann Strauss Jr. (1825–1899). An anecdote relates that Franz Josef truly reigned only until the death of the younger Strauss, his remaining years being a twilight where he lingered on in an increasingly changing world. The monarch celebrated fifty years on the throne in 1898, but for some he was slowly becoming a tragic, if respected, figure. In 1898, the emperor also lost his wife. Empress and Queen Elisabeth (1837–1898), an admirer of Heinrich Heine and harbouring thoughts that were close to socialism, was assassinated on a quay in Geneva on 10 September by an anarchist named Luigi Lucheni. The empress was a complex woman, living for years in privilege and spending an inordinate amount of attention (and expense) on herself and her beauty, whilst disliking the requirements of her class and all too aware of the poverty, the slums, and the social injustice that she felt wretchedly unable to change. A noblewoman who preferred to be recognized as an expert rider and a poet (although she forbade any publication of her writings during her lifetime), in her later years she found very little enjoyment in life. Lucheni aimed to strike at pomp and privilege, but he met an ageing woman, living incognito (or so she believed) walking without a guard but only with another middleaged woman, her only lady-in-waiting, the Hungarian countess Irma Countess Sztáray (1863–1940). Elisabeth’s companion Countess Sztáray (1863–1940) was related to Marianna Török,175 also known as Djavidan Hanum, the wife of the last khedive of

175

Holaubek 2008.

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Egypt, the Vienna-schooled Abbas II Hilmi,176 echoing the idea of interrelated elites of the ‘ornamentalist’ imperial era.177 And the Empress herself much enjoyed her 1880s trips to Britain, especially to Cromer in Norfolk, of all places.178 On that September day in Geneva, there was no lavishness, just two ladies in simple black dresses, as far as possible from the world of the court ceremony that excelled in conscientious exactitude and the aesthetics of a well-choreographed and opulent stage. Lucheni killed a woman, technically of the highest rank in her world, but one that was essentially a rebel against her own society. In a way, she could stand as an allegory of the late nineteenth century in all its complexity. Historians writing about the period sometimes choose to be Luchenis and stab at pomp and privilege. It has become the norm to write about the toxic legacies of the imperial age. Alternatively, we may choose to recognize the complexity, as well as connections and ramifications, which are sometimes significant and sometimes serendipitous. Individual stories, views, and connections may help to reclaim the fin de siècle as an era where many global connections were made, but political actions were more often than not based on local, if not downright parochial, thinking. Furthermore, the liberal visions of the intelligentsia were not coming true. Austroliberals in the reign of Franz Josef hoped for liberalisation, for the aristocracy to become an ornament, for a constitutional monarchy, and for religion to be tempered (if not replaced) by science. This multinational monarchy was to encourage cultural development, led and promoted by its German national element. But ‘Austrian society failed to respect these liberal coordinates of order and progress.’179 Franz Josef I moulded himself into the embodiment of a respectable, hard-working, but also hierarchically hard-wired monarch, where ‘zeros always preceded number ones’.180 The Viennese court, nominally the centre of Austria-Hungary, was 176

See also Thornhill 2004. Compare Cannadine 2002: 3, 60–62, 111. 178 Palmer 1994: 242. 179 Schorske 1980: 117. 180 A quote by Karl Kraus (1874–1936), an Austrian writer and journalist, referred to by Urban 2000: 175. 177

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a well-oiled machine, where the monarch went through his daily, weekly and yearly routine. Getting up at as early as four in the morning, the emperor went about his daily and yearly business, dusting his own writing desk, rearranging papers that flowed to and from his in-tray. He attended to audiences, changed into different uniforms, and was punctilious, serving the state machine with a workmanlike culture and dedication that belied most ideas of a privileged life. Although Franz Josef—and his courtiers— maintained a version of Spanish court ceremonial that had been honed to perfection several centuries before, the emperor himself chose to have very little personal freedom in his later years, apart from hunting trips and conversations with Katharina Schratt, his actress friend and, it would seem, platonic love interest.181 The empire should have been a large-scale version of a welloiled machine run on responsibility and loyalty, but it was not. There were tensions, and although toward the end of the nineteenth century the emperor no longer opposed the liberals, Austria-Hungary was a multinational empire, dependent on a centralized bureaucracy and on loyalty that transcended local ties. It was a target for fundamentalist supporters of national revivals. Austrian liberals promoted German culture, but there was also German nationalism which was answered by Hungarian and Bohemian opposition. The Emperor hoped for conciliation. His message was heard, but only some listened.182 For Bohemia, a long-time and mostly loyal part of the monarchy up to 1848, the growth of nationalism in the five decades of the emperor’s reign proved to simultaneously be the impetus for a thriving culture and spawned destructively narrow-minded nationalist movements and political groups. These in turn ultimately contributed to the course of aberrant political regimes in the twentieth century, whose legacy has not yet been eradicated. Bohemia is not unique in this respect, but its trajectory from an Austrian province to an independent liberal state to a Nazi protectorate to a Soviet satellite remains a challenging, and politically sensitive, subject for historiography.

181 182

See also Palmer 1994: 242. Schorske 1980. Agnew 2007.

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Bohemia The Kingdom of Bohemia may have had no coastline, but in 1898 it would have been inaccurate to maintain that it had no access to the sea. The railway network connected Bohemia to other parts of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which the kingdom was a constituent component. A traveller boarding a train in the West Bohemian city of Pilsen could have arrived at Vienna, changed trains, and continued on to the busy trade port of Trieste. The very economic prosperity of Bohemia, as the most industrialized part of Austria, depended on actively balancing the fluctuations of international trade. Industrialisation fostered business opportunities and competitive trade networks within the monarchy, and the historical lands of the Kingdom of Bohemia were the centre of this milieu. Other parts of the empire were important business partners, but Bohemian industrial production moved well beyond the empire’s borders. The move to industrialisation was as intense in Austria-Hungary as was in Germany or Great Britain.183 In 1900, Austrian exports were greater than its imports, reaching 156 million US dollars in manufactured goods.184 Steel, machinery, textiles, glass and, quite soon, armaments were among its most important products, accompanied by a further exportable (if not taxable) entity— skill. The monarchy promoted a schooling system, partly sponsored by the state, and there was a strong tradition of vocational training. The composition of an Austro-Hungarian community in Egypt in that period is a case in point, including among its members skilled craftsmen, trained domestic help, physicians, and artists.185 Bohemia seemed a prosperous part of the monarchy, with established upper- and middle classes, but appearances masked the societal issues and tensions typical of any rapidly industrialising society, where cities grew faster in population than in infrastructure. Impoverished suburbs sprang up, and within 183

Cipolla 1973: 228–278, see further Schulze, and Pearson 1997: 295. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/imts/Historical%20data%201900-1960.pdf. Accessed 3 June 2022. 185 Agstner 1994. 184

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them the disenfranchised felt a nationalist pull; a new, imagined community was being proposed in Bohemia, one that claimed historical roots and modern power. In 1848, the historian and politician František Palacký appealed to the German parliament in Frankfurt, proposing that Czechs should not be considered indistinguishable from Germans. The same Palacký also pleaded for the then-Austrian Empire to be a key player in Europe, both in politics and in culture, and to be a bulwark against Russian expansionism: ‘For the sake of Europe, Vienna must not sink into provinciality.’186 Palacký, following Johann Gottfried Herder, constructed a vision of Czechs as holding a small nation of decisive importance to European civilization, whose mission to promote liberty arose during the medieval upheavals caused by Hussitism.187 He sought to establish the national authenticity of Czechs. ‘In Palacký’s interpretation, Hussite doctrines are inextricably linked to ideals of modernity and progress, representing the first attempt in history to undermine the two main pillars of the medieval world: the Church (in the religious sphere) and the Holy Roman Empire (in the secular sphere).’188 His vision was that of non-violent Slavs who opposed nations of conquerors, notably Germans. It was a vision bounded by concepts of ethnic nationalism, and one that supported the idea of ‘Czechs’ as an exclusive nation, with Slovaks as their adjunct subjects, not as an independent national entity.189 This was to have repercussions. The ‘unlovely face of nationalism’,190 as Trevor Wilson put it, was to be displayed on every side in the conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, down to the Great War and beyond. Palacký’s vision of Bohemia as a place of struggle between Slavic and Teutonic peoples provided ammunition against the monarchy, and ultimately against any multinational civil society. Twentieth century nationalist fervour, fed by his narrative, was going to tear through countries, cities, and even families that happened to contain more than one imagined national element. 186 187 188 189 190

Štaif 2005: 214–224. Plaschka 1973. Baár 2013: 239. Baár 2013: 240–241. The Slovak question, see also Leff 1988. Wilson 1986: 2.

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When Palacký was in Frankfurt, Bohemia was still a vital constituent of the Austrian monarchy. Fifty years later there was significant disenchantment, fostered by nationalist tendencies from both Bohemian Czechs and Bohemian Germans, which ultimately contributed to the destabilisation of the multinational monarchy. Identifying simply as Bohemian (Böhme) became an outdated concept, as nationalists promoted either Czech (Tscheche) or German (Deutsche) identities. Czech nationalists, like most nationalist revivals of that time and others, created an ‘imagined community’,191 an historical narrative that was moulded around heroic moments of the Slavic past, the protestant faith that was defeated in 1620, and the Hussite movement. It roused an historical awareness that is characteristic of people who contemplate history as an ‘argument for a national existence’,192 in that it conveniently overlooked the multiethnic origins of the inhabitants of Bohemia. It also overlooked the achievements of elite Bohemian culture that flourished in the Baroque era under the Habsburgs, or the inconvenient detail that the protestant royal family of the Elector Palatinate Frederick (the Winter King of Bohemia), who was ousted by the Habsburgs in 1620, were also an international dynasty whose scion was seated on the British imperial throne (and is now continued by the present House of Windsor). Some Bohemian political factions took nationalist ideologies as a decisive argument to promote the Czech language, which at the time had been replaced in most official communications by German, and to advocate a better position for the Kingdom of Bohemia within the empire. In this they were spurred on by the absolutist tendencies of Franz Josef I in the first two decades of his reign. By 1867, in the aftermath of a disastrous battle at Sadowa/ Königgrätz (modern Hradec Králové), the problematic AustroHungarian Compromise established a dual monarchy, and ‘Imperial and Royal’ become an epithet of most governmental offices across the state to reflect the Imperial Crown of Austria and the Apostolic Royal Crown of Hungary. The Kingdom of 191 192

Anderson, B. R. O’G. 2016. Thus Hroch 1999, following Hobsbawm.

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Bohemia was left out, and the emperor, its king, never accepted the crown of St Wenceslas in a formal coronation. Widespread discontent followed, leading a number of politicians to reconsider the future of Czech lands, and to the general public losing respect for the emperor as their head of state. The discontent was not one-sided, as the Habsburg dynasty, though a German princely house, was facing threats from German nationalist sentiment. Still, and indeed in spite of, open German jingoist provocations (including an attack on the imperial train during an official visit of the emperor to Bohemia in 1897), the Austro-Hungarian government decided to overlook most Czech agitators. The divides deepened. The University of Prague was partitioned into Czech and German institutions, along purely language lines, by Act No. 24 on 28 February 1882. Although literary history—and nostalgic visions—would prefer to see Prague as a palimpsest of cultures and languages, where the new never fully succeeded in erasing the old,193 some very sharp divisions have been deliberately cultivated. From an historical perspective, Prague is a German, Jewish, Czech, and above all cosmopolitan city, but in Czech-dominant narratives it has been made the ‘mother’ of Bohemian cities. Similarly, the University of Prague was originally established as an institution for several ‘nations’— Bavarian, Bohemian, Polish, and Saxon—but has been appropriated in Czech national-historical narratives as a ‘Czech’ university, despite the fact that its ‘nationalisation’ has usually heralded problems for academe.194 Splitting the university in two proved to be one of the worst of these. Repurposing universities as nationalist rather than national assets is not limited to Central Europe, although one would have to look further afield, for instance to Egypt, to see a comparable example of a ‘vital national institution’ being appropriated,195 as neither French, British, nor American universities have been comparably used in struggles for national existence, though education continues to be a ‘means 193

Thomas 2010. Universities that promote a national language limit opportunities for cosmopolitan specialists. The understanding of a university as a nationalist asset is not the same as a university as a national asset, in which an educational institution is a showcase for national achievement and a gateway to social mobility, see Hise 1912: 193–201. 195 Reid 1990: 4. 194

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of transmitting shared values and senses of identity’ in nation states.196 In the decade following the partition, Czech and German nationalists clashed regularly, finally sparking significant riots in 1897 that were fostered, among other things, by a comment by a German historian and classicist, Theodor Mommsen. It was not for the first or last time that historiography, nationalism, and violence have intersected, but it was one of the more significant. National history and nationalist myths in 1897–1898 Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) is a respected figure in history and classical studies. Understandably so. His publication list includes seminal works on Roman history and his editorial efforts established the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. His political opinions included vocal opposition to antiSemitism, and the promotion of assimilation and the inclusion of minorities. Consequently this liberal politician and historian of indisputable intellectual capacity was also a strong opponent of national revivals, specifically when they coincided with areas of German interest. Unlike Palacký, Mommsen disagreed with the idea propounded by Herder, namely that ‘authentic’ nations fulfil the originality and authenticity of human existence, and that the ‘Slavs’ consequently ought to fulfil their own national authenticity.197 In Herder’s view, ‘the savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species’.198 Mommsen viewed Czechs as potentially savage apostles of barbarism, and nationalist strivings as a danger to the achievements of human civilization; a danger to be stopped in its tracks. Perhaps regrettably, one of his most oft quoted statements in Czech historiography is from his letter to the Neue Freie Presse in 1897, that ‘the Czech skull is impervious to reason,

196 197 198

Hennessy 2007: 69. Taylor 1994: 30–32. Herder 1800: 222.

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but it will comprehend blows,’199 a ferocious articulation of his distaste for non-German national emancipation. The controversy this statement fuelled, like other national revival controversies, was but part of a wider issue, or rather a sequence of ongoing issues from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries: tensions between individuals, communities, and states, and problems of identity-building and of evaluating culture and civilization.200 Beyond the academic debate that ensued, the publicity surrounding Mommsen’s comment was either well-timed or ill-timed, depending on the point of view. Issues regarding the building or suppressing of an imagined national community were tied closely to the practicalities of governmental administration in a multilingual state such as Austria-Hungary. In April 1897, the Badeni Act, sponsored by the then-Prime Minister Count Kasimir Felix Badeni, stated that staff in governmental and local offices and institutions had to communicate in both Czech and German depending on the language of the petitioner, because both languages were commonly used in the land.201 Germans in Bohemia were incensed. Compulsory Czech would disqualify a number of native German speakers from the civil service because while most Czechs knew German, few Germans had the motivation to learn Czech to the level needed for official communications. Among Anglo-Saxon writers of the day, Mark Twain was one of the few who took the trouble to enlighten and explain:202 There is a Constitution and there is a Parliament. The House draws its membership of 425 deputies from the nineteen or twenty states heretofore mentioned. These men represent peoples who speak eleven languages. That means eleven distinct varieties of jealousies, hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation difficult at times—and it does that. The parliament is split up into many parties—the Clericals, the Progressists, the German Nationalists, the Young Czechs, the Social Democrats, 199

‘An die Deutschen in Oesterreich’. Neue Freie Presse, (Issue 11923), 31 October 1897. See Taylor 1994. 201 Ongoing discussions on national relations and nationalist strife, and the sharpening of national/nationalist divisions within the monarchy, were outlined in Kwan 2011: 88–108. 202 Mark Twain, ‘Stirring Times in Austria,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for March, 1898 (Volume 96), 530–540. 200

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the Christian Socialists, and some others—and it is difficult to get up working combinations among them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes. The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni’s necessities. He could not carry on his government without a majority vote in the House at his back, and in order to secure it he had to make a trade of some sort. He made it with the Czechs—the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for him: he must pass a bill making the Czech tongue the official language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they form but a fourth part of the empire’s population, but they urge that the country’s public business should be conducted in one common tongue, and that tongue a world language—which German is. However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in parliament was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant. Then the music began. Badeni’s voyage, instead of being smooth, was disappointingly rough from the start. The government must get the Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni’s majority was ready to carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved.

Impassioned debates, and a certain unwillingness for consensus in the Viennese parliament, sparked riots in Vienna and Prague. Then, in October, Theodor Mommsen published his open letter to Neue Freie Presse, fuelling tensions. In November 1897, following the rioting, Badeni resigned. In Twain’s words: The Badeni government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague, followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other Bohemian towns there was rioting—in some cases the Germans being the rioters, in others the Czechs—and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which side he was on. We are well along in December now.

The act Badeni promoted was changed by his successor, Paul Gautsch von Frankenthurn, who placed Prague under martial law. The city was in an uproar, which Twain’s description politely understates. Public buildings and German-owned properties

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were torched and at least three civil servants were killed. In the aftermath came rising nationalist sentiment and ugly racism, notably anti-Semitism, which was curiously almost evenly distributed among both Czech and German factions. And, in hindsight, was a portent for a very dark future.203 Not all patriotic pride took such a foul turn. In academe, Czech historians led an academic offensive against Mommsen, supported by responses from international academia, including by Ernest Denis.204 There were increasing, if not new, tendencies to profile a distinctive Czech culture as a worthy contributor to the arts and crafts of humanity. Visual arts and music had gained international ascendancy. Antonín Dvořák was hailed as a Czech musician of international fame. Czech painters schooled in Paris, Munich and Vienna built successful careers in France or the United States. Characteristically, the most recognizable representatives of ‘Czech’ achievements and art were those who successfully blended local and global interests. In 1898, Alphonse Mucha was entering one of the most productive—and renowned— phases of his career, after working for Sarah Bernhardt since 1894. Also in 1898, another talented Czech Parisian, Luděk Marold, died of typhoid fever after a meteoric career.205 Both painters took their professional careers abroad not only because international schooling and clients were beneficial in their professions, but also as a means for securing commercially unappealing, but daring, large artworks imbued with national themes. Mucha planned his Slav Epic, and Marold his Lipany, a panorama of the battle that spelled the end of the Hussite era. This art was a service to the nation, and it promoted the Slavic myth. To be a Czech and a loyal Austrian of any description required an open mind and the ability to manage simultaneous loyalties, although ‘an inherent opposition between national consciousness and imperial loyalty’ should not be assumed.206 There was still space for the recognition of both local and imperial ties, although sharpening nationalist discourses made this increasingly difficult. 203 204 205 206

Compare Stone 2012: 245–250. Recently on Denis: Chrobák and Olšáková 2003. Brabcová 1998. Cole and Unowsky 2007: 3.

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Still, many ‘Bohemians’ reconciled both aspects of their pluralist identities, including an imperial and royal revenue officer named Antonín Černý and his wife Anna, father and mother to a young boy who was conceived sometime during the December 1897 riots, and was born on 22 August 1898 in the West Bohemian city of Pilsen. His parents, though probably well-versed in both Czech and German, the languages most often used in the city and region in which they lived, gave him a patriotic Czech name, Jaroslav, which echoed an imagined great Slavic past populated with heroes and pagan gods.207

1898–1904 an imperial and royal revenue officer and his family Antonín Černý was born in the town of Příbram,208 in Central Bohemia, on 11 February 1861. His father was Josef Černý, a master butcher who married Františka (née Kokešová) from the town of Hořovice, and they lived in Příbram at house number 381.209 Josef came to be a respected townsman. His son chose to enlist as an imperial and royal revenue officer of the Financial Guard in 1888, perhaps after he had served his years in the army. The Financial Guard was an essential element in the AustroHungarian state machine. It was formed in the early nineteenth century from the merger of a previous law enforcement body concerned with revenues—a Revenue Guard—with a Border Guard. This new institution supervised both internal tariffs and 207 Jaroslav was the name of a fictitious warrior, Jaroslav ze Šternberka, whose story was recounted in the Rukopisy. Though purported to be of medieval origin, these were literary fabrications produced in the nineteenth century, somewhat akin to The Works of Ossian whose author, James Macpherson, promoted them as genuine in the 1760s. The Rukopisy were accepted for several decades as authentic Czech medieval literature, and were even reported as important Czech literary works by John Bowring in his 1832 anthology Cheskian Anthology: Being a History of the Poetical Literature of Bohemia. The origin of the name Jaroslav could be related to the Slavic god Jarilo, a deity protecting fertility and vegetation. 208 Also known as Freiberg in Böhmen, and Przibram. 209 This address was provided for his grandson Jaroslav’s certificate of baptism (The Pilsen City Archive [Archiv Města Plzně], Matrika Plzeň I [digitalizát Plzeň 075, Porta Fontium], obvod Plzeň vnitřní město, plate 324).

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revenue (such as on tobacco, spirits, and select foodstuffs) and customs at the border, and was tasked with preventing and identifying smugglers. For Antonín, this was technically an enhancement in his social status. He was a civil servant, and civil servants in the Austrianand later Austro-Hungarian Empires were respected as members of a professional body that served the government. It was, however, mainly the upper echelons of the civil service who also enjoyed corresponding remuneration. Members of the Financial Guard at entry level positions were akin to ordinary policemen or other foot soldiers of the state. They were assigned to their posts, given accommodations in barracks, and lived most of their lives in uniform, on the beat, albeit a beat that covered breweries, sugar factories, and distilleries to ensure that their whole production was subjected to state-mandated duties. Revenue Supervisor Černý, as was his official title, was assigned to the Pilsen unit of the Financial Guard in 1893. He came to a city that had undergone a very dynamic two decades and was rapidly becoming one of the most significant industrial centres in Bohemia. In 1873, a railway line had connected Pilsen to other Czech and Austrian centres and the city, located close to coal mines and with a good supply of water from several rivers, boomed as an industrial hub. The railway supplied the impetus, as goods could travel quickly easily. Many industries benefitted, the Pilsen City Brewery among them. It was probably in Pilsen where Antonín, a bachelor over thirty, met Anna Navrátilová. She was five years his junior, having been born on 12 January 1866 in Záhornice, in Eastern Bohemia.210 Antonín came from the relatively well-to-do family of a butcher, but his new acquaintance was from a less affluent background. Her father, Josef Navrátil, son of František and Kateřina (née Tylová) Navrátil, was a small landowner whose family had lived in the village of Záhornice for several generations. Their extant family house, although rebuilt, still shows the character of a simple cottage.211 His wife, also named Kateřina (née Bartoňová), was 210 Register of births, Státní oblastní archiv Praha, parish Kněžice 13 (matrika narozených 1860–1887), page 41. 211 Photographs and information provided by Pavel Onderka, personal communication, February 2019.

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from the somewhat poorer family of Václav Bartoň, a tenant farmer. For her, marriage to Josef was an upward social move, and her daughter Anna likewise aspired to upward social mobility. It is unclear whether she moved directly from Záhornice to Pilsen or whether she met Černý somewhere else, but Anna might have been drawn to Pilsen, like many country women before her, to find work as a maid or other hired help, aspiring to find a better life than the small village of Záhornice with its few hundred inhabitants could offer. After some time presumably spent courting, Antonín and Anna decided to share their lives, were engaged, and married on 30 June 1896.212 He was thirty-five and she thirty. This was rather later than what would have been the norm in rural areas, but not in cities, and especially not among civil servants where a man had to attain a certain status before contemplating marriage.213 Among revenue officers’ families, they were the lucky ones, as the job came with limitations that affected private lives. As in the army, an official licence sanctioning a wedding had to be obtained because a revenue officer was not allowed to marry at will, without proper dispensation from his superiors. Antonín still had a relatively minor position so his superiors must have been feeling benevolent. Many of his fellow officers complained bitterly about the dispensation procedure. An insiders’ view of the lives of rank and file members in the Financial Guard can be seen in its bulletin, The Interests of the Financial Guard. This has a slightly rebellious tone, wont to take the side of the lower ranks over that of their superiors, but also published official news, including remuneration tables. The bulletin claimed that Guard authorities were extraordinarily parsimonious with marriage dispensations, so much so that affected couples had no recourse other than cohabitation, which was frowned upon in predominantly Catholic 212 The registers of births for both their sons are in Pilsen. The Pilsen register of marriages does not seem to show the date of their wedding, and neither does that at Příbram (based on materials accessible at present). Wedding ceremonies were often held at the bride’s place of birth, but this was not a rule as the relative wealth of the bride and groom also played a role; here it was Antonín who had the better social standing. The registers at Záhornice are probably not complete, and more detailed information is not yet available. 213 See Lenderová 2010: 155–156.

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Bohemia. Allegedly, it was often a local parish priest who took pity on growing families who were technically living in sin, and resorted to mildly bullying senior officers of the Financial Guard into finally allow weddings. Antonín and Anna did not need to resort to this solution, as their firstborn, Jaroslav, was born in Pilsen on 22 August 1898, more than two years after his parents’ wedding. Antonín continued his posting in Pilsen and the family lived in Jagellonská Street, on the outskirts of the city centre. Their accommodation, as with most officers of the Financial Guard, must have been allocated to them; it was not an apartment of their own choosing. ‘We that drag our families from place to place like cat schlepping her kittens,’ lamented a contributor in the Interests.214 Still, an allocated flat was preferable to the life in the barracks, where the wives of officers often acted as cleaners and housekeepers. As the Interests put it: ‘We are dressed up like road maintenance in green-belted caps with a metal eaglet, coarse cloaks and belts, and with an ammunition case like a spittoon attached … we chase up carriages at rail stations, check on machinery in distilleries, count boxes, sacks, and sugar lumps in sugar factories, even help with factory deliveries … and our women clean the barracks.’215 Jagellonská Street was not in a fashionable district, but was still in an area of stolid houses, some workshops and, increasingly, small factories. The new City of Pilsen power plant was to be located nearby, to feed the electrical tramway, a new-fangled means of transport that augmented Pilsen in the 1890s. Before the 1870s, the area was but a suburb outside the city fortifications, but by the 1890s the stone choker of fortifications was gone, replaced by parks and boulevards. Pilsen changed dramatically in those decades. It had been a flourishing Gothic and then Baroque city and these phases had left their mark, but were largely gone before Jaro was born. Pilsen in the 1890s boasted Neo-Renaissance and, soon, Jugendstil buildings. Jaro’s parents could stroll along new promenades and admire the new apartment blocks, hotels and municipal buildings in the Pilsen Main Square. 214 215

Zájmy finanční stráže, V/1, 1900–1901: 6–7. Zájmy finanční stráže, V/1, 1900–1901: 8.

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The removal of fortifications allowed for large scale urban redesign, which formed around a compact but well-connected city centre. There were also growing industrial suburbs. The Černýs lived in a dynamically changing Pilsen, governed by a popular and successful mayor named Václav Peták (1842–1917; mayor of Pilsen from 1892). ‘In the quarter-century of its tenure, Peták’s administration had used the potential of Pilsen to the full, and changed the somewhat chaotically growing industrial hub into a strong regional centre with a number of metropolitan characteristics.’216 Jagellonská Street is within walking distance to the elegant city centre, but in character it was still closer to a suburb. The house where the Černýs lived was probably destroyed during a Second World War air-raid, but several similar houses in the street still survive (including one upon which a dark granite memorial plaque for Jaro was affixed in the 2000s). Jaro was born at home, his mother assisted by Františka Šmídová,217 a local midwife. He was likely breastfed by his own mother, as wet-nurses were more regularly employed only by upper middle-class families,218 whose status the Černýs might have aspired to but had not quite attained. No recollections (or rather no reflections his parents might have told to their son at a later date) have survived from Jaro’s early years, or at least none that he shared with his friends and his family. Anna Černá had another son and lived to an advanced age, so presumably motherhood did not take a significant toll on her health. Although she was expected to support her husband in his vocation—the wife of a Financial Guard officer was expected to search female suspects, for example—she was less involved in her husband’s activities than the wives of craftsmen, or indeed landowners and agricultural workers. Her main duties were focused around the household, and here she developed her talent for building the social capital of the family, in a home that was very much run on a shoestring. The salaries of the Financial Guard were rather underwhelming, and an officer in Antonín’s 216

Maier 2005: 284, see also Martinovský and Douša 2004: 122–126. The Pilsen City Archive, Matrika Plzeň, Plzeň I-vnitřní město, 1900–1901, digital version Porta Fontium. 218 Lenderová 2010: 173. 217

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position would have had only 1500 to 2000 gulden (or 3000 to 4000 crowns, the two units were used simultaneously for time) annually at his disposal. For context, nine crowns bought two pounds of bread, and one gulden would have bought about thirty eggs or just under two pounds of butter.219 In 1882—and in a more affluent setting—the composer Leoš Janáček was expected to pay twenty-five gulden per month as a child support to his separated wife, that is 300 gulden per a year for just his child, and not his estranged wife, whose upkeep fell to her parents.220 It would seem that relatives in the country might have eased the financial pressure on the Černý family. Produce, for instance, could have been sent by both Anna’s and Antonín’s families. Nonetheless, from the point of view of her in-laws, Anna was a poorer relation; a townsman and butcher from Příbram might have reason to frown upon a newcomer from a village, and probably one with a little to no dowry. However, Anna, whilst looking after the household, caring for her sons, and perhaps assisting Antonín in his duties, clearly had aspirations that went beyond immediate daily drudgery. They were, after all, a marital team, although little can be said about their family dynamics without some extrapolation and speculation. For instance, one might assume that Jaro was socialized in a period where the model was of masculinity, where boys and men held higher status both socially and economically (even at the dinner table, being served more nutritious food), which happened not seldom (but also not always) at the expense of their female relatives. But it is more accurate to say that we have no clear idea how domestic and professional roles were presented to Jaro. He was later socialized in a boys’ school, and his father’s social circles influenced his youth and even early employment, but the role of his mother cannot be assumed to have been any less important. When or how Jaro acquired any abstract understanding of the boundaries and challenges of male and female social roles is unknown, so it can only be assumed that his early years were of a family setting where male and female members of the household treated one another 219 220

Martinovský and Douša 2004: 162. Tyrrell 2006: 231.

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at least with civility. If we take the unreliable path of extrapolating backwards from his later documented attitudes, when he mixed some traditional expectations regarding domestic roles with more emancipated views on women as intellectual and professional equals, we can speculate that he was a man in transition, acquainted with the earlier models of masculinity,221 but not necessarily limited by them. Sometime around 1900, a family portrait was taken by a Pilsen photographer. It shows proud parents and a well-dressed, healthy looking child. Jaro’s parents were evidently well-aware that their family status had to be projected as both confident and materially secure—they took no risks with giving the wrong first impression. His father is wearing his uniform, and one cannot avoid a feeling of sympathy with the officers and the above-quoted contributor to the Interests. Although the uniform, which had to be worn both on- and off duty, was a clear status symbol, it was also rather inelegant. Antonín, like many men of his generation, wore a moustache. His wife best embodies the family’s aspirations. Elegantly dressed and poised, Anna contributed to the self-presentation of the family. She was not exactly a Gibson Girl, but there was a clear adherence to period fashion, with her somewhat attenuated, but still distinctly hourglass-shaped, figure. A bustle, typical of the 1870s and 1880s, was abandoned, but a tight-laced waist and flaring skirt are in evidence. Her jacket and blouse are typical of the period, reflecting a slightly masculine impact on female fashion trends. It was only slowly that more daring fashion attempts, such as those of the reform dress, or a little later those of Paul Poiret, were introduced, and when these fashions were adopted it was mostly in affluent circles. National pride played a role in this reticence, as a roughly contemporary caricature showed a stolid German couple experimenting with Poiret’s dresses for the Hausfrau, and walking away in high dudgeon.222 Jaro’s mother Anna was properly and elegantly dressed, if perhaps unexpectedly stylishly, for her class. 221 222

Tosh 1994. Simplicissimus 1910, reprinted in Kybalová 2006: 23.

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A trendy Czech-Austrian mother, albeit favouring typical rather than experimental fashion, had a trendy son. Jaroslav, who at the time of the photograph would have been an approximately two-year-old toddler, was dressed for the occasion in an impeccable velvet ‘sailor suit’, following a fashion introduced in Britain, possibly by Queen Victoria dressing her son Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in a scaled-down version of a ratings uniform of the Royal Yacht in the 1840s. The Prince of Wales and his sailor suit were immortalized by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, and a style was born.223 Naturally, a fashionable suit for a toddler informs us more about the self-presentation of his parents than his own, but the attention dedicated to proper demeanour and smart clothing became inculcated in Jaro. It is, however, easy to visualize the velvet as having lost its immaculate sheen just minutes after the photo had been taken. At this time, Jaro, though no doubt well-socialized by his parents, was an only child and still rather at the centre of his family’s world. But that was soon to change, for in 1901 another young boy was born to the household on Jagellonská Street. His parents continued the patriotic tradition and gave him another Slavic-inspired name, Miloslav. Miloslav was also born at home, and Anna was again attended by the midwife Františka Šmídová. At three years old Jaro had a baby brother. While no recollections or family memories survive from this time, it’s possible that his parents deliberately opted for a smaller family, as indeed did many of their contemporaries in the civil service.224 Generally, city inhabitants of the nineteenth century chose a different model to rural ones, a model that was in ‘favor the bearing of fewer children receiving more attention (and other resources) over a longer period of their lives than was typical in agrarian societies. Changing economic, demographic and structural conditions led Western parents in the late nineteenth century to perceive the allocation of greater resources to each child as enhancing the future advantage of the child in 223 Portrait of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, by Winterhalter, 1846, Oil on canvas, 127.1 × 88.0 cm, RCIN 404873, The Royal Collection. The then-Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, described it as ‘the prettiest picture I have ever seen.’ 224 Lenderová 1999: 109–110.

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an increasingly competitive environment.’225 Knowledge of birth control, while rudimentary and fallible, had been quite widespread.226 It was not only the ‘Victorian bourgeoisie’ who approached sex with a ‘curious amalgam of awareness and ignorance’,227 but also their continental counterparts: ‘at the beginning of the twentieth century, the use of condoms among married couples was already pretty widespread.’228 Anna might of course suffered have miscarriages that were not recorded, but this need not be so. She was already thirty-five when her second son was born, and may have been reaching the limits of her fertility, not to mention that Antonín was already forty. The family now had four members, unless they also had live-in help that has gone unrecorded. The flat assigned to them in Jagellonská Street might have become a little too small, and in 1903, when Jaro was five and nearing school age, and when Miloslav was two and becoming a lively toddler, the family moved. Their next lodgings were in Lochotínská Street, in another Pilsener suburb but this time away from the city centre, on a sloping hill overlooking central Pilsen. Other Financial Guard officers lived at the same address, in a Neo-Renaissance housing block.229 It was not a verdant suburb, however, for while Lochotín hosted villas it also contained housing estates for the employees of nearby factories. By that time, Jaro’s horizons would have broadened beyond the domestic world, and they were to change even more the following year. In 1904, Jaro started his first year at the Second Elementary boys’ school of the City of Pilsen, in Karlovarská Avenue, within easy walking distance from Lochotínská 11 where the family lived. A few weeks before Jaro began his schooling, Pilsen became home to a new attraction. At the city’s shooting range, which doubled as its exhibition grounds, a new building sprang up at 225

Woodhead et al. 1991: 23. See Jütte 2008: 118–134. 227 Cannadine 1989: 225. 228 Jütte 2008: 152. 229 Officers and guardsmen from other places were given this address as a point of contact when visiting Pilsen. See Zájmy finanční stráže XVII/1, 1913: 136–137. Some from outside Pilsen were offered an overnight stay at Lochotínská 13, suggesting lodging capacity there. 226

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the end of May. Its façade was formed of two brightly painted towers that had no resemblance to classical or contemporary architecture. The scenes covering their walls and statues flanking their gate identified the edifice as ‘Egyptian’. To dispel any doubt, a large billboard reading ‘the Egyptian pub’ was positioned above the entrance. The façade of the Egyptian pub was an eye-catching element from the ‘first international exhibition of the art of cookery and hospitality’, which opened on 2 June 1902. The pavilion itself was a re-used temporary edifice that had previously adorned a students’ celebration day. Plzeňský obzor, a local newspaper, reported on 30 June 1904 that: The Egyptian pavilion of Czech students is a major eye-catcher, which will no doubt become a meeting point for the arts and amusements loving nation of our exhibition goers. The pavilion was built following plans by Mr V. Skala, academician painter, and Mr J. Sigmund, qualified technician. Their collaborators were Messrs Matějka, Obrovský, Petříček and sculptors J. Novák and Risto Pejatovič, the latter two responsible for two colossi at the sides of the gate. The decoration consists of [Egyptianized] contemporary scenes provided with hieroglyphs, said hieroglyphs to be explained to visitors at everyday lectures held for the duration of the exhibition. Thus we find a Prague Bummel scene, a view on attacking anarchists, a tourist trip, an orchestra, a ceremonial opening of the exhibition, history of the pavilion itself, life of Ramesses, Ramesses at the pub, and visiting the opera, a sad story of a man ruled by his wife, a vicious circle story, etc. A large part of these scenes was made here in Pilsen, hence the [local] visitor may enjoy meeting some familiar faces that have been thus allocated their portion of eternity.230

The Egyptian—or rather Egyptianizing—theme was primarily designed to lure patrons to the Egyptian pub (including with caricatures of local notables in Egyptian dress), but its creators attempted to replicate models of Egyptian architecture that had been used, to great effect, by Owen Jones following the 1851 230 Based on references and a quote from Plzeňský obzor in Domanický and Jedličková 2005: 76–80.

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Great Exhibition.231 The painted scenes, bright colours, and surprisingly accurate renderings of New Kingdom royal statues flanking the entrance were undoubtedly eye-catching in their own right, though the accuracy was probably not appreciated by most of the Pilsener public. The Egyptian art forms that had been condensed into the decorations of the Egyptian pub remain largely undocumented, but some influences can be traced. It is probable that the main inspiration came from publications by Ipollito Rosellini, Émile Prisse d’Avennes, and probably the Grammar of Ornament by Jones. Some knowledge of the 1851 exhibition at The Crystal Palace cannot entirely be excluded, especially as the statues before the pylon in Pilsen followed a rarely-used model: They are rather uncanny ‘reproductions’ of the black granite statue of a seated Ramesses II from the 1824 Drovetti Collection, now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Turin (inv. 1380), and a cast of this statue appeared in The Crystal Palace’s Egyptian pavilion.232 The Pilsener version, however, has Ramesses holding a spigot instead of his original sceptre. Did Jaro’s parents take an impressionable six-year-old to see this popular attraction? A show on ‘hospitality and cookery’ was probably not designed to entertain children as its target audience, yet the exhibition as a whole could have prompted a family outing. We shall never know for sure, but this could have been Jaro’s first encounter with the echo of a distant world, one detached in space and time, and perhaps reinterpreted ad nauseam yet exercising a strong attraction. A six-year-old boy probably understood some of the local news, or at least local gossip, but we cannot know much influence this might have had on him. Yet the Egyptian pub in Pilsen is symptomatic of the Egyptian Revival in Bohemia, in which public entertainment and the consumption of history had slowly,233 but surely, spread beyond the national, even if in a fairly farcical and ephemeral way. ‘Major archaeological studies on the reception of the past have already demonstrated the potential of investigating its role in the knowledge 231 232 233

Moser 2012. Moser 2012: fig. 67 on p. 98. On the popular facets of historical culture and social memory, see De Groot 2009.

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making process, showing how ancient ancestors, cultures and places have been defined by representation produced outside our disciplinary boundaries.’234 Egypt was a rare guest in official museum displays in Bohemia during the late nineteenth century. In the atmosphere of competing national revivals, it was felt that local history should be given precedence. Antonín Frič (Fritsch), Director of the Royal Bohemian Museum (National Museum in Prague), formulated a locally-driven approach to museums that was centralist and assumed that ‘in every large state only one well-endowed museum can afford … assistants’ to process the collections.235 He also preferred national museums to focus in local material, and although his model allowed large metropolitan museums in imperial capitals to host colonial exhibitions, he believed that ‘world museums, which endeavour to bring together everything from all countries, are becoming more and more impossible, and are not at all desirable.’236 Frič built on the idea of a national museum that would underpin national existence, as promoted by Frantisek Palacký, which decisively undermined any attempts at displaying Egyptian material well into the twentieth century.237 This can be seen in the decoration of the monumental 1890s building of the National Museum in Prague. There were no Egyptian-themed halls in the museum that might have been seen as ‘augmenting’ the experience of displayed Egyptian antiquities,238 and no prominent painter provided a vision of ancient Egypt as Gustav Klimt had done for the museum in Vienna.239 The new museum building enclosing the upper end of Wenceslas Square, at the head of the new central boulevard in Prague, had but one modest Egyptian head on its façade (incidentally the same number of Egyptianizing decorations that were added to the Main Railway Station, a few years later),240 but its formal halls and staircases brim with romantic mythical visions of ‘Slavic’ nature and history. This very much accords with ‘active and selective engagement 234 235 236 237 238 239 240

Moser 2015: 1264. Frič 1904: 248. Frič 1904: 253. Navratilova and Podhorný 2019: 255–292. Moser 2006: 184–186, See Czerny 2012. Navratilova 2003: 147.

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with the subject of the past, reflecting the concerns of those audiences who consume it.’241 Egypt in Bohemia was often on display only in the regional periphery, in events on the fringes of cultural production or in exhibitions and shows in district museums,242 and often for purposes of low-brow entertainment. Consuming Egypt as a decorative framework for, say, lampooning local notables was an unsophisticated way of interacting with ancient culture, and was rather different from the ‘leisurely instruction and scientific amusement’ of great exhibitions,243 but it still represented one of the key characteristics that Jones saw embodied in Egyptian art: ‘its vivacity’.244 This was not however a cultural characteristic that Bohemians immediately connected with Egypt in mainstream historical awareness, or at least not solely. Ancient Egyptians were more likely to be characterized in terms of either nobility or debauchery. The nobility and spirituality of ancient Egypt fascinated artists of the Catholic Beuron school, whose incarnation at the Benedictine abbey of St. Gabriel produced an evangeliary that dared to liken the Virgin Mary to Isis, and covered the walls with gold and bold colours, turning the abbey into an Egyptianizing jewelled box.245 It also stimulated the eccentric sculptor František Bílek, whose relationship with religion became more nonconformist over time, and who erected an Egyptian portico in front of his Arts and Crafts movement-inspired red-brick villa. The debauchery and carnality prompted Ludek Marold to illustrate Tabubu, the Art Nouveau take on the Egyptian text Setne Khaemwas,246 with voluptuous ladies with (or without) transparent veils. And a curious amalgam of voluptuousness and monumentality lent some streets in Prague streets their late ArtNouveau Egyptian queens—bold, bejewelled, crowned and almost naked—observing the old streets and new avenues with

241

Moser 2015: 1265. For the collection and display spaces in Olomouc, for example, see Navratilova and Podhorný 2019. 243 Moser 2012: 70–76. 244 Moser 2012: 21. 245 Gröger et al. 2016. 246 Vinson 2011. 242

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half-closed eyes. Perhaps, ultimately, there was also an unarticulated, hidden element of Jones’ vivacity. The leitmotif that appears throughout the various readings and re-readings of Egypt in Central Europe seems to be twofold: an imposing and stern temple of wisdom, and a cavorting and potentially dangerous otherness. The interpretive conception of an ‘Oriental other’ does not quite capture this duality. It was rather as if Egypt was simultaneously both ‘ours’ and an ‘other’, something both adopted and gazed upon from a paradigmatic distance. From either perspective, however, Egypt was of rather limited use for the purposes of Czech ‘nationalist fever’,247 which was very much at the forefront of visual art and public discourse in late nineteenth century Bohemia. Its architectural expression was usually in a Neo-Renaissance form, which had the advantage of hearkening back to a perceived glorious era of Bohemian history and ‘bore resemblance to monumental buildings elsewhere in Europe … The similarities to buildings elsewhere in Europe resulted from many nineteenth-century Czechs feeling their nation belonged to European civilization—a feeling sometimes mixed with anxiety about Czech backwardness.’248 In an atmosphere of nationalist fervour and a clamour for European recognition, Egyptian-related themes appeared mainly in passing, in art, in the news, in publishing, or in exhibition ephemera. Egyptomania was small part of Central Europe’s interest in the past, not a major concern.249 It required a peculiar interest to develop a fascination with this ancient culture, either in art or in scholarship.

1904–1917 schooling The Second Elementary Boys’ School of the City of Pilsen introduced Jaro to schooling in September 1904. He would have gone on foot from his parents’ house to the neighbouring 247

Fábelová 2001: 119. Giustino 2010: 160. 249 ‘Although it remains a problematic term, the emotive aspect of “Egyptomania” conveys a certain truth about the treatment of the subject over the centuries,’ Moser 2015: 1281. 248

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Karlovarská Avenue. His classes at first encompassed literacy and numeracy, as well as singing lessons and catechism alongside physical education. Initially, education was in the mother tongue, which for Jaro was Czech. Later, in his third year, geography, history and German language came to round off his elementary school education. Lessons in Czech and German must have felt quite natural to young children in a city like Pilsen, who lived in a largely bilingual world. Nonetheless, Jaro was a child at a time where there was increasing pressure to turn Pilseners (or Budweisers or anyone else in Bohemia for that matter) into either Czechs or Germans. It is perhaps not helpful to speculate what impact this had on their developing identities.250 ‘“Who are you?” The response to this question is contextual, not absolute. It is a question of identification, rather than identity.’251 These schoolchildren were the children of their parents, and so were perhaps Pilseners, and Jaro might have been told that he was Czech, but they were also Austro-Hungarian citizens even if might have meant little to a child. The school’s onerous task was to instil a sense of supranational patriotism or even dynastic loyalty,252 while nationalists on either side of the Czech vs. German debate claimed that children were national property.253 ‘Bilingualism, parental pragmatism and national indifference were condemned by nationalists as exhibiting a lack of character and moral degeneracy.’254 Nationalists wanted national survival—to build a national authenticity and to fulfil a national destiny, as Herder would have it. But the practicalities of daily life meant that many people grew up bilingual and pragmatic,255 open to broader concepts of what it meant to be a citizen in Bohemia, even as both benign and malicious nationalist ideologies were being firmly embedded, and bred.

250 251 252 253 254 255

Jeremy 2002. Hanley 2017: 294 Bruckmüller 2009. Zahra 2008. Kwan 2011: 101. Compare Zahra 2008.

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Jaro’s school certificates reveal that he was a dutiful student, as the only grade from his elementary studies was a first.256 No doubt this was very pleasing to his parents, but no diary tells of his early years, and school certificates don’t relate much beyond the obvious ability or diligence required to attain such good grades. Jaro might have been industrious, eager to make his parents happy, or simply bright and good at school. Being a child meant firm discipline. A young boy was taught to be a proper young man, so discipline over body and mind was required and promoted. In Jaro’s childhood, physical training and sports were accepted parts of both education and leisure, though there is no information regarding his sporting interests other than that physical education was part of his curriculum, for a time. As a young boy, and later as a young man, he would have been expected to satisfy the ideal of a firm and healthy male body,257 but the required discipline was not necessarily a restriction; it was a way to develop one’s physical and mental abilities, and to socialize in the increasingly complex urban community of the early twentieth century. Contemporary Victorian children were socialized to be seen and not heard, but schools with their illustrated books, maps, and large tableaux of scenes from history and biology can be enticing to young boys and girls of any period. To paint a dire image of early twentieth century childhood as the age of discipline, beatings, and the force-feeding of bowdlerized knowledge would deny the fun of a school running race, of curiosity indulged, of the widening horizons revealed in books, encyclopaedias and illustrated magazines for children. Schools offered guidelines, but individuals in this dynamic age more-or-less had the opportunity to shape their own lives. Some more than others. For a male child in an aspirational family, such as Jaro, there were more options open than for most female children, or for the offspring of workers’ families, but much still depended on 256 Elementary school registers, Pilsen City Archive: Archiv města Plzně, II. národní škola (formerly II. obecná chlapecká škola, Karlovarská třída), sign. 408 –1/ IV, 68, výkaz 1904–1905, č. knihy 25c9, oddělení A, číslo 14, and Archiv města Plzně, II. národní škola (formerly II. obecná chlapecká škola, Karlovarská třída), sign. 408–1/ IV, 68, výkaz 1906–1907, č. knihy 25c11, třetí třída A, číslo 10. 257 Lenderová et al. 2014: 111–117.

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individual efforts, and school and educationally oriented literature were not short of reminders and role models of conscientiousness, industry, and advancement through diligence. Much had depended on the approach and character of one’s teachers, and on intellectual curiosity stimulated at home. The bulletin of the Financial Guard often advertised periodicals and books published in instalments, to which officers could subscribe and which their families would enjoy reading. Outside school textbooks, Jaro probably read Malý čtenář,258 a periodical resembling its contemporary British counterparts, the Boys’ and Girls’ Own Paper,259 and founded in the 1880s by a group of teachers and soon taken over by a Prague publisher, J. R. Vilímek. The original idea was to provide school-age children with knowledge complementing and enriching the curriculum, but a relatively simple premise gradually developed into an illustrated monthly that was able to commission texts and illustrations from the upper echelons of Prague’s literary and visual arts scene. Jaro might have first encountered Malý čtenář around 1903 to 1904, when he was learning to read, or a little later, and probably grew out of the periodical’s target audience by 1914 or 1915. In that decade the magazine printed various short stories—which were often serialized—poetry, and illustrated articles on historical themes, including Roman and mediaeval. One serialized story by Zikmund Winter, the less romantic Czech analogue to Walter Scott, began as a mystery tale about a bell-tower which appeared haunted, but its ghost turned out to be a bird of prey.260 The culture of the time meant that a mystery needed a rational explanation. Even fairy tales written explicitly for the magazine had an undeniable educative element, generally promoting discipline, industry, effort, and shrewd economical thinking while ridiculing recklessness, vulgarity and indulgence. However, the contents were not all in the vein of Sandford and Merton. Some of the stories were—in a manner appropriate for the juvenile audience —downright adventurous, set in faraway lands, tropical forests, 258 This periodical was advertised in the Zajmy finanční stráže, where it was listed among publications on offer, alongside encyclopaedias, and next to books by Karl May. Ročník VIII, 1904: 14–15. 259 Published since 1879 and 1880 respectively. 260 Malý čtenář, 1904–1905, 24/2: 21–22.

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or at sea. Eventually, various shorter texts informed readers about the peculiar customs of distant places, or of new-fangled technology, such as skyscrapers in America. Egypt was featured as a land of dry climate, ancient civilization, and … camels.261 This knowledge was, of course, suitably packaged, and indeed properly bowdlerized, to preserve the innocence of its young audience. For some, notably girls, this innocence was far too prolonged, as captured with inimitable poignancy by Stefan Zweig ‘it was not a good time for the young when girls were placed in airtight compartments under the control of their families, sealed off from life, their physical and intellectual development stunted.’262 Malý čtenář was, nonetheless, not blatantly gendered, as it was assumed that both boys and girls would read the periodical, thus differing from British Victorian approaches such as that of Charlotte M. Yonge, who recommended that ‘The mild tales that girls will read simply to pass away the time are ineffective with’ the ‘wholesome and hardy’ fare for boys,263 who ought to be served more adventurous material. Although central European society had many gender boundaries, Czech nation builders, like their British counterparts, wanted wholesome, hardy boys but also wholesome, accomplished girls, destined to become the future mothers of the nation. At elementary school level, however, there was little natural history, and history itself had a narrative character, but geography gave the impression of a wide world that one could discover and admire. Periodicals or books expanded childhood horizons, allowing for discovery and identifying travel with adventure. Jaro perhaps travelled with a finger on a map at that point, but reading soon became staple part of his life, and a suitable window on the world. He must have had access to a library, as a few years later he was excerpting texts, copying maps, and facsimile illustrations from a range of books. It is unlikely that the Černý family would have had a large collection, for illustrated books would probably have been unaffordable unless donated by a more affluent relative. A school library might have provided a better 261 262 263

Malý čtenář, 1914–1915, 34/7: 111, 271. Zweig 2011: 108–109. Eastlake 2018: 22.

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access.264 His father Antonín also borrowed books from a local applied arts museum library in Pilsen, where he was of good standing, having donated two traditional paintings on glass to the museum collection.265 Given a later reference to the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (père),266 the library at home seems to have comprised borrowed books and serialized novels, but might have contained popular, adventurous stories as well as works on history, archaeology, and art history. Sons of somewhat more well-to-do families, such as the future Prague thespians George Voskovec and Jan Werich, read Dumas, Karl May, Rudyard Kipling, and Jules Verne.267 The wide world that lay beyond the empire’s borders was portrayed inventively, with an agenda or even prejudice,268 but literature nonetheless afforded the temporary escapism of adventurous fare, an idea of things waiting to be seen and discovered, to be understood in a rapidly changing world. If Kipling could be read as a celebration of personal bravery in the wide— and not necessarily kind—world,269 Verne added an image of science in the service of humanity. Two decades later, Voskovec and Werich used a persiflage of nearly every cliché from this literary resource in their plays. And yet, dreams of empire and progress had never been consumed naïvely. Verne himself was ‘worried that organized humanity would use knowledge and power for unworthy ends. While realizing the blessings of human conquest of the planet … [he] mourned … the inevitable losses it entailed.’270 The world of books might have replaced some outdoor pursuits for Jaro, as his myopia must have soon set in. A focus on academic prowess and discipline—with the support of his family—could be 264 Schools in Austria-Hungary were expected to have a library, see Konířová 2018: 139–145. 265 Both a letter of recognition for the donation and other documents referring to Antonín as a reader at the museum’s library were preserved in the family archive by Miloslav, Jaro’s brother. Private family archive, copies in care of the ANpM, Prague. 266 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family, 13 May 1926. 267 Schonberg 1978: 9–10. 268 Smyth 2000. 269 Dentith 2006. 270 Williams 2013: x, see also 14–27.

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also depicted as cultivating desirable qualities. If manliness ‘was about moral excellence and as likely to be found in [the] weak body as in the strong,’271 as some Victorian contemporaries asserted, then one can envisage the family focusing on nurturing a rather fragile, myopic child whilst promoting his academic achievements as a way of seeing him become a respected male member of society. Except we do not know anything about the family’s decisions in that respect, nor can we tell anything about Jaro’s attitude to sport and the outdoors. He kept his physical agility well into his sixties, and there is no reason to assume that he was a stay-at-home bookworm as a child. He had a younger brother after all, and could well have been entrusted with looking after him while at play. Domesticity and school appear to have been the defining elements of Jaro’s life at this time. Domesticity was mixed-gender, with his mother running the household. School was an all-male environment, as was fairly typical of a time with few co-educational establishments. Physically, he also moved within a relatively small area, as the school was almost literally around the corner from where his family lived. And there was also leisure time, if, perhaps, not much of it. The landscape of Jaro’s early childhood consisted of a mix of urban and suburban elements, of city streets and a city edge. The suburb of Lochotín was a somewhat adventurous area in its own right, at least from a child’s perspective, in which boys and at least some girls could venture out among market gardens and workshop yards, or downhill to the nearby River Mže, one of several that have a confluence in Pilsen. Beyond the river lay the city centre, with its new-fangled Neo-Renaissance and Art Nouveau blocks, a new railway station, and a flourishing rivalry between its Czech and German inhabitants. The national rivalries, for better or worse, flourished in schools, theatres, and charities on both sides of the language divide, and this at least contributed to a lively cultural scene in the city from the 1880s to the 1910s.272 Composers and performers of good repute were invited to Pilsen, 271

Tosh 1994: 182. For history of Pilsen at that period, see Maier 2005: 284, Martinovský et al. 2004: 122–126, and Mazný et al. 2015. 272

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from the established Antonín Dvořák to that up-and-coming star of the interwar period, Janáček. Renowned architects, such as Antonín Wiehl or Rudolf Štech,273 worked on prestigious municipal and other public edifices, exercising a range of styles. The city was led by the agile and respected mayor, Peták,274 who who helped to develop Pilsen from a conundrum of an old city with a ring of factories to a modern metropolis with a comparatively broad infrastructure of transport, services and hygiene. Yet any diffusion of nationalist tensions was only temporary— diverse groups competed for public space in practical as well as symbolic ways. Even choices of architectural style could become a battleground in the culture war, with Gothic being perceived as ‘Germanic’ and Renaissance as ‘Czech’, or in any case as civilized enough.275 National rivalries were on occasion exacerbated by social conditions. As with their British predecessors from the 1840s onwards, the cities of Prague, Brno, and Pilsen grew faster than their infrastructure, and some industrial suburbs soon turned into slums. Urban features such as sewers, reasonably safe water supplies and gas, let alone electricity, were a distant dream for many. Less wellto-do households would have used paraffin lamps, taken water from the nearest public fountain (or a tap in the house corridor in slightly better-appointed apartment blocks), and inhabited a rather cramped dwelling space. Period recommendations for an ideal home suggested that each family member should have had a room of their own, and that the kitchen was to be a separate room, not used for other purposes, especially not for sleeping. But the reality of most apartments was starkly different, and children or hired helpers often slept in the kitchen. Families in dire financial straits were known to sublet makeshift beds in the kitchen to lodgers who were even less fortunate. Around the 1900s, large cities would have held a range of dwellings, from large apartments with electricity and running water in well-appointed bathrooms, to bedsits with a paraffin 273 Wiehl was a promoter of a particular localized style of Czech Neo-Renaissance architecture, see Giustino 2010: 161, and Wirth 1921. See also Vlček et al. 2004: 712–713. 274 For Peták as mayor of Pilsen, see Maier 2005: 284. 275 Compare, for Prague, Giustino 2010.

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lamp and a zinc bathtub that doubled as a washtub. The Černý household might have been closer to the lower end of the scale, as their income was still far from substantial, even after Antonín was promoted to a respicient (supervisor) of the Financial Guard in 1905.276 The promotion made the forty-four year-old man a full officer of the guard after seventeen years of service, and this might have brought some financial improvement, if not a significant boost. Consequently, the household would have required many domestic chores, mostly from the female members but also from the children. Later in his life Jaro was quite good at caring for his own clothes and shoes,277 so he was likely brought up in a routine where the children undertook appropriate domestic chores as soon feasible. He was, however, not keen on other household work, such as cleaning and cooking, which were allocated to female members of the household. Cooking remained a closed door to Jaro, as years later he was said to have remarked to a colleague that he was glad he had succeeded in ‘cooking’ a cup of coffee.278 This would fit the image of how tasks were normally divided in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where certain domestic spheres were embedded as female responsibilities.279 In 1909, after five years at elementary school, Jaro was a pubescent boy with a lively interest in his studies that went beyond his curriculum. In June he concluded his elementary education and his parents applied for admission to the First Czech Gymnasium in Pilsen,280 with a curriculum including several languages and a good selection of mathematics and sciences. It was considered a ‘classical’ gymnasium, as Latin and Greek were taught; Latin from the outset while Greek came later, as was the case in contemporary British schools where Latin ushered the Greek.281 276

Zájmy finanční stráže, IX, 1905: 271. As an adult, Jaro was keen on maintaining a neat appearance, and by necessity had to take care of his paraphernalia when travelling, although some domestic service was available at the various locations he visited. 278 Rosalind Janssen interviewing Jack Plumley, EES Archives, audio files. 279 Kožmínová 1923. 280 Following Jac Janssen; see Janssen and R. Janssen 2014. I apply the historical term, which could be translated as ‘grammar school’. 281 Eastlake 2018: 19. 277

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Jaro was awarded an annual scholarship that enabled him to attend the gymnasium.282 This was a special scholarship set up to help the families of revenue officers, as the salaries in the service were prone to stagnation. For Jaro this amounted to 200 crowns annually, and he held it for the duration of his gymnasium studies (this would have amounted to 1182 EUR in 2021),283 and was about a half what a young unqualified worker might have expected as an annual salary.284 It was no doubt a welcome a contribution to the family budget, as textbooks had to be bought, alongside new clothes (although there was no school uniform) and shoes for a growing boy. Jaro’s first year at the gymnasium brought new subject matter and also a new routine. He now had to walk quite a long walk to get to the large lumbering gymnasium building in Pilsen city centre, on the other bank of the Mže. But he could have taken a still-novel means of transport, though one that was about as old as he was: the electric tramway. Pilsen was one of the first cities in Bohemia to introduce this innovation, promoted by Brožík, the local author and entrepreneur, and with power supplied by František Křižík, a ground-breaking supporter—and marketer— of electricity in Bohemia. Křižík manufactured lightbulbs in Pilsen and succeeded on international markets, as some of his models bested those of Edison and Siemens. In the late 1890s he decided to invest in the Pilsen tramway. The first power plant was, as noted, not far away from Jagellonská, the old address of the Černý family. Whether Jaro regularly rode the tram from their new address is of course a moot point. The tickets were probably too costly for a regular school commute, although the open tram carriages,285 which facilitated embarkation and disembarkation at various non-standard locations, invited generations of schoolchildren to 282

Regarding these fellowships see Zájmy finanční stráže IX, 1905: 255. According to the official Austrian National Bank inflation calculator; https://www. oenb.at/docroot/inflationscockpit/waehrungsrechner.html. 284 An outline on https://www.mesec.cz/clanky/mzdy-a-ceny-vcera-a-dnes/, accessed 3 April 2020. Compare also Vošahlíková 1996, including references to autobiographical material from a range of social backgrounds. 285 Carriages from the early Pilsen tram line ended up as a café in the middle of Wenceslas Square in Prague, serving as a tourist attraction and suggesting the original position of a local line. They were still there at the time of writing, in 2019/2020. 283

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mischief. One could have ridden the tram for free for a time, while the conductor was in another carriage or busy with other (paying) passengers. There was much for Jaro to attend to at his new school. There were of course languages—Latin and Czech—while mathematics, natural history, and art classes were also on the syllabus, as was the school choir, if only in his first year. This year concluded very successfully, with excellent grades, in late June 1910. In his second year Jaro dropped the choir, and opted for German instead. The same year also contains the first attested harbinger of his interest in history and archaeology: A school exercise book, labelled Notes on Geography,286 contains long lists of Greek and Roman geographers and historiographers with brief comments on the contents of their works. Jaro quantified their production, and outlined major achievements, either in their descriptions of historical events (notably Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico), or in the development of an historiographical approach (such as Sempronius Asellio looking for causes of events in a ‘pragmatic manner,’ as Jaro put it). Classical philology and history were the mainstays of the curriculum, hence his attention to the history of geographical research in antiquity. However, Jaro embellished the notebook with further observations copied from popular magazines, and was concerned with the menhirs and dolmens of France or Wales, stylized views of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, and a rather enticing take on a mummy with a smiling face. These schoolboy annotations reveal a curiosity with historical and archaeological themes in general, and are hardly a signal of destiny that sent Jaro on a path to Egyptology, but it is nonetheless significant that they appear alongside a more focused interest in the humanities. Up to his early years at the gymnasium, Jaro had consistently shown good grades across all subjects, but at twelve- to thirteen years he began to demonstrate a slightly less enthusiastic performance in mathematics. In his third year, Greek became part of the curriculum, and Jaro mostly excelled in the languages—four by that point—at the expense of sciences, although the final school certificates for each year still showed generally very good grades. 286

The most recent publication of the photograph is in Onderka 2019.

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In his fourth year at the gymnasium, Jaro decided—perhaps on his own, being an almost fifteen-year-old with his own preferences—to add another language, French.287 He consequently had to cope with five languages in the 1912/1913 academic year. The choice may or may not have been his to make. The opinion of his parents would undoubtedly have been important, as a well-schooled civil servant had to be at least bilingual in Czech and German, and the same would have been expected of his son. But his family might have agreed that Jaro had further aspirations. If so, the optimistic outlook was probably supported by another promotion for Antonín, who became head respicient in the winter of 1912/1913.288 He may well have felt that fostering ambitions in his son was no bad thing. Classical language classes obviously offered a good foundation for any further philological leanings that the young Jaro might have had, and their function was largely that of enculturation in the classical tradition. The Classics were perceived as cultivating the mind for good citizenship,289 and ideal masculinity.290 The interpretations and re-readings of classical antiquity were by definition multiple, and offered a basis for the formation of an ideal ‘imperial gentlemen’, as well as outlets for creativity and subversion.291 Unlike Victorian England, where only certain prestigious schools provided full classical training, Latin and Greek were an automatic part of the curriculum at a ‘classical’ gymnasium in Austria-Hungary, and the depth and prestige of a classical education meant that they were perceived as driving social mobility, offering a protean cultural background. It is easy to forget, in today’s vocational (white-collar) education system, that the study of Classics is useful training, especially 287 Pilsen City Archive [Archiv města Plzně], Hlavní katalog c. k. českého gymnasia, 1912/1913. 288 Zájmy Finanční stráže, XVII/1, 1913: 11. 289 See the outline of reception studies by Moser 2015: 1271–1272, quoting Frank Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, 1981: ‘According to Turner (181: xii), the Victorians made the “antique past and its peoples uniquely their own” and the classics provided a “means for achieving self-knowledge and cultural self-confidence within the emerging order of liberal democracy and secularism”.’ The past was used to ‘make sense of the present.’ 290 A recent outline in Eastlake 2018. 291 Moser 2015: 1272.

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once beyond the simple memorization of grammar and quotes, as a tool that widens a students’ horizons in philosophy and philology, alongside a proficient and articulate writing style. It acts to inculcate a certain framework of thought about history and society, while providing a perspective on oneself and one’s world. ‘Literature allows the child to conceive of her world according to certain historical and literary traditions, supplying her with scripts and signifiers by which she can come to understand her own place in it and, most importantly, a vocabulary with which she might articulate her own subjectivity.’292 These elements of classical education seem now to have been buried under much criticism,293 and no doubt much harm has been done by uninspiring teachers, but in good hands and with a receptive audience Classics is a powerful tool, preparing students for lucid argumentation that will see them through further studies, especially those that are language- and history oriented. And as most students of European languages might add, studying Latin provides excellent fundamentals for navigating most Western European languages, and indeed the structural knowledge necessary to operate in other parts of the Indo-European language family.294 Finally, ‘Latin, as a dead language’ offers ‘a unique opportunity to adopt a reflexive attitude towards one’s own language.’295 And so, on top of the classical training he was tackling, Jaro added French. A bilingual upbringing would not have been exceptional, but the multilingual training Jaro was undertaking signalled the broad aims that the Černý family had regarding social mobility. French was the language of arts and great literary traditions, and was very popular among Bohemian literati of the time, but it would not have been a requirement for anyone aspiring, say, to Antonín’s status. The family appears to have harboured further aspirations for its eldest son, perhaps academic ones, which he might well have shared. Though his choices should not be ascribed solely to parental decisions. 292

Eastlake 2018: 17. Although more nuanced readings have begun to emerge. See Eastlake 2018, and a detailed discussion with a deeper historical perspective in Caravolas 2000. 294 Compare Winand 2011, including a perspective on teaching/understanding Latin and Egyptian. 295 Winand 2011: 174. 293

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Jaro developed his language skills, and soon began to read in several languages, although the early prevalence of Czech seems to signify the cultural orientation of his family. A predominantly German-oriented family would also have chosen different names for their children. Yet Jaro was absorbing not only different languages, but a range of language registers. ‘A child’s world, and the codes through which he might interact with others, are being continually formed through language absorbed from reading across an ever-expanding heteroglossia of texts and cultural encounters.’296 The early development of his language skills is inaccessible but for fragments and hints, but it is tantalizing to speculate on how his acquisition of languages accompanied a growing appreciation for, and interest in, the world beyond Pilsen. In the summer of 1913 Jaro was a hopeful student, probably with a budding interest in ancient history, and a stable family background. By winter 1913, some of his established and predictable patterns changed dramatically. His father was given another promotion. It was not the first that Jaro witnessed, but earlier promotions did not signify any profound changes in his family life, as this one did. His father had to move from Pilsen. He was promoted to a commissioner of the Financial Guard and had to take over a station at Slaný, a city in Central Bohemia. The Pilsener guardsmen said their farewells to Antonín on 29 November 1913. If the Interests are to be believed—and considering that it expressed a critical attitude toward the establishment and upper ranks it may well be—Jaro’s father was a humane and hardworking superior to his men and an esteemed colleague to his fellow officers. ‘His character was that of a firm, honest and considerate man, always helpful, and his life devoid of egoism and excelling in manners.’ This suggests that the impeccable way that the family presented itself extended well beyond posing for a fashionable photograph. However, the praise went further and expressed not only Antonín’s professional successes, such as the exact plans he drew of the Pilsen breweries, but also his hobbies, including geology and numismatics.297

296 297

Eastlake 2018: 24. Zájmy finanční stráže XVII/24, 1913: 393.

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The Pilsen guard was sorry to see Antonín go, but for him it was a career step that brought increasing recognition of his professional skills and also greater remuneration. Accordingly, the family relocated to a rather prestigious address in Slaný, on the Station Road. The town of had a long history, including being a royal town in the Middle Ages, but in the nineteenth century it was the railway that provided new impetus to its rather halting development. The Station Road became a symbol of a new chapter in the town’s growth, and was adorned with numerous residential and public buildings in historicizing styles. But Jaro had to remain on Pilsen to get on with his education. As a fifteen-year-old, he was no longer a child but not quite yet a young man, though he may well have considered himself to be one already. Now he was on his own, and had to prove it. Though he no longer had a home in Pilsen, his father had identified a workable solution that was by no means exceptional. Usually, young people (mostly boys at that point) who were schooled away from home would reside with a family member or an acquaintance, and in this case it was Antonín’s colleague Julius Brich, an officer from the Pilsener station of the Financial Guard. Not even the address really changed, as Jaro was still commuting from Lochotínská Street. On the surface, the routine in Pilsen did not alter but it was in fact a significant adjustment for Jaro. The academic year that ended in the summer of 1914 was one of his less successful.298 He might have needed some time to adjust to his new situation. He might even have felt homesick, in the familiar surroundings of Pilsen yet without his parents and brother ‘Milka’, as Miloslav was known in the family.299 However, it is also possible that he was becoming distracted by his own hobby, ancient history, with a focus on Egypt. In retrospect, several anecdotes pertain to the beginnings of Jaro’s fascination with Egyptology. One of his students, Erik Iversen, recalls seeing an example of hieroglyphic text that was copied at the tender age of eight years.300 By itself this may be 298

Archiv města Plzně, Hlavní katalog c. k. českého gymnasia, 1913/1914. It is not yet known if Milka followed in his footsteps at the gymnasium. 300 Iversen, in recollections of Judith Hatton (née Walker), R. Janssen’s interview with Hatton, 2 January 1992, EES Archives, audio files. 299

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hard to substantiate, but Jaro’s teacher at Prague University, František Lexa, later noted that it had been a ‘random remark by a teacher’ that awoke his interest in Egyptology during his school years.301 Much later, Jaro’s Egyptian colleague, Labib Habachi, suggested that the young boy had been berated for illegibly scribbling ‘Egyptian hieroglyphs’, and that he had developed a curiosity about things Egyptian. Habachi maintained he heard this explanation from Jaro in person,302 though the remark about hieroglyphs, given Jaro’s excellent hand in both Latin script and in hieroglyphs themselves, feels rather like staircase wit. In surviving personal notes, Jaro himself referred to two books as being decisive in driving his interest: Georg Steindorff’s Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches (1900) and Justin Václav Prášek’s Dějiny starověkých národů východních (1902). Enticing books seem a plausible stimulation for a future scholar, and Steindorff wrote Blütezeit, later adapted into English with co-author Keith C. Seele as When Egypt Ruled the East, with a general reader in mind. The Steindorff book was lavishly illustrated, and it also offered a complex if easy to follow narrative that outlined the history of the eighteenth dynasty. This was one of the most dynamic and colourful eras of Egyptian history, and Steindorff alternated personal elements of royal life with art- and political history, but what mattered from Jaro’s perspective was that it was both highly readable and enticing, although digesting it meant having a solid working knowledge of German. By the age of fifteen, Jaro might have been well able to read it. Steindorff was highly praised by young Jaro’s other influencer, Prášek,303 who intended his works to be open to the interested laypersonas well as to the serious scholar. The ‘Fachgenosse’— a scientific comrade in arms—would, Prášek opined, also find reason to praise Steindorff for including the newest references and a measured assessment of previous scholarship on the subject of the Hyksos period and the New Kingdom.

301 302 303

Lexa, in a draft of Jaro’s CV from 1929, AAVCR, Fonds Lexa. Kamil 2007: 171. BphW 20 (1900), 1450–1451 (J. V. Prášek).

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Jaro’s demonstrated interest in ancient history and the strong language element in his curriculum suggest that by 1913 he was being increasingly focused in a direction, and that direction involved Egypt. The next summer, 1914, saw his first trip to the Berlin museums, which must have made a strong impression on Jaro because he repeated the trip in the summers of 1915 and 1916.304 Berlin at the time held, and still holds, a fascinating library and an extensive Egyptian collection. There was no comparable Egyptian collection in Prague (and indeed no comparable public collection in Bohemia, except for a small but well-chosen display at Olmütz).305 Perhaps the imperial museums in Vienna could have offered something similar, but Jaro travelled to Berlin, and the quality of its Egyptological resources must have been the attraction. The école de Berlin was represented not only by powerful personalities, such as Adolf Erman, but had exceptional aims for the future of Egyptology. Thomas Gertzen has defined the Berlin approach as paradigmatic on at least two levels. First, it reinforced a change from Egyptology trailblazed by lone scholars, or those with a small team (often a site-based team, in case of archaeological projects), to larger projects with long-term institutional support staffed by an international team of researchers. Berlin did not initially have the strongest institutional base for Egyptology. Generations of scholars from Richard Lepsius to Erman had tried to promote it, but only slowly did Berlin find itself a research niche, the second paradigmatic element that established the status of the Berlin school: the dictionary of Egyptian, the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache. In the cosmopolitan world before the Great War, Erman attracted a number of influential scholars to Berlin, including the American James Henry Breasted and the Briton Alan Henderson Gardiner. Breasted saw the Wörterbuch project as essentially an international enterprise, contrary to some internal views expressed by Erman’s team: ‘The Egyptian dictionary had to be made an 304 A digital copy of a passport issued by local officials at Slaný and stamped by the German consulate in Prague is held in the archive of the Náprstek Museum, in the Černý Collection. Jaro’s official contacts in Germany were listed as Adolf Erman and Heinrich Schäfer. His trips to Berlin are also referred to in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss.19.24. 305 The Olomouc aegyptiaca, see Podhorný 2018.

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international enterprise which included in its list of collaborators, orientalists of England, France, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and America.’306 The Wörterbuch project was a monumental philological undertaking, which imposed a shared methodology under Erman’s leadership. It was not the first project dedicated to Egyptian language lexicography, but it was intended to be comprehensive and to set new standards, both in quality and in how it streamlined research work.307 The Wörterbuch showed that philological Egyptology had a method, and had standards to adhere to,308 and develop. To quote Erman: ‘In my inaugural speech, I decided to emphasize that now, when we could already clarify a basic structure of the grammar, we also have to pursue the other side of the language, its lexicon.’309 Along with a desire to achieve social and political respect for Egyptology, Erman wanted the Wörterbuch to be a notable German project, a flagship of German Egyptology. And yet, as Breasted noted, if the Wörterbuch proclaimed a national allegiance,310 it was also an example of significant, and accurately targeted, research infrastructure in Egyptology. This was the first—but not the last—such infrastructure that Jaro had encountered. The infrastructure also changed over time. Later, in a much-altered political climate, the de facto international character of the Wörterbuch came to be recognized. Even Erman emphasized the international dimension of the project in his later years, proclaiming the Great War one of its great misfortunes, as it had cut off ‘the friends in other countries’.311 The Wörterbuch had also shown Jaro the methodology he was to use throughout his career: the painstaking collection of texts, assembling attestations of individual lexemes, and the analysis 306

Breasted 1922: 295. Gertzen 2013: 202–206. 308 Gertzen 2013: 194–197, and Nagel 2005. 309 In the original German ‘Betonte ich denn in meiner Antrittsrede, daß jetzt, wo wir die Grammatik in inhren Grundzügen klargelegt hätten, wir nun auch an die andere Seite der Sprache, die lexikalische herangehen müßten.’ Erman 1929: 287. 310 Compare Bruch 2006: 437–439. 311 Erman 1929: 291. However, for most of his career Erman balanced national and international expectations of Egyptology in Berlin; see Gestermann 2006, and Bruch 2006. 307

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of grammatical forms in detail to foster a better understanding of the language and to capture its nuance and changes over time. Jaro did not work for the Wörterbuch, coming to Berlin as only a young student, but he became acquainted with some of its work, and must have started to think in terms of organising his own research work. How would he identify matters of interest or, as in Berlin, of research necessity? ‘Individual interests and propensities of the scholar as an individual take second place behind the interests of his discipline … The researcher puts himself, all his time and energy, in the service of the tasks his discipline had set him.’312 The structures and paradigms set by consensus or the authority of major research institutions interact with individual agencies. But for a system to dictate the tasks, it must have ‘a new organisational framework and a secure financial backing’.313 The professionalization of research, with its strict hierarchies and dealings with political power to pay the bills, can be exemplified by—if not limited to—Prussia and Germany.314 Here lay the difference between an ascendant ‘research factory’, what might now colloquially be called ‘Big Science’,315 in Berlin and the non-institutional, still largely autodidactic Egyptology of Lexa and of Jaro himself in the coming years. In 1917, shortly after his visits to Berlin, Jaro was to perceive himself—albeit in retrospect—as mostly interested in the Egyptian language.316 The meetings with those involved the Berlin project—or rather with its protagonists—might have inclined him to philology but did not dictate it. Jaro was influenced by what he saw as high-quality research, but he was also comparatively free to choose his area of interest. The Egyptian writing system was no doubt an attraction, and its study was legitimized by the grand undertaking in Berlin. It was also the obvious necessary gateway to understanding the Egyptian language, and represented a challenge compared 312

Gertzen 2013: 206–207. Gertzen 2013: 207. 314 See also Gertzen 2019. 315 See Gertzen 2013: 207–210, explaining teamwork on the Wörterbuch as an application of principles outlined by Adolf von Harnack, ‘Vom Grossbetrieb der Wissenschaft’, Preussische Jahrbücher 119, 1905, 193–201. 316 See below, in his comments on meeting Lexa in 1917. 313

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to the Indo-European languages Jaro had hitherto studied. His own propensity toward learning languages was likely to be another contributing factor. *

*

*

The summer of 1914 brought further upheaval to Jaro’s life. On 28 June 1914 the Habsburg heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie, Princess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo. This event sparked a family tragedy, diplomatic outrage, and ultimately ‘the most terrible August in the history of the world’, as Arthur Conan Doyle put it.317 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the conflict was to snowball into the bloodshed that became known as the Great War and subsequently the First World War. Jaro’s adolescence took place in the shadow of the war. His generation had to grow up very fast. Children experienced changing roles as fathers and elder brothers were taken to the front. Mothers might have taken paid work, or extra work on top of their usual employ, and children had to take a more active hand in running a household or looking after younger siblings. Jaro did not lose his father to the trenches, and his brother was too young, but as the war continued, he had to consider the possibility of conscription, and the transformational effects that might have on his life. Jaro was fortunate in one respect. Pilsen, where he lived for most of the school year, was an industrial hub important to the armaments industry, and as such was long provided with a privileged access to foodstuffs and other supplies. For some time, it would appear many things in Jaro’s life would be business as usual. In the summers he made his trips to Berlin, and spent his school months in Pilsen, first as a houseguest of Brich, and later of a tax office clerk named Theodor Ritschl, another acquaintance of his father. However, as the war continued, even the city of Pilsen began to experience shortages. In winter 1915/1916, and again and more acutely in the winter of 1916/1917, coal and food supplies ran low, all while Pilsen was inundated with cohorts of additional 317 As stated by Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in His Last Bow, first published in September 1917 in The Strand Magazine.

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workers who had been recruited to the armaments and explosives factories, which flourished during the war.318 Jaro was often ill,319 yet he managed to attain decent grades in his final two years at the gymnasium. His illnesses, and perhaps also his myopia,320 probably spared him being enlisted in the army. It was a narrow escape, for several of his schoolmates did not even begin their final year at the gymnasium, and went to the trenches instead.321 In 1916, the Černý family had to leave their home in Station Road and moved to a suburb of Slaný known as Malá Kvíc. It is not certain what occasioned the move. Wartime inflation adversely affected the finances of all civil servants, because their salaries remained static while prices soared. There was also probably a need to restructure the household, as at some point Jaro’s grandmother, Kateřina Navrátilová, moved in with them, probably as a widow who was no longer in position to maintain her family’s small farmstead. Jaro was by then visiting a very different household to the one he knew in the pre-war years. The winter of 1916/1917 was very tough. Pilsen experienced riots, the city was jam-packed with workers and starved. With a new Emperor—Franz Josef died in 1916—there were some hopes for peace as Czech political prisoners were freed and Charles I was expected by some to put an end to the carnage. This did not happen, and the subsequent winter of discontent in Bohemia became fertile ground for separatist ideas. However, the impetus for independence came mainly from expatriate communities. In 1917, Jaro, if somewhat unwell, faced the next rite of passage: final exams, the Abitur or maturita,322 at his gymnasium; 318

Martinovský 2004: 180–186. The Pilsen City Archive, Archiv města Plzně, Hlavní katalog c. k. českého gymnasia, 1916/1917. 320 Attested officially in 1919 in a medical officer’s report, A ČNB, fonds ŽB, box 4888, 1, personal file Jaroslav Černý, medical report 28 July 1919. 321 A number of Pilsen gymnasium alumni had interesting careers. For example Eugen Businský, who later became a traveller and promoter of travel guidebooks, and Oskar Klinger, who went on to become a personal physician to Edvard Beneš and died in exile in the USA. The Pilsen City Archive, Archiv města Plzně, Hlavní katalog c. k. českého gymnasia, č. knihy 15a48, ročník 1915/1916. 322 The Czech term ‘maturita’ was then in use and has remained the equivalent of middle school finals throughout Central Europe. 319

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the conventional test of adulthood. On 2 July 1917 Jaro finished his examinations and was ready to embark on his next step, university education. He must have planned for this eventuality as by that time he had also started networking, which was to be his trademark in later life. Building successful connections with superiors and peers alike was probably a quality held by Antonín, else neither his own promotions nor the scholarship for his son would have been likely. As a gymnasium student visiting Berlin since 1914, Jaro had met with Erman and, later, Kurt Sethe.323 It might have been Erman who referred him to Lexa, a former pupil, who was then an amateur Egyptologist in Prague, but Lexa was not the only contact that Jaro cultivated in that city. Access to Lexa might have meant an introduction to Prášek, whose books Jaro had read and admired. By that time, Prášek had been presenting ancient history to the Czech public for almost a generation, and appears to have been willing to act as a mentor to someone who appeared to share his interest in the ancient Near East, as he already had been for Bedřich Hrozný. Prášek’s network ultimately served as the foundation for a generation of Czech(oslovak) Orientalists.324 Jaro and Prášek corresponded, and later met. Jaro’s budding network served him well in the summer of 1917, when an industrious and accomplished student from a good, if provincial gymnasium set off to become a university freshman in Prague. It was another change, though after several years managing a semi-independent existence in Pilsen, the move itself might not have been particularly momentous for Jaro. But the historical backdrop of his first years in Prague definitely was, as 1917 was the last year that ended with Jaro as an Austro-Hungarian citizen.

323 Jaro kept a 1918 letter from Sethe, perhaps as a reminder of his early relationship with the men of the école de Berlin, as part of his research notes, or as an enclosure inside a publication by Sethe. The letter, or rather note, is concerned with reading hieratic papyri, particularly the papyri Sallier. It is a rare surviving item of Jaro’s pre-1946 correspondence. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.148. 324 Velhartická 2016.

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1917–1923 from monarchy to republic Emperor and King Charles I, who acceded to the throne in 1916, had great respect for his predecessor Franz Josef, but also a rather different outlook on conducting the war and the future of the monarchy. He also faced expectations that could not be so easily fulfilled, and ultimately found it impossible to affect two powerful forces. Internationally, Germany was working against its Austrian ally’s attempts at negotiating a separate peace. Domestically, nationalist interests that had been simmering and were a clear and present danger to the monarchy. And were growing stronger.325 For people within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the main impact of war and the continental blockade were supply shortages, hunger, and a flood of wounded and deeply traumatized soldiers returning from all fronts. Magazines of the period contained stories about valiant warriors, but also of unhappy reunions, of wives being told that their husband had been killed in action only for him to turn up at the doorstep with life-changing injuries, usually multiple amputations, when his spouse had already found a new man. More graphic stories captured a new and terrifying aspect of the Great War: detailed coverage of more extensive and more penetrating injuries, more suffering, more combat fatigue and eventually shellshock. Psychological trauma was probably unprecedented in scale, although the First World War holds the dubious distinction of helping to develop the field of psychiatry that defined the condition.326 In that context, even imperial propaganda came across as tired, and was ridiculed. ‘Swamped with this flood of inventions emanating from the Austrian Ministry of Interior, Sergeant Flanderka had amassed an enormous backlog of unprocessed papers and answered the questionnaires in a stereotyped way: everything was in perfect order here and the loyalty of the population could be graded I.a.’327 The literary image of a hopelessly rotten monarchy 325 On Czechoslovakia, nationalist tensions, and the formation of the state, see Kovtun 2005, and Schorske 1980: 117–119. Compare also Mason 1997: 12–13 and Chapter 5. 326 Crocq and Crocq 2000.  327 Hašek 1993: 277, translated by Cecil Parrott.

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immortalized in Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk and his Fortunes in the World War was written in retrospect, and is decidedly vicious toward the Habsburg Empire, but it did capture some of the absurdities of its last years. And yet daily life had to go on. Discontent and acceptance of the status quo still balanced one another. Beyond the borders, Masaryk and Edvard Beneš were building a concept for the dissolution of the monarchy and the establishment of a Czech(oslovak) state. ‘Evidently pro-Western Beneš conceived, in the same vein as Masaryk, a modern Czech statehood that had to be won in close cooperation with Western democracies, in which he sought a model for a future Czech social reconstruction.’328 1917–1919 A university fresher in Prague In summer 1917, Jaro might have looked back on his Pilsen years with some satisfaction. He had concluded his studies with pleasing grades. The final examination of an Austro-Hungarian gymnasium was an important milestone in one’s educational curriculum, and for middle-class clerks or qualified crafts- or salespeople, the maturita was a much-desired conclusion to their years of study and a gateway to adult occupations. For many professionals this was the highest educational achievement they might have attained. For future university students, though, it was simply a necessary stepping stone preceding tertiary admission. Jaro’s maturita consisted of four quite detailed examinations that showcased the elements of his education: an exam in Czech language and literature, one in Latin language and literature with elements of Roman history, a multi-part examination of national history and geography that encompassed the whole of Austria-Hungary, and mathematics. By coincidence, or perhaps by a teacher’s design, he was questioned on Julius Zeyer, one of the few nineteenth century Bohemian literati, who enthusiastically used Egyptrelated themes. Jaro’s other examination topic was Jan Neruda, a poet, journalist and cantankerous traveller who called the Giza

328

Dejmek 2006–2008, I: 117.

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pyramids ‘erect heaps of dunderheadedness’ in one of his newspaper columns from the 1870s, though Jaro was not examined on Neruda’s newspaper articles, but on his poetry. The Latin exam consisted of analysing Tacitus and of an exposé on Roman orators and the art of rhetoric. The mathematics exam concentrated on the binomial theorem. His national history and geography exams provide insights into the scope of Austro-Hungarian education as a tool for the socialization of its imperial citizens: Jaro had to demonstrate solid knowledge of Galicia, one of the easternmost parts of the monarchy, and of the Imperial and Royal Army. That army was suffering heavy defeats that year, and it was becoming increasingly clear that the fortunes of war had turned against Austria-Hungary. The nationalist opposition led by Masaryk, Beneš, and Milan Rastislav Štefánik was working toward the idea of an independent state of Czechs and Slovaks, and Czechoslovak regiments, renegade forces in Allied service who ought against the Austrian-German-Ottoman alliance, had earned respect at Zborow, fighting as part of (White) Russian army on 1 to 2 July 1917. In the days of Jaro’s maturita, a small step had been taken on the Eastern Front toward an independent Czechoslovak state. Strengthening of nationalist sentiment was by no means unique to Austria-Hungary. It was gaining traction in every theatre of the Great War, including the neighbouring Ottoman Empire,329 though Czech nationalists had not yet fully embraced that concept in their collective imaginations. For instance, Czech or Bohemian travellers to Egypt seem to have been unaware of the rising tide of Egyptian modernism and nationalism under the British protectorate, despite parallels such as both Egyptian and Czech nationalist revivals drawing inspiration from the distant past. ‘The concept that Egypt had played a world-historical role was one of the most frequently repeated themes in the Pharaonic literature of the post-1919 period. Small wonder: for nationalist intellectuals obsessed with shaping a new image of Egypt, one that could restore the self-esteem and pride of the nation, this concept provided seemingly “objective” proof of both Egypt’s innate cultural genius and its superiority over 329

Roshwald 2001.

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other national collectives.’330 Salama Musa, for whom the ancient history of Egypt was a resource for national pride, noted ‘I became convinced of the propagandistic value of this historic approach by what I learned in Europe … about Egypt having sent the first waves of civilization to other parts of the world.’331 The ‘Pharaonism’ or ‘pharaonicism’ that resulted from these discussions did not truly become the dominant feature of modern Egyptian national identity, which was an amalgamation from different sources,332 but it still had a major role. Czech travellers usually missed the point, and often adopted a selective Western perspective on Egypt as a country in need of serious development to be facilitated by Western powers.333 The similarities with their own strivings for national identity against the dominance of a multinational empire were still lost on them. Within the Habsburg Monarchy, there was dissent and dissatisfaction, but still ‘relative quiescence’,334 from the majority of the population. Jaro spent the summer of 1917 in Slaný with his parents, but it was hardly an idyllic time. The country was most definitely at war, and while Jaro had escaped conscription there were still shortages affecting all aspects of daily life, and the past winter had been a bitter one. Jaro’s decision concerning a future career was made in the same summer of 1917, if not earlier. In formulating his plans he consulted one of his new mentors, Prášek.335 The earliest surviving letter to Prášek is dated to 29 August 1917,336 but its contents are topical and suggest preceding correspondence, as it concerns a scholarship application. Jaro was working determinedly— no doubt with his family’s approval—on finding a financially viable solution for his future in Prague. The need to find practical solutions of this nature dominated the early years of his career. Although his attitude was consistent with the expectations of 330 331 332 333

Gershoni and Jankowski 1986: 178. Musa, quoted by El Shakry 2007: 63. Gershoni and Jankowski 2004. For an outline see also Wood 1998: 177–196. Such as expressed by an admirer of Lord Cromer, Hans Mayer; see Lemmen

2013. 334 335 336

Roshwald 2001: 149. Kutnar and Marek 2009: 409–410. ANM, fonds Prášek, Correspondence. Černý to Prášek, 29 August 1917.

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young men and indeed of older children in wartime, it had less to do with Jaro putatively conceptualizing himself as a responsible young man, and more to do with the evident need to pay for food and lodgings. In August 1917, Jaro enquired after potential references for Hlávka College in Prague,337 which was (and still is) an independent charitable organization providing accommodation to select students of Prague University. This establishment was founded by the entrepreneur, architect and developer-turnedphilanthropist Josef Hlávka (1831–1908), and helped talented young people of insufficient means to live in Prague in a relative comfort. Hlávka College demanded excellent academic and athletic ability, demonstrated by proficiency in at least one foreign language and fencing. There was a competition for places in its Neo-Renaissance building in New Town, close to the River Vltava, for the college building provided more than just a clean bed. There was a kitchen that delivered hot meals and a continuous supply of fresh bread, and students had access to a gym. Given the intense interest and correspondingly high number of applicants, Jaro had to weigh the pros and cons of his situation. He sent to Prášek a detailed list of committee members that he supposed would assess an application, noting: ‘Dr Šusta’338 is most likely, he usually gives references for humanities students, and will do so this year as well. I would therefore beg you, Professor, not to take the trouble of providing your reference to support my college application. It would be too difficult, there are 160 applications and only 3 or 4 positions.’339 Perhaps we should interpret this as Jaro giving up due to the competition being too fierce, as despite his evident preparations there is no evidence in the Hlávka archive that Jaro actually applied; the letter to Prášek would suggest he eventually did not,

337

ANM, fonds Prášek, Correspondence. Černý to Prášek, 1917. Josef Šusta (1874–1945), a prominent historian at the Charles University, had a formative role in the international presentation of Czech(oslovak) historiography. He was a promoter of international cooperation in historical research, and was himself later involved in the political representation of Czechoslovakia. See Lach, 2003a, 2003b. 339 ANM, fonds Prášek, Correspondence. Černý to Prášek, 21 August 1917, translation HN. 338

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whatever his hopes might initially have been.340 He continued to consider Prášek as his mentor, though, and continued their communication up until the Orientalist’s death in 1924. Another contact mediated by Prášek proved even more successful in the long term, as Jaro obtained an introduction to František Lexa. In Jaro’s recollection almost thirty years later, this was something of a turning point: In September 1917, a nineteen-year-old student, en route through Prague, knocked on a door in Mánes street at Vinohrady, to meet a grammar school professor. He introduced himself as having an interest already of several years’ standing, in Ancient Egypt and in particular in Egyptian language and writing. He also had a card and a reference from J. V. Prášek, a renowned historian. The reference, however, was hardly necessary, as professor Lexa welcomed the other rare bird, who was also interested in Egyptian inscriptions and attempted to understand Egyptian language and lexicon.341

Lexa (1876–1960) was a grammar school mathematics teacher turned amateur—and later professional—Egyptologist.342 As the son of a respected solicitor, Lexa had a head start due to healthy family finances, but also opted to study a subject that would offer him continued financial independence early in a professional career, and so studied mathematics and physics to become a grammar school teacher immediately upon leaving university in 1899. But Lexa had other interests. At university in Prague he had attended classes in psychology and philosophy as a student of Masaryk himself, then Professor of Philosophy (already with strong sociology leanings). His inquisitiveness regarding human psychology fixated on the psychology of writing. He queried the origins of writing systems and soon became preoccupied with Egypt, considered a ‘cradle’ of one of the oldest writing systems in the world. Lexa had little interest in Egypt as a Biblical country 340 Archiv Nadání Josefa, Marie a Zdenky Hlávkových, file ‘Seznam studujících přijatých do Hlávkových studentských kolejí—Přehled všech padaných žádostí za přijetí do ústavu’ od roku 1911/12 do roku 1920/21; the name is not included on the list; personal communication, Hana Kaufnerová. 341 Lecture, Prof. František Lexa, ‘Předneseno 3.IV.1946 v Orient. Ústavě’, ANpM, Collection J. Černý. 342 On Lexa, see Verner et al. 1989.

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(which was consistent with the trajectory of Oriental Studies in Bohemia, where the search for context to the Biblical narrative was limited),343 but a deep interest in understanding its ancient mentality. Lexa’s early employment gave him the freedom to begin an independent life, and to marry, as he proposed to Irena, a daughter of a leading Prague Classicist named Jan Kvíčala, in 1901. As an established grammar school teacher he was able to indulge in his hobby, self-taught Egyptology. His first Egyptological works, translations of literary texts such as the Story of Sinuhe, were published in the annual bulletins of grammar schools in Hradec Králové and Prague, where he taught,344 and attracted the attentions of a Prague Orientalist named Rudolf Dvořák (1860–1920),345 who read these early attempts and, in Lexa’s own words ‘Professor of Oriental Studies Rudolf Dvořák, being acquainted with my translations, urged me to become a professional Egyptologist.’346 Lexa took in the advice, and after Dvořák helped him to move to a teaching post in Prague he used his connections to obtain paid leave from his employer and grants from the Ministry of Education. Lexa used the ministry funding to attend classes by Erman in Berlin,347 and Wilhelm Spiegelberg in Strasbourg.348 Erman accepted Lexa and valued his dedication to the subject, and, of course, later also supported Jaro’s contact with the Prague Egyptologist. Spiegelberg was less appreciative, holding the critical views of his Berlin contemporaries on many Egyptologists of their generation.349 Lexa was not the only budding Egyptologist in Prague, nor the only one interested in ancient oriental languages and cultures. Dvořák himself dabbled in Egyptian and there was a specialist in Akkadian, Václav Hazuka, who also taught Coptic at the Faculty of Theology.350 Most importantly, there was Nathaniel Reich at 343

Malečková 2020: 177–178. Verner et al. 1989: 21–40; Bareš 2019. 345 See also Lomová et al. 2020. 346 AAVČR, fonds František Lexa, folder 1, no. 16, notes on his biography for an anniversary speech in the 1950s. 347 Schipper 2006. 348 Gertzen 2017d and Gertzen 2018. 349 Compare Gertzen 2017a: 58. 350 Klíma 1976: 153–154; Dospěl 2003. 344

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the German ‘half’ of the university. Reich is a remarkable, if overlooked personality in Central European Egyptology. This gifted son of Rabbi Wilhelm Reich (1852–1929) was an energetic personality, a quick learner of languages, and student of Egyptologist Leo Reinisch and Papyrologist Jakob Krall at the University of Vienna.351 Reich was particularly close to Reinisch and after his Vienna years went to Strasbourg from 1907 to 1908, where his relationship with Spiegelberg was anything but cordial. His time in Strasbourg did not overlap with that of Lexa, as he left in January while Lexa came for the academic year of 1908 to 1909, but both clashed with Spiegelberg. These conflicts stemmed from diverging opinions about what ought to constitute the subject of Egyptology. Reich was fascinated with the possibility of studying an ancient mind, not ancient palaeography, and was critical of Spiegelberg’s approach: ‘S. has—as I will prove it— not even a limited understanding of the psychology of an Egyptian scribe.’352 Lexa’s outlook was similar, and not one of these three scholars was willing to admit that anyone should or could attempt to address both areas. It is also possible that their backgrounds might have been a factor. Spiegelberg may not have been so open to the opinions of a Czech such as Lexa, for example.353 Reich found more acceptance at Oxford, studying with Francis Llewellyn Griffith, who would go on to found the Griffith Institute and was a man inclined to make Egyptology an anthropologybased discipline,354 despite some limitations in understanding as far as ancient Egyptians were concerned. As Griffith remarked in 1897, The advance that has been made in recent years in the decipherment of the ancient writings of the world enables us to deal in a very matter-of-fact way with the Egyptian inscriptions. Their chief mysteries are solved, their philosophy is almost fathomed, their 351 An excellent portrait en miniature is provided in Gertzen and Oerter 2017; further data in Oerter 2012, both volumes with archive references. 352 Gertzen and Oerter 2017: 22, translated from the German. 353 With thanks to Thomas Gertzen, for pointing out that Spiegelberg might have struggled with Lexa’s Czech origin, and might have been overly critical of Reich as a fellow Jew. 354 Compare Stevenson 2015. On development of the relationship between Egyptology and anthropology, see Howley and Nyord 2018.

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general nature is understood. The story they have to tell is seldom startling to the modern mind. The world was younger when they were written. The heart of man was given to devious ways then, as now and in the days of Solomon—that we can affirm full well; but his mind was simpler: apart from knowledge of men and the conduct of affairs, the educated Egyptian had no more subtlety than a modern boy of fifteen, or an intelligent English rustic of a century ago.355

Griffith considered ancient personality and psychology to be viable areas of research, however unsatisfactory they may have appeared when he sat in judgment. After Oxford, Reich decided to pursue an habilitation, and a Privatdozent position at the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague. The divided universities were drastically torn along the nationalist lines, and Reich opted for the German ‘half’ simply on the grounds of not knowing enough Czech to be able to teach in the language, surprising in a man who had mastered a range of languages. Like Lexa, Reich had no paid position at the university, but unlike Lexa he lived in financially restricted conditions. Nonetheless, he taught both language and history classes, and others that were unusual—for instance he planned a class on history of science in ancient Egypt, or Rezeptionsgeschichte. This was never taught because the First World War broke out. Ultimately, Lexa intended to build Egyptology at the Česká universita Karlo-Ferdinandova while Reich left Prague, moving to Vienna for the 1919 to 1920 academic year, so there was never an alliance between these two future Demotists. One can only speculate what might have happened if two energetic, unconventional men with an interest in the ancient psychology of writing had been able to join forces across the university divide. While it was common for scholars from the Czech and German universities to respect one another’s professional standing and research, there was limited cooperation in practical terms.356 Reich attempted to establish himself at Vienna, and eventually found a position in the USA, although not directly in Egyptology. There was a rather awkward, and indeed downright objectionable 355 356

2000.

Griffith and Bradbury Griffith 1917: 5225–5226. On national conflicts in the context of Prague’s intellectual milieu, see Spector

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exchange of letters about his US career options between Breasted and Griffith, showing Breasted’s capacity for distasteful racist discourse (he commented on ‘unwashed … Eastern Jews’), and Griffith’s unwillingness to challenge him openly on that point. Instead, he had reassured Breasted that Reich was not in that category.357 Eventually, Breasted, despite his lapses into obnoxious language, helped Reich, and contributed, alongside Cyrus Adler, to his settling in the USA. Lexa held no official university position during the Great War, though he had the support of Dvořák. Jaro’s other mentor, Prášek, lacked a university background and was regarded by Orientalists at Prague as a respectable dilettante at best, as was shown when he attempted an habilitation in ancient history, and was rebuffed.358 Yet the irrepressible Prášek corresponded with a number of prominent scholars, such as Archibald Henry Sayce and Heinrich Schliemann, and published extensively on ancient history.359 It is indicative that Prášek was in touch with Schliemannn, who himself had struggled with professional recognition because many distinguished scholars in German academia also saw him as a dilettante. In Lexa and Prášek, Jaro gained access to the two men who contributed most to the promotion of ancient Egypt in early twentieth century Bohemia, especially insofar as its Czechspeaking population was concerned, as its germanophone residents had access to a wider publication range in their first language. Both had at least some relationship with the Prague University. Lexa was not narrow-minded where potential Egyptological allies were concerned. He cultivated an academic connection and a degree of friendship with Ludmila Matiegková, daughter of Jindřich Matiegka, a leading anthropologist of the time.360 Matiegková had attended the exceptional Minerva girls’ grammar school in Prague, was among the early cohorts of female students at the Faculty of Arts at the Czech university,361 and promoted Egypt as an area of academic and public interest. 357

Gertzen and Oerter 2017: 42–43. Navratilova 2003: 98–99. 359 Navratilova 2003: 109–111. Lexa’s father-in-law Kvíčala had advocated Prášek’s case at the university energetically, but unsuccessfully. 360 On Matiegková see Havlůjová 2005. 361 Havlůjová 2005: 69–73. 358

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Matiegková presented and successfully defended her thesis ‘The ancient Egyptian views of the soul’ (Czech title Názory starých Egypťanů o duši) at the Czech university, despite an absence of Egyptologists—the dissertation was examined by specialists in Oriental Studies, history and psychology.362 However, as she did not opt for a university career—not an easy proposition for a woman, and less so for the shy and somewhat unassuming Matiegková—her path did not yet cross with Jaro’s. There are no hints as to whether Jaro ever considered any university other than Prague when making his post-gymnasium plans. Given his family’s limited means and Europe at war, it’s probable that he had not, although he must have recognized by then that Egyptology in Prague was not yet established, whereas the tradition of research in, say, Berlin was remarkable. A German university in the German capital might also have been a rather unappealing prospect to a young man from a Czech family, though Jaro himself subsequently exhibited only limited—if any—affinity for nationalist or ethnicity-based discourses. Practical reasons, and encouragement from Lexa, who was confident that Egyptology would eventually gain a chair at the Czech university, likely presented a convincing case. Lexa might have been quite persuasive, as he was thinking in terms of building a discipline with institutional backing, and sought to gather a cohort of prospective students. And so, in autumn 1917, Jaro matriculated at the Czech university in Prague. His first term was the winter semester, and he entered a predominantly, but not exclusively, male environment. Female students were the exception, but were to become more frequent in the republican university in about a year’s time. Indeed, about two years after Jaro matriculated, one representative of the new female students (who would later enter Jaro’s story) began her studies—Marie Anna Hloušková. Marie was born on 1 October 1899, the daughter of Anna (née Slouková), a housewife, and František Hloušek, a shoemaker and head of the local fire brigade, in the town of Boskovice in what was then Austria-Hungary,363 and her life’s trajectory could 362

Havlůjová 2005: 76–78. The Moravian Regional Archive (MZA), Brno, Boskovice register of births 1894– 1906, Boskovice 178, p. 107. 363

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easily have been entirely local. Her family was not well-situated, but she had the opportunity to attend the local grammar school, which opened the possibility of later attending university. This would have been less extraordinary if she was from an affluent city family, but in a rural setting she was an exception, the first female maturant at her grammar school (gymnasium), the first local girl ever to enter a university which was, from her perspective, a less than congenial male environment. Her parents were an aspirational couple, so Marie became part of an early cohort of girls in Bohemia who had access to higher education. She was less of an exception than the first female gymnasium students who had attended schools in Prague a generation earlier, but she was still something of a special case compared to the majority of girls at that time. That she gained access to education was, alongside a certain serendipity (the headmaster agreed to her father’s request, and also sent his own daughter to what had been an all-male space at the grammar school), the result of a process of change in Czech-Austrian society, driven by the aspirations of individual middle-class families. Lower-middle class families with growing cohorts of unmarried and unemployed daughters needed to address the existential issue of female professional training, and the debate on female education ran for several decades in the second half of the nineteenth century. The need for an unmarried woman to earn her own living became a dynamic force for change,364 and Marie’s parents welcomed the idea of an educated daughter who could find a better life outside of the boundaries of her family, village, and class. Marie began studying at the Prague University in the autumn of 1919.365 She chose to pursue French alongside theoretical studies in philology and pedagogy, and this led her to further academic, and potentially career, openings. Jaro, in turn, would soon meet a number of female Egyptological colleagues, but for the record he did not meet Marie during their university years in Prague. When Jaro began his studies there was no official course in Egyptology, as there was no chair of Egyptology and not even a reader or lecturer. Jaro therefore 364

Vošahlíková 1999: 116; after Krásnohorská 1881: 17. Archive of the Charles University in Prague (AUK), Student registers, winter semester 1919/1920 and forward until the summer semester 1924; entry Marie Hloušková. 365

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chose courses in classical philology, including epigraphy. His teachers included eminent Classicists Karel Wenig and Otakar Jiráni. He also added another foreign language to his training— his choice was English. He was by that point already self-taught in basic English, but continued practicing his conversation skills with a reader of English at the Prague Czech university, a Mr Allan. Jaro’s training in Oriental languages began with Biblical Hebrew and Akkadian under the orientalist philologists Václav Hazuka and Jaroslav V. Sedláček.366 His life in Prague outside university walls was not dissimilar to what it had been in Pilsen in his last years at the gymnasium. He was again a lodger, this time with Mr František Čeloud, first in Korunní Avenue (Crown Avenue) and later, when Čeloud moved, in Mánes[ova] Street. Both locations are within the welloff district of Vinohrady, which is characterized by residential blocks with Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, and Art Nouveau façades. Both locations were also near to Lexa, who lived in Mánesova Street. Jaro could have reached his university campus in the truly baroque Clementinum College on foot in a little over forty minutes, if he chose not to use a tram to speed up parts of his journey. The trip to the university was downhill, so perhaps he opted for public transport for the uphill return. His family in Slaný was technically somewhat closer than when he still had lived in Pilsen, just a relatively short train trip away. The nucleus of family was changing. His younger brother Miloslav was soon to build his own independent life, and only his parents and maternal grandmother Kateřina lived at home. Jaro probably spent his summer vacation partly with his parents in Slaný, before embarking on a second year at university in autumn 1918. In this year, Jaro obtained—again thanks to his father—another scholarship paid from the reserves of the Financial Guard, this time of 400 crowns, but wartime inflation meant that this was a negligible sum. By the end of the war, it would have been equivalent to less than 100 EUR today. The family budget must have been quite tight.

366 Data obtained from the register of students, AUK, Faculty of Arts, for the winter semester of 1917/1918.

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Jaro’s first two years at university were dedicated not only to classical philology, but increasingly to sociology, under professors Břetislav Foustka and František Čáda, the latter of whom was one of Matiegková’s examiners.367 This direction may have been due to personal interests or the recommendation of another scholar. Jaro consulted with Lexa when choosing his courses, and Lexa had a penchant for an approach that would later be recognized as inspired by cognitive sciences, and be would likely to recommend a broad range of humanities subjects. Lexa’s approach to Egyptian civilization was built upon conversations with a wide variety of specialists—not only Egyptologists—and did not always harmonize with existing Egyptological norms. His study of magic and literature was informed by his interest in psychology at least as much as by his interest in Egyptology. Lexa was interested in phenomena from which he believed he could discern general tendencies or particular patterns comparable to, or diverging from, those of other cultures. Writing was such a phenomenon, and so was magic. Magic for Lexa was a pattern of thought, a paradigm created to understand how the world worked, and he believed he had demonstrated this view in his book Magic in Ancient Egypt, completed around the time when Jaro was working with him toward a dissertation. Lexa was interested in identifying and defining magical practice as an important and autonomous—if pervasive—part of Egyptian culture. He disagreed with several prominent specialists and notorious highprofile figures of the time, including Wallis Budge and Sigmund Freud, whose views he considered too simplistic.368 He considered Egyptian culture as close to other ‘primitive’ cultures with regard to the pervasiveness of magical thinking,369 but ‘primitiveness’ was relative as Lexa observed similar pervasiveness in the magical beliefs of Europe well into the nineteenth century. Rather than regarding belief in magic in simple evolutionary terms, diminishing with the onset of enlightenment, Lexa assumed that education was the decisive factor for the demise of 367 368 369

Havlůjová 2005: 77–78. Lexa 1923: 10–13. Lexa 1923: 9–15.

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magical beliefs, and that modern (European) education was the primary motivator. His approach to religious literature shows that he considered Egyptian culture to be dynamic, changing, and constantly reinterpreting its religious literature and systems.370 In later years, Lexa chose cultural history themes for his students in a series of Egyptological seminars. Miloslav Beránek worked on the conventions of Egyptian art at around the same time as Heinrich Schäfer,371 and Lexa’s own daughter addressed Egyptian dances. Letters between Jaro and Lexa from that period are few, as they both resided in the same city and probably met in the university library, and much must have been discussed that was not included in their correspondence. Contact between them was so regular that Lexa invited Jaro to visit his house. Indeed, Jaro may have chosen a Vinohrady address in part because Lexa lived and owned properties in the district,372 so that the student might have easy access to his mentor, and no doubt also to his mentor’s private library. The close relationship and enthusiasm Lexa demonstrated for their shared interest influenced Jaro in numerous ways. For instance, he was later open to requests by his students, including inviting them to use his personal library. In the same year, Jaro decided to broaden his skills by training in another specialist area, although his decision imposed new time constraints. Alongside his university studies, he embarked on a training course at a vocational business academy, studying accounting, business law and quality assessment, taking further classes in German and in Italian, and learning how to draft business correspondence in Czech and German. He was to receive a first-class diploma. His teachers were also impressed by a reliable attendance and the excellent presentation of documents and letters, as was clearly shown on the course certificate and in its accompanying letter.373 His neat handwriting was later to translate into neat hieroglyphic writing. Jaro must have observed that many specialist books on Egyptology were handwritten, and may have started to consider that he might soon make a contribution. 370 371 372 373

Lexa 1921. Beránek 1920, compare Schäfer 1913. On Lexa’s family standing, see Macková 2018a. A ČNB, fonds ŽB, no. 4888, 1, file Jaroslav Černý, vocational course certificate.

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He may also have realized that neat handwriting is of great benefit when producing research indexes. Lexa might have advised him about how to organize a research archive over a cup of tea in his study, with its Neo-Renaissance desk,374 but if he did so then his pupil would soon prove to have the superior skill. No records survive to explain what prompted Jaro to undertake a practical course at the business academy, but he may have recognized that he needed practical skills to pay the bills. His father’s persistent applications for scholarships from the Financial Guard had been his main source of funding, but while his parents were evidently supportive of his educational ambitions, these could not last and alternative means of support had to be sought. It is most likely that Jaro was in dire financial straits exacerbated by rising inflation. And the following year, 1919, was to bring further developments. In October, politics made another incursion into Jaro’s life. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy was disintegrating, and one of its successor states, the First Czechoslovak Republic, was declared on 28 October 1918 in Prague. No trace remains of what Jaro thought about that momentous time, or how he felt about a major shift in allegiance to being a citizen of Czechoslovakia, a new state. And indeed, a state that had inherited many problems from Austria-Hungary, not least of which was the issue of ethnic minorities. Jaro and others who identified as Czech may suddenly have been members of an ethnic majority in their new state, but that did not change the fundamental fact that Czechoslovakia was a multinational entity. The creation of the new republic from the Austro-Hungarian empire might have at first appeared surprising to its inhabitants, and historians are still exploring ‘the gap— never acknowledged by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk or Edvard Beneš—between the Czechs and Slovaks, who were comfortable in the cozy Habsburg Empire, and their nationalist politicians, who in 1918 helped place sovereign Czechoslovakia on the map.’375

374 The desk used to be part of the institutional furniture at the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague, during the days of this author’s assignment there (2001–2008), and has only recently been removed as an historical piece no longer suited for daily use. 375 Lukes 2011: 894.

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Part of making a new state is forging its identity, but the Czechoslovak identity was forged without sufficient regard for its multinational character. One of its early traits was a clear ‘divorce’ from the Habsburgs, to whom, however, officials such as Antonín were loyal until the end. ‘The Czechoslovak declaration of independence of 28 October 1918 denounced the Habsburg dynasty as “unworthy of leading our nation” and asserted a Czechoslovak duty “toward humanity and civilization to aid in bringing about its downfall and destruction” … The terms of their parting thus colored the entire history of the connection between the Habsburg dynasty and the Czechs, reducing it to three centuries of oppression.’376 Building Czechoslovakia was a daring project, as it tried to use and then rebuild Czech parochial nationalism in order to establish a Czechoslovak nation that was somewhere between a national state and a miniature multinational empire, but with the intention of running the state better than Austria-Hungary had. In 1918, Masaryk and Beneš had the ear of the Allies, links to British and American elites, and the strategic clout of an army of ‘legionaries’ stationed in Russia. The ideals of national selfdetermination for ‘Czechoslovaks’ were accepted as principles to disestablish Austria-Hungary (while at the same time the British administration denied Egyptian politicians an opportunity to discuss their country’s self-determination). ‘The Germans, Hungarians, and Poles had no reason to be satisfied’ by their position in Czechoslovakia,377 as they had their own nation states. For Slovaks, the state was a respite that soon failed to satisfy Slovak national ambitions: Slovaks now had an administrative and police force staffed mainly by Czechs,378 pending the training of the Slovak state administration, while the army and police spoke Czech rather than Slovak (or any other language). 376

Agnew 2007: 86. Rychlík 2007: 14. 378 This author’s great-grandfather was a police officer in Slovak Bratislava in the 1920s to 1930s, and his impressions of Slovakia as an interesting country with a slightly standoffish population entered the family memory. The basis for this was most likely the reserved attitude of Slovaks toward the ‘Czechos’ apparently running their country for them. When the ‘Czech’ family was expelled from Slovakia after the Munich agreement from 1938, they were ostracized after their return in Moravia as ‘Slovaks’, especially the children at school. 377

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Another difficulty rested in symbols of national identity, which drew heavily on the Czech Revivalist tradition that embraced Protestantism, the history of Bohemia, and an imaginary Slavic past but did little to please other groups with different traditions, particularly the Slovaks who were overwhelmingly Catholic.379 Jewish communities in the newly created nation trusted Masaryk for his role in defending Leopold Hilsner, a Jew who was tried and later pardoned for the murder of a nineteen-year-old Czech girl named Anežka Hrůzová, but problems of Central European antisemitism did not disappear.380 Neither were later accusations of an ‘artificial’ state entirely groundless.381 ‘The number of states that understood themselves in national terms was increasing as a product of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires: the era witnessed the end of dynastic states in Europe and the elimination of the ‘easy-going nations’ of the past in favour of what Karl Polanyi called the ‘crustacean type of nation, which crabbily distinguished between “us” and “them”.’382 How does one build an open-looking nation acceptable to its allies while avoiding the pitfalls and pratfalls of crabby nationalism? A century has passed with no clear answer. In 1918, Masaryk and his allies in Prague—‘the men of October’ —had high hopes despite evident complications; one of them being that Czech nationalism was built in part on attacking previous elites. This resulted in the problem of where to find elites, or even a sufficiently skilful corps of administrators, officials, and diplomats, who could run the new state. Masaryk needed to name a master of ceremonies at his ‘court’ in Prague Castle, to organize the protocols. The choice was remarkable, as the new master of ceremonies was a man of multiple allegiances. Jiří Stanislav Guth-Jarkovský was a multilingual individual, a translator, a promoter of international cooperation in education and sports, and a friend of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of modern Olympic Games. He had had a career in both 379

Roshwald 2001: 202–204. Their ingrained character was noted even by Masaryk’s early and charitable biographer, Cecil J. C. Street, in his 1930 laudatory biography (Street 1930). 381 This was how Czechoslovakia appeared to some British diplomats in the 1930s; Smetana 2014: 44. 382 Torpey 2018: 122. 380

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private tutoring for aristocratic families and teaching at grammar schools. He also found the ‘republican court’ and its self-creation a challenge, and his observations on the early years of representing Czechoslovakia epitomize some of these difficulties. I was to detect early that the “friendly” foreign visitors were friendly in a somewhat superficial way. They visited, enjoyed themselves, and left, considering Czechs and our new republic still rather subpar. Not that they would have ever openly articulated this view, it was veiled carefully, with very occasional slips. From their perspective, they visited and found a dual society, Czech and German. The German society was prosperous, clubbable, distinguished, and ready to involve them deftly. The Czech society was generally less affluent, somewhat clumsy in social contact and conversation, and not relaxed in communication … Czech societal illiteracy has much to answer for.383

In the lower echelons of the new republic, including the Financial Guard, Austro-Hungarian cadres had to be reemployed by Czechoslovakia without significant disruption. The change was usually in name only. Antonín became a commissioner of the Revenue Guard.384 Masaryk and Beneš initially had their inner circle of antiAustrian resistance, the ‘Maffie’,385 but gradually obtained more personnel for their government. Some people could be won over, in the hope that the new state would live up to its ethos and promote culture, education, and tolerance. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the newly-formed Czechoslovakia was by and large a democratic state, even if it didn’t succeed in fostering the sort of unity that would have made all of its citizens loyal. Forging a new national identity is no easy task, as it has to be built from within as well as projected without, and this projection included a clear location of Czechoslovakia in Western Europe.386 383

Guth-Jarkovský 1929: 288–289. The register of citizens in Slaný, February 1921 (fonds OÚ Slaný) in the suburb of Kvíček shows that Antonín Černý, his wife Anna, and her mother Kateřina Navrátilová lived at no. 69. Personal communication, State Archive (SokA) Kladno, R. Novotný. 385 Named after the Italian mafia, but in its guise of a supporter of an independent Italy. 386 Concerning the Masaryk-Beneš aspiration to present Czechoslovakia as a democratic nation and a desirable ally, see Orzoff 2009. 384

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‘The Czechs of the Bohemian lands deserved liberation from Austria according to the principle of self-determination, Beneš explained, and their innate egalitarian, rational tendencies made them ideal allies for the democratic West.’387 The state’s broader ambitions included aspirations to expand, if not in a colonial way,388 then certainly in trade and diplomatic relations that would ensure a healthy commercial balance. In 1919 there was still hope, and even euphoria. The new state concentrated on economics, diplomacy, and the self-identity of a democratic and tolerant power. The first president of the newly minted republic, Masaryk, was himself a professor of philosophy, and academics had his ear. While he was well aware of the need for diplomatic negotiators abroad to strengthen Czechoslovak positions, something that Beneš fulfilled only in part, the visual and musical arts were particularly close to Masaryk. He was aware of the power of well-targeted cultural and artistic propaganda for the new republic, even fashioning his own persona and surroundings as a projection of a new Czechoslovak culture.389 The visual impact of a ‘philosopher president’, a modern variation on philosopher kings, in elegant riding dress on his horse against the backdrop of garden landscapes, or in an impeccable morning coat in his library within his revitalized castle—with a facelift by Josip Plečnik, a student of Otto Wagner—was one aspect; one link in the chain. The capable diplomats, eloquent negotiators, persuasive business people, talented artists and erudite scholars were another, and had to be provided with sufficient opportunities. Masaryk supported the musicians Janáček, Rudolf Firkušný and Bohuslav Martinů, as he did many scholars. Although Masaryk did not always listen to Guth-Jarkovský, his acute powers of perception could not have missed the ‘societal illiteracy’, which had to be countered and neutralized if allies were to be won over and maintained. Next to supporting talented personalities and exporting Czechoslovak culture,390 one of 387

Orzoff 2009: 136. For suggested ‘colonial’ aspirations of early Czechoslovakia, compare Lemmen 2016: 610–622. 389 With thanks to Charlotta Kotik, for an enlightening outline during her talk of December 2019, in London. 390 As outlined by Orzoff 2009. 388

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Masaryk’s strategies was promoting academic knowledge and its public outreach in general—including linking knowledge to politics. Another of Masaryk’s advisors—in a remarkable transformation of allegiances—was Alois Musil, the rediscoverer of Qusayr ῾Amra and father confessor to the last imperial couple on the throne of Austria-Hungary. Musil’s position in post-war Austria would have been tenuous given his imperial links and Czech origin, for Czechs were empire wreckers from an Austrian perspective, and so it was perhaps a logical step for him to return to his country of origin after the dissolution despite the divergent attitudes he and Masaryk had to the former monarchy: ‘There is a great irony in this: during the very time when Musil was endeavouring, at two quite different levels, to save the Habsburg monarchy, Masaryk was doing his utmost to destroy it.’391 High politics and academe intertwined. Musil was a promoter of Oriental Studies and had considerable political acumen: he had noted in an Austrian context that one of the ways to succeed in obtaining effective support for scholarship was to let academe ride in the coach of politics and business. He promoted a school of business-cum-Oriental Studies in the last decade of the monarchy, and after the war transferred his allegiance and offered the idea to Masaryk. It was an advantage that Musil was wellinformed on the political and economic developments of the ‘New Orient’,392 especially the successor states of another disintegrated multinational entity, the Ottoman Empire. Musil realized a potential Czechoslovak advantage in ‘the Orient’: The Near East has, and is going to retain, a great value for us. The Orient has been the cradle of this culture of ours, the Orient has been supplied by us with numerous goods. It was the Orient, which in turn provided and will provide us with raw material. This newly resurrected Orient is in need of workers, and can offer good earnings. We have many people who would like to settle abroad, yet not knowing where and how. It is our duty to build up the connections with Orient, to arouse interest in the Orient

391

Gellner 1995: 226. As he named a series of books on the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, western Asia, and northern Africa. 392

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among ourselves, and in the Orient for us. We should help our people to settle in the Orient, be they scholars or specialists, or qualified workmen and labourers. Thus, we have to increase our imports and exports, and we shall be respected in cultural as well as economic relations. The opportunity we have now and the conditions that are open to us today are so strongly in our favour than have never been previously, nor will ever be again. The Orient, free of any foreign yoke, would like to use its natural richness. The will is strong, but the knowledge, whether theoretical or practical, is somehow missing. Help is sought. The states of the Alliance, protecting the Orient, cannot provide that help. England, France and Italy need their people for their own overseas colonies, Greece lacks them entirely, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden are themselves hiring specialists, and the USA has its own tasks on its side of the world. Germany cannot send her workers to the Orient: the Alliance would not allow that, and the Orient would not accept them. As for the newly established states, we are the best disposed to offer help. We have people to spare. Why they should feel frustrated at home, or disappear into the Occident, when they could settle in the Orient? The Alliance would support, and the Orient accept us, as we have no insidious pretences, either in politics or in religion. The time is short. The Orient awakens earlier than we do. We have to begin soon, if we do not want to be late and miss the opportunity, which Allah gives once in a century.393

Given the limited understanding of Middle Eastern societies among the Czech public, this was an optimistic position. Yet it did show Musil’s trust in a possibility of mutual respect: Despite his ambivalent attitude toward the Turks, Musil was not convinced of the inferiority of the Muslims. Nor did he advocate that the Orient should remain frozen in time or subordinated to the interests of the Austro-Hungarian regime and later those of the Czechoslovak state.394

393 Quote from Musil, ‘Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v orientě’ [Our Tasks in Oriental Studies and in the Orient]. Naše doba 27 (1919), Nos. 3–4; offprint, p. 13. For a more general context of Oriental Studies in Prague that had also shaped Musil’s positions see Malečková 2020: Chapter 4, specifically 189, 198. 394 Malečková 2020: 198.

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Musil positioned himself as a promoter of contact, exchange, and cooperation, as he understood rather well the Austrian model of support for Oriental Studies. State support was forthcoming if the discipline had wider ‘applicability’. He soon accepted the position of Professor of Arabic at Charles University,395 thus becoming a second high-profile Orientalist scholar along with the Hittitologist Hrozný. Dvořák, who had represented an earlier generation of Oriental Studies at the Czech university in Prague, passed away shortly thereafter, in 1920. The intellectual atmosphere at the university was marked by Musilian transformations of allegiances, search for a new state identity, as well as by institutional and conceptual establishment of disciplines that had more than one champion. Jaro’s teachers had markedly different approaches to Oriental studies in Czechoslovakia and their visions competed for funding and attention. For the students, this indicated implicit flexibility in building their curriculum perhaps, but also signalled instability of academic networks. Rudolf Růžička (1878–1957) was a keen philologist, and his vision for Czechoslovak Oriental Studies was strongly language focused. In his later years he opposed archaeological excavations, and was not remotely an ally of the other two scholars.396 Hrozný (1879–1952) was a Hittitologist and specialist in ancient history, renowned for his decipherment of Hittite cuneiform texts. He had obtained a doctorate in Berlin, and was probably the best philologically-trained Orientalist scholar in Prague at the time, for ancient languages at least. Importantly, Hrozný was interested in fieldwork, and saw excavations, in his case in Anatolia, as an integral part of studying the ancient world. Musil also had the experience to combine philological training with the material context. Jaro’s intellectual pursuits at the time are more easily reconstructed than his thoughts and feelings, but that reconstruction will necessarily still contain some speculative elements. This must have been the period when Jaro’s future lifelong interests in the social and economic history of ancient Egyptians started 395 How Musil rebuilt his position in Prague is well-known from his correspondence during the early 1920s; see Musil et al. 2019. 396 Correspondence of Alois Musil: see Musil et al. 2019: 74–75, 116, 136, 149, 151.

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to coalesce, and to influence his research. His classes were mostly in classical and Oriental philology—Oriental Studies complemented his classical philology and epigraphy—and included Akkadian and Arabic, along with some in the geography and history of the Middle East that were taught by both philologists and specialists with a fieldwork experience, notably Hrozný and Musil. It is Jaro’s lessons in sociology and psychology, though, that stand out in the curriculum.397 His teachers were the sociologist Břetislav Foustka and—briefly—the psychologist František Čáda. Foustka (1862–1947) became the first Professor of Sociology at the Charles University. He was a follower of Masaryk, whose work touched upon a number of sociological issues, from eugenics to alcohol abuse. His classes frequently included works by the American sociologist Franklin Henry Giddings, and indeed Foustka translated Giddings’ The Principles of Sociology (1896) into Czech, as Základy sociologie. Rozbor jevů, týkajících se associace a společenské organisace, in 1898. Giddings had edited Readings in Descriptive and Historical Sociology in 1906, essentially a reading book that introduced an analytical approach to societies of the past, and while it is not known if Foustka used it in his classes, he probably presented some of Giddings’ theoretical analyses concerning complex socio-political phenomena, including historical perspectives on the development of nations, and theories of the decline and fall of states. Foustka opposed solutions that he considered simplistic, including the idea of national decline by interbreeding or the promotion of racial purity (his main target in this critique was Arthur de Gobineau). Rather, he argued that historical theories of decline and fall should be subjected to evidence-based critiques that recognized the multifaceted character of historical and current sociological phenomena. Conventional historical phasing, such as using the concept of ‘great’ eras and ‘decline’ eras, should also be critiqued as limiting.398 This was interdisciplinary reasoning that had potential 397 List of classes AUK, Fonds Filosofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy (Faculty of Arts), Část fondu: Katalogy posluchačů FF UK, Katalog posluchačů, Řádní posluchači, inv. Nos 120, 131, 133, 136, 142, 145, 148, 150. 398 Foustka 1904: 15–19.

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resonance as an advanced theoretical framework in many historical eras. It also contrasted other—although closely related— contemporary interdisciplinary thinking, such as Flinders Petrie’s adherence to the theories of eugenics propagated by Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.399 Where Foustka advocated social reform, and an anti-alcoholic movement, Petrie would have taken social support away. Counterintuitively, Foustka was well acquainted with—and not entirely opposed to—the work of Galton,400 and was among founding members of the Czech (later Czechoslovak) Eugenic Society, though he advocated what he saw as ethical eugenics, suggesting that substantial obstacles impeded the sort of eugenics promoted by Galton. Foustka was deeply interested in impact of societal ‘degeneration’ caused by modern industrial lifestyles, not by race. Indeed, Czech eugenicists in general mostly refuted the ‘racial hygiene’ concept,401 and instead ‘bestowed greater importance on the improvement of “external conditions” than the biological selection of “carriers” of hereditary factors.’402 The complexity of eugenics is well illustrated by researchers like Foustka and his Czechoslovak contemporaries. Eventually, Foustka was also involved in the feminist debate; he opined that the ‘woman’s question’ is a matter of concern for the whole of society, which would benefit from cooperation and equality. Jaro’s open-minded attitudes toward female academics could have also stemmed from this early academic environment. Čáda was a psychologist and philosopher with a particular interest in child development and in noetics,403 and like Foustka was involved in the Czech(oslovak) Eugenic Society.404 Čáda was also an examiner of the Egyptologist Ludmila Matiegková, and of Edvard Beneš, when the future politician applied for a Privatdozent position at the Faculty of Arts, well before the First World War.405 Čáda’s only major philosophical contribution 399

Janssen 2019; Challis 2013. See Šimůnek 2015: 151–155 for an overview of Foustka’s career. 401 Šimůnek 2015: 128. There were, nonetheless, proponents of the genetic model, mostly based on the Mendelian genetics. 402 Šimůnek 2015: 134. 403 https://www.phil.muni.cz/fil/scf/komplet/cadaf.html. Accessed 3 June 2022. 404 Šimůnek 2015: 131–132. 405 Dejmek 2006–2008, I: 86. 400

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was dedicated to noetics as represented in the works of Johann Friedrich Herbart and John Stuart Mill. He was concerned with the limits of human understanding of knowledge-making processes, and promoted a ‘biotic ethics’ approach, where human life and its value—and intellectual, moral, and physical development—were to be promoted as guiding principles in the organization of both public and private life. Knowledge-making was conceptualized as probabilistic, but capable of providing indications for both the community and for individual lives. None of these themes were directly reflected in Jaro’s later works, but his attention to the private and social lives of ancient societies might have been influenced by lessons from Foustka and Čáda.406 Jaro’s choice of classes definitely hints that he was moving away from a predominantly philological model. Even Lexa (despite lacking field experience) might have shaped his move toward social and cultural history, and likely advised Jaro on his choices. This direction, together with influence of Musil and Hrozný who were both active in fieldwork, opened a perspective in which texts could not be disconnected from objects, and neither could they be separated from their makers and users. A path to history was being opened, and there was no knowing yet where it might lead. *

*

*

The Czech university had a particular standing in the social structure of the new state. It was finally the main university in Prague, and favoured by the state establishment. New developmental possibilities were opening. In 1919, Lexa became the (unpaid) Associate Professor in Egyptology, and the subject finally entered the official curriculum.407 During his efforts at establishing Egyptology, Lexa became acquainted with both Musil and Hrozný. Musil in particular had a long-standing interest in Egypt, though he could hardly be defined as an ‘Egyptologist’ as he had been there but once, when an art dealer tried to sell him an alleged Egyptian coffin.408 406 Jaro’s name is included in list of those who took classes in AUK, Faculty of Arts, Student registers, 1917–1922. 407 On the establishment of Egyptology at the Czech university, see Bareš 2019. 408 Veselá and Žďárský 2009: 89 n. 1.

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As a result of Lexa’s networking and Musil’s painstaking marketing of Oriental Studies, the budding subject of Egyptology was not isolated from other disciplines and nor were its early students, such as Jaro, who attended classes by both scholars. Jaro enrolled in Lexa’s classes immediately, and in Musil’s as soon as they became available. But before he had a chance to fully tackle the Oriental Studies curriculum he fell ill with appendicitis. In April 1919 he was hospitalized in Kladno, perhaps while visiting his parents at Slaný. He wrote to Lexa: ‘I had to undergo an appendicitis surgery, as it was high time! The surgeon told me that another day’s wait would have been fatal. Thus, I have happened to be turned out of my school duties, but most sadly from what I most looked forward to—the first Egyptological lectures.’409 Jaro convalesced smoothly. The Kladno hospital had a good record in surgery thanks in part to Bohuslav Niederle Sr. (1873– 1963), who had steadily developed the hospital’s capacity and its personnel’s surgical expertise since 1903. Whether Niederle himself operated on Jaro is unknown, as the hospital archives from that period have survived in fragments only.410 Jaro still had his meagre scholarship in the following summer, and continued his classes in Classical philology while beginning Oriental Studies with Lexa, Hrozný and Musil, but during the next long vacation he had to formulate another plan. He needed to maintain himself in Prague, and his family could no longer support him. His scholarship was to end, as the institutional structure of the former Financial Guard was being reorganized. He needed to consider his options. Jaro knew that Lexa, his unofficial mentor, was struggling to obtain a paid position as Extraordinary Professor of Egyptology at the Czech university, so that Egyptology could gain recognition and a subject-specific library assembled. In 1919, the future might have appeared less than rosy. It certainly presented challenges for Jaro, even if Egyptology was an official discipline and Lexa was instructing students in Egyptian grammar and Coptic. He needed 409

AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 27 April 1919. Fonds Niederlova okresní nemocnice Kladno 1935–1953 is later, and rather incomplete, SOkA Kladno. 410

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to finance his lifestyle in Prague and potentially to undertake further academic travel abroad, the importance of which he had come to realize as a student during trips to Berlin. Lexa might have been able to offer advice, and perhaps there was also counsel within the family, but much remains unknown from this period of Jaro’s life. Whatever the case, in July 1919, Jaro applied for a job at the Živnobanka (trade bank) in Prague, capitalizing on his vocational course. The bank was on the rise. Its new director Jaroslav Preiss was a man with strong connections to the ‘Maffie’ group of politicians that shaped the new Czechoslovak state. Preiss was keen on raising his institution’s international reputation, and was not one to vacillate. His 1919 assessment was not optimistic: Former headquarters of Czech savings banks changed into a standard Central European bank. However, it has been a provincial [emphasis by Preiss] bank … The Czech independence heralds an end of the provincial period … we have, as financiers and entrepreneurs, an international position … An economic emancipation may be achieved only by creating values, not by a rushed business chasing after immediate profit at all costs, not by business that is not shy of corruption, but by real, solid effort and honesty. We are still confronted with a significant task of dismantling the wartime demoralisation. And at the same time to bring an understanding to the Czech public, that entrepreneurship is not an activity aimed solely at money-making, but an effort contributing to new resources of earning for the entire population, resources that should also improve a social and cultural standing of the nation.411

Preiss had the ambition to overcome either putative or proven provincialism, and to establish a banking standard that would be both internationally competitive and supportive of nascent Czechoslovakian entrepreneurship. A bank of this sort would also be a formidable employer, as Jaro well knew—or had been made aware of. Again, Antonín’s social network furnished his son with a contact, a local magnate in Slaný named Baron Carlo de Liser. 411 Živnostenská banka v Praze 1869–1918, Tiskem Unie v Praze, 1919: IX, introduction by J. Preiss.

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Hence, when Jaro applied to the bank, it was with self-assurance: In a hope that a position of an assistant clerk may become available in your business, I would take the liberty to offer my services and support my application with the following: 1. I am 21 years old, born in Pilsen and free of military conscription. 2. I graduated from the 1st Pilsen gymnasium on 2 July 1917 and obtained a business academy diploma of the Czechoslovak business academy in Prague, with a first grade. 3. I am fully fluent in German in speaking and writing, and partially in French and Italian, with a passive knowledge of English. I am also fully trained in Czech and German shorthand. Although I have not yet been employed, it is my earnest wish, in case your office would look favourably on my application, to execute my work tasks to your satisfaction.

There was no hint of the awestruck student of Egyptian language who had knocked on Lexa’s door two years prior. Jaro had promptly and effectively learned the lesson of necessary compartmentalization. He wanted his studies to continue, and perhaps did not relish the prospect of being an eternal lodger. The photograph enclosed with his job application shows a young man who knew the power of appearance, whose smooth coiffure and conservative garb were designed to impress. The lesson learned from his mother was well-learnt, and was to be applied throughout his life. Baron de Liser also had something to say on the matter of this promising young man. He directed his praise to Jaro’s excellent language skills and added ‘A son of very respectable parents and himself entirely reliable and trustworthy, I am convinced I do a good thing in supporting his endeavours.’412 Jaro was offered the job, and on 15 August 1919 became a bank clerk in the Czech office of the Živnobanka. This job was to secure his lifestyle in Prague for the next eight years.

412 A ČNB, fonds ŽB, box 4888, 1, personal file J. Černý, a copy of a letter by Carlo, Baron de Liser.

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1919–1922 The student and trainee clerk Jaro apparently took a break from the university in the winter semester of 1919/1920 as he didn’t attend any classes,413 most likely to focus on his training in the bank. He started his clerical job as an untrained young man, technically after grammar school (his unfinished university studies not being relevant for the bank’s purposes) and a vocational business course that provided him with a basic knowledge of accounting and some notions of management. The Živnobanka was a large financial institution that had specific demands and workloads. The bank generated a great deal of correspondence, and Jaro’s multilingual training was gradually put to a good use, first in Czech, and later in German and Italian for international correspondence. But it was also a stimulating environment. It would be disingenuous to assume that there was only mechanical drudgery, in sorting institutional correspondence and in writing stereotyped letters. Bank clerks were evidently expected to have, or obtain and develop, languages and social skills, and the internal periodical Bulletin of the Živnobanka Staff offered a blend of information on further qualifications, training courses and classes, on cultural events, and new books as recommended reading. The Živnobanka employee was a cultured, clubbable man or woman, even if leisure time for clerks was only grudgingly accepted by the bank in the 1920s. Originally, loyalty to the institution, demonstrated by the utmost devotion, had been the most prized attribute.414 ‘Acceptance of leisure activities (including sports) of bank employees was conditioned by their more general acceptability and the social norms in the 1920s and the 1930s.’415 Sports came to be perceived as desirable in an ideal employee as a means of promoting the general fitness of the clerks. The code of conduct also emphasized respectability. A bank employee was expected ‘to abandon all 413 His scholarship last featured in the university register of students in AUK, Fonds Filosofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, Část fondu: Katalogy posluchačů FF UK, Katalog posluchačů, Řádní posluchači, letní běh 1919 [summer term 1919], inv. č. 136, and in winter term of 1919/1920 his name is missing from the register. 414 Šouša and Kahuda 2012: 50, 519–536. 415 Šouša and Kahuda 2012: 50.

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such behaviour that may impact upon the dependability and gravitas of the institution.’416 Jaro did his best to conform to the ideal. His application photograph showed a presentable young man, but his impeccable presentation concealed a degree of physical exhaustion. Dr Jiří Dědeček, a medical officer in the bank’s employ, noted anaemia and malnutrition.417 This was, after all, not yet a year after the Great War had ended, and Jaro had also undergone an appendix operation earlier that year. Otherwise, except for a degree of myopia corrected by wearing glasses, Dr Dědeček was quite satisfied, and the new clerk started work. The physical space in which the employees worked was remarkable. The Živnobanka was located in a veritable palace on the Příkopy Avenue, the main boulevard of Prague, built in the then-fashionable Neo-Renaissance style and impressively decorated. It did not survive the bank’s later expansion in the 1930s, being demolished in a modernization project that completely changed this part of the banking district in central Prague. Only photographs and its sister building on Příkopy Avenue, used by another bank near the location of the former Živnobanka, now remain. The Czech correspondence department, in which Jaro took up his first position, was located in the gallery of the great hall of the now-lost palace. The key word for such banking palaces was opulence, and they were not for general use. The gallery of the central hall was a grand if perhaps not always a wholesome place, with its gas lamps eating oxygen and adding to the warm air that hung above the hall, but it was a place of relative comfort.418 Jaro continued to lodge with František Čeloud in Vinohrady, and resumed his university classes in the spring of 1920, though now making more focused choices. By that time, František Lexa was an Associate Professor and lecturing on Egyptian and Coptic texts, including translations and commentary. Jaro also attended Arabic classes with Růžička, which were mainly dedicated to 416 AČNB, fonds ŽB ZB 3806/1, Všeobecné instrukce služební pro úředníky Živnostenské banky. 417 References in A ČNB, fonds ŽB, box 4888, 1, personal file J. Černý. 418 A photograph of the young clerk in this grand hall was appended to his personal file in the bank; fonds ŽB, box 4888, 1, personal file J. Černý.

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dialects, and studied aspects of Middle Eastern history with Alois Musil and Bedřich Hrozný. It seems that Jaro was starting to formulate a plan around the time that he began his 1920 academic term, because in January 1920 he applied to the bank for a transfer to their branch in Trieste. This appears presumptuous for a young man with only a few months’ employment, but Jaro had studied Italian privately and was confident of his knowledge.419 The application was not successful, and the Trieste branch ultimately closed as Živnobanka, no longer one of the leading banks of AustriaHungary, restructured its operations. The application raises intriguing questions about Jaro’s plans. He probably assumed that the transfer, if successful, would not be immediate, and intended to finish his studies in Prague. But then why Italy? Perhaps he had his eye on Italian collections of Egyptian antiquities, or felt that his training in Italian offered opportunities in the banking profession and potentially in Egyptology. Given his combination of professions, the latter option seems just as probable as the first, if not more so, because his research agenda would eventually came to feature Italian collections prominently. In the two following years, from early 1920 to early 1922, Jaro’s life in Prague settled into predictable regularity. Work at the bank in the morning was followed by studies at the university in the afternoon. He might have squeezed the occasional short trip to Berlin, Leipzig, or Vienna into his holidays, as he kept contact with German scholars such as Erman. He still visited his parents, to whom he was no longer a financial burden after becoming self-sufficient in Prague, thus fulfilling the obligation of a respectable man who eventually found a solution to an immediate family predicament; a key expectation for young men of that time—and one often expressed by women—was responsibility.420 A schedule of full-time work and full-time study would not appear to leave much spare time to pursue personal relationships, at least responsible ones, but appearances may be deceiving. Jaro 419 420

A ČNB, fonds ŽB, box 4888, 1, personal file J. Černý, letter dated 14 January 1920. Stránská-Absolonová 1927, II.

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found time to pursue his personal life during demanding circumstances in later years, and might have found it at university too, though he was usually discreet until a relationship had asserted itself as more serious. In some aspects of his life, though, he proved to be a dissenting young man. In 1921, Jaro decided to abandon official links to the Catholic Church.421 Although he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic, like many other Czechoslovaks he no longer felt the need to conform to the former official church of the AustroHungarian Empire. His university life introduced other philosophical perspectives, even though two of his teachers, Čáda and Musil, were devout Catholics. Musil was even a prelate. A non-denominational position evidently suited Jaro better.422 His parents’ reaction is unknown, but Jaro’s mother left Catholic Church around the time of her husband’s demise in 1930, suggesting perhaps that (Catholic) churchgoing in the family was promoted by Antonín. Even so, Jaro leaving the church does not seem to have caused a significant rift to develop in their relationship. There is a broader context to Jaro’s decision. Ever since October 1918 the relationship between the new republic and the Holy See had been rather tense, and subject to energetic discussions in the Czechoslovak parliament. It was only in 1927/1928 that a special covenant, a modus vivendi was agreed.423 It is tempting to see Jaro’s decision to distance himself from the conservative Catholic Church as being motivated in part by the political climate of his day, though it may have been a personal decision stimulated by university life broadening his horizons. Jaro appears to have been mostly devoted to his work, and he subsequently presented himself as a scholar dedicated to his œuvre at the expense of nearly everything else in life, particularly

421 A note next to his record of baptism, in the Pilsener register: Archiv Města Plzně, Matrika Plzeň I (digitalizát Plzeň 075, Porta Fontium), obvod Plzeň vnitřní město, plate 324. 422 The university student records (AUK, Faculty of Arts register 1921) show that his religious affiliation changed from ‘Catholic’ to ‘Without denomination’. 423 Its full text was later published in Sbírka zákonů a nařízení ve věcech náboženských a církevních, Praha 1929 (an electronic copy was available in late 2021 at the Charles University website: see http://spcp.prf.cuni.cz/dokument/modus.htm. Accessed 3 June 2022).

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amusement and leisure.424 Many saw only what he wished to project, and never saw his more intricate character. Jaro’s personal experiences of life in the early 1920s are lost. In 1921, Jaro’s lessons were already predominantly in Oriental Studies. Lexa continued to teach aspects of Egyptian philology and textual interpretation,425 but there were also aspects of geography and topography offered Musil, notably his lecture on ‘Ancient and New Roads of the East’. Jaro also attended further lectures in sociology with Foustka in the winter term of 1921/1922.426 Jaro’s interest in social and economic relations in antiquity, which became manifest in his plans for a dissertation, was not unique for his time, but his approach to collecting and interpreting sources that might contribute to the subject was innovative. He noted the work of Spiegelberg, which sought patterns of work organization and of ancient Egyptian daily life in royal ‘tomb robbery’ and other papyri,427 and was soon to discover that there was ‘an utter lack of systematic published work’ on the subject.428 His general plans to tackle the social and economic history of ancient Egypt had to focus on a more specific target. He must have commenced preparatory work for his dissertation in 1921, for in the April of 1922 he visited Leipzig and Berlin and consulted with Erman on a draft of his work. This was a logical continuation of his earlier visits to Berlin, and allowed him access to the textual references and expertise in the Wörterbuch files that Jaro needed to develop his thesis. His links with Berlin strengthened his developing focus on texts, and he was motivated to seek further contacts among people who were studying such material. In the early 1920s, however, German Egyptology was rather isolated. ‘German participation in scholarly meetings was resisted and often prohibited throughout the 1920s.’429 Jaro was—or chose to be—oblivious to such expectations, and did not break 424 Such as the carefully planned ‘researcher’ persona he presented in a 1929 lecture; typescript published as Černý 2007. 425 For a list of early works published as occasional papers at Lexa’s grammar school, see [Verner] 1989: 137–176. 426 AUK, Faculty of Arts register 1921. 427 A recent outline of this collection of papyri, including an analysis of the scribal practice behind the creation of these documents, see Winand 2018b. 428 AUK, fonds J. Černý, Dissertation 1922: 2. 429 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 34.

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contact, unlike Breasted, Reisner or Steindorff, who apparently took several years to rekindle their friendships and professional connections.430 Jaro, perhaps unknowingly, was following the illustrious example of Pierre Lacau, who supported Ludwig Borchardt when the German scholar returned to Egypt and to limited fieldwork, despite political difficulties for which ‘Borchardt himself bore much of the responsibility,’431 as he had exported the bust of Nefertiti in 1912 under dubious circumstances. This episode was one reason why German excavations were only allowed to resume in 1929,432 though Germany’s financial situation did not favour large-scale activities until several years after the Great War. Lacau was not particularly keen on the Germans, yet as an official in Egyptian service he sought to be impartial.433 It could be also argued that Jaro had no other option than to be lenient with his contacts in Berlin, as he required access to the Wörterbuch material, including notes and translations by Alan Gardiner,434 which were a leftover from the more cosmopolitan world of pre-war Egyptology.435 Gardiner had focused on papyri connected with an Egyptian location known as the ‘Place of Truth’,436 located in Western Thebes, which Jaro was later to address in his dissertation. The interests and methodologies of Jaro’s early Egyptological role models influenced his early concepts of what ought to constitute Egyptology, and how a scholar ought to approach the ancient culture. Erman and Gardiner were, to a large extent, men of texts, or rather men with an interest in philological analyses, textual comparisons, and the search for original versions. This interest did not always translate into an understanding of 430 Compared to earlier correspondence, see Gertzen 2010 and 2015, Thompson 2015–2018, III: 35. 431 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 36. 432 Voss 2013: 240–241. 433 At the time of writing, Pierre Lacau was the subject of ongoing research by Felix Relats Montserrat. Several contributions at the symposium Pyramids and Progress (Leuven/ Brussels, 8–10 November 2021) were dedicated to his work at the helm of the Antiquities Service, and a Lacau-themed conference took place in Paris in December 2021. 434 AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 21 June 1922. 435 About which Gardiner reminisced in My Working Years; see Gardiner 1962. 436 Gardiner’s work in Berlin gave him access to texts referring to this location; see Navratilova in press.

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a given text’s history and context.437 Editing, publishing, and thus making texts accessible was to be Gardiner’s credo, and he later articulated that he lived to ‘complete text-publications which it was my duty to complete.’438 Assessments of Egyptian history and social life were often made from a personal position, which it would be easy to critique as lacking in self-awareness were it not that these scholars hoped to enable later generations of historians to set more nuanced historical perspectives. Yet their comments suggest that the past was treated simultaneously as both the ‘other’ and yet not other at all, but rather as a mysterious neighbour to be assessed by standards and expectations that were very much their own.439 Both Erman and Gardiner yearned for imagined pristine copies of literary texts that they could subject to rigorous examination, but were instead furnished with modifications; with texts that had been transformed by generations of copyists. Erman was unhappy with the Egyptian ‘schoolboys’ to whom the texts had fallen ‘victim’.440 The perceived moral failures of Egyptians also upset him. Although he generally thought Egyptian morality to be ‘healthy’,441 the workmen (who were to intrigue Jaro) were a ‘proletariat’ with ‘gloomy, turbid’ morals. This comment was occasioned by references to workmen who attacked the wives of their colleagues. Eventually, the Turin Erotic papyrus was declared full of ‘obscenest caricatures’ and its alleged presence in a tomb (it was assumed to have come from a collection of funerary equipment) signalled to Erman a deep decline in Egyptian civilization during the Ramesside period.442 Erman was nonetheless taken with Egyptian literature, particularly with the ‘vivacity and power of expression, the naiveté of simile, the play of thoughts … all these have something fresh and youthful about them.’443

437 438 439 440 441 442 443

Parkinson 2002: 12–14. Gardiner 1962: 58. Erman and Ranke 1922: 4. Erman 1927: xliii–xliv. ‘Gesund’, Erman and Ranke 1922: 181. Erman and Ranke 1922: 182. Erman 1927: 1.

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Gardiner expressed himself on the literary merit—and by extension on the civilizational value—of Egyptian texts on various occasions. For instance, he regarded the Story of Sinuhe as follows: It will not be seriously contended that the story is one of those world-masterpieces of literary skill which stand out for all time as the perfect expression of some side of universal human experience or feeling. None the less I maintain that for us too the story of Sinuhe is and must remain a classic. It is a classic because it marks a definite stage in the history of the world’s literature; and it is a classic because it displays with inimitable directness the mixed naiveté and subtility of old Egyptian character, its directness of vision, its pomposity, its reverence and its humour.444

Sinuhe after all resonated with Gardiner’s thoughts about literature and Egypt; like Erman he was willing to admit that directness and vivacity of description were literary values. Eventually, ‘he would admit that Sinuhe was his own “favourite” among Egyptian writings … as if he initially felt it inappropriate to admit that he admired the works of a culture that was generally regarded as inferior to those studied by more established academic disciplines.’445 Yet at other times he, like Erman, was most definitely unwilling to admit the directness and vivacity of Egyptian love poetry.446 The ambiguity of popular views on Egypt, that land of decadence and land of civilization, was replicated in academia. After all, it was only later, in 1953, that L. P. Hartley noted: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,’ and even decades later it is still not universally accepted that the past should not routinely be judged by the standards of the present. Because he saw texts as the direct route to the past, and as privileged material that afforded Egyptology the scholarly status of a philological discipline,447 Erman recommended that Jaro contact Gardiner, and use Gardiner’s translations in his forthcoming dissertation. Erman encouraged Jaro to have a very succinct 444 445 446 447

Gardiner 1916: 164, see also Parkinson 2009: 237–238. Parkinson 2009: 238. See Landgráfová and Navratilova 2009: 27. Gertzen 2013, regarding the philological paradigm.

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dissertation topic; it did not seem feasible to write the economic and social history of Egypt as the grand synthesis that had originally interested Jaro. He needed to focus on one corpus of material, which it would be possible to contextualize. The works of Spiegelberg largely focused on the workmen of Western Thebes, and these contained a wealth of social and economic history data, so Jaro used Spiegelberg as his other major lead. Jaro duly moved from the idea of a comprehensive account of economic and social history to following the daily life of one group of people, who Spiegelberg described as workers in the necropolis of Western Thebes. Texts were the main access route. Both Spiegelberg and Jaro deliberated on where and how to localize this population in what was known about the West Theban landscape and society. One option was to focus on the term ‘Place of Truth’. There was preceding literature on the subject, which suggested a West Theban location. Jaro’s dissertation began to take shape from excerpts on the organization, administration, and daily life of workmen in Western Thebes, as revealed mainly in papyri. The emphasis would be on administrative material, and the importance of texts in the Turin collection, mediated by Gardiner’s set of transcriptions for the Wörterbuch and lent to Jaro, was becoming increasingly evident. To judge from his correspondence, Jaro’s main preoccupation in 1922 was his dissertation. It was mainly to be based on texts, but it also encompassed contextual interpretations including the historical topography of the region being studied. Jaro focused on a collection of texts from the Berlin Wörterbuch pool and from Spiegelberg’s publications that contained evidence on West Theban workmen. Spiegelberg’s work particularly influenced his research choices and shaped his methodology: He restricted the texts to papyri from Western Thebes in the later New Kingdom (hence his choice of dates, from 1300 to 1000 BC) that concerned professional groups of people from particular locations. Jaro was examined by viva voce in Oriental Studies and in philosophy in June and December 1922, respectively. His dissertation, the ‘Life of Workmen in Thebes’, was presented—somewhat inaccurately—as a daring synthetis. Even so, it included a number of observations that have withstood changing interpretations, or that have served as starting points for later analyses, such as the

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status of workmen on the West Bank, the administrative apparatus supervised directly by the highest Theban and state officials, the terminologies used for different categories of workers, and the group smd.t. The examiners, a Hittitologist and Arabist, were generally favourable, although Musil, being a man of exacting opinions, noted fastidiously that the dissertation was more a matter of a promise than a finished work. Nonetheless, he appreciated its philological endeavours, and the hypotheses that Jaro presented on life in an ancient Egyptian city, because the workmen were still defined as being active in Western Thebes in general rather than in their own settlement. Spiegelberg influence and the promise it held was noted, though, and among Jaro’s teachers it was mainly Musil who realized that the young man was starting to think in terms of a larger research plan, of which his dissertation was but a precursor. His defence (or rather two) ultimately went well, and Jaro sent out invitations to his December graduation ceremony. The invitation was in German,448 which was an interesting gesture given his multilingual circle of acquaintances, but since he probably formally invited his more distant but illustrious German mentors, the choice of language made pragmatic sense: his Czech colleagues could invariably read German anyway. Yet the choice also shows that Jaro was not particularly concerned about demonstrating his ‘Czechness’, in an atmosphere that was still taut with nationalist assertions. Some Czechs were vehement regarding the use of national symbols and the Czech language, especially in public spaces. Every occasion of a new Czechoslovak national holiday, such as Proclamation Day on 28 October, was a cause of much tension. Although Masaryk reassured German minorities and rejected ‘forcible “denationalisation”,’ his assurances ‘appear to have carried little weight with the country’s Germans.’449 But Jaro was not anxious about showcasing his national allegiance. There were more pressing issues at hand. After defending his dissertation, Jaro’s contact with Egyptian inscribed artefacts came via frequent visits to European museums with Egyptian collections, and to the Museo Egizio in Turin in 448 A copy is preserved in the ANpM, and a digital copy in the archive of Miloslav Černý’s family. 449 Wingfield 2007: 173.

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particular, initially in 1923. He had no academic position, and continued to support himself as a bank clerk. But it was in this period that he probably began his system of ‘notebooks’, of texts that he identified as relating to Western Thebes. Materially speaking, these notebooks are like footprints on a trail of Jaro’s travels, as he bought them in most of the destinations he visited. Stationers in Prague, and later Cairo, Paris, London, and Oxford were among regular suppliers.450 Jaro had started collecting both hieroglyphic texts, later to develop into the Répertoire onomastique de Deir el-Médineh,451 and hieratic material. It was specified in the Répertoire that the hieroglyphic data was focused on the names, affiliations, and genealogies of the workmen, and was not meant to be a comprehensive edition of all hieroglyphic texts from the site, but its initial impetus was quite broad. The ‘means to an end’ character of the collection was repeatedly emphasized in the later Répertoire preface, and probably stemmed from these early considerations. Jaro’s first collections were made from published sources, and then museums. Objects related to the Egyptian terms s.t mꜢꜥ.t, and pꜢ ḫr became of major interest, and he knew from Spiegelberg that the collection in Turin was rich in finds from the nineteenth century and—particularly for Western Thebes—from Ernesto Schiaparelli’s recent expedition to Deir el-Medina. The year of 1922 was to prove significant for Oriental Studies and Egyptology in Czechoslovakia. In January, a new diplomat named Cyrill Dušek was despatched to Egypt with the task of establishing either a general consulate or a legation, with himself as the minister plenipotentiary. Dušek arrived to Cairo on the eve of Egypt’s renegotiation of its relationship with the United Kingdom. 450 Notebooks with stationers’ brands from various locations are included in Griffith Institute Archive, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 17. 451 See Černý et al. 1949: v–vii. The idea of a comprehensive collection of hieroglyphic texts from this site first materialized in a collection of texts from the Deir el-Medina tombs in 1926, for which see the Griffith Institute Archive, Collection Černý, Notebook Černý Mss. 17.59, entitled ‘Deir el-Medîna tombs, description and texts’. Tombs were listed alongside copies of texts, most copied in 1926 and collated from 1927 to 1928. Most of the material was copied in situ with additional records made at the Museo Egizio in Turin. It also included references to Gardiner and Weigall 1913 and Engelbach 1924.

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Dušek was one of the 1918 ‘Men of October’ and was close to Masaryk’s minister for foreign affairs, Beneš.452 Being a friend of Beneš in the early 1920s was still helpful in context of international relations, particularly within the sphere of the British Imperial power, although there were also tensions. The head of Central European Department at the Foreign Office, Sir Miles Lampson (the future High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan), received a following note from Sir George Clerk, the British minister to Czechoslovakia: The whole lot, Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Jugos, Rumanians, should be put in a bag and shaken up, and then handed over to a decent Briton to administer … Czecholand today may not seem worth more than a casual, though perfectly friendly nod when we sit next to it at luncheon … but one day it is, or should be, our best bridge into Russia, and even now it is the lynch-pin of central Europe … Little though I like [Beneš] as a man and a brother, I am sorry to see him unnecessarily rubbed up the wrong way.453

Beneš—and Dušek—were in turn critical of British imperial policies. Beneš had made anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist comments, especially in his early years as a journalist,454 focusing particularly on India and Egypt, and emphasizing the evident growth of national revivalism and nationalist forces precisely because they were provoked by imperial domination. Both men were more careful in their new careers as diplomats, although Dušek’s wife Pavla Smolíková was not, and made constant puns on the ‘ungainly’ British in Egypt in her missives from Cairo to her family back home.455 As Beneš’s man, Dušek was the first Czechosloak envoy to Switzerland after the Republic was established and commanded respect in the nascent diplomatic circles of Czechoslovakia. A lawyer by training, he built and developed a small research library which contained works by major diplomats, such as Ernest Satow, and Dušek hoped it would become the seed of a public collection for diplomatic training—he was well aware of 452 453 454 455

Dejmek 2006–2008: passim. Quoted by Orzoff 2009: 144; Schmidt-Hartmann 1991: 99, 101. Dejmek 2006–2008, I: 43–46. Macková 2014b: 146–148, and 172.

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his own and his new colleagues’ limitations, so acutely observed by Guth-Jarkovský. Dušek’s nomination for a post in Egypt seemed to signal Czechoslovak interest in the sultanate, although the actual process of establishing a legation proved to be very different, mainly due to insufficient finances.456 In Prague, meanwhile, Masaryk agreed to propositions promoted by Musil and identified the means of financially supporting an institution that was to be named the Oriental Institute. It was formally established by an act of the Czechoslovak parliament (no. 27/coll.) on 25 January 1922. The Oriental Institute, as conceptualized by Musil and his supporters, was to cover aspects of research as well as cultural and economic diplomacy. This task was to be achieved by of two ‘departments’ or ‘schools’—research and business—to be established over time. It was endowed in no small part by the Masaryk Foundation, and with financial backing from the Ministries of Education and International Trade, mirroring the dual role it was expected to play.457 Jaro’s nascent career developed against the backdrop of promising political and diplomatic developments, which signalled that Czechoslovakia intended to enter the ‘Great Game’ in the Eastern Mediterranean. His own interests were those of a philologically talented young man with a good Austro-Hungarian upbringing, who was polite and focused and was raised to be self-sufficient, and who had decided to follow a dual professional path. Jaro’s pre-dissertation trip to Germany is interesting not only because of its work-related aspects. From the postcards sent to to Prášek, with whom he remained in regular contact, and to Lexa, it transpired he was not travelling alone. The appended greeting on a postcard from Leipzig supplies the name of his companion, a Miss Slezáková.458 This Miss Slezáková was most probably a young lady known from the Živnobanka employee records as Cecilie Slezáková, born in 1899, and an employee of the bank since 1915.459 She began 456 457 458 459

Macková 2014b: 82–92. Compare Macková 2014a, Macková 2016. AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 15. 4. 1922. Her personal file ACNB, fonds ZB, 0434/I folder 12, personal file C. Slezáková.

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her career as a sixteen-year-old hired to be an assistant clerk. During the war years she had left Prague to accept a post in the city of Jihlava/Iglau, but had returned in 1917. Her career at the bank is reflected in her salary, as she began with 780 crowns, including a housing allowance, while in 1919, when Jaro was only starting his job, she was already earning 3120 crowns annually. Even given wartime inflation she was an independent young woman with her own career, who fitted the image of Czech womanhood being promoted by Masaryk and period educationalists. The early years of the Czechoslovak republic offered a normative vision: ‘No sex will have any privileges, based on whether one was born as one or the other, likewise, no sex is subjugated to the other … Children should be educated from the outset so that they, be it boys or girls, are independent.’460 Czechoslovak women were—at least nominally—to become strong, responsible citizens, true partners in life but not appendages to their male companions.461 Jaro’s first documented romantic interest appears to have fulfilled these expectations, being a working woman with professional capabilities. No photographs of Cecilie have yet been discovered, but Jaro presented their relationship as utterly serious. He named Miss Slezáková as his fiancée, and introduced her officially to Prášek. Perhaps they spent some leisure time together as well, although the very concept of leisure time for bank clerks was rather frowned upon, and Jaro’s time was limited due to his studies. Cecilie was evidently willing to join him on his travels, and they may have entertained an idea of a life together, but if so Jaro was taciturn in correspondence with his academic mentors, and letters to his parents from this time are unaccounted for. Although evidence of these Prague years is limited, we may extrapolate and speculate about young Jaro to some extent. Years 460

Stránská Absolonová 1927: 1147. Masaryk promoted equality, while mainstream educational books, such as Stránská-Absolonová 1927: 1375–1377, were keen to emphasize the multivalent aspects of a woman’s responsibility. It was recognized that they would perform double duty, at work and at home, but it was assumed that women would routinely master this workload due to the specific qualities of their gender. Some authors were critical of that view, including Olga Stránská-Absolonová herself in her specialist publications; see StránskáAbsolonová 1920. 461

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later, he allegedly said to a colleague that had he not decided to become an Egyptologist, he would have enjoyed a career in dancing.462 He liked to dress well, as his photos show. It was probably during his Prague University years that he began to smoke, which was fashionable, with Egyptian cigarettes being particularly popular.463 The cigarette packets and accompanying advertising of the period used a ‘cultural hodgepodge of ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Arab East,’464 and Czechoslovak films throughout the interwar period show that smoking ‘Egyptians’ was the trademark of a sophisticated person. Christian, the eponymous and duplicitous protagonist of one such film, hinted in his flirtatious conversations with ladies about his adventurous travels to Cairo (conveniently mixed with Alexandria to create a fantasy landscape of monuments, nightingales, and the sea) and fragrant Egyptian smoke.465 His scenes were set in a stylish but fictitious Prague venue, the Orient Bar. Prague had a number of stylish bars and cafés during the 1920s and 1930s, and one can only speculate whether Jaro and Cecilie ever patronized them, dressed in the new fashions of the flapper age. The fashion in its most stylish form was unforgiving; only the most svelte figures could pass the strict expectations created by flounced dresses with waistlines at the hips, embroidered stockings, and elegant ballroom dancing shoes. In 1921, the Palác Lucerna, an entertainment complex owned by the Havel family, opened in central Prague, ten minutes’ walk from the bank, but if Jaro ever visited he never suggested it in correspondence. His letters give the impression of someone fully dedicated to Egyptological studies, rarely even mentioning that he earned his keep through gainful employment. The early 1920s were crucial years for him professionally, and he came across as extremely focused, yet he had allowed some romance in his life, 462 This is unproven and comes from hearsay at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. Anthony Donohue was apparently the member to whom Jaro confided his old dream. 463 Shechter 2006: 56–62. 464 Shechter 2006: 62. 465 Christian (Czech: Kristián), a 1939 Czech screwball comedy directed by Martin Frič, based on a play by the French playwright Yvan Noé (1895–1963); see Vašák et al. 2005.

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and, if ‘fiancée’ is to be taken at face value, had some idea of settling into married life with Cecilie. A wish to settle would have been only proper for a young man, although at twentythree Jaro was still relatively young to contemplate marriage; his career was not sufficiently advanced.466 But he was not too young to experience attraction and to develop his own sexuality, even if this was not something to be discussed in correspondence. His parents’ views on the relationship remain unknown, but they would certainly have mattered, especially as his association with Cecilie was definitely not clandestine. They travelled and made social calls together, and must have been recognized as a couple. Such travels together might have even been viewed as risqué, as a contemporary book on good manners by Masaryk’s master of ceremonies Guth-Jarkovský suggested that ‘opportunity makes the thief,’ and the ‘thievery’ involved was obviously sexual.467 Societal views were restrictive: ‘It is recommended to parents and guardians to insist on a degree of supervision, particularly offering more protection to the young woman, up until the wedding.’468 But a slightly unconventional attitude might have suited both Jaro and Cecilie, as two working people with career plans who sought to distance themselves from conservative attitudes. Some societal and personal expectations were nevertheless more difficult to ignore. Many considerations were recommended before an engagement could proceed to marriage banns: ‘Even for the most harmonious soulmates, it is not recommended to enter marriage without a proper financial consideration.’469 But if unconventional attitudes had some appeal, these ‘proper financial considerations’ for an indistinct future might have seemed unappealing to Jaro and Cecilie. By the end of 1922, it seems that Jaro was balancing his profession and his hobby, with his private life mostly hidden from view. Egyptology in Prague was still regarded as a dedicated pursuit rather than a career with an institutional structure, so Jaro was 466 Social norms of the period focused on the ability of a man to support his family to an acceptable standard; see Kožmínová 1923. 467 As exemplified by Guth-Jarkovský 2000: 175–176. Earlier unabridged editions were published in 1925 and 1929. 468 Stránská-Absolonová 1927: 1293. 469 Stránská-Absolonová 1927: 1292.

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not disqualified by lacking a university position. In Berlin his career path would perhaps not have been regarded as acceptable, but in Prague, with the Czech university remaking itself after the war and within the parameters of ‘building’ a new state, it was socially and academically permissible. The discipline of Egyptology was still being introduced, and the prerequisites for its further academic development—and more generally its presence in the public discourse of Czechoslovakia—were being established. His teacher Lexa was an essentially unpaid privatdozent until 1922, when he became an ‘Extraordinary’ Professor of Egyptology at the Charles University: not yet the holder of an established chair, but in possession of a title and the promise of a salary. Jaro had earned the respect of his colleagues at the bank, who composed a tabula gratulatoria when he was awarded his doctoral degree on 20 December 1922.470 A letter concludes by praising Jaro’s dedication to his work: ‘For in work is the reason and aim in existence’.471 A photograph, possibly taken in his office, shows Jaro with four of his colleagues, two women and two men, in a busy setting.472 Jaro seems to have been regarded as a dedicated, serious man—a good son to his respectable parents—which he articulated in a most proper way, and in turn received the accolades due such a diligent young citizen. Yet he must also have been well-liked: respectable but boring characters do not usually receive congratulations from a long list of colleagues.

The concept of an historical study: dissertation in 1922 and developing a personal research archive Jaro’s research goals had started to coalesce in the early 1902s, and he began to build a strategy in order to achieve them. His dissertation offers something of a programmatic statement, both in the scope of his original research and in his approach to Egyptian material. 470

ANpM, Černý Collection; tabula gratulatoria 1922. Onderka 2019: 33. 472 ANpM, digital Černý Collection; private archive of the Černý family. An unnumbered photograph showing an office with Jaro and a colleague seated, and with three co-workers standing. 471

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The dissertation consisted of two parts,473 preceded by an introduction and a list of references that included publications of papyri, ostraca, and varia. This contained most of the major editions of papyri and ostraca that he used in the dissertation, with analytical studies by Spiegelberg and the 1920 publication on the tomb robbery papyri by Thomas Eric Peet. The first part was an introduction to different aspects of the work and daily lives of professional groups defined as ḥmw.w or rmṯ kd.t, but not yet as sḏm ꜥš n.t s.t mꜢꜥ.t in particular. This was a change from Jaro’s original concept of an economic and social history, which Erman had dissuaded him from undertaking. As a result, Jaro did not offer a framework for economic relations and social transactions, but rather select details as they emerged in the textual corpus he had been using. Following the work of Spiegelberg, Jaro outlined that official titles and work roles, as well as a personal prosopography of individuals, might be reconstructed using papyri and other local finds such as graffiti. Charting all the inhabitants of a community and closely observing their conduct was a daring proposition, and one that had an anthropological flavour. Jaro preferred a rather clearly defined focus on a ‘limited space and time’,474 and specifically on the Theban workmen who appeared to be accessible in a relatively large number of documents. It is evident that texts played a dominant role when he compiled his evidence, but location was equally important as the dissertation proper opens with a description of the topography and a schematic map of Western Thebes, with suggested localizations for frequently used terms such as pꜢ ḫr. This was followed by considerations on prosopography and administration. Although he was bound to base his observations on the published works of others, notably those of Spiegelberg, and on available maps, he tried to visualize the area and obtain a spatial understanding of the hills, paths and locations where the workmen lived. Jaro also agreed with earlier studies which suggested that two toponyms frequently related to 473 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). AUK, Faculty of Arts, dissertations, no.1148. 474 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, p. 1.

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the workmen in Western Thebes, s.t mꜢꜥ.t and pꜢ ḫr, described the same location.475 Here his study became part of a larger group of analyses on toponyms and titles relating to Western Thebes. *

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Because it is largely thanks to Jaro that Deir el-Medina is now regarded as the confirmed location of the workmen’s village in Western Thebes, it is worth considering the long development of this identification, and how researchers reached an understanding of who the members of this community actually were.476 His dissertation did not yet fully equate the community of workmen with the settlement of Deir el-Medina. To local inhabitants in the early years of Egyptology it was evident that there was a historical site close to a Ptolemaic temple in a West Theban desert valley (later identified as a temple to Hathor). Some objects related to the site were in circulation before and alongside excavations, the antiquities trade in all its forms being one part of the complex relationship between the inhabitants of the West Bank and the past.477 Later, ‘in the 1880s, the goal of Gaston Maspero’s work at Deir el-Medina was primarily to stop plundering activities by “diplomats-adventurers” and various other smugglers.’478 The residents of Western Thebes were also aware of graffiti in the Theban mountains, as a man with local knowledge, Idris Awad, later proved to be an indispensable guide for Spiegelberg.479 To early travellers from outside Egypt, the site was known first for its Ptolemaic temple of Hathor. In the 1820s, Edward William Lane noted ‘In the Valley of the Temple of Athor (sic), and near the spot where that temple is situated, are numerous tombs of crude brick, and in the acclivity on the right (or northwest) are several grottoes of the early ages of the Eighteenth Dynasty.’480 These tombs caught the eye of the artist John Gardner 475 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, pp. 4–6. 476 An extended analysis of the process in included is Navratilova in press. 477 Spek 2011. 478 Gobeil 2015: 3. 479 Spiegelberg 1921: vii–viii. 480 Lane 2000: 358.

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Wilkinson, who referred to a tomb containing a king-list, most likely the tomb of Inherkhau (which is, like many of its neighbours, Ramesside).481 Most nineteenth century guidebooks noted the temple, but not the tombs. A clear change came at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century with the first systematic excavations by Maspero, documentation by Eduardo Toda, and finally excavations by Ernesto Schiaparelli.482 Updated knowledge was swiftly reflected in a guidebook penned by Arthur Weigall, who, after mentioning the temple, also noted ‘other remains at Dêr el Medineh. To the south of the temple there are remains of a town which dates from Pharaonic times. At the time of writing, it has not been completely excavated; but sufficient has been found to indicate that it was a settlement of priests and necropolis workers. Behind these ruins there are several tombs.’483 Between 1910, when Weigall published his guidebook, and 1921, when Bernard Bruyère was assigned to work on the site and soon began to steer the work toward systematic exploration, several other expeditions investigated the large archaeological surface of the site, including Émile Baraize, Georg Möller, and several specialists in the employ of the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO), which took over in 1914 with a more long-term prospect.484 The name ‘Place of Truth’ had been encountered on numerous objects in Egyptian collections outside Egypt throughout the nineteenth century. Probably the first to comment on the term was Jean-François Champollion, who suggested it was a community connected with the Egyptian judiciary. Maspero in 1880 and 1882 collected a substantial body of material in Italian museums which he connected to Western Thebes and its necropoleis, more particularly Deir el-Medina and Dra Abu el-Nagga, and he himself excavated in the area of Deir el-Medina in 1883. He noted a number of titles and epithets, including sḏm ꜥš m s.t mꜢꜥ.t, and considered that they belonged to servants of the necropolis 481 482 483 484

Wilkinson 1847: 362 –364. References plus outline in Gobeil 2015. See also Toda 1887; Schiaparelli 1923. Weigall 1910: 279. Gobeil 2015.

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who were part of a religious confraternity, which in turn informed Weigall’s guidebook. He also considered the terms s.t mꜢꜥ.t and pꜢ ḫr, appearing in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts respectively, to be closely linked. Heinrich Brugsch likewise promoted the interpretation of a religious confraternity.485 In 1913, Gardiner, examining hieratic material, considered the option that these people might have been linked to the actual building of royal tombs,486 and tentatively took the step of linking the hieratic material concerned with the workmen in royal tombs to sḏm ꜥš, emphasizing a connection between sḏm ꜥš and Deir el-Medina. In 1917, Henri Gauthier, without accepting Gardiner’s suggestion, sustained the thesis of a religious confraternity,487 although he allowed that the confraternity might also have included workmen or artisans. Spiegelberg took another approach. From the 1890s to the 1920s he had developed his research agenda of systematically recording all written material concerned with the workmen of Western Thebes. While he did not initially speculate on whether they were part of an organized community, or where they lived, he had noticed that Western Thebes produced a significant quantity of documents about people who appeared to have been situated locally and who included craftsmen among them. He began analysing papyri and ostraca that hinted at the existence of a community closely connected to the tombs, including royal tombs, with the Ramesside tomb robberies papyri being a pertinent example. He noted there was an administrative organization, and a settlement of some sort where the daily life of the workmen must have taken place. He connected the workmen to West Theban desert locations, and considered graffiti left in mountain wadis to be potential material for a study on those Theban workmen. These lines of enquiry were not synthesized until the 1920s, though Spiegelberg was close to doing so, when suggestions linking Deir el-Medina and tomb workers were made by Gardiner and Weigall.

485 Brugsch provided an early collection of s.t mꜢꜥ.t and related titles; see Brugsch 1879: 1276–1278. 486 Suggested by Gardiner e.g., in 1913b: 16. 487 The discussion was summarized in Gauthier 1917.

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Jaro made a step toward such a synthesis in his 1922 dissertation, though a tentative one, and set about identifying texts related to the workmen for future projects. In the meantime, the IFAO was drawing up excavation plans in Western Thebes that included the site of Deir el-Medina. When Bruyère, who had architectural training,488 took over the excavations in 1921 he formed a plan to change the process of selective excavation into a systematic enterprise that would clear both the necropolis and the settlement. *

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Jaro’s dissertation was a marker along the way to developing a larger research project, which proved to be a comprehensive preoccupation that shaped his future research interests. Seven years later, in a public lecture, he stated that he lacked an autopsy of the site of Deir el-Medina, but in 1922 his motivation was resource collection, and that was mainly in ‘the shadow of texts’.489 His larger agenda, though, did not assume the primacy of texts over artefacts, but sought to portray the life and organization of an Egyptian community. Egyptology to Jaro was not an aide to Biblical exegesis,490 and nor was it a discipline enamoured by the ‘wondrous curiosities’ of Egyptian art, nor even an interest in racial history—as it was described by Georg Steindorff in his inaugural speech as Chancellor of the University in Leipzig in 1923:491 a speech which serves as a poignant reminder of that Egyptologist’s struggle to ‘belong’ in Protestant German and even —for a time—völkisch academe.492 In terms of style, Jaro’s narrative of life and work at the necropolis was a series of essays with select references, not yet a systematic analysis of the available sources followed by a synthesis. He also had a tendency to enliven the narrative with short anecdotal excursuses on individual members of the community, especially if there was a problematic behaviour such as that by 488

Gobeil 2015. As later put by Barry Kemp, as a general description of the Egyptological paradigm: Kemp 1984. 490 German Egyptology also stood somewhat outside debates regarding Biblical historicity: Gertzen 2017a: 51. 491 Steindorff 1922; Häuser 2009: 1385–1395. 492 Gertzen 2016. 489

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the foreman Paneb, now infamous in Egyptology as an adulterer and molester. Generally speaking, Jaro was interpreting freely, and on occasion without further scrutiny of the translations his secondary sources offered. Both his critical apparatus and comparative material were, at that time, limited. Following his chapters on the workmen, their overseers, and their close if partly unspecified relationship to the vizier responsible for Western Thebes, Jaro examined workers’ property and households, admitting incomplete knowledge and interpreting a number of Egyptian words.493 His chapters, entitled ‘Organisation of the Necropolis and its Workmen’, ‘Workers’ Property and Family’, ‘Work and Leisure’, ‘Wages and Nourishment’, and ‘Religion and Morality’, looked to be an ambitious project that detailed ancient Egyptian daily life, but were in fact short cameos of the workmen’s lives, with details inferred from a circumscribed textual corpus and with extended excursuses on individual sources. His interpretations occasionally reflected modern understandings rather than ancient social nuances, such as when connubial relationships were described as either ‘actually married or just common-law’, a modern distinction that may, but need not, apply in an ancient context.494 His own situation, as a single man but with a romantic attachment constrained by the realities of practicality, might have been on his mind as he contemplated the marital histories of ancient Egyptians. Jaro’s original Czech expression for ‘common law’ literally meant ‘wild marriage’, probably copying Spiegelberg’s term wilde Ehe.495 The status of women was a jigsaw puzzle of details: their titles, marital statuses, and the role of menstruation,496 which was also discussed in Spiegelberg’s study.497 On the whole, the dissertation was an ambitious project of limited means, as Jaro admitted in his preface,498 but what 493 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, p. 12. 494 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, p. 14. 495 Spiegelberg 1895: 10. 496 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, p. 16. 497 Spiegelberg 1895: 5. 498 J. Černý, 1922, Dissertation Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300– 1000 př. Kr.). Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, p. 1–2.

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comes across clearly is how much he enjoyed his research topic. His critical facilities, though trained, were still underdeveloped at that point in his career, but he wrote with gusto, and an obvious interest in the elusive humanity of people in the distant past. In Oriental Studies, enjoyment and aesthetic delight had long been exiled to the periphery,499 and in Egyptology were either banished and overstated, depending on whether the author had philological or archaeological leanings.500 In his later works Jaro ‘betrayed’ his positivist training, and occasionally focused on the minutiae of textual resources or strayed into reflections on Egyptian social life and Egyptian art.501 However, he was apparently not aware of his contemporary Heinrich Schäfer’s studies on Egyptian art, or at least did not refer to them, although Schäfer offered a new and insightful view by suggesting that in order to understand Egyptian art one had to look at emic art conventions, and admit one’s limited ability to understand it.502 ‘We must always be aware that our understanding can never be complete … It is completely impossible for us to transport ourselves into the mind of a strange people.’503 The first part of Jaro’s dissertation successfully demonstrated that it was possible to glean an impression of ancient Egyptian experience, and to come close to the minutiae of their daily lives by examining clues left by individuals with agency. Texts seemed to hold the key to ancient lives, and an understanding of script, grammar and lexicon held the key to texts. This approach appears to anticipate his future research agenda. Jaro was too occupied with details of the lives he glimpsed, and believed he would ultimately be able to reconstruct, and so did not elaborate upon the historicity of his subject matter; instead, he focused on the hunt for available (textual) material. Given the emphasis on historicity and contextualization within geographical and historical limits advocated by Foustka, and the levels of anthropological observation offered by Musil, it is not 499

Marchand 2009: 160. See Moreno Garcia 2015. 501 This was shown clearly in his later public lectures; see notably the Griffith Institute Archive, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.89, notes for a lecture titled ‘The Character of Ancient Egyptians’. 502 Schäfer 1922: 7–9. 503 Schäfer 1974: 7. 500

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likely that he would have ignored the necessary contextualisation and historical reflection. But he preferred to focus on the practice, not theory of history writing. In doing so, he chose not to reveal any ideas he might have harboured about what Egyptological subject matter—and the practice of its study— should be. It was still too early. The influential Dutch historian Johan Huizinga had only just started to express that a ‘new contrast was born’ in his studies ‘between philology and history’,504 between working with texts and reconstructing social and individual narratives. Jaro’s working process was implicit, unarticulated, and from that point onward he was perceived as a philologist. The second part of the dissertation consisted of a translation and partial transliteration and commentary on select texts from papyri Abbott, Amherst, Harris 10053 and 10054, Mayer A and B, Wien 30, and selected texts from Turin. These were the backbone of the dissertation, and Jaro quoted them extensively. Existing publications were used as his starting point, and elaborated. Jaro’s approach was in the style of Spiegelberg, inasmuch as it combined notes on the community with legal and administrative aspects.505 Indeed, the publications referred to in his dissertation indicate that Spiegelberg’s work played a formative role in both his research topic and his research paradigm. Spiegelberg’s work on Western Thebes itself was an interesting, problem-oriented collection of case studies focused on the authorities and institutions that he had identified as having a role in the Egyptian legal system.506 A number of Theban papyri, such as Mayer A and B, were included. Spiegelberg soon developed his ideas into a proposal for a well-rounded approach to the ancient necropolis, including regarding it as a living community of workers and administrators.507 This proposal supplied an outline of materials 504

See Otterspeer 2010: 29. This approach was later repeated in Jaro’s discussions of Theban graffiti and, perhaps not coincidentally, in the topic of his 1929 habilitation lecture, ‘Credibility of Herodotus’. Spiegelberg had presented The Credibility of Herodotus’ Account of Egypt in the Light of the Egyptian Monuments in 1927. 506 Spiegelberg 1892. 507 Spiegelberg 1895. Here Spiegelberg published what he believed added an element to the study of Egyptian workmen, particularly in matters of their daily lives, and which followed earlier studies by François Chabas. He outlined a sketch of workmen’s lives, mostly based on the papyri from Western Thebes with which he was well acquainted. 505

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he considered relevant—with an emphasis on papyri in the Turin and British Museum collections—to begin a complex study of the community of workmen, which at that point was understood to encompass much of Western Thebes. The work would require the collection of all available written sources to facilitate an analysis of their administration. Graffiti were indicated as a resource with further potential, as they evoked the presence of ancient people who had paused to sit down and leave their signatures in the same shady locations that invited their modern counterparts to take a break. Both ostraca and graffiti were deemed of interest for further studies of hieratic palaeography, and he expressed an interest in toponyms that might be identified with extant locations in the West Theban region. Spiegelberg expected that the workmen’s settlement was nearby, but did not propose a location. He also noted that sketches on ostraca might be considered preparatory phases for the artwork in tombs. In 1898, Spiegelberg published a survey of the temple of Amenhotep I. The search for this temple was informed by Theban textual references, archaeological observations, and on local knowledge obtained from Egyptian informants.508 In place of a conclusion, he elaborated on his 1895 outline for work he considered necessary to advance the study of the Theban necropolis: the collection of all available ostraca and papyri, and all written material from the area, again emphasizing the importance of the Turin collection. This would entail a complete research programme, in which sites and museum collections would be systematically scoured for West Theban material, suggesting categories for graffiti (where relevant), ostraca, papyri, and other inscribed objects. He assumed that the task could not be undertaken by a single person, and exhorted his colleagues to take part in the endeavour.509 His was a problem-oriented paradigm for a social history of Theban The workers’ settlement was not identified, and neither was it entirely clear that his sources concerned royal workmen exclusively. Spiegelberg embarked on a general outline of the monumental landscape of Western Thebes (without detailed toponymy at this time) and on the daily routine, excuses from work including the taboo of menstruation of women in a workman’s household, and elements of public and private affairs. A section was dedicated to strikes in the Ramesside period. 508 Spiegelberg 1898b. 509 Spiegelberg 1895, 1898b.

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necropolis communities, but it applied a source-oriented methodology as its first step. Spiegelberg wrote: The complete material could be divided in I) graffiti, II) ostraca, III) papyri, IV) inscriptions; within the three latter categories there will be museum material naturally … This sort of work outgrows the powers of one person, even if they were in position to devote themselves exclusively to the task. For a successful undertaking of the plan presented hereby, it would be necessary to set up a friendly cooperation of many … just to point out the biggest difficulty: the spread of the material all across the world, unfortunately, makes it impossible for one researcher to grasp it.510

The 1898 publication was over twenty years old when Jaro began his dissertation, but it appears to have been of a particular interest for several reasons: the idea of a Gesamtarbeit of the Theban necropolis resonated with Jaro’s intentions for his dissertation; the emphasis on a topographical study informed his introductory chapter; and the outline of further studies that Spiegelberg proposed, but did not pursue,511 would be taken over and continued by Jaro on a larger scale. This proposal envisaged a cooperative project and Spiegelberg hoped that his work would attract attention of his fellow researchers. It did eventually, as Jaro, perhaps surprisingly given Spiegelberg’s caveats about the impossibility of the task for a single researcher, started to form an individual research plan. Once his dissertation had been accepted, he began to travel to museums, self-funded and starting with Turin, to study texts (primarily hieratic texts) and monuments, and started collecting their transcriptions. He also began indexing names, titles, and possibly some lexical features,512 which would later develop into a system of indexed mini-volumes or notebooks.513 The first attested notebook originated only after the dissertation had been finished, so it would appear that although he was not formally Spiegelberg’s pupil, Jaro was indebted to his research guidelines. 510

Spiegelberg 1898b: 11. It should be noted that Spiegelberg did not continue his Theban investigations, but focused rather on Demotic studies. 512 Exactly as suggested by Spiegelberg 1898b: 12. 513 Černý Mss. 17 in GIA, Černý Collection. 511

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Jaro’s dissertation signalled the beginnings of a project. In his own words, it was ‘but a fractional fulfilment of my original intention to offer a systematic description of social and economic conditions of Ancient Egypt, fractional in terms of quantity and quality.’514 The subsequent development of his ideas, which led toward a micro-historical study of one particular ancient community, should not mask the early stages of Jaro’s research agenda. To understand the impetus for Jaro’s long term plans, which in 1922 were just beginning to take shape, one also needs to understand the research landscape of contemporary Egyptology outside Czechoslovakia. Egyptological publications dating to 1922 show a large proportion of language studies, Coptology, and excavation reports. The programmatic work on Egyptian art by Schäfer was republished in a second and much extended edition,515 while the interest and importance to global art history of Egyptian art was discussed by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing.516 Perhaps the foremost was the multi-topic book commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Champollion’s Lettre à M. Dacier,517 which contained a study on the ‘agrarian’ history of Egypt that was mainly concerned with the Byzantine period.518 It was also a time of incipient methodological considerations. Peet was unimpressed by the level of archaeological argumentation used in contemporary publications. He was particularly unimpressed by the speculative character of Petrie’s outlines of early Egyptian history, stating that ‘archaeologists have hitherto made no attempt to come to any kind of agreement as to the conditions which must be satisfied by a train of archaeological reasoning in order that it may acquire cogency. We are doubtless all to blame in this, and in our defence it can only be urged that the constant accumulation of fresh material has tended to distract our attention from a really critical use of the evidence already available.’519 514 J. Černý, Dissertation, Život dělníků thébské nekropole v nové říši (1300–1000 př. Kr), Archive of the Charles University in Prague, dissertations, no.1148, pp. 1–2. 515 Schäfer 1922. 516 Bissing 1922. 517 Anonymous 1922. 518 Bell 1922. 519 Peet 1922: 5.

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But 1922 was also the year of a different programmatic statement when Breasted outlined the foundation and tasks of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, which had been supported by the Rockefeller family. The outline by Breasted consisted of particulars rather than generalizing statements on the purpose of the Institute, but also contained his observations on the changing conditions of research in Egypt. Notably: Post-war Cairo in the throes of nationalistic agitation had completely lost its old charm. My time was divided between the antiquity dealers and the great national museum, where there were many new accessions and recent discoveries which I had never seen.520

Breasted crammed his statement with references to novelties both known and undiscovered in Egypt, though not masking the character of post-war dominance of European powers: Our work was much aided by the cordiality of our relations with the European governments in control of the Near East, especially the English and the French. This fact is well illustrated by Lord Allenby’s cordial support of my efforts to begin airplane photographic records. I was asked to meet the Milner Commission to discuss Egyptian affairs. I found both Lord Milner and Mr. Alfred Spender, secretary of the Commission, very hopeful and sympathetically interested in the future of scientific research in the Near East, anxious to see incorporated in the report of the Milner Commission recommendations for a sound policy in the government control and support of archaeological research, and I had the pleasure of handing Mr. Spender, at his request, a group of such recommendations.521

He was also keen to attract his audience’s attention by pointing out the importance of funding for the purchase of artefacts. It would appear that for Breasted, Egyptological activity could thrive if it could maintain open diplomatic channels and cooperation from the powers-that-be, and could capture public attention with discoveries and the influx of artefacts. In order to secure funding, Breasted’s introduction to the Oriental Institute covered not only an overview of the work the Institute intended, but the conditions in which Breasted personally operated. In retrospect, 520 521

Breasted 1922: 235. Breasted 1922: 238.

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this is an insight into the social history of Egyptology done the American way,522 but its importance lies in his presentation of a research institute, complete with resources in the form of a library, artefact collections and archives, and with notes on the workflow of some of its projects. Breasted’s goal was research infrastructure: he had, after all, seen how proper infrastructure benefited another large project, the Wörterbuch, from his Berlin days. None of the above topics relate directly to Jaro’s professed interest in the social and economic history of ancient Egypt, although they deal with organization of large-scale Egyptological projects and with methodology. Social and economic analyses are not entirely absent from publications of that time, though they are rare and mostly drew from sources deriving from other periods of Egyptian history. Michail Rostovtzeff, for example, published a study on Graeco-Roman material;523 another on economic history by Alexander Scharff relied on an earlier source, papyrus Bulaq 18.524 There are rather more substantial examples on the economic history of the ancient world by Jaro’s contemporaries or nearcontemporaries, including of Roman Egypt. The major contribution was An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, edited by Tenney Frank (whose PhD was from the University of Chicago) and published in the 1930s,525 which had a clearly-defined and well-planned agenda that began development around the time Jaro was working on his dissertation: ‘Our first aim is to present the sources (literary, epigraphical, papyrological) and to give due attention to the economic meaning of the archaeological evidence.’526 But economic theory was eschewed after due consideration: ‘It is not our purpose here to theorize. The early work in Roman economic history was produced largely in the day when Hegelian methods had popularized aprioristic habits of thought in historical interpretation, and we believe that it is now wise to return to the sources. Furthermore, we have tried to keep in mind the specialist’s propensity to 522

An outline of Breasted’s life was provided by Abt 2011. Rostovtzeff 1922. 524 Scharff 1922. 525 Rostovtzeff was one of its reviewers; see Rostovtzeff 1939. 526 Frank et al. 1938, I: vii. This followed the editor’s earlier sole work on the subject; see Frank 1920. 523

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interpret history in the light of his own interests.’527 This approach —collecting and marshalling known resources to give voice to antiquity—was not an option for Jaro, who had to identify and edit his sources first. This comparative hurdle was to prove a lifelong preoccupation and one of the determining factors of his work— and of its later appreciation. Jaro did not admit to having used Rostovtzeff’s work in any detail, although theoretically it could have been available to him.528 This would perhaps be understandable because Rostovtzeff’s specialization was on Hellenistic Egypt, and he used resources limited to that period. Jaro’s later works refuted the idea of an immutable Egypt, where historical resources from one period could be used freely to fill gaps in the evidence from another. Yet Rostovtzeff fused history and sociology,529 and his approach might have been of considerable interest to someone who had training in both disciplines. Jaro wanted to write ancient Egyptian history, and had promoted the need to write economic history before Steindorff noted that the Egyptian man was homo oeconomicus.530 Contrary to Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia’s impression that naïve enchantment with Egypt had long blocked an interest in economic and social history,531 it is evident that Jaro’s earliest research agenda involved the meticulous reconstruction of daily life and establishing economic relationships in Egyptian society. To satisfy the access to sources that he (and others before him) deemed relevant, Jaro began to build a personal research archive, which was expanded upon and maintained, despite his frequent travels, for the rest of his active life. He established indexes of material so that he could locate data in his practical and transportable notebooks.532 This began as an index of museum artefacts,533 but his later studies led him to emphasize the analysis of language and he embarked upon dictionaries: compiling a general hieroglyphic 527 528 529 530 531 532 533

Frank et al. 1938, I: viii. Rostovtzeff 1920; see also Segrè 1922. Evans-Pritchard 1962: 54. Häuser 2009: 1394–1395. Moreno García 2009. Index of ostraca, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 28. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 31.

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dictionary, a Late Egyptian one,534 and indexing grammatical features of Late Egyptian in the texts he had read. Jaro had the advantage of being free to set his own research agenda, while simultaneously bearing the disadvantage of being essentially self-funding. He was implicitly answering Spiegelberg’s call for a systematic study of Western Thebes, which at this point was informed by an interest in the Egyptian language and texts, coupled with a desire to address an area of Egyptology that had proved challenging but was also ripe with possibility. His country’s political scene also—albeit briefly—favoured Oriental studies as a part of its projected image of a fresh, but already stable and cultured democratic state.

534 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 24 (the hieroglyphic dictionary), and Mss. 22 (the ‘Late Egyptian Dictionary’).

BOOK II Portrait of an Egyptologist as a young man Love of one’s own nation should not entail non-love of other nations. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk It was Woodrow Wilson’s belief that only democratic states could sustain a collective security system, but democratic forces do not always promote international conciliation. Zara Steiner535

1923–1927 an independent scholar After concluding his studies in December 1922, Jaro visited his mentor Václav Prášek in Klánovice, a leafy weekend resort near Prague, to say a polite and proper, but no doubt genuine, thank you. The trees in Klánovice stood bare, and the December weather was dank and cold, but Jaro was given a warm reception. Compartmentalized life reasserted itself at the beginning of 1923. Alongside his day job behind a desk under the NeoRenaissance ceiling at the Živnobanka, Jaro was working on a research plan. He had obtained a degree of independence, now living on his own in a rented flat in Praha-Košíře, at that time a budding suburb, rather than lodging with František Čeloud. Accessibility to the city centre wasn’t as good, as he now needed to walk to a tram stop and then take the tram line that connected Košíře with central Prague, but he was relatively free to set up his daily routine as he wished once he discharged his duties at the bank. It must have been evident to Jaro that his dissertation had needed to be selective, and even that his research into a community of workmen who appeared to be closely connected to the 535

Steiner 2005: 490.

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Theban necropolis was still in its formative stages. He had followed the existing records, and the suggestions of Wilhelm Spiegelberg who had identified that such as community must have existed, but could he write its history? How could he address its economic and social story? At that point Jaro was also collecting transcriptions of texts from Egyptian monuments relevant to his topic in a series of what he called ‘notebooks’. His dissertation was conceived as problem-oriented, on problems of social and economic history and then on the life of a particular community, but afterwards his research approach became source-oriented, as recommended by Spiegelberg two decades earlier. Jaro’s early notebooks from Turin contain references from various monuments connected with the Place of Truth. He increasingly came to focus on hieratic records, first papyri and then ostraca, as Jaro realized that he needed to perfect his ability to read the cursive Egyptian script. Lexa had taught Egyptian language and literature but hieratic only to the level that Lexa could himself master, and so Jaro was largely self-trained. He revisited readings of difficult texts and developed his skills through practice, and was soon confident enough to tackle the ostraca and papyri in Turin during a summer visit.536 Jaro returned to Prague on 19 June 1923. A postcard to his parents shows that he still relied upon them for logistical support: ‘I am coming on the Trieste express on Sunday morning. If possible, meet me at the station.’537 He was a twenty-fiveyear-old man living independently, but evidently regarded his parents as service providers, easily taken for granted. After Turin, Jaro visited Vienna together with Lexa in the autumn. Lexa travelled first, with Jaro joining him afterwards, as a letter shows that his itinerary was dictated by his employment at the bank. In it, Jaro commented on the publication of Lexa’s Staroegyptské čarodejnictví, which he regarded as ‘very commendable’. The mentor-mentee relationship was transforming into 536 Repeatedly shown in correspondence with Lexa in the 1923–1925 period; AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, box 2, inv. no. 69, correspondence F. Lexa and J. Černý. 537 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family; a postcard dated 19 June 1923.

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something more collegial as Jaro’s professional self-confidence grew. Lexa, in turn, seems to have relied on Jaro for various small tasks and communications with his publisher, Janda.538 Jaro was still in touch with Adolf Erman, Kurt Sethe, and Alan Gardiner, but this was distant and occasional. He was already, like his father, an experienced networker, and his visit to Turin opened him to a larger network by meeting people who had also come to study the materials there. His own thoughts on networking were shown in letters to Lexa,539 and focused mostly on the professional cooperation, not (or at least not explicitly) on career aspirations. Later, he referred to T. Eric Peet, Giuseppe Botti, Alan H. Gardiner and himself ‘our quartet’.540 Peet and Botti were early acquaintances from his time in Turin. Years later, Jaro noted to Eiddon Edwards that he was also in contact with Ludlow Bull, possibly from his 1923 visit, but the correspondence, if it existed, had not survived. However, Edwards later wrote: Černý used to relate that Bull happened to visit the museum when he was standing on a ladder copying the papyrus which records the harem conspiracy under Ramesses III, and Bull, impressed by Černý’s obvious skill in the transcription of hieratic, obtained an introduction to him through Schiaparelli. When James Henry Breasted arrived to Turin a few days later, Bull was able to tell him about the young scholar’s prowess … Breasted soon saw that Bull’s high opinion of Černý was well justified, but he could do nothing directly to help him, so he wrote a letter of recommendation on his behalf to Alan Gardiner.541

Breasted travelled through Europe ‘on his way to and from Egypt in 1922’,542 and returned to Chicago only in spring 1923. Bull had accompanied Breasted on his journeys in 1923,543 so a meeting with Jaro in Turin cannot be ruled out. 538

AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 1 October 1923. Comments and references are present throughout their correspondence in 1923 and 1924, including lists of new networking contacts as in AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 16 September 1924. 540 AAVCR, Fonds Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 February 1928. 541 Edwards 1972: 369. 542 Abt 2011: 277. 543 Wilkinson 1954. 539

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Definitive assessment of Jaro’s movements and contacts in this period is complicated by the absence of private papers, and reminiscence might bear an element of creativity. He had certainly developed regular correspondence with Gardiner, in April 1924 reporting details about papyrus Prachoff,544 and was looking forward to meeting him during an upcoming trip to London. By this time Gardiner was already a part of Jaro’s network, but closer links between the two (beyond polite exchanges in correspondence) are likely to have been forged through Peet. Around ten years later Gardiner contacted Breasted to help Jaro gain an established position, so it appears that Jaro was known to senior scholars such as Breasted and Bull, and that they were impressed by what they saw of him in Turin. In the summer of 1924, Jaro once again used his annual leave to visit the museum in Turin, becoming reacquainted with Botti and Peet. Peet was impressed with Jaro’s transcriptions, and wrote to Gardiner about his prowess in hieratic, albeit tentatively, in 1924: ‘But I think he is a good transcriber, how far he can interpret and how much grammar he knows I can’t say.’545 Jaro continued together with Peet to Paris, and then on to London in September where he met with other researchers.546 Peet was convinced of the importance of grammar because he was concerned with the limitations that Egyptologists and their readers faced in the presentation and understanding of Egyptian culture via its literature. He very much disagreed with a statement by Francis Llewelyn Griffith that ‘The advance that has been made in recent years in the decipherment of the ancient writings of the world enables us to deal in a very matter-of-fact way with the Egyptian inscriptions.’547 In the late 1920s, Peet observed: The study of ancient Egyptian is still in its infancy. It is only seven years since we made our pilgrimage to Grenoble to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Champollion’s epoch-making discovery. It is even less since the publication of the first Grammar of Middle Egyptian which can claim any approach to completeness and the

544 545 546 547

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.78, 11 April 1924. GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.124.230, 13 September 1924. Postcard AAVCR Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 15 September 1924. Griffith and Griffith 1897: 5525.

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Grammar of Late Egyptian is still to be written. The first full dictionary of the language is even now not completed … The number of scholars capable of making translations has always been very small … What is worse, these very men, anxious to justify the accuracy of their renderings by showing precisely how they were obtained, have produced bald, stilted, literal translations … What is still more serious is that even those who know Egyptian well are in very little better position to judge of its aesthetic value than those who can read it only in translations.548

This was typical of Peet’s ‘cautious way of working’.549 For him the ability to appreciate a past culture through its texts began—but did not end—with a proper understanding of the grammar, and Peet was concerned that Jaro had not fully mastered its foundations. But if in 1924 he was at least persuaded of the young man’s potential, he was also cautious about Jaro’s attitude. In his letter to Gardiner he continued: Czerny [sic] is interested in hieroglyphic palaeography and a little inclined to work it up. Whether he has the books at his control I do not know. A bank clerk who is free at 3 pm, goes home and dines and works from 5 to midnight every day, is an amazing person. His complete indifference to everything else in the world struck me as pathetic. He walked past all the beauties of the Louvre, even Egyptian, with no eye at all, unconscious there were objects there at all.550

Peet soon considered the joint publication with Jaro of a text from Turin, and noted his acquaintance’s strong work ethic, but was also looking for other qualities. Jaro’s ‘pathetic’ indifference was probably as much a testament to exhaustion as anything else, because his work routine was so punishing that any reactions to further stimuli, however interesting, must have been muted. Perhaps this punishing schedule was one of the reasons why he adjusted—or had to adjust—the expectations of his private life. His working routine was dictated by severe time constraints, which informed a need to organize his research plans meticulously. He had to be selective, and at that stage priority was given 548 549 550

Peet 1931: 4–5. Hollings and Parkinson 2020: 26. GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.124.230, 13 September 1924.

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to collecting texts and references to the sḏm ꜥš. His later interest in material culture and archaeological context belies the idea of studied indifference. Toward the end of 1924, Jaro’s fiancée Cecilie disappears from his correspondence without explanation. In absence of evidence, one can only speculate why. The break may have been her decision or his, or a mutual recognition that the relationship was not going to satisfy either. Jaro at this time still had a punishing selfimposed schedule, and this may have created distance between them. Perhaps Jaro had decided to sacrifice a personal life in order to build a career. Cecilie was a professional woman at a time when the new Czechoslovak state encouraged a degree of gender equality, and she may have been unwilling to sacrifice her job, but nothing is known of her desires. She may equally have wished to be a dedicated housewife, carefully managing her husband’s household from the economic security he provided.551 What did Jaro expect of a spouse at that point in his life? His teachers’ generation was used to stay-at-home wives. The historian Josef Šusta’s spouse Leopoldina made sure that ‘he was not disturbed by having to take care of the household. Nevertheless, his wife spoke several languages and could play the piano.’552 Mrs Šusta was also the first to read of her husband’s manuscripts, so her intellectual capabilities could have been in no doubt. The Lexa household, of which Jaro had intimate knowledge, operated on similar principles. In any case, both remained employed at the Živnobanka, and Cecilie worked there until 1932, when she eventually married someone else.553 In late summer and autumn 1924 Jaro travelled whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was developing his survey of artefacts relating to the workmen of Western Thebes now housed in Paris and London. In September, he spent several days in London, staying in the Alexandra Hotel, at 5 Harrington Gardens in South Kensington.554 This was built in the 1870s to 1880s, and 551 As might have been expected by traditional society, given many texts of the period; see Kožmínová 1923: 41–52. 552 Lach 2003b: 18. 553 ACNB, Fonds ŽB, Personal file Cecilie Slezáková. 554 There is still a hotel at the address but its name has changed with new ownership. At the time of writing it was called the Harrington Hall Hotel, though it has been scheduled for refurbishment.

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‘most of these houses have polished granite columns to the porches and are dressed with a degree of eclectic novelty on an Italianate body.’555 The journey was not entirely dedicated to research, as he also visited the Empire Exhibition in Wembley, in company of a lady named Ann M. Somerville.556 This piece of news was reserved for the family, relayed on a very laconic postcard. Musil also visited the exhibition, albeit on a different day, and was underwhelmed. Eloquently so: ‘This is no Empire Exhibition, but just a common or garden London fair: dirt, dust, mud, wrappers, brats, I mean the bloom of English youth, who made sure everything was grubby, mucky, wrecked.’557 Jaro sent Lexa a very different and enthusiastic postcard,558 focusing on professional success: ‘I transcribed six papyruses [sic] … and met Hall, Crum, Davies and Blackman. I struck a good friendship with the latter.’ His parents appear to have been staying or visiting his flat in Prague, as Jaro sent his postcards to his Praha-Košíře address, and received a letter from them referring to a note Lexa had left in the flat when borrowing some books. The mentor and his former student were still in regular contact, and Jaro was to visit Lexa immediately upon return. Also shortly upon return, in mid-October, Jaro wrote again to Gardiner. He had borrowed some of Gardiner’s notebooks in London, which suggests a degree of trust had developed between the two, and was keen to outline his ‘workmen’ project:559 he was looking for ostraca and other material helpful to a study of the community. Jaro explained to Gardiner that information from ostraca would help substantially in achieving a prosopography of workmen, and suggested that he could place his own copies of the Turin material at Gardiner’s disposal. Gardiner was most likely intrigued by the exchange of material and access to a range of texts, but if he found merit in Jaro’s musings on the community, he did not say. Jaro also approached Gardiner for a piece of advice. Some Egyptian artefacts had apparently been offered to the National 555

Hobhouse 1986: 168–183. ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, postcard dated 20 September 1924, Wembley. Addressed to Antonín Černý. 557 Musil et al. 2019: 112. 558 Postcard AAVCR Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 15 September 1924. 559 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.77. 556

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Museum in Prague, and Jaro was consulted regarding their evaluation. His letter contained a short list with brief descriptions of several amulets, a wooden statue of Anubis, a ram’s head made of limestone, and a stela with Horus standing on some crocodiles. The descriptions are fairly limited, but there was one stela in Bohemia that depicted Horus standing on crocodiles: the Metternich stela at Königswarth that had been studied by Wladimir S. Golénischeff,560 and later by Lexa, and after peregrinations was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1950s (now MMA 50.85). At the end of 1924 and the beginning of 1925, it seemed that Jaro would continue his routine of visits to Turin, meeting with international colleagues, collecting texts, perfecting his skill in reading hieratic, refining his knowledge of Egyptian, and generally confirming his clubability. He still normally spent his mornings at the bank and his afternoons in the ancient world. *

*

*

Things were also moving in Egypt. The Czechoslovak envoy in Cairo, Cyrill Dušek, presented his agrément to King Fuad I in 1923,561 after months of uncertainty. He followed this with the possibility of establishing Egyptological links between the two countries. The overall goal of his mission was to develop economic ties between the new Czechoslovak state and Egypt at the highest level, which was after all one of the goals of the Oriental Institute when it was founded in 1922, but there were other considerations. In Tomáš Masaryk’s circle there had been sustained interest in history and in promoting the humanities, and in using academics as representatives of the Czechoslovak state in a manner that would now be termed ‘soft power’. Masaryk not only accepted Alois Musil into his circle, but provided vital support for Musil’s publications in English, financing his travels to the United Kingdom and the United States, and facilitating his contacts with American publishers.562 Personal interests mingled with cultural diplomacy. Masaryk believed that the new republic should fashion itself as a cultured democratic 560 561 562

Golénischeff 1877. Macková 2014b. Musil et al. 2019.

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state with a solid educational foundation, and this was one rationale behind the appointment of academics to diplomatic posts in the early years of the state (other reasons might have included previous language training and future intelligence gathering).563 Even outside strictly diplomatic circles, capable and cultured Czechoslovaks were regarded as informal envoys of the republic. Masaryk’s academic training and respect for the humanities found synergy with his political pragmatism when selecting his diplomatic tools. In this context, it would have most desirable to install a qualified Czechoslovak Egyptologist in Egypt who was accepted at a major institution such as the IFAO, and Masaryk had contacts that could provide him with the names of suitable candidates. He counted Lexa among his former students, and Lexa had recently been promoted to Extraordinary Professor of Egyptology at the Czech University in Prague, and desired the establishment of a seminar for Egyptology there. Lexa was also aware of the circumstances that a bank job imposed on one of his best pupils. Progress in what was to become Czechoslovak Egyptology was closely connected to Czechoslovak interest in the Levant and the Middle East. When Dušek arrived in Cairo in January 1922 he was the representative of a state not yet four years old, had no clear assignment, and had in fact been sent out on a makeshift mission. He had practically no budget and, consequently, for a long time had no legation to run. It had not even been specified whether his was to be a full-fledged legation; Dušek might have ended as a consul general. His arguments eventually convinced his Prague superiors to regard his mission as suitable for a fully-fledged diplomatic representation, at the cost of several months of negotiation. Dušek became a minister plenipotentiary, accredited at the Egyptian Royal Court.564 Among his tasks was the possibility of building Egyptological connections, in part because of his own interests,565 but also in the name of state representation. Accordingly, Dušek fostered 563

Hrdlička 2009. Dušek’s mission is analysed in detail by Macková 2014b. 565 Dušek was a collector of Egyptian antiquities and an acquaintance, and indeed for a time the employer, of the Russian Egyptologist Grigoriy Loukianoff, who had been living in Egypt since 1920 and who sometimes dealt in Egyptian antiquities. See Hagen and Ryholt 2016: 230–234. 564

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relationships with the IFAO,566 which was housed in a former royal residence in the district of Mournia, close to the legation villa off the Boulevard Qasr el-Aini that ran south of Khedive Ismail Square (the present Tahrir Square).567 The Institute was housed in another former royal home in the district of Mounira.568 The IFAO was a French establishment, but was considered— with good reason—to be a powerhouse of scholarship, fieldwork, and solid scholarly publishing, aspects that were lacking in fledgling Czechoslovak Egyptology which, at the time, had only one unsalaried professor, a few students, no artefact collection, next to no library, and limited resources. The was also element of a French control in the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, although Czechoslovak diplomats apparently did not appreciate the fact that its head, Pierre Lacau, was not on good speaking terms with Georges Foucart (1865–1943), then head of the IFAO.569 France was also, by 1924, the chief and strongest Western ally of Czechoslovakia, surpassing and somewhat alienating Britain in the process:570 ‘There was little doubt, at the end of 1923, that Prague would not become the linchpin of British policy in Central Europe.’571 Czechoslovak inclination toward France was somewhat practical, given perceived French domination in the administration of Egyptian antiquities, and allowed the state to join the Egyptological game alongside a powerful ally. From the perspective of Czechoslovak diplomats, no Egyptian Egyptologist or Egyptological institution could have offered comparable advantages to

566

Vercoutter 1980; Thompson 2015–2018, II: 143–144; III: 3, 15–19. A recent dissertation states that the house has been identified as Qasr el-Aini 54; see Rudiš 2017: 146. There is however a possibility that the villa was actually within the then-suburb of Garden City, as it had a large garden that would not have been typical for mansions on Qasr el-Aini itself. I gratefully acknowledge the opportunity to visit the location with a long-term resident of the Mounira area, Cynthia M. Sheikholeslami. 568 About the IFAO building see also Chassinat 1909. 569 Reid 2015: 84–86. Lexa hoped that Vladimir S. Hurban might succeed, with Lacau, in obtaining artefacts for Prague, which he considered vital for a promotion of Egyptology, but this did not happen. The Hurban-Foucart correspondence now held in the archives of the IFAO supports this interpretation; for a different one see Růžová 2010: 159. 570 See Steiner 2005: 289–298, and Zeman 1997: Chapters 6 and 7. 571 Zeman 1997: 91. 567

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foreign ones. This attitude was symptomatic of the period,572 but in context was a pragmatic choice. Cairo University was only established in 1908,573 and by 1924 and by 1924 had little administrative support to offer Czechoslovak scholars at a time when Egyptian academics were still trying to establish their own positions in the discipline. The IFAO was a logical choice. Dušek died in January 1924, leaving a number of diplomatic tasks unfinished. His negotiations with the IFAO were however at a relatively advanced stage, and his successor, the chargé d’affaires Vladimir S. Hurban, who arrived from Prague in February 1924, continued them within several weeks of his arrival. In April 1924, Hurban contacted Foucart.574 He referred to a previous communication by Dušek, and emphasized the ongoing relevance of promoting Czechoslovak Egyptology. In Hurban’s view, there was a growing public interest in Egyptology in Czechoslovakia. This was partly true, though the increase was mainly in academic and governmental circles. Czechoslovak scholars, Hurban claimed, might avail themselves of the ‘glorious tradition’ of the French institute, and would prove to be substantial assets. Foucart replied positively and effusively.575 In principle he would be delighted to oblige, as the project fitted well within the broader scope of French-Czechoslovak amity, it was only the technicalities that required clarification. These technicalities, which had to be negotiated between Cairo, Paris, and Prague,576 took several months to resolve. But a new opportunity arose in 1925. Hurban and Foucart managed to agree a deal regarding the prospect of Czechoslovak attachés at the IFAO. Foucart had assessed the financial situation of the IFAO and suggested that the Institute was not at present in a position to offer full sustenance to further personnel. There was also the question of lodgings, with space in the Institute occupied by its administrators, but if the number of administrative 572

Reid 1985 and 1997: 127–149. On its history and development, see Reid 1990. 574 Archives IFAO, personal file J. Černý, 8 April 1924, Cairo, from V. S. Hurban to G. Foucart. 575 Archives IFAO, personal file J. Černý, 15 April 1924, Cairo, from G. Foucart to V. S. Hurban, two typescript pages, carbon copy. 576 Navratilova 2018b. 573

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personnel were to be reduced then there would be an immediate opening for attachés étrangers. Alternatively, there might be a building dedicated to foreign guests, as at a similar institution in Athens. Foucart believed that he could offer the affiliations and lodgings only if material support was found from other resources. On that condition, the IFAO could offer full scientific support. In Foucart’s opinion, other attachés, including K. A. C. Creswell (1879–1974), an eminent scholar studying Arabic architecture,577 had prospered at the IFAO, and the model could be repeated successfully for Czechoslovaks on the condition that the prospective applicants would already be qualified professionals who had the necessary philological and historical training. The attachés would be in Egypt for a planned seven months, with their time divided between studies in the Institute, a field season, and travels. Hurban was pleased with this proposal. Consequently, in July 1925 the Czechoslovak Department for Schools and National Education sent an official letter to Lexa, detailing the IFAO offer: The deceased minister Cyrill Dušek took during his official mission in Cairo a substantial interest in securing scholarships for two Czechoslovak researchers at the Institut Francais d’Archéologie Orientale in Cairo. Negotiations he led to that effect achieved definite results—the Institute may make provisions available, of which we shall name the following: 1/ Schooling in archaeological work with participation at excavations led by experienced specialists. 2/ Use of the Institute’s tools, machinery, camping gear, etc. 3/ Access to library and collections when in residence in Cairo. 4/ Participation in the Institute’s publication programme, to be defined. The printing costs of Memoirs to be covered by the Czechoslovak side. 5/ Training in modern archaeological methods by experienced research personnel. 6/ In general, research and administrative support, provided by the Institute, as concerns communication with Egyptian officials, mediation of studies, travel and contact with local scholarly associations.

577

On Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell see Hamilton 1974, and Grabar 1991.

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The attachés would have to provide for themselves in terms of accommodation and per diem expenses. The attachés are also expected to have adequate scholarly qualifications, verified by appropriate authorities. The Office of the Director of the Institute would like to stress particularly that candidates for the positions must have adequate knowledge in history and philology, obtained as part of a university degree. The Institute cannot provide personnel to teach them. The new attachés would be expected to stay in Egypt for at least 7 months, eight if possible, compatibly with their French colleagues. The stay would be divided as follows: 3 months at the excavations or cooperating closely with the Institute’s personnel. The remaining time would be spent in Cairo or travelling in Lower Egypt when and as requested by the Director of the Institute. The basic expenditure for Cairo is LEG 15 to 20.578 The Department of Schools and National Education requires comments concerning this offer by a committee of professors and adds that at present it is not possible to cover the expenses of said study sojourns in Cairo.579

This was a clear positive result and neither Lexa nor Hurban intended to lose much time setting the plan in motion. Hurban was briefly delayed by health problems, as in September and October 1925 he was hospitalized in a pulmonary diseases’ sanatorium in Praha-Podolí, where his predecessor Dušek had also been a patient. The Egyptian posting, apart from demanding a capable diplomat, was preferentially given to civil servants with pulmonary illnesses, so that Dušek’s wife Pavla observed that the legation bore a close resemblance to a small sanatorium.580 Lexa, meanwhile, contacted Přemysl Šámal, the head of the President’s Office, to advocate for Jaro, and Šámal met with Hurban on 2 October, in the sanatorium where Hurban was recuperating before his next season in Egypt. Šámal was an ideal choice, being friendly with Jaroslav Preiss, the Director General of Živnobanka and Jaro’s ultimate boss, from the ‘Maffie’ days during the Great War. He was among the regular guests at Preiss’ hunting parties, while Preiss was frequently invited into Masaryk’s 578 An abbreviation of the Egyptian pound. In the interwar period, and until 1962, the Egyptian pound was pegged to the pound sterling. 579 AAVCR, Bequest F. Lexa, call no. IIB, record no. 305. 580 Macková 2014b: 92.

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circle.581 When Šámal contacted Preiss and enquired after the possibility of paid or unpaid leave for Jaro, Preiss was unlikely to outright refuse a friend, a political ally, and a close confidant of the president. On 12 October Šámal met Preiss again, this time obtaining a promise of unpaid leave for Jaro, and a vague indication of further support if Jaro ‘proves his value.’582 At about this time Šámal met with a ‘Dr Říha’,583 who mediated a grant from the Ministry of Education of 8000 crowns.584 Šámal returned to Hurban in the sanatorium with the news on 16 October,585 adding that the Office of the President was willing to subsidize Jaro against guarantees from the Živnobanka. Masaryk’s informal support hovered in the background of the negotiations, and Hurban in turn pressed for a speedy resolution and finalization of the requisite paperwork. On 26 October 1925, Lexa and Jaro visited Šámal officially at Prague Castle. They were an interesting if slightly incongruous pair. Jaro was working hard on maintaining the respectable appearance of a fashionable, if not too dandified, young man with his characteristic firmly combed hair, round glasses, and formal clothing. Lexa looked as if he was cut from the same cloth as Flinders Petrie, with a bushy late Victorian beard. Šámal respected Lexa, but maintained a respectable appearance and may well have felt more personal affinity with Jaro. By that time Jaro had been made aware of the conditions of the IFAO contract and the opportunity that several months’ stay in Egypt afforded him. The ultimate goal of his visit had probably already been defined, even if not stated officially: It was Deir el-Medina, where IFAO had taken over the German excavations in 1917, and had by 1925 already undertaken several successful seasons, with published results. 581 His name appears frequently in the diaries of Masaryk’s secretary, Vladimír Kučera. AUTGM, Kučera diaries. 582 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1925, T 1175. 583 Probably the government councillor (‘vládní rada’) and lawyer Alois Říha (1875– 1945). Říha’s role as a mediator and executive was also evident in the negotiations surrounding the establishment of the Oriental Institute. AKPR, fonds KPR, Orientální ústav 1920–1937; see Musil et al. 2019: 202. 584 Equivalent to the annual salary for a low-ranking clerk. 585 AKPR, inv. No. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1925, D 8200.

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Jaro was apparently worried about the length of his stay in Egypt, and the consequences of this for his job at the Živnobanka, but Šámal assured him that the situation was easily resolved. Šámal had secured 8000 from the Department of Education and a further 10,000 from the Masaryk National Foundation.586 Reassured, Jaro began to plan a trip to Egypt via Turin.587 The outcome of what were initially lengthy negotiations took surprisingly little time. Jaro took quick leave of his family, as his travel preparations, as related in a later letter,588 were probably a little rushed. For instance, he borrowed his brother’s riding breeches, instead of ordering and purchasing suitable clothing of his own. His choice of clothing for the field reflected practical expectations as well as the visual imagery of travellers at the time. Jaro did not mention purchasing a pith helmet, but is shown wearing a version in excavation photographs.589 Jaro was on his way to Turin within a few days of the meeting at Prague Castle. There he was cordially met by Botti and Schiaparelli at the Museo Egizio. Seated at his desk in Hotel Suisse, wrote triumphantly to his parents and brother: ‘I had an enthusiastic reception at the Museum. The service staff immediately recognized me as the person who had been here already. Botti embraced me and Schiaparelli promised to do everything that I might need. Perhaps they are all impressed by my trip to Egypt … Please tell Mum that the Italian cuisine suits me well.’590 Jaro’s time in Turin allowed him access to further papyri for his notebooks. Botti offered him further fragments of papyri to join to the plates in the edition of the Turin papyri published by Willem Pleyte and Francesco Rossi in 1869:591 ‘Pl. & R. 94 & 95 & Pl. & R. 61, col. I’. The museum storerooms also included papyrus Turin Cat. 2044 (including references to a Libyan raid

586

See Hálek 2018. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1925, D 8200, meeting on 26 October 1925. 588 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, letter from Jaro to his parents, January 1926. 589 Mainly in photographs from the 1930s photographs in the archives of the IFAO. 590 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, postcard to A. Černý, 31 October 1925. 591 Pleyte 1869. 587

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in Western Thebes),592 so Jaro was able to collate and expand on his earlier readings.593 Schiaparelli was friendly and offered him access to further ostraca found in the Valley of the Queens, which Jaro described as follows: Altogether 24 unpublished pieces, mostly providing further details about the life of the workmen excavating the tombs of queens and princes at the end of the reign of Ramesses III. As a by-blow of my activity, there are, as I referred to you earlier, 2 ostraca. One contains a ghost story and the other an ending of a hymn praising the king’s chariot of war (in 9 lines). Both texts are planned to appear in the next issue of the French Institute Bulletin.594

From Turin, Jaro travelled to Florence, stopping at the archaeological museum and collating further ostraca, including those edited by Erman,595 and then finally to Brindisi before catching a Lloyd Triestino liner that was en route from Trieste to Alexandria. Unlike many of his predecessors and contemporaries,596 Jaro was not keen to relate his shipboard experience—at least not to Lexa—apart from a laconic: ‘I had obtained no discount on the ship fare.’597 Jaro was met in Alexandria by the Czechoslovak consul Antonín Blahovský, and went on to Cairo, arriving in the Egyptian capital in mid-November 1925. After a long wandering, there I am, finally in Egypt, and I happen to like it very much. Naturally, I had to see the pyramids the day after arriving, and again yesterday, I almost climbed them. I have permanently this hazy sensation of meeting things that I know and yet do not know. For 18 years I have just read about it all, and now I am still struggling to accept that I have finally arrived to Egypt and this is real. Tomorrow I shall go to the museum, and will probably get trapped there; I visited the Institute [IFAO] yesterday.598 592

See KRI, VI, 340–343. And reported details to Lexa in a letter AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 6 January 1926. 594 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 6 January 1926. The ostraca appeared in Černý 1927a and Černý 1927c. 595 Erman 1880. 596 The journey figures prominently in the family letters of Pavla Dušková; see Macková 2014b. 597 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 6 January 1926. 598 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, postcard to Lexa, 19 November 1925. 593

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Jaro needed an official introduction to Foucart, which should have been mediated by the Czech legation but official channels were still silent on 10 December.599 In the meantime, Jaro took the opportunity to visit the Saqqara excavations, meeting Gustave Jéquier, Battiscombe (‘Jack’) Gunn, and Cecil Firth; the latter two were working in the Step Pyramid complex, with Gunn focusing on the visitors’ graffiti. Gunn was apparently open to further cooperation, as Jaro reported a few weeks later.600 He had noted Jaro’s capability with hieratic and offered to work with him on the Carter and Carnarvon ostraca from Western Thebes: Gunn welcomed me most kindly. He was working on ostraca found by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings (approx. 60 pieces) dated end of nineteenth dynasty.601 He offered me an exchange: When I am back in Cairo, we should discuss his transcriptions, and in exchange for my corrections I am to be allowed to copy the ostraca and use them for my work.602

Gunn was also about to prepare an edition of graffiti in the Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos, and would utilize Jaro’s expertise in the coming years.603 When considering Jaro’s growing prowess in reading hieratic and working with ancient Egyptian it is easy to forget another aspect of his travels, namely that he was also making a journey across modern languages. He did not yet report whether he used Arabic with any proficiency, although he met Egyptian employees of both the French Institute and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and would have encountered many during everyday life in Cairo. The fact that he does not refer to Egyptians at this point is probably due to the character of social contacts within important institutions, whose heads or heads of mission were often Westerners. Languages were one of several aspects of his travels that went unstated,604 even to Lexa. After leaving Czech-speaking Prague he was immersed in Italian in Turin, then in French in 599

AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1925, R 31251. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1926, no. 527. 601 Howard Carter worked extensively in the Valley of the Kings and Western Thebes; James 2006. 602 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 6 January 1926. 603 Jaro’s help was referred to by Gunn 1933: 87: ‘I am indebted to Dr Černý for help in the transcription and dating of the hieratic…’ 604 Macková and Navrátilová 2015. 600

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Egypt at the IFAO, Czech again at the Czechoslovak legation, and English when meeting British Egyptologists. But French was probably the most important language, and the Frenchspeaking Jaro was quite at home in Cairo as he rapidly became part of Francophone Egyptology and Cairene society. French was ‘the language of cafés and tea-rooms, department stores and learned societies, museums, banks and cotton houses’ of Egypt.605 The pragmatic acceptance of thinking and living in another language does not indicate the language in which he felt most comfortable. Unlike his contemporary, the actor Jiří Voskovec, another Czech litterato involved with French intellectuals, Jaro never stated whether he admired French for ‘its strength, its elaborateness, and exactitude.’606 The ostraca in the Egyptian Museum were the focus of Jaro’s time in Cairo, and he was soon introduced to the conservator, Gustave Lefebvre,607 and to others he met in the Egyptian museum and the IFAO, such as Golénischeff. His work in the museum was concerned with ostraca previously published by Georges Daressy (1864–1938),608 and Jaro came to be very critical of the man. He wrote to Lexa in unequivocal terms: My transcriptions and Daressy’s are enormously unalike. Daressy’s editions are useless. Lefebvre did not yet identify about 25 ostraca originally published by Daressy; it was likely they had been misplaced when the museum was moving from Gizeh. I have added a number of hitherto unpublished ostraca, and before leaving Lefebvre showed me further boxes of more ostraca, and noted he would be grateful if I could address these. He proposed the option of publishing the transcriptions in the Annales du Service. The required photographs would be made by the museum.609

By correcting Daressy, Jaro was yet again following in the footsteps of Spiegelberg.610 Ostraca were not unknown in Egyptological circles, as Spiegelberg, Gardiner, and Daressy had published 605

Cooper 1995: 27. Schonberg 1978: 26. 607 Bierbrier 2019: 272. 608 Daressy 1901. 609 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 6 January 1926. The move Jaro refers to was that of the museum to its building on Khedive Ismail (now Tahrir) Square. The previous location was in Giza. 610 Spiegelberg 1902. 606

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hieratic ostraca from the late nineteenth century,611 and Coptic, Demotic, and Greek ostraca had appeared in several late nineteenth and early twentieth century publications.612 Erman pleaded for their systematic publication just in 1925.613 Jaro was thus following up on the work of more senior colleagues, with the added impetus of focusing on a particular community. Moreover, he had started to appreciate the importance of these informal-looking texts as individual documents that held a critical mass of historical material concerned with social and economic history. Jaro’s first weeks in Egypt, from November to early December, were thus filled with site trips, work on the available ostraca, and visits to the IFAO library. When Jaro was not visiting a site, his mornings were spent in the Egyptian Museum and his afternoons in the library. At first, he resided in the Czechoslovak legation villa, but later, after an informal introduction to Foucart at the beginning of December, he moved directly to the IFAO’s building. He paid six Egyptian pounds for his accommodation and roughly the same for catering, both of which were billed monthly. Foucart also approved of Jaro’s plan to join the Deir el-Medina expedition. Jaro was later to state that no other expedition was possible for him.614 In these weeks Jaro experienced life in Cairo, a large and intensely cosmopolitan city that was unlike any other he had so far visited, and yet which was related to grand metropolises elsewhere. Only recently there has been recognition that Cairo’s urban growth, the materials used, and even conceptual matters had parallels with large cities across the world. The historian Joseph Ben Prestel has recently offered a rich view of changing transport infrastructure, public spaces, habits and emotions of urban dwellers in Cairo and Berlin. His perspective suggests that there was much in common in the processes that shaped the urban world of ‘comparable, yet different cities’.615 Jaro was essentially 611 The earliest work with the word ‘ostraca’ in its title appeared in 1872; Devéria and Pierret 1872. Further references include Spiegelberg 1894, Spiegelberg 1898a, Daressy 1901, Spiegelberg 1902, and Gardiner 1913. 612 For example, Crum 1922, Brightman and Crum 1902, Wiedemann 1882; Spiegelberg 1912, and Thompson 1914. 613 Erman 1925: 3. 614 See below, the 1929 lecture. 615 Prestel 2017: 198.

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an urban-dweller; he acclimated to the metropolitan perspective of Prague so quickly that in 1923 he called his suburban address ‘a wasteland.’616 Cairo was not wholly unknown ground in terms of its organization and the feeling of its cityscape. Jaro the boulevardier was at home; only the scale was different. Perhaps the most eloquent suggestion of this is that he spent relatively few words on Cairo itself in his letters, although here the gaps in correspondence may be deceptive. Cairo may have been cosmopolitan, yet it was also a divided city. Cairo was run with a fascinating blend of Egyptian and colonial administration, containing Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings on a grand scale, as well as traditional haras and a system of blind alleys in the old quarters beneath the Citadel. If these quarters had history, and could be seen as remnants of faded grandeur from medieval Cairo, other suburbs such as Shubra to the north merely resembled shantytowns.617 Cairo had undergone a ‘poorly organised expansion’.618 The city was a paradoxically picturesque blend of cultures and lifestyles, and of façades that covered both riches and poverty and concealed many societal tensions. The IFAO building is an intriguing setting for the history of Egyptology, and serves as a lieu de mémoire of the discipline with its many controversies, successes and shortcomings. The members of the Institute lived inside the main palatial compound, with direct access to its specialized library. Its rooms were comfortable, high-ceilinged spaces that served as both a bedroom and an office.619 The building was to become Jaro’s Cairene home for many years. Within the IFAO, Jaro was exposed to a dedicated research institute with a large functioning library, and comforts that were a far cry from Egyptology in Prague. The former palace had been obtained in 1907 and was as such not purpose-built to be an academic institution, but had been adapted and later rebuilt by the Institute’s directors. It inhabited (and still inhabits) a large 616

AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 4 October 1922. Raymond 2001: 337–338. 618 Raymond 2001: 337. 619 At present these rooms serve as offices of the IFAO; researchers stay in a dedicated accommodation wing. 617

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palatial building in the district of Mounira, close to Garden City on one side and to the Sayyida Zeinab quarter on the other. The location itself can be seen as symptomatic of Cairo’s diversity. New apartment blocks had sprouted and soon lined Qasr el-Aini Street, which began to resemble a late nineteenth century boulevard in Paris or Vienna, or indeed Prague: Khedive Ismail’s architect had been Franz Schmoranz, a professor at the Prague Academy of Applied Arts. Beyond Qasr el-Aini, toward the Nile, lay Garden City, a quarter of luxurious villas. It was a largely Europeanized part of Cairo, preferred by upper class Egyptians and foreigners, and had been influenced by Western architecture. It harbours excellent examples of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the 1930s modern style. The district of Sayyida Zeinab, to the other side of the IFAO villa, has been called a ‘transitional urban hub’,620 and contained traditional architecture and fine examples of religious buildings, including the mosque dedicated to eponymous Sayyida Zeinab herself. The exact history of this particular building is complex, and it had undergone renovation in the 1880s.621 The Institute’s architectural tradition is distinctly European, similar to many buildings in its area, and features elements of the Neoclassical style and Art Nouveau. At the time of Jaro’s arrival it was a predominantly Art Nouveau building, with a grand hall contains elements suggestive of the Viennese architect Otto Wagner, and with colourful wall ornaments and lincrusta. Later, in 1929, it was to take on a more Neoclassical façade and modifications to the interior.622 These architectural influences were adopted by both Westerners and Egyptians of a certain social class and cultural register, and need not be viewed as an imperialist imposition,623 but rather as a testimony to the multifaceted development of colonial presence and the complicated landscape of an Egyptian national 620

Reynolds 2012a: 77. References in Volait 2005: 153. For a discussion on the contribution of Julius Henrich Franz to its reconstruction in the 1880s, see Volait 2005: 431. 622 See Chassinat 1909. I am indebted to Nadine Cherpion, Bianca Madden, and Cédric Larcher for our 2017 discussions relating to an ongoing research and conservation project regarding the IFAO premises. 623 On issues of Egyptian modernity, see Ryzova 2014; on architecture, see Volait 2005: 16. 621

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identity or identities.624 Cairo’s architectural space captures the late nineteenth century as a reciprocal process, in which ‘No one forced the Egyptians to found newspapers, or the Japanese to listen to Gounod and Verdi. There was cultural mobility from east to west, as we can tell from the riveting effect that Japanese or African art had in Europe.’625 Mercedes Volait has suggested that inspirations and adaptations gave rise to interesting architectural creations, ‘localized’ in Cairo and drawing on a rich patrimony of historical styles from both within and outside Egypt.626 Cairo’s architectural legacy reveals a complex city where, as with many such entrepôt settlements, urban living involved engagement with things both ‘Egyptian’ and ‘foreign’, characteristics that had decisive influences on the intersections of class, gender, and any number of categories of social identity and practice. The changes to Cairo, like anywhere else, were the outcome of dialectical relationships between its many inhabitants: both shaping and being shaped.627 Later events in Egyptian history, notably the fire in January 1952 in which ostentatious ‘Western’—mainly British—symbols were burned down by an Egyptian mob, have been interpreted as a ‘native’ vs. ‘Western’ dichotomy discernible in the city’s structure and its material symbols, but this is an oversimplification. Cairo was more than a sum of its parts, and more complex than a mere divided city. It was both divided from and entwined with itself.628 Architecture was but one aspect of material culture that symbolized the cosmopolitan city. Everyday consumer goods offered a similar ‘bricolage [that] Egyptians used to incorporate new or different styles of clothing into their wardrobes or new uses of space into their experience of the city.’629 Its citizens adopted 624

Whidden 2013. Osterhammel 2015: 34. 626 Volait 2005: 190–191. 627 Dissected from the methodological standpoint of a history of emotions and urban change by Prestel 2017, using a comparative study of Cairo and Berlin from the 1860s to the 1910s, these being the formative phase preceding First World War and the inter-war years. 628 Issues of Cairene mobility in hybrid urban spaces were amply discussed by Reynolds 2012a. 629 Reynolds 2012a: 5. 625

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a mixture of distinct forms of dress. The ‘traditional’ end of the sartorial scale consisting of ‘broadcloth cloak, striped silk caftan, and silk scarf’, as Naguib Maḥfūẓ described the patriarch protagonist Ahmad Abd Al-Jawad in his Cairo Trilogy,630 but the Cairo street was a parade of clothing styles, from crisp European suits, with or without tarboosh, to a local (baladi) gallabiyah paired with a Western (ifrangi) waistcoat or coat. The term ‘morseled style’ has been coined for this fascinating variety.631 In department stores, Pavla Dušková, in her summer dress with ‘Tutankhamun motifs’,632 could have encountered women from the affluent local families and older generations in heavy black silk habara cloaks and full-face veils.633 The Egyptian urban middle class (overlapping, although not fully identical with the efendiya)634 and cosmopolitan upper classes (often involved in trade and finance) engaged with Westernization and national traditions as opposites, and yet formed these components into their own identities. In this context the efendiya can be regarded as a group of professionals that built their social position and cultural capital in colonial modernity, and articulated their specific identity.635 The upper classes negotiated similar transitions in the generational space of the 1850s to 1950s. The reformer Ali Mubarak’s transition into a civil servant in the 1850s, to become an officer of the state, ‘turned him into an alien in his home village.’636 From this time on, any number of young Egyptians made that transition by studying in cities, often in Cairo. The growing academic community in Egypt offered a complex representation of the country, with Cairo University (University of Fuad I) becoming a state university in 1925 and a dynamic place of intellectual debate, not least concerning the intellectual development of Egypt itself.637

630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637

Maḥfūẓ 2001: 990. Reynolds 2012a: 4–5, 39. Macková 2014b: 248. Hamamsy 2005: 238–239. Discussed in Reynolds 2012a: 53, n. 26; for an alternative view, see Ryzova 2014. Ryzova 2014: 8, 23, 33–36. Prestel 2017: 54, with further references. Reid 1990, passim.

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Transition and change were not limited to male-dominated public spheres, even though some Egyptian intellectuals might have looked askance at the intellectual and moral capacity of women.638 The turn of the century saw a range of discourses about women, certainly among women themselves,639 which paralleled women’s movements in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Some of the social traditions that Egyptian women of the time discussed and intended to change would have resonated in Central Europe.640 The 1920s saw elite women entering public life with a political voice and a feminist message (notably Huda ShaꜤrāwī), but even seemingly ‘retiring’ women who lived their lives mostly in the domestic sphere had influence based on their personality and their family’s social standing. Chafika Hamamsy recalled that her grandmother Chafaq Nour who, although functionally illiterate, was frequently sought as a friend and advisor: ‘Safeya Hanim Zaghloul would often seek her advice on personal matters and Hoda Hanim ShaꜤrawi would usually make an appearance despite her busy political life.’641 As the interwar period progressed, women succeeded in obtaining further education and even university positions.642 This was the Egypt that Jaro entered; a country engaging in lively intellectual debate on modernity, identity, and heritage, and contending with a range of social contingencies and reformulating—or entrenching—its social practices. Jaro was most likely not aware of these aspects, at least not at first. Initially, Egyptians other than Egyptologists were people with whom Jaro ‘coexisted but did not meet.’643 His first encounter with Egypt was circumscribed by professional requirements and the desire to make acquaintances in professional circles; he was also on a steep learning curve of life in a multilingual space, and his routine gradually turned almost entirely Francophone. His social group 638

Prestel 2017: 62–70. Remembered in diverse memoirs, from feminist leader Huda ShaꜤrāwī (1987) to author Chafika Hamamsy (2005). 640 Havlůjová 2010. 641 Hamamsy 2005: 91–92. 642 Reid 1990: 103–109. 643 As expressed by Hanley 2017: 43, regarding the similarly cosmopolitan character of the streets in Alexandria. 639

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—scholars—was largely European, but not exclusively.644 While he might have adapted automatically to life in Cairo, because it was not wholly alien to him, reflections on its social problems and intellectual growth, if he had them, were left unarticulated. Yet nor did he comment negatively on the hybrid spaces of Cairo or other Egyptian cities, as did many his contemporaries.645 Dušková was direct in her remarks on Alexandria: ‘it is not Orient, and it is not Europe and such an insipid ambiguity is always revolting.’646 What she termed ‘insipid ambiguity’ others thought of as refined, and tolerant. The generations merged different customs, and the confluence of traditions was often achieved after much inter-generational diplomacy, taking into account the individual agency of different personalities.647 However, essentially, ‘at the top of the Egyptian social scale was a cosmopolitan society that did not aspire to be Europeanised—it already was.’648 These were people who also spoke French and English, and who would have been within reach of Dušková had she had enough time, money, and interest (and also less prejudice) to be able to enter the company of the ‘haute Juiverie, haute Copterie et la haute Mussulmanie du Caire’.649 But she was writing from the perspective of an overwrought diplomatic wife without proper training in the required social practice (including limited language skills) or material means to fulfil her role, as her husband was an envoy without a legation who lived in hotels for most of his time in Egypt, all while being seriously ill. She might have come across as petty-minded, but she was also under considerable pressure.650 Activation of stereotypes often happens in times of perceived or actual vulnerability,651 and the relatively blasé focus of Jaro on his ostraca, meetings, pyramids, and libraries can be attributed 644

Reid 2015. Reynolds 2012a: 29. The theme is recurrent in many late nineteenth century travelogues. 646 ANM, fonds Cyrill Dušek, k. č. 1, inv. č. 40, correspondence P. Dušková to her family, Cairo 5 April 1923, see also Macková 2014b: 250–253. 647 Hamamsy 2005: 120–125, 179–181. 648 Cooper 1995: 27. 649 Cooper 1995: 28. 650 Macková 2014b. 651 Logan, Steel, and Hunt 2015: 39–52. 645

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as an outward manifestation of benevolent feelings toward a new country and social circle, uninterrupted by domestic concerns. And, as anxieties are formed by social interactions, Jaro was in a much better position than Dušková to come across as fitting in. She came to Egypt unprepared, and the country she encountered was markedly ‘different’ from that seen by a non-tourist. Given her unpreparedness she actually managed reasonably well, but certainly did not enjoy—or educate—herself as much as Jaro did. Jaro came to Egypt as a relatively healthy young man with funding, with only himself to care about, and whose dream of working in Egypt had just been fulfilled. Unlike Dušková he was open to the experience, though was less likely to enter Cairene high society. He initially met mostly European Egyptologists, but Egyptian colleagues would be encountered in due course. When this happened, he did not avoid them. To his colleagues, Egyptian and non-Egyptian, Jaro came across as a friendly but not overbearing young man. He dressed very much as they did, spoke French as many of them did, and was in the process of learning some colloquial Arabic (he had been drilled in Arabic by Musil). He even smoked cigarettes, just as any middle-class Egyptian would be expected to do.652 If Jaro had any anxieties about his position and profession they did not come across his letters, and nor did they colour his perceptions of Egypt at least as articulated in available documents. In his first Egyptian winter Jaro enjoyed the IFAO and Cairo for only a few weeks, as he was to join an expedition leaving for Deir el-Medina. About three years after this first season Jaro penned a retrospective view of his plans at the time, emphasizing that he: … came to Deir el-Medina after careful consideration. Before I got to Egypt, I had studied the documents concerning the life and situation of the lower echelons of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, mainly the workers who were employed in the carving of the royal tombs into the rocks of the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. I read all inscriptions that had been published until then, and in several museums in Europe I learnt of many unpublished writings that contained important information about the subject of 652

Shechter 2006: 120–121.

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my interest. On their basis I was able to form a general idea, which, however, suffered from the fact that I had no direct experience of the country and places where these people used to live. Because they worked and lived in Thebes, I did not hesitate in regard to which of the French excavations I would prefer to be assigned to: for me, only Deir el-Medina was possible.653

His acknowledged practice at this stage was to recognize the primacy of documents, but he was able to admit the limits of this approach, and to express the desire to expand upon it by ‘direct experience of the country and places’. At this point there was no specific reference to material culture as a resource, but that does not necessarily indicate Jaro’s lack of awareness. In mid-December 1926, Jaro reported to Lexa he was almost done with a portion of the ostraca in Cairo.654 On 27 December the IFAO party was ready to set off, and he left for Upper Egypt in the company of Étienne Drioton and Bernard Bruyère, and with an itinerary that included Aswan and surroundings, Kom Ombo and Luxor. The plan was to begin the Deir el-Medina season on New Year’s Day 1926.655 Later, Jaro described the journey: We board the fast train at Cairo at 7 o’clock in the evening, carrying only our personal belongings and a supply of blankets, and we comfortably ensconce ourselves in the compartment and sleep through the entire journey. Today a European has to travel in Egypt at least in second class, because third class is usually so packed with the locals, whose concepts of peace and cleanliness are radically different from our own, that it is not recommended for foreigners … At 7 o’clock in the morning the train arrives at Luxor.656

Jaro’s description of the travel conditions that he offered in a public lecture did not differ greatly from the views of typical travellers, nor for that matter from those of the upper echelons of 653 Černý 2007: 22–23, translated from Czech. The published translation by R. Landgráfová was consulted and adapted. 654 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, postcard, 17 December 1925. 655 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, postcards, 17 December 1925 from Cairo, and 30 December 1925 from Aswan. 656 Černý 2007: 23, adapted from the translation by R. Landgráfová.

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Egyptian society regarding the lower socio-economic classes.657 Nonetheless, it is notable that he commented on different ‘concepts’ of behaviour, not about any innate irrationality or lack of emotional control as suggested by some colonial administrators in Africa, notably Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer.658 The ‘lack of self-control’ theme also appeared in Winifred Blackman’s book on Egyptian fellahin, which she was completing at about the time of Jaro’s first visit to Egypt: The Egyptian peasants, in spite of much poverty and sickness, and with few amusements to break the monotony of their lives, are as a whole a wonderfully cheerful and contented people. They are very quick of comprehension, of ready wit, dearly loving a joke, even if directed against themselves, usually blessed with a retentive memory, light-hearted, kindly, and very hospitable; they are also very hard-working. At the same time, they are very emotional, highly strung, most inflammable, generally very ignorant, and nearly always conspicuously lacking in self-control.659

Blackman also referred to the lack of a desirable promotion of cleanliness,660 and on occasion used language not entirely dissimilar to that of Baring (who, in fairness, deplored a lack of stoic self-control without racial partiality, whether it occurred in an Egyptian or in General Gordon),661 she was at pains to point out the harsh conditions the Egyptian rural population had to face, thus suggesting an understanding beyond simple ‘Orientalist’ prejudice. One comment, ‘it is not fair to judge these peasants so harshly,’662 reappears in different wordings throughout Blackman’s book. Blackman’s observations offer an interesting comparison to the musings of her contemporary, Jaro. Although Jaro went south as an epigrapher, not an ethnographer, he shared with Blackman a certain reticence in pronouncing sweeping judgements. His views 657 Poorer Egyptians were often suspected of having poorer hygiene; see Hamamsy 2005: 136–138. References to rationality and self-control as qualities to be cultivated were published in Arabic; see e.g. Prestel 2017: 114–115. 658 Prestel 2017: 107–109. 659 Blackman 1927; quote taken from Blackman and Ikram 2000: 23. 660 Blackman 1927. 661 Cromer 1911, II: 571–573. 662 Blackman and Ikram 2000: 45.

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on his Egyptian colleagues and the local population working at the excavations were not immutable, but varied subject to conditions localized in place and time. 1926 At Deir el-Medina for the first time Jaro saw the site of Deir el-Medina for the first time in January 1926. It could have felt like déjà vu. He had read about it; it was probably the origin of the monuments of the sḏm ꜥš, the community of people he intended to study; and it was the site from where ostraca kept coming. Raindrops of life frozen in fragments of texts; snippets of past conversations. Here a nebulous cloud of ancient voices could begin to hold a definite shape. The journey to the site on the Theban West bank might have felt like a journey through time. First the train deposited the group of archaeologists at the station of Luxor. Then they were transported across the river by boat, enjoying views of monuments on both banks of the Nile, and then on donkeys to the desert site. Jaro sent a copy of one of his early private letters home to the Office of the President, allowing him a glimpse of day-today life in Deir el-Medina during the early weeks of 1926, exactly as he presented it to his parents, brother Miloslav (Milka) and grandmother. Jaro was an avid photographer, filling any gaps in his words with visual evidence.663 Notably, he photographed stages of the archaeological process, such as the cleaning and removal of sand and debris. Local workmen were very much in focus. Dear Daddy, Mother, Milka and Nan, You must think ‘well finally the lad has sent the long-promised photographs’. But don’t be upset, one is kept really busy here and after a day’s work one is not much inclined for an evening of letter-writing. We go to bed at ten already, and get up at seven. That is, when our Decauville starts (Milka will explain, it is a narrow-gauge railway with open cars also used in our part of the world in construction). The Decauville runs right in front of— I can’t really say windows (our only window is in the kitchen)— but doors of our house … I have become quite apt at donkey riding and you would be intrigued to see me dashing gaily… 663 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family; collection of postcards and snapshots sent by Černý to his parents and brother.

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We have now more workmen, about 100, of which 40 are adult men and 60 children, 4 of them girls. The children are of all ages, from 6 to 20. Bruyère supervises the excavation in the mornings and I am free. I usually either work at home, or climb in the Valley of the Queens copying rock carved—and hitherto unpublished— rock inscriptions … Our dig house had been built by Schiaparelli and then adapted by Bruyère, so that one can actually live in it. It is in fact built as an extension of an ancient tomb. Its veranda and our rooms are built of stone (lower parts), and brick (upper parts) in the former tomb courtyard, whilst the magazine that adjoins my room is the original tomb chapel cut in the bedrock. As the dig house abuts the rock cliff, we have frequent night-time visitors on the roof, the jackals that make an abysmal racket. The rascals come to the ventilation opening in my roof that is blocked with iron bars, and howl and sniff at the little roof window. Bruyère, who has troubled sleeping (he had had a bad grenade wound during the war, was a complete mess and ended up as a German POW), goes up and chases them away; I sleep well through it, and have no difficulty. Apart from that, the house teems with mice, but we have a lovely cat to address that particular problem. One has to check on the bed and boots every day, to avoid snakes (they killed 12 reptiles here last year) and scorpions. Have no worries, though, we have a serum for both snake and scorpion bites here. Besides, this is Bruyère’s fifth year and he has not yet been bitten. We are out-and-out desert dwellers, settled between rocks on a hill, with a view on the hillock of Gurnet Murai in front of us (also full of tombs), and with open ravines on left and right, that provide our windows to the world. […] It is a fabulous life. I shall find it very difficult to part with this lovely place. We get up at 7 a.m., and breakfast between 7.30 and 7.45: 2 eggs (fried), 2 cups of tea with lemon (and chocolate on Sundays, so that we know it is a Sunday), bread (but French, not like ours), and jam (orange, strawberry, cherry or apricot, I like them so much!). We lunch at noon. Today’s menu for instance was as follows: smoked ox tongue with courgettes (a local vegetable, somewhat like cucumbers) cooked with fennel, spinach with hardboiled eggs, toast and ham, fruit (oranges and apples), tea flavoured with lemon; later, at 4.30 in the afternoon, when the work has ended for the day, we have tea with milk, bread with marmalade, and we enjoy the most beautiful part of the day. I will report our dinner menu later, as I am just writing this at 7 p.m.

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[…] Today, we went to inspect a newly uncovered tomb. We squeezed through an opening and crawled across five rooms cut deep in the rock. We have had to edge and crawl in all possible and impossible positions: on the belly, on the buttocks, on the back, or on our knees, as the rooms were packed almost up to the ceiling, with sand, debris, rock, and mummies. Air is full of mummy dust that stuffs the nose and scratches the throat, the underground is hot as hell; in short, it is so bad one gets sick. And we had to measure everything, candle in one hand, measuring tape, notebook and pencil in the other. Think of what we have to go through; there’s a spot, you need to lean on it and quickly find out that there’s no firm ground, your hand goes straight into a mummy belly. I am quite sure this tomb will yield at least 20 mummies to our workers. Imagine these poor people—they work from 7 am to 4.45 pm, with just one-hour lunch break at noon, and get [the equivalent of] 8.50 crowns per day. For breakfast and lunch, they bring raw vegetables and Arab bread. However, they are first class thieves, and one has to keep an eye on them at all times as they would steal any artefact they could lay their hands on. Men dig with hoes and children carry the sand and debris in little baskets on their shoulders (girls on their heads) to the Decauville. We will be opening another tomb the day after tomorrow. God help us, that’s going to be a big snuff. I’d think I must have snuffed at least half a mummy already. Still, I look forward to it, intriguing things; only when you read an Egyptologist’s book you have no idea how much hard work and self-denial has been involved. We are just after dinner now. We had 1) arrowroot soup, 2) ox tongue with baked potatoes and carrots, 3) baked courgettes with a potato pancake, 4) fruit, 5) tea (that’s for me, Bruyère prefers black coffee).664

Jaro seems initially to have internalized some of the views common among European archaeologists on site, but it did not escape him that the local population lived in conditions that would have been deemed poverty by European standards. Blackman, for example, characterized the living conditions of the fellahin as ‘much poverty’.665 The population of the Theban necropolis was less well-off even than some agricultural communities, except for one specific source of income. Employment at excavations was 664 665

AKPR, file J. Černý. Blackman and Ikram 2000: 23.

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essential part of the economy of Western Thebes, dependent on antiquities dealing in all its forms, from illicit trading to simple hard work. The village of Qurna that enveloped part of the Theban necropolis had developed as a successor to Old Qurna, but was located nearer to cultivated fields. The village grew around a building known as Yanni’s house, after the collector and dealer Yanni d’Athanasi, which was built in the early nineteenth century. The villagers developed a mode of subsistence that was intimately linked to the antiquities trade, and while this mainly involved working with archaeological teams (with perhaps some opportunistic pilfering), there were times when activity became downright illicit. Yet the Qurnawis’ situation should be viewed in context,666 as Blackman had been suggesting for other Egyptian rural communities. Outbreaks of illicit searching for antiquities (which really can be regarded as such only from the 1850s onwards, when the trade came under stricter governmental control) coincided with times of economic hardship that jeopardized other sources of income.667 Life in Upper Egyptian villages has never been easy, and fluctuations in the Egyptian economy hit them hard. It also pays to see the Egyptologists’ attitudes in context. They were trying to obtain as much information about a past culture as possible, experimenting with novel recording methods by regarding minuscule finds and large works of art as being equally important, and combining and developing their training and team synergies as work progressed. A complex site like Deir el-Medina devoured manpower. It was demanding work done in conditions that from a Western perspective were most uncomfortable. Jaro’s first encounter with the differences between European fieldwork and indigenous practice is both pertinent and topical, and invites a discussion on the general experience of Egyptian archaeology. His early letters highlight a growing and productive area of research into the ‘scholarly social machine’.668 The keywords appear to be ‘context’ and ‘nuance’, which critics seem reluctant to allow: ‘to allow Egyptology to generate questions about its 666

Done well by Spek 2011, when he is not maligning Egyptology. Spek 2011: 145–149. 668 Although on a different scale and speed compared to later scholarly social machines; see De Roure 2014. 667

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own impact on the surrounding social landscape, falls outside the boundaries of its own intellectual objectives.’669 This seems a misrepresentation. Egyptological correspondence suggests that even early Egyptologists could be quite self-reflective, musing about the surrounding social landscape and at least occasionally on the impact their work had on it.670 Archaeologists did not come to Egypt as social reformers.671 The earliest accepted a quasi-corvée labour force because that was standard practice in Ottoman provinces at the time. This later transitioned along with societal expectations into a paid workforce, and in nearly all cases further transitioned also a qualified local workforce, without which excavations would not be possible.672 This has long been recognized: It was the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie who acknowledged that a trained Egyptian workman had a lot to teach to a freshman European excavator.673 Even so, some Egyptians and some Europeans viewed each other as the ‘other’.674 This tendency is as alive today as it was in Jaro’s time, and is delicate terrain to navigate. It is perhaps too easy to regard archaeologists in Egypt as a homogeneous bunch of ‘Westerners’ with ‘colonial’ attitudes, but generalizations rarely bear close scrutiny. Throughout Jaro’s life he encountered people dismissive of Egyptian achievements and people who applauded them, or in any case did not diminish them. Nor was it impossible to find ‘Westerners’ critical of Western attitudes toward the Egyptians, including in political aspects. Blackman, to take a pertinent example, was ‘often … critical of the British government’s policies in Egypt in general, and its attitude toward the fellahin in particular.’675 Nor were ‘Egyptians’ a uniform group. An urban intellectual debating political ideas that impacted Egypt and Europe had a more diverse range of opportunities and interests than a rural dweller shaped largely by the village and its local customs. Yet 669

Spek 2011: 31. As do their modern successors; see Tully and Hanna 2013. 671 As noted by Quirke 2013. 672 Georg 2019: 91–126. For the social complexities of the status of workmen, see Doyon 2013; Doyon 2015; and Doyon 2018. 673 See Quirke 2010 and 2013. 674 For references, see Georg 2019. 675 Blackman and Ikram 2000: ix. 670

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lines of communication between rural and metropolitan communities should not be underestimated. Indeed, a characteristic element of Egyptian modernity is the trajectory of a young man (Ali Mubarak being a pertinent example) from a child in a village to an efendi, to enter the public sphere and administer the modern state and its economy,676 although this trajectory toward modernity was not always reflected on kindly in Egyptian culture during the colonial era.677 A ‘modern’ Egyptian, with an education and prospects formed by the hybrid world of colonial Egypt, could be as dismissive or critical of issues in Egyptian life as his ‘Western’ contemporaries. So much so that the urban upper classes were often ridiculed for the distance that they set up between themselves and the fellahin.678 The one element of Egyptian society in Jaro’s time that was thought capable of redressing ‘the lost balance of in society’ was the efendiya,679 among whom were the first generations of Egyptian Egyptologists such as Ahmad Kamal and Selim Hassan.680 But lines of communication with their Western counterparts were not easily opened in a climate of both geopolitical pressure and professional mistrust. Jaro didn’t seek to meet ‘local’ Egyptologists upon arrival, and this is perhaps understandable. He had immediate obligations to discharge as a representative of Czechoslovakia, and obtaining introductions to the circles of Cairene intellectuals, where he might have felt at home, was not on the list. Few field Egyptologists were or are psychologists trained in intercultural communication. It might be argued that such training could be useful, as it is useful to have undertaken first aid training when travelling with an expedition, but reproaching Egyptologists or other archaeologists for being disrespectful of local customs, however unintentionally, while complaining that they have failed to remedy local social issues,681 is to fall into a blame-game narrative. This is an impossible situation: playing 676 677 678 679 680 681

Ryzova 2014: 97–120. See also Gershoni and Jankowski 2010. Ryzova 2014: 140–141. Ryzova 2014: Chapter 2. Ryzova 2014: 84. Reid 2002: Chapter 5, and Reid 2015: chapter ‘Contesting Egyptology in the 1930s’. Compare various comments by Spek 2011.

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the role social reformer has often been seen as disrespectful to local customs, as generations of Egyptian efendis have come to realize.682 The ‘managing’ of the poor, or the ‘politics of benevolence’,683 in Egypt has constituted a large chapter in Egypt’s social history, and has been closely related to political and social changes in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.684 Egyptian elites have exercised responsibility for the poor of Egypt in a number of ways, using various philanthropic organizations. Foreign organizations have likewise made attempts, whether Christian or Muslim, especially from the early twentieth century. Some have been related to the women’s movement, often with focus on the health of mothers and children, and in this particular public forum female participation was not discouraged.685 But in any cultural context where social and economic disparities are systemic, local communities—the intended beneficiaries of social interventions—tend to respond diversely. People tend to regard good intentions as meddling, and resist. The speed of social change differs markedly in any society, according to geographic and social factors. Many come slowly, especially in aspects of private life. For instance, in Egypt up until the First World War ‘the family, the status of women, and the social function of religion did not undergo any change,’686 yet many other aspects of the Egyptian society did change, from the sedentarization of Bedouins, to a dissolution of some traditional class divisions, to the formation of the hybrid group that came to be called the efendiya. Some were government induced, such as Bedouin sedentarization,687 but some were occasioned by much more complex developments, including Western influence with regard to the developing efendiya.688 Egyptian society when Jaro first visited was a hybrid, transforming under social orders implemented by the government from an Ottoman province to what Lucie Ryzova termed ‘national682 683 684 685 686 687 688

Ryzova 2014: 175. On which see Ener 2003. Ener 2003: 95–96. Ener 2003: 111–112. Holt 1968: 135–161, quote p. 137. Holt 1968: 138–140. Ryzova 2014.

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colonial’ Egypt, with a different social momentum emerging from public discussions, an ascendant identity as a modern nation, and an interest in its own past. The years following the Great War and Egyptian independence in 1922 emphasized many changes in Egyptian society, including women challenging the status quo, but Egyptians as a whole came to regard themselves as a nation, with social and cultural needs and demands that resonated with an observation by the French Orientalist Ernest Renan: ‘To have common glories in the past and to have a common will to perform still more—these are essential conditions for being a people.’689 When Jaro first visited Egypt, Pharaonism was coming to be regarded as essential for the conceptualization of an Egyptian nation, and indigenous Egyptology was an asset for that purpose, more than simply being a contribution to scholarship. The Western attitudes took time to respond to the changes, having been formed in a colonial mindset that assumed the development of colonized or occupied nations but was slow to recognize or respond to it. Some retained the entrenched vision of what Baring called a ‘semi-civilised’ condition,690 while others regarded their lack of understanding as a convenient means of sparing themselves the effort, as noted by the British Assyriologist Archibald Henry Sayce,691 who compared ‘Orientals’ to inhabitants of Saturn.692 Ideally, efforts to bridge the intercultural divide would have been mutual, but both Egyptians and Europeans were hampered by their ignorance. Baring was at least clear when explaining the limits of his own knowledge, and his constant learning process concerning all things Egyptian, or in clarifying that he was in principle sympathetic to the difficulties of Egyptian society. He sought to promote the ‘picture of beneficent England, operating at her most effective in Egypt,’693 but that does not preclude an element of genuine belief on his part that his empire was beneficent. But his was a paternalistic view—he (and British politics by extension) knew best—and this meant that he came to 689

Gershoni and Jankowski 2004: 7. Baring 1911, I: 2. 691 But then Sayce considered Central Europeans to be ‘vermin’, particularly if they happened also to be Jewish. See Challis 2013: 144. 692 As quoted by Baring 1911, I: 7. 693 Holt et al. 1968: 247. 690

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be regarded as an overbearing ‘al-Lurd’ for whom Egyptians had very little sympathy. This pattern was repeated on many levels of Western-Egyptian interaction, Egyptology not excepted. In the complex situation of Egypt’s ‘qualified independence’ after 1922 (as Artemis Cooper characterized it)694 there were many vestiges of Baring’s beneficent empire. Confronted with their own limitations, and faced with local communities whose social structures were largely obscure, most archaeologists in the early twentieth century simply took over models that appeared functional, and which seemed to provide the locals with additional income. They did not necessarily question their own status as khawagas, if it appeared to offer them a social status and a degree of protection. A community was, after all, not theirs to change, though by entering one and becoming part of its internal discourses they took on a measure of at least partial responsibility,695 local hirings and providing medical care, especially if the expedition contained female members (such as Françoise Bruyère at Deir el-Medina).696 But by their very presence they assumed the mantle of responsibility for cultural heritage that was actively contested by different parties, some of whom used antiquities to enflame nationalist discourse. When the dialogue comes to pit archaeology against the inhabitants at or near an archaeological site, and certainly in a historical setting, the willingness to judge the past should be perhaps be tempered by adherence to engaging with as much evidence as possible. Jaro came to an entirely unfamiliar social situation in January 1926. He had to adapt to the identity of a khawaga, which was not necessarily a term of prestige, but held the implication of an ‘other’ in the Egyptian society. He had to master arrangements in the field, cope with the climate, adapt to the daily routine, live entirely within a Francophone environment (apart from writing letters in other languages, mostly English and Czech, and the occasional use of Arabic) and do his job. He initially took on some of the attitudes of his team 694

Cooper 1995: 15. Proposed with vehemence by Stephen Quirke (2007; 2013) and discussed by Tully and Hanna 2013 and by Wendrich 2018. 696 A photographic record of her activities is kept in the Bruyère Deir el-Medina files of the IFAO archives. A selection has been published in Driaux and Arnette 2016. 695

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members. The expedition team knew very well its limitations when it came to influencing local circumstances, and Jaro would later to come to reflect upon them, but in the winter and early spring of 1926 he was still a young man overwhelmed by the opportunity to work at a site that was so evidently tied to the ancient community he wished to study. His later reflections led him to remark that he felt unsuited to pronounce comments and assessments on the subject of contemporary Egypt.697 He was in at least interested in local conditions, including local geography, which sets him apart from some contemporaries, such as John Pendlebury who, some years later, kept his distance from the workmen at Amarna (but who nonetheless took care of the experienced local members of the team)698 and was not intrigued by the local environment. Jaro considered local knowledge to be essential. The archaeologists at Deir el-Medina were not ignorant of difficulties in the lives of their workmen, and Jaro in particular noted the discrepancy between the provisions for the European members of the expedition and local self-catering. Indeed, the cuisine on the expedition was luxurious by his standards: Jaro had lived through the deprivations that the First World War had brought to Bohemia, and had been pronounced ‘undernourished’ during his medical for the Živnobanka. Jaro’s letters, other than the one surviving personal letter to his family, were mostly to Lexa, and in these one can hear his professional voice. Not long after reaching Dier el-Medina he had formed a research plan: 1) Plan of the tombs in the Valley of the Queens plus unpublished graffiti I found in the said valley 2) Plan and collation of graffiti in the Valley of the Kings […] 3) Plan and description of the workmen’s village […] 4) Copy the calendar and offering texts in Medinet Habu […] photograph and copy the list of sons of Ramesses III— important for Dynasty XX chronology 5) Analyse all hieratic finds of the Institute […]

697

As stated in his 1929/1930 lecture in Cairo; see Černý 2007. Grundon 2007: 199–200; note his interest in securing careers for the Abu Bakr brothers, 210–212. 698

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Aforementioned points show that I mainly work with hieratic texts; however, I also pay attention to topography and archaeology. Walking through the Theban necropolis I observe carefully, to have a clear picture of each place for my intended publication […].699

Involvement with the tasks Bruyère planned for the 1926 season left Jaro only limited time for his own plans, usually on days off. Some overlapped, however, such as analysing ‘all hieratic finds of the Institute’ and surveying material from Medinet Habu. He accompanied Bruyère on the reconnaissance of a kom near Medinet Habu in early January 1926, two days after wrote this letter to Lexa.700 A photograph of Jaro on a ladder might have been taken in the temple itself.701 Although archaeological work was foremost in Jaro’s mind during the excavation, he was a practical man. In the above letter to Lexa he added: At the moment, the plan is that my leave ends on 19 February. I shall apply for another, and will send the copy of my application to the presidential office to support me in the bank. Would you please meet Chancellor Šámal, and discuss if your kind intervention may help with Dir. Gen. Dr Preiss? However, there is still sufficient time to do so. I shall report more in detail, and I hope to have photographs to enclose. Do let me know your news, when you have a moment. How are your books going, and lectures? I have already collected fair few volumes here from their authors.

Jaro pursued his intention to prolong his leave from the bank, which was granted, quite possibly because Šámal interceded on his behalf with Preiss. He probably realized that both formal reports to the Office of the President and correspondence with Lexa would be shared between his mentor and his sponsors, and so ensured that both communicated successful projects and 699 A letter from J. Černý to F. Lexa, from Deir el-Medina and dated 6 January 1926, with the heading ‘1926, 6. 1., Deir el-Medine’; AAVCR, Collection Lexa, box 2, call number 69. The quoted text omits parts of the letter that contain comments on the timing of Jaro’s plans and similar details. 700 IFAO Archives, Bruyère diaries, cahier DEM 2, mission 1926, p. 1. 701 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family; an undated and unprovenanced photograph of Jaro, in his hat, standing on a ladder in one of the temple courtyards with well-preserved walls.

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praise of his work by IFAO administrators. Jaro chose to present himself as a specialist in hieratic who was a valuable member of the team at Deir el-Medina, and emphasized obtaining access to materials in the Egyptian museum that benefitted his academic career. He even listed new professional contacts with international scholars: ‘a significant gain of my sojourn here I would indicate the connections with foreign Egyptologists, for instance Golenischeff, Lacau, Lefébvre, Drioton, Foucart, Jéquier, Winlock. Gunn, the Englishman, made a profitable offer to me…’702 Presentation of success to his sponsor was proof of funds well-invested. Although Jaro normally wrote to Lexa in a serious tone, he allowed himself some self-reflective musings. Their communication focused on practical provisions for the development of Czechoslovak Egyptology, both in terms of furthering Jaro’s career and in setting up of an Egyptological seminar in Prague, topics of interest to both the professor and his former student. The seminar officially commenced its activities in summer 1925, but its library was small with next to no teaching collection, and there was no chance of sponsoring expeditions. Both the collection and a prospect of fieldwork were deemed essential. It appears that Jaro balanced his interests and contacts between Czechoslovakia, from where his funding came, and the international Egyptological community, where his professional career development lay. His point of contact in Czechoslovak diplomatic circles was, other than direct correspondence with Říha and Šámal in Prague, the legation in Cairo. Its head, Hurban, occasionally tasked him with being a guide to prominent Czechoslovak visitors. Here, Jaro was to prove himself an asset, being a suitably urbane representative of Czechoslovakia. Diplomats in Cairo were rather anxious about what sort of a traveller brandished a Czechoslovak passport in Egypt. Several years prior to Jaro’s first visit there were several groups of budget travellers, the ‘tramps’; low-cost travellers, the 1920s equivalent of backpackers. Usually young men—students or apprentices—they travelled on a shoestring budget, mingled with the Egyptian population as much as their limited Arabic and cultural knowledge allowed, and generally 702

AKPR, file J. Černý, no. 527.

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were the opposite of a suitably dressed and financially secure Western tourist. The first Czechoslovak envoy, Dušek, was amused; his consul, Blahovský, was utterly shocked.703 The legation was keen to promote a rather different type of traveller. Hurban’s acquaintance Ludmila Matiegková arrived at Western Thebes in January 1926, accompanied by the legation secretary, Emanuel Mazač. Matiegková was deeply interested in Egyptology, was in contact with Lexa, and had promoted the study of the ancient and modern Near East in Czechoslovakia, although she never followed a standard academic career. By midJanuary she was on her first trip to Upper Egypt: ‘We visited the site of the French archaeological mission, to which a certain Dr Černý, one of ours, has also been affiliated. He visited Medinet Habu with us and the valley where queens of Egypt are buried … Tomorrow I am visiting the mission all alone and Dr Černý will take me to other tombs and temples.’704 Matiegková’s letter was written in several stages over four days, and she enthusiastically visited several West Theban temples, including Deir el-Bahri, where a small snapshot has survived that shows Jaro and the stately Matiegková in front of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, who was a favourite topic.705 Contact with Matiegková might have fostered Jaro’s interest in other aspects of Egyptology and archaeology. Apart from her more widespread popular books with historical orientalist and feminist themes, Matiegková was a serious scholar with much interest in everyday life and physical anthropological characteristics of the ancient Egyptians. Her father (and mentor) Jindřich Matiegka was a key figure in the development of Czechoslovak anthropology, including establishing what is now the Museum of Man in Prague.706 Jaro and Ludmila may have discussed the possibility of providing anthropological material, including human remains, to Prague institutions, as Jaro later succeeded in obtaining the promise of such material from Bruyère, possibly in 1926 but certainly in 1927.707 703

Macková 2014b: 93–94. ANM, J., fonds J. Matiegka, box 39, folder 1514, L. Matiegková to A. Skořepová, 14–17 January 1926. 705 ANpM, Černý Collection, unnumbered photograph. 706 See Tomsová and Schierová 2016. 707 Bruyère 1928: 95. 704

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By February, Jaro was making progress on some fundamental questions connected with his research, but he was also sceptical of what the excavations would bring: I am fairly sure nowadays that most of the collection provided by Drovetti to the museum in Turin is coming from Deir el-Medina. Following Drovetti’s agents, Deir el-Medina was a gold mine for the Arabs, excavated—and destroyed—with much attention. Then Schiaparelli came, followed by the Germans (Möller) and finally de Noüy, so we have leftovers. Our present excavation aims at making an accurate plan of the necropolis, clean the tombs, save what we can, and publish as soon as possible.708

These ‘leftovers’ were rather more interesting than expected. The reconnaissance of the sanctuary of Meretseger, ‘located halfway between Deir el-Medina and the Valley of the Queens,’709 and cleaning of tombs brought stelae, relief fragments and a variety of other finds, including fine mummy masks in the tomb of Ani, P 1069.710 While assisting Bruyère with the survey, excavation and clearance of individual tombs, and generally helping with ostraca and other written material, Jaro continued on two more tasks associated with his research agenda: My second job is copying inscriptions in tombs that have already been cleared. There are mainly genealogies, very important for me. The deceased and wife are portrayed accepting offerings from the entire family, who are listed with their names. These geanealogies give me plenty of names of women, who are represented in the papyri only selectively. I must namely note a discovery. Everyone buried here are and I have found that the title is being used by the same people who in the papyri are named . I must therefore analyse every material concerned with sḏm ꜥš m s.t mꜢꜥ.t Further work comes with the Theban necropolis graffiti. I have found out that Spieg.[elberg] had published only a selection, mainly from Deir el-Bahari and the Valley of the Kings. However, 708 This quote is from a letter to F. Lexa, dated 2 February 1926, AAVCR, Collection Lexa, box 2, call number 69. 709 Gobeil 2015: 8. 710 Archive IFAO, B. Bruyère papers, Cahier DEM 2, 1926, p. 7.

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I have identified 60 already in the Valley of the Queens and between Deir el-Medine and Deir el-Bahri, of which I have copied thirty and will copy more this week. These are left unpublished by Spiegelberg and I intend to publish a paper on them. To check what Spieg. did publish, Winlock, the American excavating in Deir el Bahri, offered to lend me Spieg.’s book and even took me & the book back to our place. I was very grateful, considering the weight of the book.

To Lexa he outlined his aim of writing to Gardiner about the workmen named in these inscriptions,711 identifying the Deir el-Medina inhabitants with rmṯ n pꜢ ḫr, and identifying these with the tomb builders. To Gardiner he was more formal, and went into less detail regarding the objectives of his work. His writing style to Gardiner meant that comical inconsistencies occasionally crept into the rather flowery style of English Jaro used. Some years later, when international mail delivery was less reliable, he complained ‘I have quite a number of letters of yours to answer, some of them are by now pretty old. Then first my best thanks for all of them.’712 The work continued through February and March, and Jaro reported both to Lexa and to Šámal. His March report to Lexa offers insights into their shared plans for the Egyptological seminar in Prague. Lexa clearly had some idea of a teaching collection, and Jaro was to consider how to obtain artefacts for it. He was fully aware of the privileged character of obtaining artefacts with secure contexts, from the framework of archaeological excavations, as ‘only a thorough knowledge of the archaeological context gives each object its true value.’713 There was also a practical reason for this—the cost of artefacts from dealers. ‘I would say, however, that if we really wanted something one day, we would have to excavate. I know now how much excavations cost, and will explain in detail.’714 The subject would recur in their exchanges over the following years.

711 To whom he indeed wrote later, GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.76, 16 February 1926. 712 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.27, 11 September 1943. 713 Černý 2007: 21, translated by R. Landgráfová from the original Czech. 714 Letter dated 24 March 1926, AAVCR, Collection Lexa, box 2, call number 69.

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Jaro also felt obliged to be an informal envoy of his country, a task not made easy by limited and delayed financial means. Yet, as he wrote, ‘I am pleased not to be a shame on the Czech name. I do promote Czechoslovakia and the Prague English newspapers and some brochures are very useful.’ In late March 1926,715 Jaro met Georg Steindorff in Luxor, and ‘gave him plenty of information for the new Baedeker.716 Also, he plans a completely revised edition of “Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches”,717 and further he promised to write a Coptic grammar, so that I could procure it for myself.’ Jaro’s returned from Egypt in April, via a detour to Jerusalem,718 where, among other sites, he visited and photographed the temple of the Holy Sepulchre.719 From Palestine, he took the ship to Marseille, sending a postcard from the harbour city and referencing a favourite book of the Černý family: ‘I am sending [a photograph] of the fortress If, the gaol of Edmond Dantes. We passed by it, as well as the isles of Monte Christo, Elba and Corsica. We saw also Etna, Stromboli and Messina.’720 In May he probably had to tackle the backlog of work at the Živnobanka, but in early June he visited Šámal in the Office of the President, presenting some results of his archaeological work in person. The summer was probably spent working at the bank, perhaps with some leisure time, but in September Jaro was once again packing for a trip to Turin. There he resumed his association with Botti and Peet. Peet was impressed: ‘Černý and Botti were both there, and out of 20 days I deciphered for seven hours per diem on nineteen, and the rest of the day was mostly filled up with talking shop. Černý has come on wonderfully. He is a much quicker and more brilliant decipherer than I am or ever shall be … I trust that he will be able to get leave again

715 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 24 March 1926, from Deir el-Medina. 716 Steindorff largely wrote the famed Baedeker guidebook during the 1920s. 717 Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches, the first edition of which appeared in 1900. 718 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 20 April 1926. 719 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family; a photograph of the temple’s gate, identified by a caption on the recto. 720 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, 13 May 1926.

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this winter, for he ought to be away from the bank and wholly devoted to Egyptology.’721 He also offered Jaro the co-authorship of a publication. They were working, among other things, on a papyrus containing a marriage settlement that was dated to the late twentieth dynasty.722 Jaro had developed his method of painstakingly comparing names and—if available—family relationships of people named within a text with attestations in other late New Kingdom papyri, and with names in graffiti. The paper was to have a detailed philological commentary, but it ended with remarks regarding an economic and social settlement: the division of family property in which a man who had been married twice intended to provide both for the children of his first (and probably deceased or divorced) wife, and for his second (thus far childless) wife. Contacts with Botti, Peet and Lexa seem to predominate in the mid-1920s, but one absence stands out as unexpected. This is communication with Erman, which apparently continued but is left largely undocumented, probably because letters from the 1920s are often missing. It thus remains unknown whether Jaro used the opportunity to visit Erman during the latter’s trips to Karlsbad, such as in October 1926.723 Jaro returned from his productive Turin trip on 6 October 1926 and embarked once again on his routine at the bank. He still expected logistical support and practical necessities from his family, as just before leaving Turin he wrote to his parents: ‘I am leaving Turin on Friday and shall reach the Wilson station [in Prague] on Sunday morning, travelling on the Trieste express. Have things ready for me, including new clothes and a bath.’724 Not even a ‘please’ was included. In December, Peet continued in the same enthusiastic tone about Jaro. He and Gardiner and Jaro were exchanging notes on Turin papyri and on ostraca in Gardiner’s possession, especially those with apparent property lists. Peet had come to rely on Jaro’s readings, and Gardiner must have requested Jaro’s address as 721

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.230.92. The resulting publication was Černý and Peet 1927. 723 See Cappel 2013: 184–185. 724 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, dated 6 October 1926. 722

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Peet supplied him with that of his flat in Praha-Košíře, adding ‘I sincerely trust he will get out to Egypt again this year, though a short time ago it was still uncertain. I wish we could get him away from that damned bank. He is a first-rate man.’725 No longer ‘pathetic’, then. In December 1926, Jaro most likely spent the Christmas holidays with his family, but on the 29th, just a day after Peet typed his letter to Gardiner expressing uncertainty, he was again en route to Egypt. Jaro was probably not confident that his network in Prague would continue to secure favourable treatment at the bank, and he had no other significant employment prospects. This pressure must have informed his working style in Egypt: work as hard as possible, and submit well-organized reports. This quality made him a dependable colleague in the IFAO. Bruyère was a man with insight, and came to realize how well Jaro’s interest in the social life of the ancient Dier el-Medina community and his approach to the available resources benefitted the IFAO’s own goals. The connection was mutually beneficial, and the IFAO accepted Jaro despite the fact that he was ostensibly a ‘foreigner’. Jaro was in the right place at the right time, albeit with Czechoslovak diplomatic backing. The IFAO excavation reports from 1927 began to include regular references to Jaro’s multifaceted work. Along with deciphering ostraca and hunting for graffiti, Jaro was entrusted with supervising the conservation of tomb paintings, and overseeing parts of the excavation. His involvement in both excavation and epigraphy might seem obvious now, but in the 1920s the two were generally kept separate, and it was Bruyère’s foresight that allowed Jaro to work on both. It is a testament to his professional skill and propensity for systematic research that Jaro’s work was met with such acceptance and support. At this time, Jaro’s professional prospects rested with the IFAO, the support of the Czechoslovak government, and a growing international network that soon encompassed some of the most important figures of British Egyptology, initially Peet. These relationships were of course reciprocal, and provided some form pragmatic advantage for all parties, but still show a degree of 725 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.230.86, T. E. Peet to A. H. Gardiner, 28 December 1926.

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openness to a young scholar who had only his skill to recommend him. Their collaboration from 1924 to 1927 in Turin left Peet with generally a positive impression, beyond mutual professional usefulness. Not only was Jaro the ‘best hieroglyphs writer in Europe’ (Peet pressed Jaro to perfect his hieroglyphic hand) and ‘a first rate scholar’ who had a ‘brain,’ but also seemed ‘to have all that background of culture and knowledge which our own youth lacks so completely.’726 Peet was soon to hint at the general desirability of culture in his Schweich lectures, which promoted the image of an ideal scholar with ‘literary gifts’ and multilingual training.727 Jaro’s training in languages was impeccable, as was his ability to think in terms of historical context. How widely he read is uncertain, as his known reading material seems to have been largely professional. Yet to have the background of culture and knowledge that Peet so admired suggests that he indulged in at least some recreational reading, likely as a legacy of his upbringing. The positive impression Jaro made upon Peet was a testament to the thoroughness of the education offered by Austro-Hungarian gymnasia, which enabled Jaro to present himself with cultural capital that compared favourably to the alumni of prestigious British public schools and universities (Gardiner was educated at Charterhouse in Godalming, Peet at Merchant Taylors’ Boys’ School in Crosby, near Liverpool, and both at The Queen’s College, Oxford). Peet was willing to see Jaro as an equal, as someone worthy of his and Gardiner’s professional interest and time, and worthy of inclusion in their professional and epistemic community. There was no significant hint that nationality, or even class, was a barrier, although the latter would have been less of a consideration for Peet, who had also faced financial difficulties. Peet’s position at Liverpool, although it provided him with a professorial title, was not particularly secure, and he sometimes needed to prompt the affluent Gardiner to show some understanding.728 Peet was pragmatic, noticed Jaro was a good ‘transcriber’, and 726

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.230.84, 12 March 1927. Peet 1931: 5–6. 728 Notably in 1928, when he was passed over for a better remunerated job at the Ashmolean Museum; GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.240.59, 6 June 1928. 727

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was willing to lend helping hand. But he went further, because to some extent he could see himself in the younger scholar’s shoes. Jaro had started to build his position in what Caroline S. Wagner has termed the ‘invisible college’. In the Czechoslovak context, the support of Šámal and the resulting funding by Masaryk can be explained in terms of pragmatic support for Oriental Studies and the potential for representing the still-new republic of Czechoslovakia in the field of cultural diplomacy. Internationally and academically, positive reactions were based on Jaro’s personal characteristics and Egyptological expertise.

1927–1929 presidential patronage Jaro resumed his routine at Deir el-Medina in January 1927, after discharging several other tasks along the way. He wrote to Lexa: I was welcomed warmly at the IFAO, and as we had to wait for the monies for excavation, I spent a fortnight working on the ostraca in the Cairo museum. As a result, I had transcribed 30 ostraca from the end of the nineteenth century and Lefébvre [sic] (conservator) told me that I could get to the museum to work for a certain time (about 3 months) in the museum catalogue and process the ostraca for Cat. Gén. With 75 pounds monthly. However, my time plan does not suffice. I was about to leave for the excavation with Bruyère and Clère,729 when I was suddenly asked to act as a guide to a group of students of Egyptology from the Cairo University on a tour of monuments of Upper Egypt. I have accepted this rather advantageous offer, despite some discomfort [of the travel], and visited in six days of my guide duty: Fayûm (Hawâra and Illahûn), El Berša, El Amarna and Abydos. Upon arrival to Luxor, I handed the group over to director Foucart and left to join the excavation where I have been ever since.730

Jaro did not hesitate to engage directly with prospective Egyptian Egyptologists who had been given the opportunity to exchange experiences with a Western-trained specialist. Among 729 730

Jacques Jean Clère (1906–1989); Bierbrier 2019: 106. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 16 February 1927.

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the group was his future friend, Labib Habachi,731 though it was still several years before Jaro began to collaborate with Egyptian scholars.732 This was, however, an opportunity to see more sites of archaeological interest, including Abydos, where the Jaro and his students were photographed.733 The job as a guide provided a crash course in Egyptian topography, and made him some local connections, but it also brought in welcome cash and this was probably a factor in Jaro’s decision making. Gustave Lefebvre’s offer of employment at the Egyptian Museum could not be accepted at once, but it remained open. The season that followed the tour was again very busy, both in terms of work and social life. The expedition team made weekend trips, visiting Luxor and local markets and festivities regularly.734 In March, the ever-busy Jaro and Bruyère wrote a letter to Jean Clère enumerating their various social obligations, including a visit to the Chicago house.735 The routine at Deir el-Medina was also enlivened by visits to other IFAO locations, including to Fernand Bisson de la Roque’s excavation at Medamud. Jaro and Bruyère signed off the joint letter as ‘sḏm ꜥš m s.t mꜢꜥ.t, mafish nb.t pr’, a combination of ancient Egyptian and colloquial Egyptian Arabic that means ‘Servants in the Place of Truth, without the lady of the house’ (because Bruyère’s wife Françoise was not present). Jaro had come to be immersed in the sociability of the team. Over the years, the IFAO team even produced a number of humorous pseudo-ancient artefacts, notably Bruyère’s bouillabaisse recipe,736 a variant of the fish mummification scene from TT 2 which is steeped in insider jokes and French puns, and a ‘coffee stela’.737 If Jaro was able to enjoy this humour, his fluency in French must have been very close to that of a native speaker.

731

For a biography of Habachi, see Kamil 2007. Some aspects of the limited opportunities for academic collaboration in the interwar period were discussed in El Shakry 2007: 24–26. 733 Kamil 2007, photo on p. 62. 734 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, undated photographs showing local festivities and picnics in the desert. 735 GIA, Clère Mss. 25, J. Černý to J. Clère, 6 March 1927. 736 Salmas 2018a. 737 A photograph of which is preserved in the Deir el-Medina collection of the Griffith Institute Archive, and was analysed in Salmas 2022. 732

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The serious business of Jaro’s appointment manifested when Šámal let him know, via the legation, that it would be opportune if he prolonged his Egyptian season to ‘be available to Mr President’.738 Masaryk had decided to undertake a semi-holiday visit to the Mediterranean, which he had been considering since 1924,739 and Jaro was required to obtain further leave from the bank. He was not entirely comfortable with this due to the ambiguous position in which it placed him: ‘[my] position in the bank appears to me rather shaken in consequence of my frequent leaves…’740 By this time, however, developments were engaged in moves that would eventually take Jaro away from what Peet had called ‘that damned bank’. Obtaining leave was probably straightforward, given the connections between Masaryk, Šámal, and Preiss, because the director was still invited to social events at Prague Castle or the presidential summer residence at Lány, but Jaro could not quite believe his exceptional position (or at least did not want to commit such beliefs in writing to Lexa). Masaryk was interested in Egyptian culture to a certain extent, and was apparently interested in Jaro’s work in general. He admitted he did not possess a detailed knowledge of Egyptian civilization, and expressed a preference for spending more time in Greece than in Egypt,741 but Šámal insisted it was important that he should meet Jaro in person in Egypt during the spring of 1927. The visit was not without controversy. George Kovtun, a historiographer of the Masaryk era, has termed the trip as a ‘flight to Egypt’, because Masaryk was seen as escaping the tense atmosphere preceding another presidential election in Prague, which was planned for May 1927.742 The trip was to encompass France, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and Italy. The president’s entourage included his daughter Alice, an Italian noblewoman named Giuliana Benzoni, the archaeologist Renée Mladějovská, his secretary Vladimír Kučera, a physician,

738

AKPR, inv. no. 1024, Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, no. 1511, 6 March 1927. AUTGM folder, 47/I-69, file 6, 1925, Poznámky a zápisky Dr Kučery počínajíc 1. dubnem 1925, p. 1, Wednesday, 8 April 1925. 740 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 16 February 1927. 741 AUTGM, box 47/I-69, file 6, 1927, Zápisky z diáře Dr Kučery za r. 1927, p. 9. 742 Kovtun 2005: 492–497. 739

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and two plain clothes policemen.743 The trip took place from 9 March to 7 April 1927, and was recorded in both official records and Kučera’s diary. Jaro features in the latter several times. His attendance was required when Masaryk and his group visited Thebes on 30 March, and settled in the Winter Palace Hotel. ‘Dr. Černý’ appears in Kučera’s notes for the following day as accompanying the group to the temples of Karnak and Luxor. He was also invited to lunch with his patron, and in the evening Masaryk enjoyed both a performance by a local conjuror and chatting with Jaro, who is reported to have emphasized that he ‘is interested in the ordinary lives of the Egyptians, ordinary people, workers, not just the kings,’744 to which Masaryk interjected in his characteristic polyglot way, ‘Trés juste!’ Jaro then led the presidential party on a late-night visit to local jewellers’ shops, where they appreciated gold filigree work, and then stopped for brief refreshments in a café to admire a storyteller who excelled in rhetorical and acting skills. The next day was devoted to Western Thebes, where Howard Carter provided Masaryk with a tour of his discovery.745 The programme was strenuous, as the company started for the West Bank at 8:30 a.m. despite their late night. Jaro was with them. Masaryk was initially not sure if he wanted to see a royal mummy, but when learning that ‘Vlado Hurban had already arranged it’ he submitted to being led into the tomb. Tutankhamun did not fail to impress, and Masaryk was eventually utterly fascinated.746 The role of the tomb in rising Egyptian nationalism was presumably not discussed. Carter was able to disguise his concern about the precious work time he was losing with every potentate’s visit, and the outing to the Valley of the Kings, followed by select west Theban tombs of nobles, Deir el-Bahri, and the colossi of Memnon, was 743 Outline in Macková et al. 2009: 177–178; further details are provided by Kovtun 2005: 495–497. 744 Kučera, AUTGM, box 47/I-69, file 6, 1927, Zápisky z diáře Dr Kučery za r. 1927, p. 30. 745 Referred to in Carter’s diaries: GIA, Carter Mss., Howard Carter excavation diaries, 5th Season, 22 September 1926 to 3 May 1927. 746 AUTGM, box 47/I-69, file 6, 1927, Zápisky z diáře Dr Kučery za r. 1927, p. 31, 1 April 1927.

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deemed an unqualified success. After Masaryk took some time to recuperate (he was after all a seventy-seven year-old traveller), he was entertained by a snake charmer and finally by a shopping trip to an antiquities dealer. The dealer was left unnamed in the record, but his façade was noted to bear the sign ‘Genuine and Imitation Antiquities’, allegedly leading Masaryk to chuckle, ‘At least he is an honest businessman.’ Kučera noted, ‘We, of course, have Dr Černý, who is quick to recognize if the hieroglyphic signs on a scarab’s belly are genuine and composed to form a true text, or just a heaping of picture signs, however well copied.’747 One can only suppose that Jaro was still with the party for the evening entertainment, which included some belly dancing, and if so was probably hosted at the Winter Palace Hotel, as a trip back to Deir el-Medina late at night would not have been feasible. If so, it was certainly a change compared to the simple, if homely, arrangements of the Deir el-Medina excavation house. Jaro had changed his dress code accordingly. Gone was the pith helmet and practical breeches or plus-fours with gaiters, replaced by a light-coloured fedora, a well-pressed suit with a blade-like trouser crease, and white shoes.748 On 2 April Jaro again accompanied the president and entourage, this time to Deir el Medina, to the French mission, and the Valley of the Queens.749 According a record in Kučera’s diary, Masaryk again noted with approval that Jaro was interested particularly in non-royal Egyptians: ‘The Western archaeologists, usually citizens of great states, had hitherto been interested in Pharaohs and their monuments and their retainers, altogether, all great lords. I do like Černý’s perspective. He goes after tombs and lives of poor people.’750 Masaryk framed the matter politically, alluding to the new republic by identifying the unique contribution that could be made by a Czechoslovak scholar among the old European elite. The workmen of Deir el-Medina, who were in the focus of Jaro’s interest, could hardly be characterized as ‘poor people’, but they were certainly neither royalty nor the 747 748 749 750

AUTGM, box 47/I-69, file 6, 1927, Zápisky z diáře Dr Kučery za r. 1927, p. 32. The Archives of the Prague Castle, Masaryk Photo Collection, Egypt 1927. Data from Macková et al. 2009: 177–178. Kovtun 2005: 496.

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courtly elite. Jaro’s was an early attempt at a non-royal history, that didn’t simply look at grand monuments and what Georg Steindorff had termed the ‘wondrous curiosities’ of Egyptian art.751 It may have focused on a sub-elite community that happened to make wondrous curiosities, but this was driven by the availability of— and an urgent need to process—its resources. Masaryk’s remarks can be seen in the context of his philosophy, his politics, and consequently of his—and his advisers’— idea of what the Czech(oslovak) nation could offer, both in general and in relation to the ‘Orient’. Alois Musil’s idea of an open-minded, non-colonial nation were known to Masaryk, and formed part of the concept of what Czechoslovakia could offer the ‘Orient’: a mutually beneficial partnership with a foundation in trade relations.752 Musil had a somewhat reserved attitude toward geopolitical ‘imports’ from the West. In his published opinion, the Islamic states of the Middle East or the ‘Orient’ were capable of arriving at their own form of modern statehood (including democracy) ‘without the interference of foreigners’.753 Such attitude was a part of Masaryk’s nation-building project, which included cultural diplomacy, or indeed propaganda, aimed at creating a strong ‘imagined community’, that of a democratic, practical, and non-elitist Czechoslovak nation,754 and at projecting these desirable qualities to an international audience. It was an important element of Jaro’s career that he was fortunate to be supported by sponsors who, although they had ulterior motives, allowed him to pursue Egyptology and to develop his own authentic research agenda. Masaryk’s endorsement was the first, but not the last, example of a win-win relationship with a sponsor. Masaryk returned to Cairo by an evening train on the day of the visit to Deir el-Medina, and Jaro’s temporary role as Egyptologist-at-court came to an end. Jaro himself returned to Prague a month later, in early May 1927, and soon visited Šámal to deliver a letter from Hurban.755 He also returned to the bank, where he spent a large part of the summer. However, a plan was 751 752 753 754 755

Steindorff 1922; Häuser 2009: 1385–1395. Lemmen 2016. Veselá and Žďárský 2009: 118. Compare debates in Orzoff 2009. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 2695, 13 April 1927.

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slowly being developed following Masaryk’s visit to Egypt. Masaryk was widely known for supporting what he believed to be deserving causes, although his donations usually targeted people in difficult personal and financial situations. He had already supported Jaro’s IFAO engagement, albeit indirectly, from 1925 onwards. Jaro had his own decision to make. His situation at the bank was perhaps not yet untenable, but he might have noted the reactions of his colleagues. Leaves of absence for his Egyptian excursions were unpaid, as Preiss insisted on this: ‘it was not possible to do otherwise in due fairness to other employees.’756 His was an exceptional position, probably one that was unmanageable without presidential backing and an elite network that included Preiss, but someone in the office had to pick up the slack when Jaro was abroad. In addition, he must have come to enjoy the difference between a full-time position in Egypt and part-time existence in Prague, alternating office work with research. His deliberations in 1927 are largely undocumented, but in what survives Jaro comes across not only as a practical man, but also as one willing to take risks to promote his career. Over the summer he came to the conclusion that he would accept the invitation to work on the catalogue of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. To oblige the museum and the IFAO, he would have to resign from his job at the Živnobanka. One can only assume that despite his colleagues’ goodwill, demonstrated five years earlier in their congratulatory letters, and despite having the backing of the director general himself, the bank was relieved. Jaro planned to resign his bank job in winter, to accommodate an early (if customary) trip to Turin,757 but his searches in museums had widened. He now had a friendly contact in Clère, who was based in Paris, and Jaro asked him to initiate a search for ‘Servants in the Place of Truth’ in the Louvre.758 Yet there remained the unanswered question of how to secure his material and professional existence, practically and in the long-term.

756 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 7402. This had been discussed in 1926. 757 GIA, Clère Mss. 25, J. Černý to J. Clère, correspondence, 10 September 1927. 758 GIA, Clère Mss. 25, recurring in their letters from 1927 onwards.

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Lexa suggested that if Jaro was eventually to secure a university position, he had to first take the necessary step of an habilitation to become an unsalaried Privatdozent and, hopefully, a salaried professor. In November, Jaro presented his plan to Šámal, including his hopes of obtaining a paid position at the IFAO, and an application for presidential sponsorship of a planned trip to Oxford to attend the Oriental Studies Congress in August 1928.759 Jaro was still perusing Gardiner’s notebooks in November,760 and working on his transliteration skills by comparing his efforts with Gardiner’s. By this time Jaro had fully developed his method of continuous training and betterment, which he considered essential to proficiency in transcription. It was to be a process without an end; a skill to develop and hone, but never to complete. Jaro’s decision paid off. The presidential office negotiated a comparatively generous sponsorship: ‘For the study stay of Dr Černý abroad there are 50,000 crowns reserved for two years from the interest earned on the Oriental Institute endowment. The first instalment of 25,000 will be forwarded to Dr Černý at the end of 1927.’761 By the end of December 1927, Jaro had resigned his bank post, had a sponsor, and was free to go to Egypt and become a full-time Egyptologist. He was just over twentynine years old, and was winning both a domestic and an international reputation. January 1928 found Jaro in Egypt, initially at the Deir el-Medina excavations. He arrived shortly after Christmas and spent a few days in Cairo proofreading his papers, and then followed Bruyère, who had already left for Deir el-Medina. Initially the plan was for Jaro to remain there only briefly: ‘I had no intention to begin a larger graffiti project, having only a short time of three weeks, hence I collected jar dockets and copied ostraca that we had just found.’762 Jaro met with Gardiner in Luxor and the two compared and exchanged notes on ostraca. He had already been in the habit of borrowing Gardiner’s notes, but now Jaro increasingly began to lend his own as well. 759 760 761 762

AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 30 November 1927. GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.741927, 28 November 1928, from Prague. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 2 December 1928. AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 February 1928.

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Jaro was beginning unobtrusively to cross various—and arguably porous—boundaries between diverse academic communities. For instance, French and British academics in Egypt had a relationship that could be described, with understatement, as complex. Not only was there competition in Egyptology and in the control of the Egyptian Museum and the Antiquities Service where, as Donald Reid put it, Whitehall was ‘unwilling to match the Quai d’Orsay support for the mission civilisatrice,’763 but also more generally. Academics were frequently at loggerheads. One such battleground appears to have been Cairo University. This institution began as a private university and became the state university in 1925, and its development was symptomatic of some wider national and political rivalries in Egypt, including the Egyptianization of the academic body in the interwar years.764 Not every academic was happy about the level of implicit politicization, but its consequences would have been difficult to avoid. The poet and author Robert Graves, upon his appointment in Cairo, was told at the British High Commission that ‘I must keep the flag flying. In the faculty of letters. This embarrassed me. I had not come to Egypt as an ambassador of Empire, and yet I did not intend to let the French indulge in semi-political activities at my expense.’765 Ensuing tensions erupted in various, sometimes comical ways. I am talking angry bad French at my Belgian and French colleagues in support of the young [English] professor of Latin … He is declaring in worse French that he positively refuses to make a forced contribution of fifty piasters to a memorial wreath for one of the Frenchmen (who had just died), since he was never consulted. I am declaring that neither will I, blustering to him in English that as far as I am concerned all dead Frenchmen can go bury themselves at their own expense.766

Jaro found it natural to communicate with exponents of British Egyptology without even considering that this might in any way intrude upon his work for the IFAO. In turn, his colleagues, on 763 764 765 766

Reid 1990: 93. Reid 1990: 87–102. Graves 2000 [1929]: 267. Graves 2000 [1929]: 277–278; the line was also noted by Reid 1990: 92.

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either side, did not hold it against him. His position as a citizen of a country that had declared itself an ally of both France and Britain might have helped, to a certain extent, but perhaps there was also an element of his affable personal character. He would have probably disagreed with Graves, and contributed to a hypothetical wreath if asked. Jaro left for Cairo on 31 January 1928, settled into his IFAO accommodation, and proceeded to take up the job cataloguing ostraca in the Egyptian Museum’s collection and preparing them for forthcoming publication. At this time Lexa was probably hinting at the idea of Jaro’s impending habilitation, because Jaro countered that he needed to await publication of his forthcoming papers before he was in a secure enough position to commence the official habilitation process.767 In the same letter he reported his preparations for the upcoming Congress of Oriental Studies, noting that he was submitting a paper on his own behalf, but he nudged Lexa about travel funds. It is time to register for the congress at Oxford. I am currently in the process of submitting a paper on my own. If the Faculty of Arts harbours the wish for me to act as its representative, would they please contact Professor Griffith before the end of February? I would then apply for travel funding…768

If this were to happen, Jaro’s travel expenses to Oxford might have been covered. This would not a have been a negligible amount, even if his financial status as a paid editor of ostraca for the Egyptian Museum and a member of the IFAO expedition was being financed by the Czechoslovak government. Around this time news came from Bruyère about a sensation: a tomb uncovered at Deir el-Medina was believed to be intact. Jaro took leave from the Egyptian Museum and promptly returned to the site on 7 February to assist Bruyère. The tomb of Sennefer and Neferit (DM 1159) was officially opened the same day. After spending time in Luxor working on the tomb, Jaro returned to his duties in Cairo, which took up most of March, April and May. During this period he was a busy letter-writer, 767 768

AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 February 1928. AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 February 1928.

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informing Lexa of his carefully husbanded professional network. This now firmly included Battiscombe Gunn, who was then employed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,769 but his Oxford connections were also developing. Not only did Gardiner offer to secure Jaro’s lodging for the Congress in August (he was to stay at The Queen’s College), but also Rosalind Moss came with an offer to assist with accommodation. Whether she volunteered or was prompted by Gardiner is unknown, but ‘a Miss Moss’ (as yet without further details) first appeared in Jaro’s letter to Lexa on 13 April 1928. As Jaro was about to leave Egypt, Bruyère uncovered an interesting find of papyri at Deir el-Medina. Papyri from the area also surfaced at antiquities dealerships, and Jaro would often scan local antiquities dealers’ stocks, suspecting the possibility of Deir el-Medina finds surfacing in local shops. Ostraca were certainly among them, and fragments of papyri would soon appear. This caused a controversy, especially when fragments of papyri from the site later appeared in the possession of Gardiner and the mining magnate and philanthropist Alfred Chester Beatty.770 The story of these papyri has only recently been better understood: Gardiner suggested that Beatty purchase a large number of papyri from the antiquities market.771 Beatty was deeply interested in collecting, and genuinely fascinated with art and with the idea of undertaking prestigious philanthropic activity. His personal interest in Egypt dated to the 1910s, and by the 1930s his family owned property in Egypt, including a fascinating modernist villa known as Bayt al-Azraq.772 Jaro’s itinerary for the remainder of 1928 illustrates the possibilities that presidential support offered. He left Egypt to make a stopover in Vienna in June: ‘I was delayed in Vienna, but only by papyri and ostraca.’773 He spent some time in Prague in July, visiting a number of people, including calling on Šámal at 769

AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 13 April 1928. Ragazzoli 2019b: 156–157. For Beatty, see Prain and McConnell 2004. 771 Ragazzoli, C. and S. Polis: Comment se passer de Lacau: l’affaire Chester Beatty entre 1928 et 1935; paper presented at the Colloque international, Pierre Lacau, un égyptologue à la tête des antiquités égyptiennes, 9 to 11 December 2021, Paris. 772 Volait 2005: 362–365, fig. 119 on p. 364. 773 AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 20 June 1928. 770

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Prague Castle on 24 July 1928 to exchange photographs from the presidential visit to Egypt.774 In Prague he also began to work on his prosopography of Deir el-Medina, which later became known as Répertoire onomastique de Deir el-Médineh. Jaro still retained his Košíře flat, but didn’t spend much time there as by mid-August he was en route to Paris, and from Paris to Oxford for the Congress. Many Czech academics, particularly Josef Šusta, promoted the idea of international research cooperation, including a special commission at the League of Nations,775 and attendance at international symposia. Šusta himself attended an international congress of historians in Oslo in 1928.776 The 1920s saw historians who tried to build and project an international approach to historical research which, like sciences,777 was not merely in the service of nationalist causes. The 1928 meeting was Jaro’s first congress, and he was impressed by what he saw of Oxford. The congress mainly took place in the majestic Indian Institute building at the junction of Catte Street and Holywell Street.778 Attendees were also invited to private functions by scholars living locally, typically in their Victorian villas in north Oxford. Oxford was at the time undergoing a dynamic architectural change, in which design choices were often inspired by the past: ‘Queen Anne style’ architecture was selected for women’s colleges, while ‘tutor’s Tudor’ was widely expected by tourists, particularly Americans.779 Oxford is more than its university, but Jaro did not come into contact with its commercial and industrial side, such as the Morris Motors factory. The congress at Oxford was Jaro’s first opportunity to present his interpretation of the community of Deir el-Medina. He intended to portray them as a community of ‘workmen’, and not as a community of priests or sundry necropolis personnel.780 774

AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, note from 25 July 1928. Renoliet 1999 and the Archives of UNESCO: https://atom.archives.unesco.org/ susta-josef. Accessed 3 June 2022. 776 Lach 2003c. 777 Fox 2016. 778 As of 2022, this building houses the Martin School of the University of Oxford. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/ 779 Kay 1994: 502–503. 780 Černý 1929c. 775

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He introduced his audience to the fascinating diversity and quantity of sources that referred to ‘servants of the Place of Truth’ or the ‘gang of the tomb’. He noted the history of research, recognizing the contributions made by Heinrich Brugsch and Gaston Maspero to the identification of this ‘Place of Truth’ with a necropolis or its administrators, and of that expression with the pꜢ ḫr found in hieratic documents. His key point in the lecture was to identify people who had identical titles and family ties as unique individuals, whether they appeared in ostraca or papyri, in hieroglyphic inscriptions associated with the ‘Place of Truth’, or as the owners of tombs around Deir el-Medina. The foreman Inherkha was a pertinent example, as this was the same Inherkha whose king-list attracted the attention of John Gardner Wilkinson about a hundred years before. Jaro also demolished Maspero’s religious confraternity thesis, and noted limitations in Egyptological terminology, such as the inaccuracy of designating ‘people of the necropolis’ as ‘workmen’ (ouvriers).781 This final element was fully explored many decades later, in the 2000s, when Guillemette Andreu pointed out a terminological and epistemological development in Egyptology that led from ouvriers to artistes and artisans.782 Apart from a professional success (Jaro believed his presentation was well-received), he was pleased but ‘somewhat tired’ after all the official functions, ‘invitations and teas’, as he reported to Lexa. No wonder, it was a whirlwind of experience.783 The congress also saw the first meeting between Jaro and Rosalind Moss. Moss was engaged, together with Bertha Porter (1852–1941), in a project called the Topographical Bibliography, which has since become established as a core part of Egyptology at Oxford Egyptology was dominated by men at the time, but Jaro increasingly met female professionals. In Prague he knew Šámal’s wife Pavla Fořtová and Lexa’s daughters (Irena and Milada, a professional dancer and painter respectively), and had by this time encountered others who were engaged in the Wörterbuch 781 Published as Černý 1929c. In the same year he published also a short popularizing paper on this topic in Czech: Černý 1929b. 782 Andreu 2006. 783 Jaro reported from Paris on 17 August, from London on 23 August, and from Oxford on 31 August. All were letters to Lexa; AAVRC, Collection Lexa.

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project. Typically these women were ‘bibliographically trained ladies’, educated dilettantes, family members, students, and female researchers.784 This philological and bibliographical involvement differed from the contemporary engagement of wealthy women in collecting Egyptian antiquities.785 Erman and Sethe both had reservations about women in research,786 yet Henni von Halle was Erman’s student and made essential contributions to the dictionary, as did Caroline Ransom Williams,787 the first American woman to become a professional Egyptologist. Masaryk’s ideals of female participation in the workplace were being played out, however tentatively, in much of the world. Jaro wrote to Clère noting that he was forming new professional relationships. One of them was with Jean Capart, although Capart was initially unconvinced by Jaro’s identification of the royal workmen, their designation as sḏm ꜥš, and the site of Deir el-Medina as their home.788 Capart was an acquaintance worth having. He promoted Egyptology in Belgium, began as an autodidact, built himself a professional reputation, and developed a network of Egyptological contacts. His activities were set in the context of the Belgian state policies, and he no doubt benefitted from the expansionist ideas of his political allies, who—like Musil but without his reserved attitude to colonialism—considered Egypt to be a desirable trade partner and a geopolitically suitable target area for industrial projects.789 To a certain extent, Capart’s trajectory bore some resemblance to Lexa’s, particularly in promoting Egyptology at university level and collecting Egyptian artefacts, but the means they had at their respective disposals were different. Capart had a substantial royal patronage, which took tangible form in 1923 with the establishment of

784

After Cappel 2013: 171, with further references. Stevenson 2019: 57–60. 786 Thomas Gertzen: personal communication. Erman had ambivalent views, praising the schooling and intellectual ability of his wife but accepting as a given that her family did not permit her to study Greek and Latin as ‘it was then not acceptable for a young woman, the examples of unlikeable and haughty bluestockings were off-putting’: Erman 1929: 181. 787 For Caroline Ransom Williams, see Bierbrier 2019: 493. 788 GIA, Clère Mss. 25, correspondence from J. Černý, 3 October 1928. 789 De Meyer et al. 2019. 785

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the Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth.790 Capart was also deeply interested in the organization of Egyptological information, and was keen on collecting a library in Belgium that could support major projects.791 His wish was to build an Egyptological network with its centre in Brussels, where Egyptologists of other nations would be most welcome. This was the message Capart imparted at the congress in Oxford.792 It is tempting in the context of Capart’s later ideas, of which Jaro was to become a part and a promoter, to see there the influence of broader information and education projects, such as the Mundaneum project driven by Paul Otlet.793 Despite the detail that Capart forced Otlet’s project out of its premises, to make way for more collections of the Royal Museums of Art and History.794 The drive to improve scholarly communications, be it via congresses or research infrastructures, was greatly desired by Capart’s generation, as Alex Wright notes: After the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald won the Nobel Prize in 1909, he poured most of his prize money into founding the Bridge (Die Brücke), an organization devoted to improving the worldwide enterprise of scholarly work. Along with his partners, Adolf Saager and Karl Wilhelm Bührer, Ostwald imagined a global scholarly environment that would act like a telephone exchange, fostering connections between like-minded researchers.795

This intellectual endeavour resonates with Porter & Moss’s Topographical Bibliography project, as this attempt at providing research infrastructure for Egyptology began around the same time. Egyptologists were involved in the beginning of the Information Age. Yet even at the beginning of the twentieth century problems had been noted, such as information overload created by rising numbers of productive scholars, and the perceived need to think in terms of humanity, not of enclaves of scholarship (or political movements) militating against one another.796 This is 790 791 792 793 794 795 796

Bruffaerts 2013: 213–214; De Meyer et al. 2019. Bruffaerts 2013: 199. Bruffaerts 2013: 224–226. This connection was pointed out by Marleen De Meyer. On Otlet, see Wright 2014. Wright 2014: 203–204. Wright 2014: 205. Fox 2016.

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what H. G. Wells discussed in his 1938 collection of essays, World Brain. Meanwhile, Jaro was building research bridges by traditional, but functional, means: travel. He spent some time in Prague in September, and reported his exploits in Oxford to Lexa in greater detail, including his continuing cooperation with Gardiner.797 In early October he was in Turin, and then it was back to Prague to prepare for the next season in Egypt.798 In late November Jaro again visited Šámal in Prague Castle, bringing with him copies of his published work, an outline for his habilitation, and a plan to spend December and January in Deir el-Medina with the IFAO, and from February in Cairo.799 He was cultivating a relationship with his sponsor, albeit remotely via Masaryk’s secretary. There would be no Christmas at home this year, as Jaro left Prague in early December and travelled again through Italy. He met with Giulio Farina, the new director of Museo Egizio in Turin, but the man did little to impress Jaro. They engaged in some debates regarding Egyptian grammar, a topic that Jaro was investigating with increasing attention, but Farina apparently managed to convey a rather bleak picture of himself as a diehard nationalist with limited interest in allowing any ‘foreign’ expert to study and publish the artefacts in the Turin Museum. Ownership of monuments was being politicized. Jaro was still allowed to work on his texts,800 but he was upset enough to call Farina ‘très fasciste’.801 Lexa visited Šámal on 7 December, lobbying yet again for Jaro. In Lexa’s opinion it would be best to secure him a salaried position of some description. From the university’s perspective, Jaro was ideally to become a Privatdozent, which was an unsalaried position with limited income from teaching, somewhat resembling the sessional lecturers of later times, and despite the title of ‘docent’ would more closely resemble an assistant professor or 797

AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 26 September 1928. AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 17 October 1928. 799 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 8223, Šámal’s notes dated 29 November 1928. 800 Turin materials are included in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.20. 801 GIA Clère Mss. 25, from J. Černý to J. Clère, 5 January 1929. 798

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reader. Such a post required additional backing, ideally from an undemanding but decently paid job. Šámal approached Rudolf Hotowetz,802 the chairman of the newly minted Oriental Institute, to enquire about such a position: ‘In accord with Dr Hrozný we would like to propose the possibility of appointing Dr Černý as a director of the Oriental Institute. He has apposite language skills for the post and also training from a bank.’803 Lexa’s idea was that the position would initially be for three years,804 after which he hoped that a full professorial chair could be found for Jaro either in Prague or Brno. There is nothing to suggest that Jaro ever hinted at his increasing professional status in communications with Lexa. He appears to have remained uncompetitive and respectful of more senior contacts throughout the interwar years. But Jaro obliged Lexa and prepared his habilitation proposal in January,805 possibly following some further hectoring. Shortly thereafter, perhaps after seeing Jaro’s preparations, Lexa wrote a glowing report for the university on his former pupil, describing Jaro’s projects, his international success in identifying the workmen of the royal tombs, and the ‘promise’ of a Late Egyptian grammar which, in Lexa’s eyes, had the potential to replace Erman’s earlier one. Lexa even stated that Jaro could replace him in selected classes and enlarge the scope of Egyptological teaching at Charles University, particularly in the ‘areas of Egyptian cultural history’.806 Lexa thus regarded Jaro’s position in Egyptology as being a philologist and an historian, hence very much within the boundaries of his own understanding of the discipline. 802 Rudolf Hotowetz (1865–1945) was a Czech lawyer based in Prague, an official in the Austro-Hungarian state administration (the Governorate of Bohemia), and Trade Secretary for early Czechoslovak governments. He specialized in international trade and promoted active international trade relations in Central Europe. After 1921, when he had resigned his ministerial position, he instigated a reform of governmental pensions and, finally, in 1928, he was named Chairman of the Oriental Institute. 803 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 8223, December 1928. 804 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, no. 8223, 29 November 1928. 805 AUK, Faculty of Arts, personal file J. Černý, 29 January 1929, no. 1564. 806 AAVRC, Collection Lexa, Rozbor vědecké činnosti Dr. Jaroslava Černého pro udělení docentury egyptologie na Universitě Karlově v Praze, inv. no. 679, box 33.

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Lexa’s access to the corridors of power at Prague Castle had proved decisive in the past. Given Masaryk’s generosity and overall interest in matters ‘Oriental’, he evidently hoped for further support and eventually an institutional future for Egyptology in Czechoslovakia, at the universities in Prague and Brno, and was still intent on building a library and teaching collection in Prague. Jaro’s growing international network and participation in fieldwork took the younger man regularly to Egypt, and this seemed ideal for the purpose. Masaryk was still well-disposed to the subject, and had other Egyptological friends—the Petries. Hilda Petrie was a frequent visitor to Czechoslovakia in the 1920s, and in 1929 was to enjoy a special presidential invitation.807 While Lexa and Šámal worked on settling Jaro at the Oriental Institute shortly before the Christmas holidays of 1928, Jaro visited the Czechoslovak legation in Cairo, then still led by Hurban. He must have agreed to give lectures to the expatriate community, but had to politely decline an invitation to Christmas, as he left for Deir el-Medina before the festive season began. As in previous year, Jaro chose to stay for approximately a month, which he dedicated partly to work on the prosopographies and genealogies that the Deir el-Medina workmen recorded in their tombs.808 While in Luxor Jaro also kept a social diary, in which he noted meeting a Prague banker by the name of Petschek, an acquaintance from his university years. Meanwhile, in Prague, the faculty began to process Jaro’s habilitation.809 March found Jaro back in Cairo, settled at the IFAO but discharging his duties for the Egyptian Museum. At this time he was also browsing Late Egyptian non-literary material with the idea of compiling a Late Egyptian lexicon and grammar, and consulted with both Lexa (who approved) and the Danish Egyptologist Hans O. Lange, who mentioned the idea to Erman. In a letter to Lange in March 1929,810 Jaro thought it better to emphasize that he did not yet see himself in a position to author a new Late Egyptian Grammar, but that he would be open to discussing 807

Navrátilová 2015b. GIA, Clère Mss. 25, J. Černý to J. Clère, 19 January 1929. 809 AUK, Faculty of Arts, personal file J. Černý, 29 January 1929, no. 1564. 810 Royal Danish Library, Correspondence H. O. Lange; J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 11 March 1929. 808

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the matter with Erman. He also suggested that such a Late Egyptian grammar would benefit from using of non-literary texts, as these would be less influenced by Middle Egyptian. After returning from Deir el-Medina Jaro kept in touch with the nearby Czechoslovak legation, and evidently gave a wellreceived lecture at the legation villa.811 A photograph of the event shows Jaro in the company of legation officials and other expatriate Czechoslovaks, some of whom were soon in his circle of acquaintances. The Hais family, for example, owned a boarding house called Pension Garden City at 80 Qasr el-Aini.812 They were fairly typical for Central European émigrés in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Austrians, Hungarians, and Czechs often found jobs in the hospitality industry, in services, or in trade. As trade links developed between Czechoslovaka and Egypt (the first Bata shoe shop in Egypt opened in 1923),813 the expatriate community came to contain a significant business element. Jaro’s lecture was delivered on a day in spring 1929, to a group who had gathered in the eclectically but tastefully furnished rooms of the legation villa, among pieces of Orientalizing furniture complemented by examples of Czechoslovak art. It was but a short walk for Jaro from the IFAO, across the boulevard toward Garden City. He was evidently no stranger to diverse audiences and social situations at this point. In the talk,814 Jaro showed awareness of his limited experience of Egypt: I came with a clearly defined purpose of an Egyptologist, that is of a person815 occupied not with modern Egypt and its current 811

See photographs in Onderka 2007, 2008: 283. Obuchová et al. 2008: 62–68. 813 A general survey of the Bata Shoe Company’s activities in Egypt is available online at http://svet.tomasbata.org/afrika/egypt/, including references. In 1930 a local branch of the company was established in Egypt as the Société Anonyme Égyptienne de Chaussures Bata, Alexandrie. Representatives of the company visited Egypt repeatedly in the 1930s; see Herman 2018. Tomáš Baťa, Sr. repeatedly mentioned Egypt as a strategic location in his essays and talks; see http://tomasbata.org/uvahy-projevy/. Accessed 3 June 2022. 814 Czech original and a full translation in Černý 2007. In the following quotes I have used R. Landgráfová’s translation, with some modifications. 815 Černý 2007. The published English translation by R. Landgráfová on p. 21 has ‘man’, but the Czech original on p. 20 uses ‘člověk’, which is a generic designation of a human, without specific gender. 812

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inhabitants, but with ancient Egypt and its long-lost culture … I can thus dare speak only about ancient Egypt.

Jaro articulated his disclaimer quite clearly, indicating that while he could not avoid the subject of contemporary Egypt, he did not consider himself to have the authority to comment on it in a public lecture. He recognized—and declared—the limits of his own knowledge. He continued by introducing the site of Deir el-Medina and its archaeological history, and explained his participation in the IFAO mission as the logical outcome of a research agenda concerned with the lower echelons of ancient Egyptian society. His own motivation to select Deir el-Medina was explained: ‘I came to Deir el-Medina after a careful consideration…’, that is the consideration of his own research interests in the community of workmen in Western Thebes. He the presented his audience with an abridged version of his lecture at Oxford in August of the preceding year, namely that the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina were the workmen of the royal tombs, and that earlier identifications with priestly personnel had to be dismissed. After this introduction to the gist of his work, Jaro discussed life on the excavation, which, strategically interspersed with some specialist information, occupied the rest of his talk. His audience found much to be curious about, such as the expedition house, which was built into a former tomb (‘he who believes in the mummy’s revenge, which is fashionable in Europe today, would probably die of fear here’), the examination of mummies, the melee that was pay-day, and the practical aspects of hiring local workmen. Jaro admitted that due to the similarity of many local names he did not remember more than twenty workmen at a time. He did not note whether they knew his name, but in another, earlier communication with his parents he observed that misheard names were a common occurrence on both sides, European and Egyptian.816 He seems to have assumed rudimentary knowledge of colloquial Arabic among his audience, as he quoted various sayings and comments used by the Reises and Egyptian workmen at the dig. The talk culminated in a narrative of the previous years’ discovery of the tomb of Sennefer. Nonetheless, 816

AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 1926 letter to his parents.

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his parting words were ‘We should not measure the importance of excavations by the number of intact tombs…’817 Hurban enjoyed Jaro’s good-humoured chronicle of Egyptological life, and was once again the bearer of good news: ‘Minister Hurban informed me that Dr Petschek from Berlin, whom I once taught Czech in 1919 and we met again this year in Upper Egypt, donated 20,000 crowns to the Oriental Institute to support my Egyptological studies.’ Jaro’s ‘Dr Petschek’ was probably one of the younger members of the mining and banking family,818 which had adorned Prague with several notable buildings including a number of family villas.819 One impressive banking stronghold that combined a Neoclassical façade with the latest advances in building technology (reinforced concrete, massive underground safe vaults, air conditioning, and paternoster lifts) was finished in Central Prague in 1929 and thereafter became known as the Petschek Palace. The Petscheks and their grandiose building projects were among the tangible symbols of economic opportunity, and of the business elite (in this case its Jewish representatives) who were active and prosperous in the new republic, continuing and developing portfolios that had often begun in the AustroHungarian era. Czechoslovakia’s economic strength in its first decade was largely based on traditions of entrepreneurship, and some entrepreneurs saw patronage as a tool with which to promote a cultured, multinational state. This included representation in formal and informal diplomatic circles, and Jaro’s situation, while far from unique, was one such opportunity. Another individual active in the ‘Orient’, and personally sponsored by Masaryk, and who slightly preceded Jaro, was Vlasta Kálalová (later Kálalová-Di Lotti, 1896–1971), a physician who had approached Masaryk with a project for a hospital and research faculty in tropical diseases to be located in Iraq, then a British mandate.820 She achieved her goals, and ran both her personal 817

Černý 2007: 32–33; translation adapted after consulting the Czech original. Regarding the role of the Petscheks in the Czechoslovak economy, see Otruba 1983. For an outline of their family history, see Shumsky 2010: http://www.yivoencyclopedia. org/article.aspx/Petschek_Family (accessed 28 January 2019). 819 One of the Petschek villas serves as the residence of the ambassador of the United States; see Eisen and Goldblum 2018. 820 The official name was the State of Iraq, and Mandate for Mesopotamia. 818

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research and a commercially successful surgery and small hospital in Baghdad in the 1920s and 1930s. The grant from Masaryk was taken by Kálalová as a loan, which she fully repaid.821 The years of sponsorship moved Jaro’s career forward in many ways. He began presenting at major international meetings and was altogether successful in this. He was a specialist, and a diligent one, at a time when diligent specialists were sought-after domestically and internationally, and so financial backing was forthcoming. He was on occasion willing to take on minor ‘orders’ from other specialists, to discharge research tasks for them in museums or locations he regularly visited. Walter Ewing Crum, for example, availed himself of Jaro’s expertise to trace materials in Turin and Cairo, and remunerated him handsomely, prompting a telling reply: I thank you very much for your kind letter and the cheque duly received. I only fear you have estimated too highly my work in Turin. I shall use your cheque for paying [sic] for the first volume of the London Hieratic Papyri which will always be for me a souvenir of your kindness. I made some enquiries in the Museum [in Cairo] concerning the Coptic Ostraca found by Winlock and have been told by Gunn that the matter had been presented to the Ministry for decision, which, however did not come until [sic] now. As soon as the Museum has it, you will be informed and the matter settled.822

The next act of Jaro’s academic life was to be staged in Prague in the spring of 1929: the habilitation, a formal procedure necessary to obtain a venia legendi, the right to teach at a university and a prerequisite for the title of Privatdozent, and thus also a step on the academic ladder toward a full professorship and a salary. Jaro was already preparing for it by mid-May; his application was well 821 Detailed information on Kálalová and an archive resources related to her and her Iraqi project were provided by research project The Czechoslovak Interests in Iraq 1918– 1938. Life Story of Vlasta Kálalová di-Lotti, GA AV, 2008–2010, led by Adéla Jůnová Macková. The resulting publication was blocked by Kálalová’s relatives for undisclosed reasons. An outline of her life and activities is provided here: https://web.archive.org/ web/20080107042831/http://www.dejiny.nln.cz/archiv/04-2003/03-42003.html (accessed 7 April 2020). 822 British Library, Papers of W. E. Crum; MS 45682: 1884–1940, vol. II, fol. 130, dated 15 April 1929. All grammatical errors are Jaro’s.

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primed, and Jaro enjoyed the support of Lexa, Hrozný, and Růžička. In the meantime, he was also designated to become a secretary of the Oriental Institute. He had an idea about this coming already in Cairo in April, whilst still working on his Egyptian tasks, and leaving the work of developing the Repertoire onomastique (not yet under that name) for Prague. In addition, he planned papers on the hymns to Thoth, combining ostraca from Cairo and Vienna, on an Egyptian measure of weight, snjw, and on the late Ramesside historical period known as the wḥm msw, literally ‘repeating of births’.823 In May it was decided that the theme of Jaro’s habilitation colloquium was to be ‘Veracity of Herodotus’ Egyptian accounts’,824 incidentally the same subject matter as that was chosen for Spiegelberg.825 Initially, Jaro suggested three rather diverse themes—Egyptian epistolography, the Egyptian judiciary, and Herodotus,826 but the committee selected the topic that was accessible to most of its members, as only one of them, Lexa, was an Egyptologist. The academic board at Jaro’s habilitation consisted of the Hittotologist Bedřich Hrozný, a specialist in Turkish and Iranian history named Jan Rypka, the Egyptologist Lexa, Classical scholars Vladimír Groh and Paul Kraus, and the Dean, the sociologist Břetislav Foustka, names that had accompanied Jaro since his student days. In preparation for the event, Lexa, Hrozný, and Růžička had written a glowing report on Jaro’s work. They were particularly keen to emphasize the originality of Jaro’s analysis of the Deir el-Medina workmen, and his collection of ‘cursive hieratic Late Egyptian expressions’, a large dictionary consisting of ‘over 12,000 cards’.827 This collection no doubt impressed Růžička, who clearly preferred a philological paradigm for Oriental Studies and who lobbied for

823

GIA, Clère Mss. 25, J. Černý to J. Clère, 15 April 1929. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 14 May 1929. Prague, AUK: File Černý, no. FF 1564/1928/29. 825 There are extensive commentaries on Herodotus, including the veracity—or otherwise—of his reports; a recent comprehensive approach was taken by Asheri 2007. 826 AUK, Personal file J. Černý, to the faculty, 1 June 1929. 827 Committee report preceding the habilitation; AUK, personal file J. Černý, 13 April 1929. 824

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the Oriental Institute to become a research organization with a focus on philology.828 Jaro had his presentation at 11:00 am on 8 June 1929. The contents of Jaro’s habilitation lecture have been lost to time, but the verdict was positive and was passed on to the Ministry of Education. With his habilitation concluded, Jaro was now expected to teach at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University. Yet becoming an unsalaried associate professor would have been impossible for Jaro, without other means of supporting himself. His teachers’ generation had usually resorted to some sort of ‘potboiling’, often as grammar school teachers, and Jaro himself had up until recently been earning a living outside traditional academia. A continuation of the sponsorship that freed him from the bank could not be taken for granted. Masaryk’s largesse had paved the way for two intensive research-centred years, and there was some promise of further support from the Petscheks, but this was not enough to secure Jaro’s future in research. Jaro’s position was symptomatic of the Czechoslovak academic life, full of promise, uncertainty and provisional solutions. The location of his lecture was very much provisional: in a faculty building located in Krakovská Street near Wenceslas Square in central Prague, which was a temporary location for the Faculty of Arts. Its new Neoclassical building near the Vltava riverbank and the Czechoslovak Parliament was soon to be finished, very much in the same style as the Petschek Palace, but without the up-to-the-minute technology employed in the latter. Even so, the new faculty was an impressive addition to the new urban space of Czechoslovak Prague,829 and its neighbour, the Rudolfinum, a concert hall which at the time served as the National Assembly building, accentuated the status of academia in Masaryk’s republic. But its corridors and lecture halls were to be filled not only by scholars with a status, but also by people like Jaro, in precarious positions. However, Lexa and Šámal had discussed the idea of an administrative job at the Oriental Institute, and their proposal had a positive outcome. Jaro was appointed as an administrative director 828 829

As referred to in correspondence by Musil et al. 2019: 74–75, 116, 136, 149, 151. Giustino 2010: 166.

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at the Institute with an annual salary of 24,000 crowns, an appropriate amount for someone in the upper-middle echelons of state bureaucracy, and almost a double the salary of a qualified worker. At that time, a single bedroom flat in Prague could be rented for a little over 200 crowns per month, so Jaro’s remuneration amounted to a comparatively comfortable salary. It also showed the confidence that the Oriental Institute had in its income and reserves, as well as a certain amount of prestige associated with the institution. The timing of Jaro’s promotion was rather favourable, as June 1929 saw an Egyptian royal visit to Prague, in which King Fuad I returned Masaryk’s courtesy from spring 1927 and was given a truly royal welcome.830 The visit was widely reported,831 and the king was cheered by large crowds and fêted by Masaryk, including a military parade on the Czechoslovak Army Parade Ground at Letná. The event was filmed by Reuters,832 and shows infantry, cavalry and motorized units passing a decorated dais with gilded throne-like chairs for Fuad and his host. Masaryk was sensu stricto not a military man, but he was fond of showing physical prowess and bravado, be it his own—preferably on horseback—or that of his nation.833 Jaro took part in the festivities as a guest, being present at a late-night garden party on 26 June 1929 honouring the Egyptian royal visitor at Prague Castle.834 The royal visit also garnered much attention in the local press, as dailies and popular magazines reported widely on the visit, the king, and Egypt. The Orient, a periodical published by a charity called the Society for a Development of Relations with the Orient,835 asked Jaro to contribute, and he offered a short paper—presented as if it were a snippet

830

Macková 2008. For instance in the New York Times, 27 June 1929, p. 4. 832 https://www.britishpathe.com/video/VLVA7V5XJ5031X8QS17BOQY9FBT16CZECHOSLOVAKIA-EGYPTIAN-KING-FUAD-I-REVIEWS-CZECH-ARMYIN-PRAGUE/query/Fuad (accessed 3 June 2022). 833 Wingfield 2007: 182–193. 834 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family; the invitation is dated 26 June 1929, at 21.30 was ‘an evening garden-party’. 835 Information on the Society and its archives was obtained courtesy of Adéla Jůnová Macková. 831

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from a book—about workmen in ancient Egypt.836 The editors, however, decided to accompany his text by photographs of contemporary Egypt, including the cotton industry, providing a rather ambiguous relationship between the text and its visual accompaniment. By the end of the decade, Jaro was a salaried representative of an institution concerned with the promotion of cultural diplomacy and trade with the Orient, at a time when Czechoslovak/ Egyptian relationships were enjoying something of a heyday. Šámal, Lexa, and Hotowetz no doubt thought that this was a position befitting a man capable of both scholarship and ‘practical life’.837 In any case, Jaro’s position as one of the ‘directors’ of an Oriental Institute office (as his job was eventually renamed) gave him a degree of security. It was yet to be seen whether the newly established Oriental Institute could sustain Egyptology in Prague, and whether its expectations would overlap with Jaro’s developing perspectives of the world beyond Czechoslovakia’s borders. Jaro had entered an intricate web of loyalties when he accepted the IFAO’s invitation with financial backing inspired by Czechoslovak diplomatic aspirations. And his Egyptological connections were growing ever more diverse. Photographs from legation events and archaeological sites show that Jaro was an accomplished Egyptologist, and that he could fulfil the tasks of cultural diplomacy. We can follow him in trains, on ships, at archaeological sites, in museums, and in libraries. His letters from the 1920s reveal an increasingly diversified professional voice, but they mostly show his public face. Where was the private man? Some insight may be gleaned by eavesdropping on his correspondence. He had a household in Prague, which was quickly filling with books. He communicated with and via his parents, and could be quite jovial with friends, such as Clère. Then his family relationships changed abruptly in 1930, when his father

836

Černý 1929c. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta; Šámal’s copy of his memo to Hotowetz, no. 8614. 837

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Antonín died,838 and he set up a household in Prague with his mother. If there was an intimate side to him, it was one he kept hidden and wanted to ensure it stay that way. Jaro’s portrait remains almost carefully blurred. Evidence says that he was a presentable young man in his thirties, consistently well-dressed and groomed, a smoker, and if the legation photographs are representative, probably at ease in company. His observations on social gatherings in his letters seem to corroborate the impression of a companionable man who presumably enjoyed mixing in the company of men and women. The legation photos were no doubt posed, to an extent, but the admiring glances of his companions seem quite genuine, and Jaro appears to relish them. This was an aspect of his public face, and the fact that he had developed his social skills seems indicative of his personality as a whole. In professional terms, he cared about being part of a team, and probably found it natural to belong where he could identify with a professional ethos. In personal terms, he cared about being accepted, helpful, praised, and on good terms with people around him. This too came naturally, as he was brought up to be civil, well-mannered, obliging. And as a motivating factor there were rewards to reap from presentability; it was a functional model. But there was more perhaps to his character than an obliging and conventionally courteous pragmatist, who might have mastered the social and academic game better than some of his contemporaries. Egyptology infused his life, absorbed him, and perhaps provided an excuse to remain unattached (he was still in a financially unstable situation, despite recent successes), but he was not boringly studious, let alone pompous—he even gently mocked the ‘adventurous’ image of the archaeologists’ life in his Cairo presentation. The string of invitations and meetings that characterized this part of his life begs the question: was Jaro in his early thirties simply good company?

838 The death of Antonín was referred to in 1930, in letters penned by Peet and Gardiner, GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.230.28, 7 May 1931.

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The crisis years 1929–1935 1929 ends Now financially secure, Jaro embarked on his two new jobs in July 1929, letting the world know when he began to use the letterhead of the Oriental Institute in his correspondence. As an administrative director of the OI he was able to approach Šámal directly. He first reported to Šámal that his habilitation had been successfully achieved, and that he had been offered (and accepted) the position of a ‘research secretary’, his actual job title being somewhat fluid. Then, more seriously, he relayed concerns about the OI’s provisional location, as its designated site, the Lobkowitz Palace, was undergoing adaptations, and asking Šámal to intervene.839 Šámal duly followed up with officials from the Ministry of Education and discovered that the palace had been subject to lengthy scrutiny by the committee for listed buildings. The Lobkowitz Palace was, and is, a prestigious address,840 being one of Prague’s most impressive baroque palaces and a formidable location in Bohemian and Czech cultural memory. It was one of Giovanni Battista Alliprandi projects,841 and boasts exquisite stucco and frescoes throughout. The Lobkowitz family had turned it into an aristocratic salon that hosted concerts by Ludwig van Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber, and Maximilian Lobkowicz had turned over several rooms to Masaryk before selling the palace to the Czechoslovak state in 1927. The Oriental Institute was to share the premises with the Institute of Slavonic Studies, which was a key component of the Czechoslovak national programme, indicating that the OI had sufficient social and cultural capital to compete with the grand premises of the IFAO and Oxford colleges. It still lacked an established library, a programme of activities, and a tradition, and these would need to be accumulated. 839

AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 19 June 1929, no. R 20141. Currently the German embassy, and the historical site of the East German exodus to West Germany via Prague shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall. 841 Alliprandi (1665–1720) was a fortification specialist and architect who spent most of his career in Bohemia. The architect designed a number of major palaces and manor houses, including the Thun Palace in Prague’s Lesser Quarter, which since 1919 has been the seat of the United Kingdom’s embassy. 840

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It is evident that the Institute still enjoyed political priority, if the relocation of its offices was presented as a matter of urgency in the Presidential chancellery. Jaro had formally entered—after four informal years—an inner circle of scholars with access to political leverage, though such scholars enjoyed this status only so long as funds were available to support their activities. In later summer, using all the freedom that came with his position, Jaro travelled to further European collections. He intimated to Clère that he intended to visit Strasbourg and Munich in April 1929,842 to follow up on meetings with Spiegelberg. He had also received an invitation from Georges Nagel, a colleague from Deir el-Medina, to stay in Neuchâtel.843 He rounded off this trip with a visit to Paris in September,844 and then went with Bruyère to Belgium, from where they sent a humorous postcard to Clère designating themselves ‘builders of the great pyramid’.845 The trip to Belgium also fostered another professional contact and friendship, with Capart,846 who at that point was also a recognized scholar pursuing the promotion of Egyptology as cultural diplomacy. As with Czechoslovakia, Belgian interests in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa were founded on the growth of trade and the expansion of political influence,847 and Capart, like Lexa and Jaro, knew that a relationship between government and academia could help to further the cause of his beloved discipline. Jaro and Capart also bonded over ostraca, about which Jaro noted they ‘should contribute to the salvage of a precious resource.’848 Meanwhile, he was due to publish ‘A Note on the “Repeating of Births”’ and Papyrus Salt 124 (Brit. Mus. 10055) in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. But Peet had a hard time chasing the wandering Egyptologist: 842

GIA, Clère Mss. 25, 15 April 1929. His travels may be followed in his letters to Lexa: 7 August in Prague; 20 August in Neuchâtel; 24 August in Strasbourg. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa. 844 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, 2 September 1929, Paris, to F. Lexa. 845 GIA, Clère Mss. 25, J. Černý to J. Clère, Bruxelles, 9 September 1929. 846 Bruffaerts 2013: 213–214; De Meyer et al. 2019: 173–194. 847 De Meyer et al. 2019, for Czechoslovak context, albeit with some simplification, see Lemmen 2016. 848 Lit: ‘devra contribuer au sauvetage des matériaux précieux’; FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 6 October 1929. 843

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Černý’s proofs would not have been rushed had he sent in his two MSS. at the time agreed upon, and precisely the same answer may be made to all cases of complaint on this head [i.e. Peet’s] … I don’t in the least see why he could not correct his proofs when travelling. In France he had B.[ibliotéque] N.[ationale] to consult, and in London the B.[ritish] M.[useum]; in fact, he gave me a series of addresses across Europe precisely in order that he might have his proofs. I don’t expect a man to correct his proofs when in the wilderness of Abyssinia, but in Paris and London we all of us both can and do.849

Although the proofs were delayed, the papers still made it in time for the 1929 edition. Peet might have overestimated Jaro’s endurance whilst travelling long-distance, even though travelling had become something of a lifestyle. Jaro’s teaching position in Prague was officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education on 12 September,850 and he began to ready his lessons. In the winter term of 1929 he began teaching two hours of Late Egyptian Grammar per week.851 This arrangement left him sufficient time for other duties at the Oriental Institute and indispensable study trips, including some that took place during term. In late October he went to Berlin, where the library and Wörterbuch materials proved indispensable,852 as resources in Prague were still limited. Jaro had also news from Erman, who was updating his own Late Egyptian grammar, which took Jaro somewhat by surprise. Nonetheless, as he observed in a letter to Lange, he was not going to give up on his own plans to develop a grammatical and lexical study, as he had to teach Late Egyptian in Prague anyway.853 It is at this point that the first hints of a rather scandalous affair begin to appear. At an unspecified point during 1929, Jaro met with Faulkner in Prague and gave him a set of papyrus fragments, which were taken out of Egypt in somewhat irregular circum849 GIA, Collection Gardiner, T. E. Peet to A. H. Gardiner, AHG 42.230.47, 16 September 1929. 850 AUK, JC, personal file, ministerial decree 12 September 1929; č. 85.593-29-IV, AUK: Čís. 4054/1928/29, and AMSANO, File J. Černý, 12 September 1929. 851 AMSANO, File J. Černý, list of classes in the professorial application file. 852 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 30 October 1929. 853 Royal Danish Library, Correspondence Lange, J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 30 September 1929.

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stances.854 Since a large part of their correspondence from the 1920s is missing, the affair is reflected in letters and notes only retrospectively, mostly in 1934 when its fallout became evident,855 but it is likely that the fragments were taken illicitly from the Deir el-Medina excavation area in 1928 and made their way to the antiquities’ market. Jaro was at this time periodically searching antiquities dealers’ stock and might have purchased them to prevent their loss. There was always an undercurrent of activity surrounding the acquisition and movement of ostraca and papyri, and how they were accessed for their intended publications.856 Some of the pieces handed over to Faulkner probably came from the Deir el-Medina scribal archive that became known as the Chester Beatty papyri. These began to appear in the museums of England and Ireland in the early 1930s, when their first editions were published by Gardiner.857 For Jaro, the year 1929 must have seemed like a heyday, with a stable job, recognized academic standing, and ongoing scholarly output. But October 1929 brought dramatic changes that would have lasting impacts not only for Jaro but for the world. The Wall Street Crash of 24 October, called Black Tuesday in New York and soon followed by Black Friday in European markets, signalled the beginning of what is now known as the Great Depression.

854 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.58, 3 October 1934. Faulkner’s role was also referred to in Hall 1930: 46–47. 855 Some clarifications began to appear in public much later still. See Posener in Černý, Posener and Koenig 1978: VIII: ‘papyrus recueillis par le fouiller le 20 février 1928. Le lendemain de cette découverte, Bernard Bruyère note dans son Journal de fouilles avoir entendu dire que « trois ouvriers du chantier le volaient » et il décide de les congédier. On saura plus tard que les papyrus Chester Beatty proviennent de la même trouvaille. Cinquante ans se sont écoulés depuis ces événements et il n’y a plus lieu d’entourer d’un voile pudique l’origine de la grande collection.’ 856 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.73. 857 The case has been recently investigated by S. Polis and C. Ragazzoli, presented at Colloque international, Pierre Lacau, un égyptologue à la tête des antiquités égyptiennes (9—11 December 2021); it would appear that Gardiner, in his single-minded pursuit of text editions, was an active buyer on the antiquities market in Cairo, sometimes without regard for the origin of his coveted artefacts. These papyri were smuggled out of Deir el-Medina both during and after the 1928 season. A publication is forthcoming by Polis and Ragazzoli.

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Meanwhile, Jaro engaged in what might now be termed ‘outreach’ for the Oriental Institute, the remit of which included public engagement and public lectures. Jaro was by now no stranger to popularizing lectures, and in November gave a talk on ‘the economic situation in ancient and modern Egypt’.858 The text appears to be lost, but it must have been a diversion from his normal research agenda as he also explained elements of modern Egyptian life. It was nonetheless consistent with Musil’s goals for the Institute, which included promoting knowledge of ‘Oriental’ countries and a pragmatic understanding of their situations. He then resumed his travels, leaving for Egypt and again declining to spend his Christmas holidays at home. On 20 December he detailed his plans to Šámal, which must have seemed familiar as Jaro intended to spend January in Deir el-Medina and then three months in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, living on the premises of the IFAO and working on the catalogue.859 The situation was very much business as usual. 1930–1932 Between Egypt and Prague Years 1931 to 1932 had a very similar structure to 1930. The new decade, even in the early years of the Great Depression, appears to have been something of a routine for Jaro. He travelled, taught, attended meetings, and wrote papers, lectures, and letters. His research agenda was set, and his professional interests now included epigraphy, museum work, grammar, and palaeography. He had the goal of building a corpus of texts and archaeological information that would portray the lives of the workmen of Deir el-Medina. This routine was relatively fixed, with some individualized elements in each year. If anything could be said to characterize the three years following Jaro’s appointment in Prague—and to develop the description of his professional life— it would have to be travel and Jaro’s developing of his social capital. 858 The lecture is referenced in Černý’s personal file, AUTGM, Oriental Institute papers, J. Černý personal file, dated 29 November 1929 859 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, 20 December 1929.

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Routines At the start of the year, usually January, Jaro would follow a beaten track that led from Italy to Cairo to Deir el-Medina. He would spend several weeks with the French mission, and each year Bruyère would organize funding and rooms in the expanding dig house. His weeks at Deir el-Medina were enjoyable, enlivened by new finds and social occasions. In 1930, a new corpus of ostraca was found at a location known as Kom Sud (normally abbreviated KS), which required more manpower, and Jaro developed the project in cooperation with Georges Posener, a young French Egyptologist of Russian and Jewish descent, who became attached to the IFAO in 1931. While sifting through texts from tombs at Deir el-Medina Jaro occasionally became distracted by various topics, such as the ‘Egyptian chess’ text in the tomb of Inherkhau.860 Another interest, in Egyptian correspondence from the end of the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period, was starting to form as a result of his increasing pursuit of Late Egyptian grammar. These letters were developing into a small project of their own.861 His months in Egypt contained many meetings and social obligations, but in early 1930 Jaro missed an important visitor to Deir el-Medina: the March visit by Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of Belgium, who toured Egypt accompanied by Capart. Capart enjoyed the support of the Belgian royal family, and took the opportunity to build a collection of ostraca in Brussels in the context of broader Belgian interests in the Middle East.862 Jaro might have missed the visit by the Belgian queen, but he was to benefit from Capart’s network and plans for world Egyptology. Meanwhile, in Cairo, he met Lange and discussed the possibility of setting up an affordable series of editions of Egyptian texts,863 which was later realized, with input from Capart, as the Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca. 860

GIA, Collection Clère, Clère Mss. 25, 22 May 1930. See also AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 7 August 1930. The letter shows that Lexa was on holiday. 862 See Delvaux 2013: 19–22. 863 Royal Danish Library, Collection H. O. Lange; correspondence J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 14 July 1930. 861

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Jaro missed the royal visit because he was at the disposal of his benefactor, Šámal, and his wife Pavla, who visited Egypt in spring 1930.864 Jaro deployed his abilities as a socialite. A photograph from the entrance staircase of the legation shows the Šámals with Jaro and the minister, Hurban.865 If acting as a guide to legation guests and Egyptian students was a social responsibility, Jaro was perhaps able to enjoy being a guide and companion to his friend and mentor, Lexa, who visited Egypt in the winter of 1930–1931.866 On 11 January, Jaro urged Lexa to plan a visit to Deir el-Medina, as he needed to coordinate his stay with that of various expedition members and their families.867 Lexa arrived in Luxor on 24 January,868 and Jaro was at his disposal for the next few days, leaving at the end of the month to resume his work in Cairo. Lexa continued his visit to Upper Egypt. The spring of 1931 was enlivened by more than the visit by Lexa. Jaroslav Preiss, Jaro’s former boss from the Živnobanka and still an influential person in Czechoslovakia, visited Egypt in May 1931.869 Jaro was his guide and companion for a period, just he had been for the Šámals earlier on. He assisted Preiss with the selection of plaster casts of artefacts from the Egyptian museum in Cairo.870 The following year, in April 1932, Jaro took time away from the ostraca in Cairo to act as a guide to some of Preiss’s friends,871 with related social obligations. He also wrote extensively to Preiss, stating his apprehension that further work

864 Jaro referred to their visit in a postcard to his father, dated 21 March 1930; ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family. 865 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family, unnumbered photograph. Hurban was to leave Egypt in 1930 to continue a remarkable diplomatic career, which culminated in his wartime role as a Czechoslovak minister in the United States during the Second World War. 866 Suková 2004; Macková et al. 2012, I: 283–324. 867 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 11 January 1931. 868 Macková et al. 2012, I: 283–324. 869 Macková 2004. 870 Their meeting in Cairo was referenced in ACNB ZB S VII/i/1/I, 128. Letter, J. Černý to J. Preiss, July 1931. 871 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 17 April 1932, from Cairo. ACNB, Correspondence Preiss, J. Černý to J. Preiss, 10 April 1932, letter to Preiss from Cairo. Here Jaro mentions plans to visit Preiss after his return. The letter was a reply to communication from Preiss, and makes it clear that Jaro was a guide to the latter’s banking friends or colleagues.

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for the Service des Antiquités might be thwarted due to a lack of finances caused by the Great Depression. After several weeks at Deir el-Medina, Jaro usually moved back to Cairo, working at the Egyptian Museum for several weeks or months, as budgets allowed. His work from 1930 to 1932 was focussed on ostraca in the Museum’s collections, but he also made repeated visits to Meidum, then under the direction of Alan Rowe, to inspect graffiti in the temple next to the pyramid. Jaro had promised Gunn his help for a revised edition of the graffiti, and reported to Peet that he was ‘working with Gunn on early hieratic graffiti at Medum.’872 After an initial visit in 1931, Jaro returned to the site in April 1932 and again a year later, in April 1933.873 His credentials as a hieraticist were by then firmly established. In July 1931, Jaro followed up on his connections with Preiss, who had ‘expressed a wish to meet’ Jaro in Prague when he left Cairo at the end of May. Jaro had procured some books on art history, which were left unnamed in their correspondence, but which were clearly destined to enrich Preiss’s library. Jaro was no longer Preiss’s employee, so Preiss could only ask for special favours (albeit through suitable channels, such as Šámal), but he was still a man of professional consequence, and obliging a former benefactor would have been an expected social nicety. Jaro’s attitude in their correspondence was very polite, perhaps even deferential: I would rather wish to avoid a situation when my visit would come inopportune, and would be grateful for an indication when and where our meeting would be of the least annoyance to you. I hope you may wish to tell me whether the plaster casts we had selected in Cairo reached you in good order, and are still amusing you. I would take the opportunity to present several books on Egyptian art and subsequently procure such titles, as you may decide to prefer.874

872 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.230.28, 7 May 1931; ‘Medum’ was Jaro’s rendering. 873 The letter is now enclosed in a pocket in Notebook 54, p. 18 vso, GIA, The Gunn Collection, Gunn Mss., III, dated 17 January 1935. 874 ACNB, Collection J. Preiss, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Preiss, 30 July 1931.

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Jaro was not openly servile, but a hint of a formality that was particular to Central European correspondence in the early twentieth century was still there, even in the 1930s. It seems that Jaro was able to gauge the required level of formality in his correspondence, unlike Nathaniel Reich, who used his Austrian style of correspondence in an Anglo-Saxon context, such as with Breasted or Griffith, after which communication had a tendency to stall.875 Jaro wrote to Gardiner and Lexa courteously, but without the hint of obsequiousness he felt required to offer Preiss, who was potentially still a sponsor, if not of Jaro personally then of the Oriental Institute. At the end of 1931 Jaro wrote to Preiss, communicating the successes of Oriental Studies in Prague and referring to his imminent departure, which was planned for Christmas day. Preiss intended to repeat his Egyptian trip in spring 1932, and Jaro dutifully noted: ‘I am very pleased to know that your plan to visit Egypt again is unchanged and involves a longer trip at the beginning of the coming year [1932]. I would like to assure you that it would be an honour and a pleasure to be at your service.’876 From Cairo, Jaro would often return to Prague via Vienna, which he visited to collate ostraca.877 Prague meant teaching and the Oriental Institute, though his professional obligations were often conflicted. Jaro was understandably keen to pursue his own interests, but Lexa was becoming restless, despite Jaro’s report on some successful purchases of hieratic and Demotic ostraca for the Oriental Institute.878 Problems began to appear in spring 1930, less than a year after his appointment. It seems that there was some resentment, that he was spending too much time travelling and not enough time teaching or administering the OI. In a letter to Lexa, Jaro appears nonplussed: My father tells me that upon his visit to the OI both you and Mr Haltmar complained of an excessive workload. I am very sorry that I could not help, but could you please kindly ask Mr Haltmar 875 876

Thomas Gertzen: personal communication. ACNB, Collection J. Preiss, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Preiss, 19 December

1932. 877 For example, on 7 May 1930 Jaro was in Vienna collating ostraca; GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 17.114, e.g., p. 44. 878 AAVRC, Collection Lexa, Černý to Lexa, 27 March 1930.

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to bear with me for a few more weeks. It is not going to be long now before I shall take on my portion. Also—if my father understood your meaning correctly, you are of the opinion that the number of my teaching hours is insufficient, or in any case low. I have held the view that 4 hours in a week ought to be satisfactory, especially as the students of Egyptology are still the same.879

Jaro defended even himself to his father, commenting on the exploitative character of his faculty job: ‘I have no idea, how could Professor Lexa claim that my lectures are too few. They constitute 4 hours a week, which is enough for a docent, especially as it is unpaid work.’880 The perspectives of Jaro and his employers had about the nature of his job were clearly different, and the pattern of an elusive Jaro, flitting in and out of the city seemingly at will, appears to have upset some of his colleagues in Prague, and was becoming entrenched. By defending himself to his father, Jaro made it clear that he wanted to be regarded as a responsible man. His father’s opinion mattered. Antonín does not come across as a family despot, yet he expected Jaro to maintain the values inculcated in a ‘son of respectable parents’. When Jaro was in Prague, his summer and winter terms were usually dedicated to Late Egyptian grammar and hieratic palaeography. He often tried to condense his teaching into a few weeks, to free up time for travel and personal study. His teaching for the winter term of 1931/1932, for example, was confined to the pre-Christmas period, and concentrated entirely on Late Egyptian.881 In May to July 1932,882 Jaro held Egyptian language classes in Prague, alternating teaching with work on ostraca for the Cairo Catalogue.883 He was becoming especially proficient in 879 The Mr Haltmar mentioned in this letter was Karel Haltmar, who translated Irena Lexová’s book on Ancient Egyptian Dances into English. He was employed as an officer of the Oriental Institute and specialized in trade relations and political analysis. AAVRC, Collection Lexa, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 27 March 1930. 880 ANpM, Digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family, 21 March 1930. 881 AMSANO, File J. Černý, list of classes in the professorial application file. 882 List of classes, AMSANO, file J. Černý, box 21, the professorial application file. 883 On 22 July 1932 Jaro received the current issue of Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca in Prague, and wrote to thank his Belgian colleagues, whilst referring to his other activities; FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 22 July 1932.

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non-literary, administrative hieratic of the Ramesside period, which is more demanding than its more calligraphically-accomplished literary counterpart.884 His teaching nonetheless encompassed multiple categories of hieratic. Jaro was as systematic in his approach to collecting resources for teaching as he was to resources for personal study,885 and considered gathering material for a hieratic palaeography project that did not come to fruition.886 Along with his duties at the faculty, Jaro sought to do his part at the Oriental Institute, from which he derived some income. On 2 June 1931 he took part in the regular meeting of the Institute in Prague, and reported on his work. His audience included Orientalists, historians, and archaeologists (including some of his teachers, notably Hrozný and Lexa), and colleagues of his own generation, such as Felix Tauer (1893–1981). Tauer was a former pupil of Růžička and Dvořák, and a protégé of Musil, and was heir to the Arabists in Prague. Jaro preferred to travel for research and conferences, and only rarely hosted colleagues in Prague. Gardiner visited in 1933 and was made an honorary member of the Oriental Institute, although little is known about this visit. Jaro hoped to get Clère visit him in Prague, for a less formal stay than that by Gardiner, and had even taught him some essential Czech, including how to order half a pint of beer. The closest Jaro came to playing a host was when Botti began to attend Lexa’s classes of Demotic. Jaro developed the genre of professional correspondence, tracking and strengthening select aspects of his professional network as he built upon meetings and exchanges of mail. In June 1930, for example, he consolidated his Belgian connections, ahead of a planned presentation at the upcoming Semaine Égyptologique in Brussels, by promising in a letter to Marcelle Werbrouck that the paper would be ready in time for the next issue of Chronique d’Égypte.887 884

As summarized in his contribution on the study of non-literary ostraca; see Černý

1931a. 885 Only a selection of Jaro’s teaching notes survived his later peregrinations (such as GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 19.63, and his comprehensive notes on Egyptian grammar), but what remains shows thoroughness. 886 Some notes preserved in GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 29. 887 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to M. Werbrouck, 9 June 1930.

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The autumns and winters of 1930 to 1932 also followed a pattern, in which travel alternated with teaching and OI duties. In September 1930 Jaro embarked on a trip that included visits to Strasbourg, Leiden, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin.888 At Leiden, and unusually for the polyglot, he was somewhat annoyed at the Dutch not being very responsive to his use of German.889 The Semaine Égyptologique followed on 14 to 20 September 1930.890 Brussels was an opportunity to meet up with Capart and Lange, and he presented a paper on the interest and importance of studying ostraca, which was one of only a few of Jaro’s papers with an explicit methodological aim. It also aligned with Capart’s interests. Jean Capart was in some respects in a similar position to Jaro. He was an active promoter of his subject, and no less active a networker,891 who lobbied and liaised to gather support for Egyptology including among the highest echelons of his country’s social circles. Jaro formed a collegial relationship with the trailblazing Belgian, who was able to strengthen Belgian Egyptology even during the Great Depression,892 which those relying on the government support in Prague could not.893 However, Jaro benefited from observing how Capart approached his role, and actively pursued the lines of research that they shared. Jaro was again fortunate—or astute—to meet with and engage with an enabler. This was a pattern in his professional life: beginning with Lexa, then Peet, then the IFAO team led by Bruyère, Jaro’s carefully managed personal network operated smoothly even when institutional backing was uncertain. Jaro returned to Prague at the end of September 1930, to start a winter term teaching Late Egyptian and hieratic, two hours of each per week.894 A year later, in September 1931, the again attended a congress of orientalists in Leiden, where Capart presented the first volume of the series Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca that 888

GIA, Collection Clère, Clère Mss. 25, 6 August 1930. GIA, Collection Clère, Clère Mss. 25, 9 September 1930, from Leiden. 890 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 15 September 1930. Černý wrote to Lexa from Brussels. 891 Bruffaerts 2013: 213–214; De Meyer et al. 2019. 892 For an upcoming project aimed at exploring this facet of Capart’s work, see De Meyer et al. 2019. 893 Compare also Lemmen 2016: 610–622. 894 AMSANO, File J. Černý, list of classes in the professorial application file. 889

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contained Gardiner’s Late-Egyptian Stories.895 From Leiden, Jaro went via Paris to London,896 where, as he reported to Lange, he was completely consumed by social obligations.897 In October 1931 he was catching up with Oriental Institute work,898 but found time to indulge in a hobby, stamp collecting, exchanging specimens with Clère and fellow philatelist Lange.899 This is one the early (and rare) occasions when Jaro referred to something other than work and related matters in his letters. Back at work, his Oriental Institute presence was never limited to administrative tasks. On 18 December 1932 he took part in another meeting at the OI, where Hrozný reported on his Hittitology work and Lexa presented the organization of popular lectures at the Institute: ‘Future public lectures will be held in the Central Round Hall of the Institute. It had been decided to recommend the Board of the School of Political Science to arrange a series of lectures dealing with the Oriental Countries. A vote of thanks was made to the Dean of the German Faculty of Philosophy in Prague in acknowledgment of facilities granted to the Institute in support of some of the lectures arranged by the Institute and in allowing them to be held in the Faculty lecture rooms free of charge.’ This shows the Oriental Institute becoming a platform where specialists from both Prague universities—the Czech and the German— could build a degree of cooperation. The meeting also noted that Jaro was to depart for Egypt by the end of the month.900 Jaro made short study trips in 1932, such as to Berlin in early November. The library in Prague was not yet sufficient for his needs, and he was still in the process of building his own collection. Each year concluded with preparations for the next Egyptian season, and teaching. The routines were complicated only by the increasing uncertainty of Jaro’s position, and he increasingly looked to his social network as a safeguard. 895 896

Bruffaerts 2013: 228. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 22 September

1930. 897 Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, H. O. Lange Collection, J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 31 October 1931. 898 GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 7 and 15 October 1931. 899 GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, from J. Černý to J. Clère, 7 October 1931; Royal Danish Library, Collection H. O. Lange, Correspondence, J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 31 October 1931. 900 Reports, Archív Orientální 1932, IV/1, pp. 130–131.

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Social and professional capital Jaro’s relationship with the Czechoslovak legation in Egypt remained cordial. Archival records show that Jaro gave another lecture to the Czechoslovak expatriate community on 4 April 1932, likely on the legation premises. This was despite concerns that his connections at the legation could have been weakened, first by Hurban’s departure two years earlier and now by the departure of another contact, a Mr Pitlik.901 If the typescript of the lecture accurately reflects what was delivered, it was a comprehensive but entertaining view of the life on the dig, including snakes and scorpions, heat and dust, and the discovery of an intact tomb. However, it does not seem that the typescript preserved in the family papers is actually the one from 1932,902 as it refers to the early 1928 discovery of the tomb of Sennefer and Neferit. It is more likely the typescript from his 1929 lecture, which would fit the 1929 photos of Jaro with his mesmerized expatriate audience. It may however simply be that Jaro repeated his lecture at the legation. His professional development was becoming more and more evident. He was now a recognized authority and editor of ostraca, and a collector of Egyptian material on the behalf of institutions such as the Oriental Institute or sponsors. He kept a keen eye on the antiquities market: In 1930, when a large body of ostraca was uncovered at Kom Sud, Jaro also bought some of the ostraca that subsequently appeared on the antiquities market and were believed to have come from the settlement.903 Trips to dealers had a wider remit than simply obtaining artefacts. In January 1930, he wrote to Lexa about his ostraca hunts: One small fragment fits with a large piece in the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, which I saw first in 1923 and eventually copied last year. Another fragment fits with an ostracon now in Cairo, found 20 years ago, and this Cairene piece in turn joins another piece from the Louvre. I am merely indicating that there is a hope to join the hordes of ostraca fragments wallowing in the museums— it just needs some effort.904 901

For the community around the legation, including Pitlik, see Macková 2006. Published as Černý 2007. 903 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 17.26. 904 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, Černý to Lexa, 21 January 1930, from Deir el-Medina. 902

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Not only was Jaro’s visual memory quite well developed by his ‘chasse aux ostraca’, but he was developing the idea of a larger study on this corpus of ancient texts, having identified the unprepossessing fragments as being vital for studies of Egyptian history and language. Jaro had presented his work at the 1930 Semaine Égyptologique, demurely named ‘Ostraca and why to study them’.905 Convincing his international colleagues on their importance was one thing, but persuading the Oriental Institute in Prague that it needed to support Egyptological research was another. Jaro obliged whenever he was required to explain his research. On 2 June 1931, according to a report in Archív Orientální for 1931, he ‘gave an account of his work in Egypt, for which he had twice obtained leave from his official duties at the Prague Oriental Institute, in 1929/30 and 1930/31.’ Jaro had prepared his arguments well. He needed to demonstrate with clarity the value of his research, and to thus provide good reasons why the Oriental Institute should continue backing him when he was so often absent. He focused on two aspects, collecting and editing ostraca and explaining why these texts were of such importance for Egyptological studies. And he quantified his efforts: ‘Of the great number (some two or three thousand) of pieces he was able to copy about 250 for future publication.’ He also provided evidence of deliverables: The three subsequent months (February to April) he worked in the Cairo Museum on the invitation of the “Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte”, continuing for the Catalogue Général of that museum an exhaustive catalogue of the hieratic ostraca, a long and difficult work begun already in 1927/8. Up till now three instalments of the publication have been prepared, and in part already issued. In all 176 hieratic ostraca (No. 25501 to 25676) have been dealt with. They furnish important and interesting information and details regarding the life of the Royal Necropolis workmen in Thebes during the New Kingdom (eighteenth to twenty-first dynasties), as well as contributions to the Egyptian dictionary and the new Egyptian grammar. Sometimes the ostraca have a bearing on Egyptian history and civilisation in general: the lecturer quoted an ostracon relating of the death of a woman on the 15th day of the second month of Inundation and her subsequent burial on the 17th, thus showing that the long embalming 905

See also below, Chapter Ostraca and other projects.

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process of 70 days was by no means always used among the poorer classes in Ancient Egypt. Another piece contributed to an adjustment of the chronology of the kings at the end of the nineteenth dynasty. Dr. Černý observed several cases where fragmentary ostraca found long ago and preserved in various museums in Europe are now completed by the new fragments found in Deir el-Médineh and considers it his task first to assemble these disjecta membra before going on to write an exhaustive treatment of the life of the Theban Necropolis workmen. The main lines of his investigation are quite clear by now, but prolonged study promises to bring a mass of new details.906

Jaro’s clear outline of his research plan emphasized the ultimate goal of providing ‘an exhaustive treatment of life’ of the ancient Egyptian inhabitants of Deir el-Medina, once his collection of material had progressed satisfactorily. Ostraca featured prominently in this presentation, which summarized the main points he had made at the Semaine Égyptologique in Brussels the previous year. Cataloguing and presenting lists of entries has been a large part of Egyptological work since its inception, and will probably remain so in the foreseeable future. Material needs to be published, so that it enters the scholarly-recording, publicationstructure and knowledge-making ‘machine’, and to make it more generally known and useable. Not every researcher was fully engaged in cataloguing—one of Jaro’s contemporaries, Herbert Eustis Winlock, had started work on an imaginative treatment of Mentuhotep’s slain soldiers907—but it was sometimes unavoidable and, for Jaro, a means to an end. He needed to quantify his evidence before establishing the relationships encoded within it, in order to assess the economic structure of the settlement and write its economic history. This required considerable time in the collecting phase. Yet the making of ‘little more than catalogs’,908 as Donald Redford called some early examples of Egyptological historiography of Egypt, had already been perceived as problematic, even by by Jaro as early as 1932: ‘Here in Prague I am trying 906 907 908

A report on the work of the Oriental Institute; Archív Orientální 1931, III/1, 410–412. Thompson 2015–2018, III: 383–384. Redford 2001, I: ix. See also Baines 2011: 574–576.

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to get something out from the materials I have collected on the prices in Ancient Egypt. I am reluctant to present a mere list of examples, but even the hundreds of entries I have at my disposal do not allow any more general constatation. They are too scattered over a long period and too confined to Thebes and only one class of its inhabitants, not to speak of the difficulty of dating most of the documents.’909 His notes echo some recurring preoccupations with Egyptian history and its resources. The collecting of material in order to edit it and make it accessible was related to another of Jaro’s professional motivations. Inspired by his Belgian colleagues, Jaro had developed an interest in the circulation of research information and updates on existing and forthcoming Egyptological bibliographies. Capart promoted a system of bibliographical information covering thencurrent Egyptological works that was circulated at regular intervals among Egyptological communities. Jaro was decidedly in favour of this,910 and became an early subscriber, as did Peet.911 The project was effectively a precursor to the later Annual Egyptological Bibliography, based in Leiden, and its successor the Online Egyptological Bibliography, based at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, which demonstrated Egyptology’s ability to develop discipline-specific research infrastructures. Jaro’s more comprehensive thoughts about Egyptology, what it was good for and how it ought to be organized, were starting to coalesce, if slowly. Jaro was still carefully concealing his personal interests. Relationships are not normally referred to in his letters, although— with the exception of purely official correspondence—he always expressed his warm wishes to the recipient’s family and friends. His personal life remains hidden. The one hobby he mentioned in letters, philately, was to select friends who presumably shared that interest. Only rarely are books, the theatre, concerts or exhibitions mentioned, and yet it is evident from later references and recollections that Jaro was not ignorant of popular culture and was very fond of music. 909

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.72, 12 July 1932. FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 22 July 1932. 911 Peet discussed the future of the project with Capart in March 1932, and believed that Baudouin van de Walle would make a suitable bibliographer. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.230.24, 29 March 1932. 910

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Jaro’s reticence to discuss personal matters became strikingly evident in 1930, as even a major personal loss, the death of his father Antonín, was hinted at only obliquely,912 and his absence in Jaro’s personal correspondence is particularly acute. Antonín’s passing—the role model figure and the first node in Jaro’s social network—must have hit him hard. His father had introduced Jaro to books from the Pilsen library, had probably taught him to draw, had sought means to support his son’s pursuit of Egyptology, and had later acted as something of a secretary—handling some of Jaro’s administrative paperwork—when his son was abroad. Jaro had a close relationship with his father, and yet he kept up his rigorous working routine throughout 1930, without any major breaks, and avoided referring to his private grief in most of his international correspondence. It almost appears that Jaro did not wish any discord to enter his professional interests. The nucleus of the family was thus transformed. His brother Miloslav remained in touch, but had his own family. Anna Černá decided to leave the Catholic church and became a Protestant, probably in the wake of her husband’s passing; Jaro had declared himself agnostic ten years earlier. Almost a decade had passed since Jaro’s first documented romantic relationship. This aspect of his life in the 1930s was hinted at only retrospectively, in a much later letter to Gardiner, but it must have been at some point early in this decade, and probably in Prague, that Jaro embarked on another relationship. Yet the lady remains anonymous in surviving correspondence, and interested parties are denied her likeness, unless she was the lady on the bridge enjoying the sun with Jaro at her side in a photograph probably taken in the 1930s,913 or the smiling companion from a couple of others.914 It is a useful reminder that Jaro’s life was not lived exclusively against a backdrop of libraries, museums, and fieldwork, although his work ethic and systematic approach to both his studies and his publication output might suggest it. He was even something of a flaneur, preferably in 912 In an exchange between Peet and Gardiner in 1931; see GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.230.28, 7 May 1931. 913 Photograph reprinted in the Arabic edition of Jirina Ruzova’s Scribe in Place of Truth, published in 2014. 914 ACEGU, unnumbered photographs.

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company, ‘savouring the multiple flavours of his city.’915 He was not a typical boulevardier though; he liked to walk and talk with a purpose. Years later his pupil Zbyněk Žába recalled walking on the Vltava embankment while Jaro talked at length about the ‘flamme sacrée’ that kept people like them persevering in Egyptology.916 The talking and walking were essential. When not staying in Egypt, or en route across Europe, Jaro lived in Prague, which in the 1930s was a vibrant kaleidoscope of a city. Its face was still that of a grande dame of the Art Nouveau. Its wide avenues formed a stage for boulevardiers enjoying the metropolitan flair that had permeated Prague since the 1890s. Exploding bouquets surrounded the masques of exotic figures on its facades, which were being tentatively displaced by modernist styles. Although ornamentation may have gone out of fashion, it lingered in the Art Deco architecture that had swept Prague in the 1920s. The stark, aerodynamic modernism of the 1930s, of the De La Warr Pavilion or Villa Tugendhat, had its moments, but did not dictate the city’s overall appearance. Likewise, the earlier Cubist episode may have been short-lived, but it left a legacy of noticeable houses and of dreams, including the proposed rebuilding of the Old Town Hall in the shape of a step pyramid. Stark neoclassical forms manifested in new university buildings. An original approach that recalled Egypt, Byzantium, and Greece was adopted by Masaryk’s architect for Prague Castle, Josip Plečnik. Jaro moved against this aesthetic backdrop with the focus of a scholar, but also with the ease of a flaneur, the grace of a dancer, and—behind closed doors—likely with the warmth of a lover. But he still covered his traces. It was only in 1934 when he admitted to Gardiner ‘I am engaged with a girl whom I like very much and whom I shall marry in a not very distant, I hope, future.’917 In July 1932, Jaro finally obtained a driving licence.918 It is unclear whether he bought a car or whether there was a car in 915

Skinner 1962: 19. ACEGU, Žába correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 16 August 1951. 917 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. 918 NAP, the police directorate: Policejní ředitelství, všeobecná spisovna 1941–1950, karton 1221, sign. C 644/12: ‘vůdčí list k osobnímu automobilu,’ July 1932 (a driving licence for a personal transport vehicle). 916

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the family to which he had an occasional access. His brother ran his own business and might well have had a car. Czechoslovakia was then a right-hand drive country,919 and an undated photograph of a car with the number plate P-272 has survived in the family archive.920 He put his driving to a good use, escaping from Prague when the summer workload, preparing his teaching notes for Late Egyptian in French and Italian because he expected that Botti would join his classes in Prague, became too onerous. Jaro took fifteen days holiday in South Bohemia in August, walking and swimming for hours with ‘not one hieroglyph’ in sight.921 Lexa, known for his ability draw boundaries between work and leisure, would have heartily approved. Thus refreshed, Jaro embarked on preparations on his fourth volume of ostraca for the Egyptian Museum. 1932–1933 Adjusting expectations During September 1932, Jaro was working on his own small collection of ostraca, and collating transcriptions of some of its accounting texts.922 But as the effects of the Great Depression worsened his travelling lessened, and he began to worry about its further consequences. By October, while in Prague discharging his teaching duties (Late Egyptian featured prominently yet again, including reading exercises),923 he was increasingly concerned with the possibility that his work in Egypt would soon end. He had given an account of his work to his department in June, and now detailed his increasingly insecure position to Pierre Jouguet, the director of the IFAO. He was in an administrative quandary, awaiting communication from the Service des Antiquités regarding his future at the Egyptian Museum. 919 For driving training of the period, see I. Kučera, Jak se stanu dobrým šoférem, which was published repeatedly. The 7th edition, published 1938, was consulted here. 920 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family, unnumbered photograph. 921 GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, Clère Mss. 25, 22 August 1932. 922 GIA Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17, Notebook 17.26, envelope, ostr. H 15, collated on 30 September 1932. This ostracon is currently known as O. Náprstek Museum P 3814 + O. Náprstek Museum P 3837, publication forthcoming 2022/2023. 923 AMSANO, File J. Černý, box 21, list of classes in the professorial application file.

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His plan was to travel to Egypt in early December 1932 and spend a month working in the Institute, then to move on to Deir el-Medina to assist Bruyère for three weeks before returning to Cairo.924 He had received an invitation from the Egyptian Museum and planned to work there from 1 February, but there had been no further communications at that point, and presumably no financial advance. He thus approached Jouguet on the matter of accommodation for the winter, which he then considered would be his last in Egypt. He was also facing financial difficulty in Prague, as the Oriental Institute did not advance him any support. The Institute probably expected him to spend more time in Prague, and Jaro had been liberal with time spent on his own projects. Without an invitation from the Service des Antiquités, he feared that he would be left without means that had since the winter of 1925/1926 allowed him to spend several months per year in Egypt. But not all of the news was grim. Jaro was pleased to learn that Posener had decided to work on the hieratic ostraca from Deir el-Medina, and Jaro was willing to share them.925 The work was to be divided into literary and non-literary material, with Jaro focussing the non-literary material as he was interested in social and economic history. Jaro finished another round of teaching during the remainder of 1932. It had become his custom to squeeze as many classes into his time in Prague as possible to compensate for the months of absence. This was eventually appreciated by the university, as it allowed for a certain amount of flexibility in their schedule.926 Jaro was fortunate to have been allowed this flexibility, given the historical (and current) need to balance research and teaching for academic staff who have fieldwork obligations. Jaro visited Egypt as planned in early 1933, including time spent at Deir el-Medina and in Cairo, the latter of which involved work transcribing and indexing ostraca. He developed his cooperation with Posener, but his doubts about the future of his work 924

GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 7 and 15 October 1931. Archives of the IFAO, Personal file J. Černý, 29 October 1932, Prague, J. Černý to P. Jouguet. 926 AMSANO, File J. Černý, box 21, list of classes in the professorial application file. 925

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in Egypt were growing. Jaro articulated these doubts in his correspondence, hinting also to Gardiner in February that 1933 might well be his last year in Egypt: This is probably my last year in Egypt and I am therefore hard working on the Institute publication and a good deal of the first volume is already autographed. As the ostraca found in our excavations are so numerous that I would never have succeeded to copy and publish them all alone, I was obliged to take a collaborator. It is Posener, a young clever French Egyptologist. We have put order in our materials and are working since on joining the fragments and copying the texts. I have taken the non-literary texts including weights inscribed in hieratic, Posener is making the litterary, religious and magical ostraca. I control all his transcripts. We naturally will communicate you [sic] all texts which could interest you.927

On the top of his worries for the future, Jaro was ill with influenza throughout his stay at Deir el-Medina, although, as he noted to Lexa ‘there were but a few ostraca, so fortunately not so much to do.’ It was a very cold winter in Upper Egypt, and Deir el-Medina was often covered with fog.928 Poisonous political fog had also appeared on the wider international horizon, as Germany had a new Reichskanzler at the end of January, an unprepossessing-looking but vocal Austrian named Adolf Hitler. In February the Reichstag was burned down, paving the way for exceptional measures to be taken by Hitler and his ascendant Nazi party. Soon thereafter, Germany began to change. The change seemed quite sudden, as if ‘within weeks after the Nazis took control, Germany’s Jews became targets of harassment, stigmatization and professional ostracism.’929 This might reflect the lived reality of 1933 from a distant perspective, but it had deep roots; a complex legacy of anti-Semitism that, fertilized with Nazi ideology, begat a new system.930 Some of the great names of German Egyptology, including Adolf Erman and Georg Steindorff, gradually found themselves 927 928 929 930

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.70, 17 February 1933. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 March 1933. Thompson 2015– 2018, III: 198. Friedländer 1997, vol. I.

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coming under pressure because of their Jewish ancestry. Direct attacks were initially slow in coming, but the atmosphere was deteriorating.931 And it was not only scholars with Jewish origins or relations who felt the pressure. Universities and the intelligentsia became targets, expected to bend to the will of the regime. A ‘heedless’, or simply confused, conformity began to take hold, and soon the repercussions of the Nazi takeover were felt in the German Institute in Cairo.932 The situation grew worrying for the Ludwig and Mimi Borchardt, used to move freely between Egypt and Germany. One German Egyptologist, Louis (or Ludwig) Keimer, like many German intellectuals, began to consider a move to Czechoslovakia.933 The full implications of the pressures facing his German colleagues were not yet facing Jaro, who visited several excavation sites during this stay in Egypt, and upon his return to Cairo in February took the opportunity to accompany Hermann Grapow to visit Gustave Jéquier at Saqqara, who was working on texts in the pyramids of Udjebten, Neit, and Ibi.934 Grapow was at that point a professional colleague, and probably himself still unaware of the deals with the Devil he would be making with the new regime in Berlin.935 Also in February, Jaro was invited to an event at the Royal Geographical Society of Egypt, to celebrate Masaryk’s 85th birthday.936 The event included a lecture by Pierre Crabités, the American representative on the Mixed Courts of Egypt in Cairo,937 and the man who was the judge in the Howard Carter case in 1924, about who should control the recording and clearance of Tutaknhamun’s tomb.938 Jaro also reported to Gardiner about what was occurring in Prague, noting that ‘Botti is now in Prague learning Demotic with Lexa and before I left, I made on the whole a successful 931

Gertzen 2016. Discussed in greater detail in Voss 2013, II: 90–93. 933 Oerter 2010b and 2003. 934 See for instance Jéquier 1928. The trip with Grapow was referred to in AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 March 1933. 935 See Gertzen 2019. 936 The invitation was used as scrap paper for notes on Egyptian Grammar, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.18, recto of p. 3. 937 Parkinson 2005. 938 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 67–68. 932

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effort to perfect him in the Egyptian Grammar. He shall not return to Turin, but is appointed to the Florence Museum in order to work in the demotic and Greco-Demotic papyri found in Tebtunis.’939 Jaro’s exchanges with Gardiner were becoming increasingly regular.940 As usual, Jaro listed all ongoing archaeological excavations in his March letter to Lexa. He reported meeting with Carlo Anti,941 and that they had discussed prolonging Botti’s stay in Prague.942 He also relayed greetings from the Czechoslovak expatriate community, as the Haises and the portrait painter Ferdinand Stašek were now well known to Lexa due to his 1931 visit. In April Jaro again visited Meidum on Gunn’s behalf, wondering if he could improve on their previous readings of the graffiti.943 But his routine mostly revolved around his traditional work in Cairo, and he was still rooming in the IFAO. On his return from Egypt, Jaro once again embarked on his teaching duties for the summer term. He again focused on language classes, in Middle and Late Egyptian. His exchanges with Gardiner covered various hieratic projects, and Gardiner came to consider the possibility of more regular cooperation, and of establishing practical provision for Jaro. Among other things, Gardiner must have noted Jaro’s neat hand when producing hieroglyphic transcriptions of hieratic material, which was standard practice for the publication of Egyptian texts because extensive typesetting in a hieroglyphic font was prohibitively expensive, and managed only by select publishers, such as the Clarendon Press (with the font created by Norman and Nina de Garis Davies for Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar),944 and the IFAO. Gardiner probably appreciated Jaro’s reliability, as—despite the occasional lapse in proofreading—did Peet. Peet at this time was preparing for a major change in his circumstances, accepting a 939

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.70, 17 February 1933. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56 series. 941 Carlo Anti (1889–1961), Italian Archaeologist, Chancellor of Padua University from 1932. 942 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 3 March 1933. 943 Letter now enclosed in a pocket of Notebook 54, p. 18 verso. GIA, Collection Gunn, Gunn Mss. III. 944 Introduced by Gardiner; see Gardiner 1928. 940

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readership in Egyptology at Oxford in May 1933 based at The Queen’s College,945 which Gardiner had a hand in setting up.946 However, reliability was not what colleagues in the Oriental Institute in Prague regarded as Jaro’s chief characteristic. From their perspective, his frequent absences were a recurrent problem as someone had to deputize for him. This was usually Karel Haltmar, who was not best pleased by the arrangement. Therefore, in the spring and summer 1933, Jaro had both work and personal concerns, but work continued. He taught Late Egyptian, and wrote a paper on Egyptian oracles based on observations in his ostraca. Clère helped to correct Jaro’s French. Jaro planned holidays in August and an autumn visit to Paris, to be introduced to French academic officials who might have influence over his future position at the IFAO. As Jaro’s funding from the Egyptian Museum ran out, Jouguet tried to obtain for him a ‘bourse’ to continue his IFAO work on ostraca.947 October, November, and December 1933 were spent mostly in Prague, during which Jaro was once again teaching Middle and Late Egyptian. His Late Egyptian teaching load still amounted to four hours a week, and an introduction to Middle Egyptian took a further two, an arrangement that no doubt pleased Lexa. In October Jaro made time to act as a guide and local contact for Gardiner, who made a European trip and stopped over in Prague. Jaro had commented earlier to Clère that he had readied himself for this visit by preparing some readings of texts that might interest Gardiner.948 Gardiner was increasingly becoming an influential figure in Jaro’s plans. He was slowly guiding Jaro toward research cooperation and considered him a reliable epigrapher, recommending him to the Harvard Semitic Museum’s expedition to Sinai and the EES project in Abydos. These recommendations came to fruition in 1935 and 1934 respectively.

945 An outline of Peet’s career in context is available in Hollings and Parkinson 2020; see also Lewis 2016. 946 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.230.8, a copy of Gardiner’s reply, explaining the finances of the readership position. 947 Jaro intimated his plans to Clère: GIA, Collection Clère, correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 5 June 1933, from Prague. 948 GIA, Collection Clère, J. Černý to J. Clère, 26 August 1933.

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In this period Jaro also frequented the academic circles of Lexa’s Demotic scholars, and spent time with a friend from Turin, Botti, who was studying with Lexa but who also frequented some of Jaro’s Late Egyptian classes.949 These apparently serious scholars were not averse to having a little fun: in later recollections Botti gave the impression, repeated by his biographer, that the two were ‘inseparable friends’.950 It seems that Jaro took Botti on trips, probably by car, including to Křivoklát Castle on 15 October. Křivoklát had a chequered history, and was (and is) a popular tourist destination. It is a former royal castle, with some notable royal births and audiences having taken place on the premises, the latter including envoys of Richard II of England coming to the court of Wenceslas IV in 1380 and heralding the marriage of Richard to Anne of Bohemia, but it was also a royal and imperial prison, with the occultist Edward Kelley as one of its more notorious occupants. Finally, it was rebuilt romantically to be the residence of the princes of Fürstenberg, who sold it to the Czechoslovak State Historical Trust in 1929. Botti duly sent a postcard to his aunt Antonia from this memorable destination.951 Jaro continued teaching in November, and continued playing host to Botti. On 26 November they visited the Prague Zoo,952 which had opened in 1931. In November, contact with Gardiner intensified, as Gardiner looked for ways to support Jaro and to put their cooperation on a firmer basis. Gardiner had evidently thought of approaching Masaryk, and was prepared to marshal support of James Henry Breasted. Irrespective of the outcome, Gardiner urged Jaro to cooperate on a planned edition of ostraca, but modified his offer following negotiation. He now accepted that Jaro should publish his Late Egyptian grammar alone, as he had already collected most of the required material, and that he would also become a full co-author of Gardiner’s edition.953 The year concluded with Jaro planning his usual visit to Egypt, albeit that his plans this time were provisional. 949

Botti 2011: 106. Botti 2011: 103. 951 Botti 2011: fig. 45 on p. 109. 952 Botti 2011: Fig. 39–40 on p. 99; the material is kept in Archivio Storico del Museo Archeologico di Firenze, Sezione Egizia. 953 Copy of Gardiner’s letter to Černý, GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.69, A. H. Gardiner to J. Černý, 30 November 1933. 950

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1934 A new professional relationship Very early in the new year, the French Ministry of Education again nominated Jaro as an attaché libre of the IFAO for the academic year of 1933/1934.954 Jaro was in Prague, where he was giving much thought to Gardiner’s queries regarding the Chester Beatty papyri. Gardiner was finalizing his edition of the papyri, which was to appear as the third volume of the series Hieratic Papyri of the British Museum.955 Papyri from the library of Chester Beatty had occupied Gardiner for some time, including the large Chester Beatty I housed in Dublin, which he had published earlier.956 Jaro was interested in the context of what was recorded on the papyri, particularly Chester Beatty I with its rich assemblage of love-songs, encomia, accounts, and the story of Horus and Seth. He was curious about where they came from, who wrote or compiled them, and especially how they related to other groups of papyri that Jaro knew came from Western Thebes. Jaro’s view, based on his knowledge of Deir el-Medina and finds in 1928, was that this group of texts was a product of the workmen’s community, and sought names recorded in the collection among other texts from the village, including in graffiti adorning paths through the Theban hills. The name of scribe Kenherkhepeshef, for example, was known from both Deir el-Medina and papyrus Chester Beatty III, the dream-book. Jaro’s was a historical perspective, embedding written culture in its local context, however patchy the evidence might have appeared. He also knew, or at least suspected, that the Chester Beatty papyri had been removed illicitly from Deir el-Medina during excavation, finding their way to Luxor dealers and then to Dublin and the British Museum.957 He had another reason to believe this was probable. He was at Deir el-Medina in 1928 and 1929, and ultimately was an accessory to how some fragments of papyri, well known to have come from the Deir el-Medina excavations, made their way to the collections 954 AMSANO, Černý personal file, reimbursements, memoranda, research schedules by Černý and other administrative material; the IFAO Archives, Cairo, Personal file J. Černý, 4 January 1934, Paris. 955 Gardiner 1935. 956 Texts from Chester Beatty I were published in Gardiner 1932. 957 Compare GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.59.

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of Chester Beatty and Gardiner.958 His letters to Gardiner show some uneasy decision making on his part, regarding Bruyère’s and Gardiner’s research practices, but he nonetheless tracked down the history of papyri then in the keeping of an antiquities dealer named Mohassib. Step by step, he was becoming Gardiner’s unofficial agent: ‘As to the papyri which are with Mohassib, please be assured I will do all in order to satisfy you. I will probably spend a few days in Der el-Medineh and will procure for you a copy of those portions of Bruyéres journal which are concerned with the find of the papyri in 1928.’959 This relationship endured. During the early months of 1934, as Gardiner prepared the Chester Beatty papyri for print, Jaro procured for him additional information from Bruyère’s journals regarding the 1928 discovery: I include extracts from M. Bruyère’s journal concerning the great discovery of papyri in 1928. Please do with it what you think the best, but do not forget that on my consciousness [sic] lies the heavy responsability [sic] of having carried them out from Egypt without any permit from the Antiquities Service and M. Lacau. Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me know the wording of your preface so far as it concerns the provenance of the Ch.-B. papyri. In the accompanying note, I have, of course, not mentioned the fact that the fragments alluded to in Bruyère’s journal are identical with those carried by me to Europe and handed over to Faulkner in Prague in 1929.960

This was (and to an extent still is) a recurrent problem for collectors and archaeologists: does one accept the status quo, assuming that their actions will protect irreplaceable objects from loss or destruction, or refuse to participate in the vicious circle of trade in antiquities with problematic histories? ‘Bruyère was wont to regularly inspect the art dealers’ shops at Luxor, trying to identify

958 The affair was outlined in a recent analysis of responses, both diplomatic and in the Egyptian press, to the removal of the Chester Beatty papyri: Ragazzoli, C. and S. Polis: Comment se passer de Lacau: l’affaire Chester Beatty entre 1928 et 1935; paper presented at the Colloque international, Pierre Lacau, un égyptologue à la tête des antiquités égyptiennes, 9 to 11 December 2021, Paris. 959 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.59, 12 January 1934, J. Černý, from Prague. 960 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934.

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objects from his own site,’961 and Jaro followed suit. Several ostraca, particularly from the 1930s, were noted by Jaro as having been bought in Luxor and then found their way either to the IFAO collection or to the nascent Prague collection, which has a complex history because Jaro purchased artefacts for the Oriental Institute as well as for himself.962 This situation was alternately characterized as a regretful result of Bruyère’s laxness and ‘inadequate standards of excavation’,963 and more charitably as a result of the sheer impossibility of being able to ‘adequately supervise’ the large numbers of workmen that Bruyère employed.964 Like most heads of a mission, Bruyère was required to make various compromises, as was Jaro, and he was not always on site and thus could not adequately supervise the work because he was employed elsewhere. Jaro’s approach appears largely pragmatic, and accepting of the status quo. He made attempts to connect loose ends by tracking ostraca and papyri in antiquities dealerships to their place of origin, but acted as a buyer and exporter for some of those very artefacts, be it for Gardiner or for the Oriental Institute in Prague. He normally used the official route, obtaining permission from the Service des Antiquités, but seems to have made an exception for the 1929 fragments, carrying them from Egypt either with Bruyère’s and Jouguet’s consent or, perhaps, a blind eye. It seems unlikely that they knew nothing of Jaro’s role, but instead accepted the removal of fragments that might supplement the bulk of the Chester Beatty papyri, which had already been removed to Dublin and London. It is perhaps more likely, given that a number of papyrus fragments are still (or are again) in the IFAO collection, that Jaro might have trafficked those fragments back and forth, allowing Gardiner to study them unperturbed but not depriving the IFAO of its assets. This would have been a highly irregular solution, but one that would have meant that fragments of papyri from the group could be joined, which is perhaps what mattered most to Jaro and his colleagues.965 961

Raven 2014: 197, n. 18, which was based on personal communication from G. Andreu-

Lanoë. 962

Navrátilová and Onderka 2014. Shaw and Nicholson 2002: 82; see also Thompson 2015–2018, III: 19. 964 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 19. 965 For references to papyri about which Bruyère and Jouguet would not wish to provide details, see GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. 963

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The uneasiness Jaro displayed in his letters may have resulted in part from his dual allegiance to Gardiner and to the IFAO, as demonstrated by the tortuous way he broached the subject in letters to the former. But he demonstrated a willingness to pursue ‘pure’ research; to do what he believed was best for the subject matter and artefacts, despite what political or professional authorities, notably the Service des Antiquités and its French head, Pierre Lacau, might think. His actions, however unintentionally, flouted Egyptian authorities under French leadership. Jaro was aware of the unease that the loss of the papyri caused in Egypt,966 but probably did not see an alternative that allowed unrestricted access to literary texts for his friend Gardiner, or non-literary texts for his sponsors at the IFAO. Meanwhile, as the winter term of 1933/1934 came to an end, Jaro had to cram his lectures on Late Egyptian grammar into the available weeks before his departure for Egypt. Lexa was also developing his circle of Demoticists, which still included Botti, who was to become Jaro’s most prolific correspondent in Prague that year.967 Another correspondent, who noted Jaro’s interest in economic history, was the historian Fritz Moritz Heichelheim, whom Jaro had met in Leiden and Prague some time before.968 Jaro could not then have known that his own future would be reflected in Heichelheim’s circumstances: Heichelheim had been forced from his university position in Germany, and was also to become an émigré in the United Kingdom. By early February 1934, and somewhat against his expectations from the previous year, Jaro was again en route to Egypt, travelling via Cairo to Luxor. In Cairo he met a newcomer to Egypt, 966 Egyptian newspapers and periodicals of the time, whether in French, English or Arabic, often raised questions regarding foreign influence, Egyptian identity, and political orientation. They were aimed at a broad range of social groups, and Western influence was variously regarded, from criticism to praise, including from a workers’ movement seeking inspiration. For the latter see Gorman and Monciaud 2018, especially the chapter ‘Voice from Below in the 1940s Egyptian Press: the Experience of the Workers’ Newspaper Shubra’. 967 As Jaro reflected in a communication with Lexa; AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 8 March 1934. Letters from Botti appear to be lost. 968 GIA, Černý Collection, Correspondence, Černý Mss. 21.1065, 2 January 1934, from Cambridge; this letter was evidently kept by Jaro, and is one of the few from the interwar period that survived in his collection.

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Kazimierz Michałowski.969 Jaro’s involvement at Deir el-Medina had now lasted for almost ten years, and he was recognized as a regular at the IFAO mission, spending time with Bruyère and his team. On 12 February 1934, a month after Jaro’s finished work for Gardiner on a complete analysis of persons in Chester Beatty I,970 Jouguet asked the Ministry of Education for permission to implement Jaro’s nomination as attaché libre and pay him 8000 francs, after Bruyère had urged the remuneration.971 Jaro’s presence became increasingly important as the number of ostraca from Deir el-Medina increased, even after he began to share the workload with Posener.972 Jaro arrived at Deir el-Medina on 20 February,973 and that very day copied an ex voto inscription in Luxor.974 He did not stay long that spring, as he left on 1 March. Others there that season included Bruyère, Alexandre Varille, Clément Robichon, Michel Malinine, and his new Polish acquaintance Michałowski, who remembered meeting Jaro and being worried about snakes in the house.975 Sad news also reached Jaro from Oxford. On 22 February 1934, T. Eric Peet, his colleague, co-author and—to a certain extent— early international mentor, had died unexpectedly.976 Along with his personal loss, this news put an end to the long-planned editorial task that Peet intended to undertake with aid from Jaro, publishing Ramesside letters. ‘His premature death’, noted Jaro in a later introduction to his own edition of Late Ramesside Letters, ‘prevented him from accomplishing his task, but his note-books show how far advanced were his preparations. Several 969

Michałowski 1986: 109. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, J. Černý to A. H. Gardiner, AHG 42.56.59, 12 January 1934. 971 Černý personal file, reimbursements, memoranda, research schedules by Černý and other administrative material, the IFAO Archives, Cairo; 12 February 1934, from Cairo, Director P. Jouguet to the Ministry of Education, with enclosure from B. Bruyère to P. Jouguet. 972 In Černý 1935a: iv, Jaro indicated that Posener’s cooperation began in January 1934, although as his letters from 1933 have shown it had in fact begun a year earlier. 973 Archives IFAO, Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952, season 1933/1934. 974 Bruyère 1939: 201. 975 Michałowski 1986: 123. 976 Gunn and Simpson 2004. 970

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unknown British Museum papyri which he was able to copy were too important to remain unpublished for long, and when Prof. Capart identified the Geneva papyri also as belonging to this group, Dr. Gardiner and the present writer [Jaro] decided that the publication could not be delayed any longer.’977 But in early 1934, Peet’s passing was a sad time for Jaro, even if he had little time for grief in the fast-paced 1934 Egyptian season. He wrote of Peet’s death to Lexa, noting not that Peet was one of his key links to international Egyptology, but rather of the ‘loss hieratic studies were to suffer.’978 To Gardiner he wrote that it was very sad, indeed disastrous, news.979 The finances from the IFAO were delayed, as French authorities often took time to authorize such requests.980 However, Jaro had another assignment that year, this time mediated by Gardiner and concerning the site of Abydos. Gardiner was involved with the EES ‘enterprise of publishing the whole Temple of Sethos I at Abydos, in facsimile, just as the Oriental Institute [Chicago] were already doing’ for other temples.981 The first volume of the enterprise appeared in 1933, and the driving forces were two ladies—artists and enthusiasts—Amice Mary Calverley and Myrtle Broome.982 Jaro, whom Gardiner came to consider a capable epigrapher with good technical skills,983 joined the epigraphy team at Abydos. In early March, he gave an account of his Abydene life to Lexa: I have been in Arabah al-Madfuna, i.e., Abydos, for nearly a week now, and copy some very faded texts in the temple of Seti I for 977

Černý 1939b: v–vi. As he also noted to Lexa. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, letter 8 March 1934. 979 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. 980 The IFAO Archives, Cairo, 30 March 1934, Paris, from the Ministry to Director P. Jouguet. J. Černý personal file, regarding reimbursements, memoranda, research schedules, and other administrative material. 981 Gardiner 1962: 53. 982 Amice Mary Calverley (1869–1959); see Bierbrier 2019: 86. Myrtle Florence Broome (1888–1978); see Bierbrier 2019: 69. On their work see Strudwick 2012 and Ruffle 2013. For a publication of the Broome letters and more details on Broome see Young 2021. A letter from Jaro references pencils made by the Czechoslovak firm Kohinoor, which Jaro bought for Calverley in Prague; Černý GIA, Oxford, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21: 277–279. 983 Gardiner 1962: 51–52. 978

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Gardiner, or rather the EES. I live in a small house between Shunet ez-Zebib (the Thinite fortress)984 and Umm el-Qaab (tombs of the first dynasty rulers).985 Standing on a ladder daily from 8 am to 5 pm, I struggle with what used to be beautiful painted hieroglyphs, but are now no more than shadows. On occasion, dousing them with a damp sponge makes some difference, but often even this method is of no avail.986 I have already analysed four rooms of the Treasury, one storeroom, and now there is only one room left, the largest one, where animals for offerings were being slaughtered. I hope that I shall be done with this by Sunday, and shall be able to return to my beloved ostraca, which I impatiently look forward to. The English have two women painters here: Miss Calvaley and Miss Broom [sic] and one draughtsman, Mr Little. They make beautiful colour facsimiles of reliefs and inscriptions. However, as none of them is a philologist, Gardiner applied to me to take care of the philological aspect and check their paintings and drawings, to prevent a mistake creeping in.987

Jaro thus worked alongside two of the most respected and talented female artists of his generation, comparable with Nina de Garis Davies, who was also promoted by Gardiner. Miss Broome, in turn, found him to be a ‘delightful guest’.988 Jaro also wrote to Gardiner from Abydos to say that he approved the proposed work scheme for their collaboration on the publication of ostraca, which had been under negotiation since the previous year. He wrote, ‘I … accept your terms’: I have arranged my case and the entire plan to be put before Pres. Masaryk; his Chancellor, Dr. Šámal, adviced [sic] me without any hesitation to leave the Prague Institute and to accept your offer. Hrozný who was quite aware that my departure from the Institute 984

Shunet ez-Zebib is a local toponym in the Abydos area. Umm el-Qaab is a part of the Abydos necropolis, outlined in Effland 2008; see also PM V, 78–90. 986 This option was used in cases when all other methods had failed and was perceived as a solution in extremis to enable at least some record to be made of evidence that would soon be lost. It was not normally recommended and neither were squeezes; the 1912 Antiquities Regulation referred to the fact that ‘il sera prohibé de prendre sur les monuments des estampages par procédé humide…’ (quoted Gertzen 2017a: 222). 987 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 8 March 1934, from Arabah al Madfuna. 988 Young 2021, letter no. 277, 16 March 1934. 985

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was mainly caused by a personal campagne [sic; Jaro’s emphasis] conducted against me, tried to retain me, naturally without any success.989

However, Jaro was worried about spending an extended period in London, which was what Gardiner expected of him, because he intended to retain his venia legendi in Prague. He also admitted—or shielded himself behind—personal reasons, continuing: ‘I am engaged with a girl whom I like very much.’ However, the lady remained nameless to Jaro’s colleagues abroad, and whether there indeed was a fiancée, or even a serious relationship, is a matter of speculation. She remains elusive; a missing voice in Jaro’s narrative. One piece of academic gossip noted that he might have visited the house of his mentor Lexa for more than just academic reasons. Lexa was the father of two elegant daughters. The older, Milada, still lived with her parents. The younger, Irena, was an accomplished artist, a dancer, and author of a book on ancient Egyptian dance,990 but was engaged to be married.991 Her father had entrusted her the work on Egyptian dances as a special task when she began to attend the Egyptological seminar: ‘it was easier to train her in scientific work than for me to obtain a specialist knowledge of dancing, which had already been hers.’992 Her talent and interest in dance might have attracted Jaro’s admiration, or they might simply have enjoyed time together without any particular romantic attachments. Jaro then (and later) had female colleagues in different age groups and roles, and despite a strongly male academic environment could have found female friendships quite desirable, even as a replacement for strong romantic attachments. Which of the Lexovás, if any, was a romantic interest remains unknown. If there was a budding romance it did not develop very far, allegedly because Jaro was not considered a good prospective partner. His correspondence with Lexa was either less intense or is more patchily preserved during the 1930s, but that 989

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. Lexová 1930. For the English edition see Lexová 1935. The book was illustrated by her sister Milada. 991 About Irena also Macková 2018. 992 F. Lexa in a preface to Lexová 1930: 5. 990

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does not mean that their relationship went sour, or at least not so significantly as to leave a prominent trace. After the Abydos intermezzo, Jaro spent time with his ostraca in Cairo before returning to Prague. He also arranged for the export of some ostraca for Gardiner, mainly pieces both he and Norman Davies had collected in the past couple of months, though some were purchased from a collector named Nash: Both I and Mr Davies think it reasonable to send to England only the complete pieces and to leave the fragments at Mounira in my working-room waiting for joins, which will probably be found, when they are studied in connection with Institute’s materials. For doing this I naturally want your consent; I would only add that all your pieces would be kept separately from the others, they would be provided with a “G” and a provisional number and a list of them would be handed to you.993

More teaching awaited on his return to Prague, notably the final part of his Late Egyptian class, which took up two teaching hours per week. Jaro also continued his Introduction to Middle Egyptian class, which entailed a further two hours of teaching.994 These were now established courses, and Jaro did not have to undertake any special preparations. His teaching workload might appear, especially in hindsight after decades of academic mass production in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, relatively light. Nonetheless, he was kept busy with other research and with preparing publications. The one element of his schedule that seemed to change was his involvement with the Oriental Institute in Prague (a separate entity from the university). Jaro no longer had his administrative position, although he kept some professional contact with the Institute’s members. The OI had entered a phase of financial constraints due to the effects of the Great Depression, and dropping a largely inactive member of its administrative team would have made pragmatic sense, but there is no information as to whether it was Jaro or the Institute who initiated the departure.

993 994

1939.

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. AMSANO, File J. Černý, list of classes in the professorial application file, box 21,

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The rhythm of Jaro’s year had finally become quite established, with travel, fieldwork, and only university duties in Prague. But another element was about to be added to his schedule: In the summer of 1934, after term had ended, Jaro travelled again, including to London where a new research partnership was about to begin. Gardiner had formalized his support for Jaro when they agreed on the format of their professional cooperation. Gardiner became Jaro’s employer: I, Dr. Alan Henderson Gardiner, of 9, Lansdowne Road, Holland Park, London W. 11, herewith undertake to pay to Dr. Jaroslav Černý the sum of £75 (seventy-five pounds) quarterly in advance from September 16th 1934 for a period of three years, in consideration of his collaboration with me in the publication of the hieratic ostraca in my possession or in my care, together with other ostraca in my notebooks over which I have rights of publication. I also agree to allow Dr. Černý £100 (one hundred pounds) for travelling expenses to be spread over the three years in question. In the event of my dying before arrangements have been made with a publisher, I expect my Trustees to allow a sum of not more than £500 (five hundred pounds) to be allotted for this purpose, unless the expense is not defrayed from another source. No stipulation is here made for a definite amount of time to be spent by Dr. Černý in England, and all decisions as to hours of work and the like are left to his own judgement. Whereto Witness my hand this 29th day of July 1934.995

Jaro was no longer wholly reliant on domestic sponsorship from Masaryk, but was instead becoming a freelance international researcher, having obtained a powerful patron who wielded both actual and symbolic capital. It opened new possibilities, but also strengthened his allegiance to Gardiner. Jaro’s network of communication with patrons, personal and institutional, had been long established by this point, but his relationship with Gardiner would soon develop greatly, with accompanying changes in Jaro’s lifestyle.

995

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.67.

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Gardiner hoped that the ostraca volume would materialize swiftly,996 but there were other aspects to their partnership. Gardiner engaged Jaro, now remunerated, to draw hieroglyphic plates for publication, to buy artefacts, to undertake sundry research tasks in collections that he could not himself visit, and as a general assistant. Jaro was not alone in this, as in the 1930s Gardiner also enjoyed the services of Herbert W. Fairman, Raymond Faulkner, and Aylward M. Blackman.997 In the introduction to his Late Egyptian Miscellanies Gardiner stated: For the laborious task of autographing my transcriptions I was fortunate in being able to secure the services of Mr. H. W. Fairman; My friend Dr. Černý has been of great assistance in running through all the British Museum Miscellanies except the Lansing, a final control upon my accuracy which brought to light a number of points calling for modification. He also visited Berlin and Turin for the express purpose of this book; here again the harvest, though small, was by no means negligeable. Lastly, I have, as usual, to thank my trusted assistant R. O. Faulkner for checking my references and for general help at all stages of the work.998

Jaro’s entry into Gardiner’s circle seems different to that of Faulkner or Fairman, even though they were all Egyptologists. Though he was retained under a contract, Jaro was called a ‘friend’, which suggests a more equal relationship. Moreover, Gardiner’s patronage was private, not tied to an institution,999 and Jaro was accepted as a professional without complications due to his nationality. At this stage, the British attitude to Czechoslovakia was not one of interest or even respect.1000 Even Sir George Clerk, a friend to Czechs in general and to Masaryk in particular during the 1920s,1001 thought Czechs ‘outwardly one of the least prepossessing of mankind.’1002 Diplomacy became more complicated as 996 In his Late Egyptian Miscellanies, he referred to ostraca that ‘Dr Černý and I hope to publish in a work now in preparation’; Gardiner 1937: x. 997 The Egyptological network in Britain from the 1920s to the 1950s was, at the time of writing, being studied by Clare Lewis. 998 Gardiner 1937: XII. 999 See Dodson 2019. 1000 Orzoff 2009: 145–152. 1001 Protheroe 2001. 1002 Hanak 1989: 128.

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the 1930s progressed. The British envoy in Prague was Sir Joseph Addison, who was witty but anti-Czech. He was of the general impression was that while one could respect Masaryk as a philosopher who invented a nation and who was accepting of minorities, the old gentleman was now increasingly in decline and controlled by Beneš, who was viewed rather less charitably.1003 Being Czechoslovak was not a particular recommendation in Britain, but a cosmopolitan and clubbable man like Jaro could be accepted on his own merits. If Czechoslovakia was declining politically in Britain, then this didn’t impact the intellectual circles in which Jaro moved. Still, cultural diplomacy was martialled to present and defend the Czechoslovak cause.1004 One early—and favourable—biography of Masaryk had already been published in Britain by 1930.1005 Its author was a retired artillery officer, MI7 (b) intelligence officer, and prolific writer of crime stories named Cecil John Street, who had travelled widely in Central Europe. His knowledge of the region was not merely that of a propagandist, though his work has recently been interpreted as propaganda,1006 and his books read as affectionate travelogues that present a positive image of Czechoslovakia.1007 British reservations and critical attitudes to Czechoslovakian politics would prove more important in the coming years, as cultural diplomacy ‘could not outweigh Britain’s distaste for engagement on the Continent (or for Beneš).’1008 Gardiner’s opinions on Czechoslovak politics and Jaro’s political allegiance are unknown, but Jaro presented himself as a wellmannered, capable professional and was thus granted entry to the Gardiner household. Jaro wasn’t playing politics when he accepted Gardiner’s offer, let alone engaging in deliberately imperialist ideology. He was a man of his time, born to an age of empires, who took an opportunity presented to him to advance his career. Once he accepted, he did what was expected of him 1003 1004 1005 1006 1007 1008

Hanak 1989. Orzoff 2009: chapter ‘Difficulties Abroad’. Street 1930. Woolven 2004. Orzoff 2009: 148. Orzoff 2009: 171.

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according to his contract without paying much heed to wider political concerns, even if that involved collecting texts for someone who was, despite his control of the professorship at Oxford, employing him as a private individual. Jaro may have been aware of the difficulties involved in collecting antiquities as Gardiner requested, and may have felt some unease, but in the 1930s this was still regarded as a functional model. Jaro, unlike many in the 1930s, was open to communicating with and working with scholars of any nationality, even when not every colleague was in position to reciprocate, but he had to select his partnerships with care. He did not enter the contract blindly, but there were few who could advance his professional credibility as Gardiner could. Under Gardiner, Jaro’s professional engagement was more directly tied to working on texts and making them available via publication. This task was central to Gardiner’s academic principles, as it was to those of other Egyptologists of his generation. Ancient texts were regarded as basic methodological tools, and reliable editions would form the building blocks of the discipline.1009 Jaro’s contract also reveals that his employer and benefactor was in many ways a typical Edwardian gentleman. Gardiner’s address in Lansdowne Road is near the monumental manor of Holland House,1010 in a well-to-do part of London that, if not on par with Mayfair or Belgravia, would still be unobtainable to one of Jaro’s social status. Unlike the manor, which was bombed in 1940, it still retains much of its elegance, and the Gardiners lived a comfortable lifestyle. Gardiner’s own description of family life is fairly clear on this, as he describes a large house with a ‘splendid cook’ and a ‘most impressive butler’, a Mr Richman (originally Reichmann, as he likely came to work for the Gardiner family during their years on the continent).1011 Gardiner enjoyed regular exercise at the North Kensington tennis club, or ‘walked in the park with a very dear friend.’ Evenings were spent at home: ‘I had made it a custom of my life that the after-dinner time should be devoted to my wife 1009 1010 1011

Abt 2011: 258. Walford 1878. Gardiner 1962: 45.

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insofar as she wanted it,’ but he had also ‘acquired another muchloved diversion, namely music.’ Regular guests, pianist Miriam Duncan and cellist Margery Edes, formed a trio with Gardiner whom ‘they never failed to encourage,’ although they admitted the limits of his technical training.1012 In hindsight, one almost wonders how Gardiner managed to fit in all the hours of work he spent with Jaro on ostraca, let alone his other Egyptological activities. But Gardiner was of the tradition of nineteenth century academics, many of whom were among the leisured class, and lived the life of a disciplined researcher, not that of a professional academic pressed for time.1013 Financial independence allowed Gardiner other opportunities. Apart from directly supporting younger Egyptologists, he endowed the readership in (and later the professorial chair of) Egyptology at Oxford, which advanced the career of Battiscombe Gunn. He does not seem to have initially considered Jaro suitable for the same type of position as Gunn, and indeed there were tangible professional differences. Gunn was a more senior scholar than Jaro, and had held full-time Egyptological positions, for example in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. Jaro’s academic career in the nascent Egyptology seminar in Prague had involved commitments other than teaching, and this might have factored in Gardiner’s reasoning, if he had been comparing potential candidates at all. One might speculate whether nationality figured in his choice of candidates for any role, but there is no clear answer. European scholars, especially East Central ones, were not always accepted as equals in British socially, even if their work was well accepted professionally. Archibald Henry Sayce referred to some East Central Europeans, often assumed to be Jewish, as ‘vermin’,1014 and prejudice was encapsulated by the novelist Charles Percy Snow when one of his fictional scholars assessed an East Central European colleague as ‘He was an astonishingly ugly Jew. I thought he was rather pushful and aggressive. He once asked me—“What does an outsider like me have to do to get a fellowship?”.’1015 1012 1013 1014 1015

Quotes from Gardiner 1962: 44–45. See also Pang 2017, accessed 24 January 2019. Challis 2013: 144. Snow 1951: 97.

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And yet, it soon became evident that an influx of foreigners was to the academic benefit of British universities, even the most established institutions. ‘Pre-war Oxford could never have attracted this stellar line-up of some of the greatest names in scholarship. Small wonder then, that the newcomers had a direct and measurable impact on university life and education, which in turn impacted on English-language scholarship well beyond Oxford’s colleges.’1016 Building a career in Britain was and to an extent remains challenging for foreign professionals. Jaro was not an exile in 1934, but some of his German contemporaries already were, and their journeys in the British system reflected and foreshadowed his own. Medical professionals particularly underwent several stages of ‘the refugee experience: admission to the UK as a place of safety; recognition of qualifications; obtaining the right to practise; obtaining a clinical post. Finally, to obtain a post commensurate with experience and qualifications, with autonomy and appropriate seniority.’1017 Yet close cooperation, including welcoming Jaro into his household, suggested that Gardiner was open to the possibility of regarding him as an equal. Gardiner’s wife, Heddie, was after all East Central European, born Hedwig Rosen. Jaro was not demanding of Gardiner, and even if their partnership might have started with Jaro as something of an academic butler it did develop further. It was perhaps Gardiner’s perspective on what he wanted from Egyptology that played the greatest role in his decision to employ Jaro. Gardiner was, as noted, determined to see text editions appear, and in that context likely reached the conclusion that Jaro, who was meticulous, had created a large system of dictionary index slips, wrote in a clean hieroglyphic hand, took copious notes and had a defined research plan, and moreover had already achieved a steady publication output, was the man he needed. Gardiner’s experience with Gunn was rather different, which he summed up as ‘his subsequent publications were relatively meagre when viewed in the light of his undisputable genius, but for this there were two reasons, firstly that he was an incorrigible perfectionist and, secondly, because he became enthusiastically 1016 1017

Crawford, Ulmschneider and Elsner 2017: 2. Weindling 2009: 491.

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absorbed in teaching, an occupation in which he achieved great success.’1018 It might have been entirely appropriate for Gardiner to have established Gunn in a teaching position at Oxford, and to retain Jaro as his research amanuensis and subsequently partner. Jaro had greater potential to match Gardiner’s formidable publication record. Jaro became a regular guest of the Gardiner household in Lansdowne Road, and enjoyed the hospitality of a well-to-do British residence. There is no reference to him ever attending a musical evening there, but given his later interest in music, and in particular his admiration for Mozart, it is quite possible that the two Egyptologists shared more than professional interests. However, if there was one activity in which Jaro was not partner with Gardiner, it was tennis. The lifestyle of his benefactor was very different to that of the small household that Jaro maintained in Prague, initially alone and later with his mother. Jaro lived in more modest circumstances than several of his British contemporaries, whose households came with domestic staff and spare rooms. John Pendlebury, for example, hired staff for a temporary home for his family (between his numerous digging seasons) in Cambridge during the early 1930s, and stated that ‘it would probably need three maids.’1019 Pendlebury was the son of a successful surgeon, Herbert Pendlebury of Brook Street, Mayfair, and like Gardiner his financial independence allowed him a great deal of research independence. Recipients of Gardiner’s generosity, including Peet, Faulkner and Fairman, tended not to be affluent, and lived more modestly. Their research collaboration in the comfort of Lansdowne Road began in September 1934, and in the winter term of 1934/1935 Jaro gave no lectures in Prague,1020 focusing instead on his work. During the year, he finished the first volume of Deir el-Medina ostraca for the IFAO.1021 In composition it closely resembled the catalogues he had compiled for the Egyptian Museum, as both series have limited commentaries. The main goal, as defined in 1018

Gardiner 1962: 33. Grundon 2007: 168. 1020 AMSANO, kart. 21, sign. J. Černý, návrh na jmenování mimořádným profesorem, dated 1939. 1021 Černý 1935a. 1019

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the first volume, was ‘to present the material, that is a description of the ostraca, complete transcriptions of the texts, and, if important, a photograph or a drawing of the piece to permit the reader a verification of the transcription.’1022 Choices had to be made. Jaro was also—as he yet again made clear—‘under no illusion’ as far as the transcription, itself an interpretation, was concerned.1023 He was aware that the reading of texts on ostraca was an unfinished enterprise, and that his suggestions were open to revision.1024 The ostraca in both the IFAO and museum volumes were provided with a short physical description and their provenance was indicated. In the IFAO volume there was an abbreviation indicating where the ostracon had been found: KS for Kom Sûd, and K2 for Kom 2. Occasionally dates were also added, if known. Some ostraca had interesting joins, for instance no. 94 (Černý 1935a: 25) consisted of one part that was excavated in 1930, and another that was purchased by Alexandre Piankoff in Luxor in the spring of 1931. Significant objects were depicted on plates, either in facsimile or photograph, with a hieroglyphic transcription. The transcription adhered strictly, as Jaro explained, to Gardiner’s guidelines for hieratic, which he used for both the IFAO and the museum catalogues.1025 The Deir el-Medina volume appeared with a publication date of 1935, the same as the official publication date of the first Egyptian Museum volume. At this time Jaro was also at work on related historical issues that he believed were represented in the corpus of ostraca. Several papers to that effect appeared in 1935 and 1936, notably regarding the reigns of Ramesses III and IV,1026 and the presence of Semitic people in Sinai.1027 His searches in these ostraca also eventually produced material for a study of questions addressed to oracles.1028

1022 1023 1024 1025 1026 1027 1028

Černý 1935a: v. See further chapter Ostraca and other projects. Černý 1935a: vi. Černý 1935a: v. Černý 1936. Černý 1935c. Černý 1935b.

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It would appear that Jaro stayed in London from September to November, as he reported to Clère that he spent three very agreeable months with Gardiner (and his interesting collection of material),1029 and was planning to leave London only midDecember to return to Prague via Paris. He hoped to see Clère and other French Egyptologists. Jaro had gained a degree of limited financial security now that he had a contract from Gardiner, along with some monies forthcoming from his fieldwork for the EES. Gardiner had also mediated Jaro’s inclusion in the Harvard expedition to Sinai for the forthcoming season, which gave Jaro access to the rock inscriptions at Sinai mining sites that had been studied by Peet and Gardiner, and by Flinders Petrie before them.1030 It appears that Jaro must have taken short visits to Prague while working in London, driving around the city in an automobile and not always on business. Jaro’s approach to driving was not always flawless. On 14 October, he ‘drove at 18.50 through the Clam-Martinic Street in direction from Bělohorská avenue to the vinegar factory and had no light on the back numberplate.’1031 He seems to have ignored the police notice fining him for driving without lights, and left for London shortly thereafter, only paying the fine in January of the following year. On 8 December he was photographed in the Baum residence with Jiří Baum and Mrs Foit. Jaro knew František Vladimír Foit and Jiří Baum from Egypt, where they had met in 1931 when the two were making an epic journey from Cairo to Cape Town by car.1032 The photo from Baum’s salon, perhaps taken by Foit, shows Jaro carrying himself like an elegant man of the world, in a double-breasted jacket, crisp trousers and neat shoes. He is wearing a bow-tie and his usual round glasses,1033 the ensemble resembling Glen Miller. Jaro appears at ease in company, and this ease, a contrast to the strictly informative though often quite warm tones of his letters, made him eminently clubbable. He had put the ‘pathetic’ phase of his youth, the scholar buried in 1029

GIA, Collection Clère, J. Černý to J. Clère, 15 November 1934. Earlier research on these inscriptions is outlined in PM VII, 339–367. 1031 NAP, Police directorate archive, Policejní ředitelství, všeobecná spisovna 1941– 1950, box 1221, inv. No. C 644/12. 1032 Macková et al. 2012–2013, II: 121–238. 1033 ANM, Fonds Baum, collection of photographs. 1030

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texts, behind him since his involvement with the highest echelons of Czechoslovakian politics in the late 1920s. Any female companion(s) might have found him attractive. He had the persona of a somewhat adventurous traveller. The ability to project an interesting persona was vital, as his position was increasingly dependent on his broader networking capabilities. He had yet to find a full-time position, and with it being accepted as a full professional equal by his colleagues. This was a transitional phase, of research with funding in both Britain and Czechoslovakia, and this meant that he was carving a niche for himself as a respected scholar, albeit without a job. He still held a teaching position in Prague, and his remaining links to the Oriental Institute were not negligible, but most of his professional activity was centred around fieldwork and access to Egyptian artefacts outside Czechoslovakia. And his financial backing was mostly tied to his French and British connections. 1935–1938 on the trains across europe The pattern of Jaro’s travels and sojourns changed, though his preferred method did not. He still lived as the ‘great traveller’ that his colleagues and friends came to regard him, and his transport of choice, as well as of necessity, was the train. Air travel was gaining momentum in the 1930s,1034 but Jaro’s multi-stop tours (and likely the expense) made trains preferable. Railway stations can appear as liminal spaces—to those who travel, and those who say good-bye and welcome. Individual voyages begin and end there, and so the station becomes a place of transition, of the seemingly endless possibilities at the start of a new journey. Jaro was no newcomer to long-distance train travel, or to serial leave-taking and homecoming, from Italy or Germany or France, but in the second half of the 1930s London became more of a base from which to begin. Whether on his way to Egypt or across Europe, trains (and occasionally boats) were his mobile quarters. A brisk walk along a platform or an embankment set the pace of his days, and the pulsing rumble of wheels and wreaths of steam were writ large in his senses. 1034

Pirie 2009: 49–66.

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Characteristically for a man who kept his private thoughts private, he never revealed in letters how he perceived the network of tracks and railway stations, and the friendly houses in different cities. Were they an extended ‘home’? Did he regard London as a home away from home, or simply as a convenient location offered by his employer that made his life noticeably more comfortable? The only clue is that he later came to consider 9 Lansdowne Road to be his main ‘address’ outside Prague —an epithet he did not claim even for his Cairene home in Mounira. Jaro was most closely engaged in his work with Alan Gardiner in the four years before the start of the Second World War. His ties to the Oriental Institute in Prague had loosened, as he was on an extended period of unpaid leave. The Institute perhaps regarded him as having taken too many leaves, like some colleagues in the bank had a decade before, and could not easily cope with his frequent absences in the wake of the Great Depression. But with Gardiner’s support Jaro was free to pursue his interest in Egyptology, and even felt permitted to do so given that his diplomatic mentor, Přemysl Šámal approved of Jaro’s focus on an international research career over an institutional one in Czechoslovakia. As a result, Jaro felt able to write nonchalantly to František Lexa, in response to some academic small talk from Prague: ‘Many thanks for your letter and the Oriental Institute news which had a considerable interest for me, although I belong to the Institute only nominally, not practically. The office has had a hard time to settle, and as I hear about it, I am glad this is not my remit.’1035 Jaro instead settled into another routine, and any available time was now given over to transcribing ostraca for Gardiner.1036 The structure of his year also reflected an increasingly transnational existence. At the beginnings of 1935, 1936 and 1937, Jaro went to Egypt, as usual. Preparations for work with the IFAO were made following invitations from the director, Pierre Jouguet, or sometimes directly from Bernard Bruyère. Jaro typ1035 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 19 March 1935, from Cairo. 1036 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.56, 2 January 1935.

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ically required a letter for his university in Prague as he needed to justify any absence from teaching,1037 and Jouguet duly secured funding and provided a letter to explain that Jaro was indispensable to the ostraca and papyri from Deir el-Medina.1038 A catalogue of ostraca was forthcoming in 1935, two volumes in 1937, and another in 1939. January 1935 was a packed month for Jaro. Just prior to his departure for Egypt he had bought a selection of books from the library of his deceased friend. T. Eric Peet. He asked Gunn to expedite the purchase at Oxford, and in turn submitted to Gunn his notes on the Meidum graffiti, stating his willingness to revise any further readings while on-site in Egypt.1039 Characteristically, Jaro did not ask for any compensation for an additional trip to Meidum, but rather enquired if books could be given as payment in lieu. Also in January, either Jaro or a member of his family sorted out the fine for driving without lights that he had been given in October 1934.1040 His customary stopover in Turin was brief, and dedicated to papyri, and his time at Deir el-Medina was, as ever, punctuated by visits to other archaeological destinations, for instance the excavations at Esna.1041 A year later, in 1936, on 12 January, Jaro’s mother celebrated her seventieth birthday, which delayed her son’s departure.1042 Another celebration that year was Lexa’s sixtieth birthday, in February, and although Jaro was absent he wrote a laudatio in advance, which was duly published in Archív Orientální.1043 Bruyère noted Jaro’s expenses for Deir el-Medina that March as 500 and 575 francs, presumably for the months of February and March,1044 as Jaro concentrated his efforts on the site’s prosopography.1045 1037

AIFAO, Personal file Černý, 6 January 1935. AIFAO, Personal file Černý, 16 January 1935, Cairo, Director P. Jouguet to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, in Prague. 1039 GIA, Collection Gunn, Gunn Mss. III, the letter is now enclosed in a pocket of Notebook 54, p. 18 verso. 1040 NAP, Police directorate archive, Policejní ředitelství, všeobecná spisovna 1941– 1950, box 1221, inv. no. C 644/12. 1041 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, Černý to Lexa, 1 March 1935. 1042 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.60, 12 January 1936. 1043 Černý 1936b. 1044 Archive IFAO, B. Bruyère, Cahier de comptes, March 1936. 1045 Published later as Černý et al. 1949. 1038

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The years from 1935 to 1937 appear to have brought routine to Jaro’s life, though the 1935 season in Egypt was exceptional both for its variety and because of Jaro’s new role as Gardiner’s collector-in-chief. Jaro informed his French hosts that he was now contracted by Gardiner, who had granted him leave to go to Egypt and had arranged for him to work with the Harvard Semitic Museum Expedition to Sinai, led by Kirsopp Lake.1046 Gardiner was particularly pleased that the sites of Sinai would be revisited, given his and Peet’s earlier work on the Sinai inscriptions. Jaro requested an official invitation from Lake, via Gardiner, as proof of his international assignments to the university in Prague, similar to the he one had from the IFAO. Accordingly, in March 1935, after Deir el-Medina and while still in Cairo, Jaro made his preparations for the Sinai expedition, regularly updating Gardiner on his progress: Owing to my incertitude of my movements, I was rather nervous and my work did not progress exactly as I would have desired it should. I am working on the second fascicule of the Deir el-Medina ostraca, the first is nearly ready in print … I spent about a fortnight in Deir el-Médineh and saw the last rubbish leaving the area.1047

As the village was cleared, Jaro reported on ostraca from both the campaign and the local antiquities market. He also bought ostraca in Luxor, in conjunction with Clère and Alexandre Varille, including a piece with a fragment of the story of Sinuhe.1048 As he reported to Gardiner: ‘I have bought several dozens and so has [Herbert Walter] Fairman; he left them with me here.’ These ostraca were intended for London, as were many others: Norman de Garis Davies had bought enough to fill several boxes, yet there were no papyri ‘to be seen or heard of this year except for two smaller rolls with Mohasseb.’1049 These had not been unrolled,

1046 Grant 2004. Lake was a former curate from the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford, and an old acquaintance of Gardiner. 1047 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.65, 13 March 1935, from Cairo. 1048 The fragments were published together in Clère 1939. Compare also AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 1 March 1935, from Cairo. 1049 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.65, 13 March 1935, from Cairo.

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but Jaro managed to see the word ḳdw through a crack, which convinced him that they might well be related to Deir el-Medina. Jaro’s wanderings took him to Sinai in April, to join Lake’s expedition. The organization and lifestyle were adapted to the environment: We stay in a cave, ancient mine, and I cannot say that the life is very comfortable. The nights were until quite recently extremely cold, in our cave there is a constant draught, we are fed exclusively on American conserves, water is rare, so that we do not shave and wash once every three days, I guess … but I do not regret all this discomfort, for my work is interesting.1050

The spartan conditions of previous expeditions were wellknown, as Lake had felt the need to comment upon them in an expedition report from three years earlier: It was not exactly luxurious, and on two days when in rained it was extremely uncomfortable, as we had to spend the whole time in the cave, in which it was impossible to stand upright except in a few spots. The cooking was shared by Professor Blake and Mrs. [Silva] New, and consisted chiefly of rice, with canned meat dissolved in tomato-sauce and curry-powder.1051

Sinai, as well as testing his camping abilities, provided Jaro the opportunity to test his aptitude for revising earlier research, in this case that of Flinders Petrie. His views on Petrie were critical, but he was aware of the speed at which Petrie was working: ‘Except for the royal tombs at Abydos, that is the first Petries [sic] dig I saw and I can say that I never saw a more desperating [sic] place in Egypt … work must have been done in great hurry.’1052 The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions the expedition uncovered would soon become Gardiner’s main interest, but the Sinai mission established Jaro’s proficiency as an epigrapher for all seasons, able to tackle different surfaces and diverse registers of formality 1050 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.64, 16 April 1935, J. Černý from Sinai. 1051 Lake 1932: 98–99. The Professor Blake mentioned here was Robert Pierpoint Blake, an American Byzantinist who specialized in Armenian and Georgian cultural material. 1052 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.64, 16 April 1935, Černý from Sinai.

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in art and text. He was making his reputation as an epigrapher, not as an archaeologist, and indeed the Sinai mission harmed his reputation in that respect. George Reisner, who had to deal with the division of finds after Lake and Blake left, and after Jaro went on to more work for Gardiner, found confused heaps of photographs and lists of finds in no particular order: We have been trying for three days to write the photograph nos. on the list of objects, but there are still more than 15 out of 141 objects which we cannot find on the photographs. I have formed a very low opinion of the archaeological value of Starr and Czerny.1053

After his foray in Sinai, Jaro returned Cairo and went about business on Gardiner’s behalf, operating fully and officially as his agent. He already had a firm idea of where to look for suitable objects, and in this case did not have to worry about the price. He reported to Gardiner in some detail: Dear Gardiner, Many thanks for both your letters; the first of them reached me in Sinai, the second already here in Cairo after a very hard journey back and very weak and tired. I at once started to execute your orders and have done the following: 1) Ostraca are all here and will be sent to you at the beginning of the next week. I will ask Engelbach for a letter, but I very doubt he will give it to me, as it is forbidden to the keepers to testify genuiness [sic], of the antiquities presented for exportation. In case of Engelbach’s refusal I shall at least send you a letter of mine on the official paper of our Institute. 2) I brought this morning Tano’s demotic for £70, as he added— since I first saw them—another box containing parts of rolls from the same find. I consulted one friend of mine as to the Greek and have been told that in some fragments the Greek texts are accounts, on others they are enregistration (sic) remarks. Date prob. first half of 2nd cent. B.C. He did not think £70 is too much for them. We show them to-morrow in the Museum and Tano will send them immediately 1053 G. A. Reisner to C. L. Smith, 31 May 1935, original at the Harvard Semitic Museum. With thanks to Peter Der Manuelian. Reisner was at the time about to finish his own detailed manual of archaeological practice, although the book remained unpublished until 2020; see Reisner et al. 2020. The Starr mentioned in this letter was Richard F. S. Starr, who went on to have a long career in archaeology.

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by post-parcel, so as they may arrive even before Ibscher’s arrival. I do not think you will have any troubles with customs, as they will probably be able to see the difference between old papyri and tobacco. 3) I am purchasing Maḥmûd lot for £250 according to your cable of this morning. I have not seen the two rolls since I left Luxor, but I hope they will fullfill [sic] your conditions. I phone to-night to Mohasseb, who is staying in Continental, and he will wire to Luxor. The papyri will probably come down to Cairo on Monday or Tuesday next, I will take them with me and bring them to England. 4) I shall pay at once both lots drawing checks on my London account. Therefore, please transfer necessary amounts on my account in Midland Bank, for I do not possess myself enough money to honour the checks. 5) I will gladly work with Dr. Ibscher and bring another probably important document—leather roll, vertical lines, M.K. hieratic forms, belonging to the French Institute. 6) I leave Egypt on 11th next on ‘Calithea’ and shall arrive to Prague on 16th. I feel that after Sinai and Egypt I need a few days of relative rest and if you do not mind, I shall come over to London during the first Juin [sic] week. I hope Dr. Ibscher will be still in London by then and we shall be able to do some useful work. In Prague I shall continue autographing Petrie’s ostraca in order not to be idle. 7) I shall see Staring (?) about his fragments, but as far as I learn from Guéraud1054 who saw them, they are extremely small and I think it might be difficult to decide whether they belong to Chester Beatty’s pap. I have been told the dealer demands £15 for them. 8) I shall get in contact with Gayer-Anderson1055 and arrange with him. I shall buy, if possible, both drawings and texts. I hear with pleasure that you and Mrs. Gardiner, as well as your friends are all well. Please give them my kind regards and tell them that I am greatly looking forward to seeing them again in London.1056

1054

Octave Guéraud (1901–1987), French Egyptologist. Probably Thomas Gayer-Anderson (1881–1960), brother to Robert GayerAnderson, founder of the collection that became the Gayer-Anderson Museum in Cairo. 1056 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.66, 3 May 1935. 1055

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Jaro shows here that he was working in what was then the standard way, identifying suitable pieces at dealers’ shops, then obtaining the Egyptian Museum’s permission to export them (not necessarily with a testimonial concerning the authenticity and value of the pieces), and then organizing their export. This does not necessarily mean that he carried all of the antiquities in his suitcases, as the letter implies for some leather rolls. More probably most were sent to Gardiner directly from Egypt. It is not easy to identify in retrospect which ostraca or papyri went with which consignment, but many that ended labelled as ‘Gardiner’ or ‘Černý’ evidently originated in the Luxor area, and could thus have been extracted illegally from then-ongoing excavations. Jaro would have recognized possible Deir el-Medina connections in much of the material, or hoped for pieces that would join with what he had already identified and transcribed. He regularly used dealers such as Tano and Mohassib (spelled ‘Mohasseb’ in the letters) as his suppliers. The Chester Beatty issue still loomed large in 1935, and influenced Jaro’s plans to export the material. Gardiner’s book on the Chester Beatty papyri was hot news just as Jaro was leaving Egypt in May, and its publication had aroused passions. Egyptian elites were angered that yet another important group of artefacts had found its way out of Egypt, and public opinion was turning away from foreigners working on Egyptian sites. This put both Pierre Lacau as well as the IFAO in a difficult position. Jaro sought to obtain permission from Reginald Engelbach to export Gardiner’s consignment of papyri and ostraca, following the procedures of the Egyptian Museum, but it appears that he felt further measures would be required to ensure that the objects were not seized at customs, and so one consignment was entrusted to the suitcases of someone who was above suspicion, perhaps Hugo Ibscher. Jaro seems to have been concerned that the material, even if accompanied by export documentation, would be seized during transit, or perhaps damaged during customs inspection. Nonetheless, the use of friends and acquaintances as couriers, and Jaro’s plan to rendezvous with the artefacts in Greece,1057 casts 1057

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.63, 17 May 1935.

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the endeavour in a problematic light. Georges Posener noted to Jaro, who mediated the remark to Gardiner, that Lacau was not in the least happy about the situation with papyri, presumably still meaning the Chester Beatty papyri. Jaro accepted the status quo, but from his notes and hints it was clear that he did not find the situation easy or straightforward. As he had earlier noted to Gardiner, he served as a courier for some related papyri fragments in 1929, but did not want this fact to be generally known.1058 In 1935, Jaro’s feelings on the export of ostraca and papyri appear to have been ambiguous. From the perspective of pure research the export seemed justified, but he was also aware of other perspectives, including nationalist ones. Jaro’s personal narrative was of a cosmopolitan gentleman scholar and international traveller who could traverse the boundaries set by narratives of national identity, either those imposed physically, by border checks, or symbolically, such as the export of antiquities considered by some to be national treasures. Communication with Gardiner expanded significantly after Jaro became his agent and amanuensis, but he did not neglect his attentive letters to Lexa. Reports on archaeological activity in Egypt and a social chronicle of Egyptologists and expatriates in Cairo, regardless of nationality, dominated these letters. The first excavations mentioned in a letter from early 1935, for example, were those of Egyptians: Selim Hassan in Giza, and Sami Gabra at Tuna el-Gebel.1059 Whether Lexa expected reports of ongoing archaeological activities, or Jaro thought it vital to keep his old mentor updated on the state of Egyptian fieldwork, was left unstated, but Jaro also reported news such as where to buy certain titles that Lexa was interested in, and general items such as that ‘Gardiner is completely exhausted by the last Chester Beatty volume and wanders around Italy and Sicily.’1060 Jaro also met with friends and colleagues, including the Haises, who sent their regards to Lexa via Jaro. Lexa was at this time carrying out his responsibilities as Czechoslovakia’s first professor of Egyptology, 1058 1059

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.58, 10 March 1934. AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 1 March 1935,

Cairo. 1060

Cairo.

AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa, 19 March 1935,

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and Jaro duly addressed him as Spectabilis, the official term for the dean of a faculty, in his letters. At this point, Jaro still followed his seasons in Egypt with a stint in Prague, though he now concentrated this into a few weeks in the spring and autumn. His work in London had become his second greatest priority, after his work in Egypt. His schedule indicates that his third most important priority was cultivating his international network, with work for the Czechoslovak university effectively a distant fourth. In April and May 1936,1061 for example, when his Egyptian sojourn was shorter than that of the previous year, his customary return to Europe was supposed to be followed by more extensive teaching at the university in Prague. Jaro was expected to continue his lessons on the theme of Theban workmen,1062 but if he did so it must have been brief, as he also spent some time in hospital. As he later wrote to Marcelle Werbrouck, to excuse a belated publication, he had been busy in Egypt and the brief time he had spent in Prague afterwards, before his planned departure for London, was partly in hospital, having an unspecified operation then and convalescing.1063 The Egyptian portion of 1937 left fewer traces than its predecessors and successors, though it seems to have been broadly similar to others in the late nineteen-thirties, and was financed by French funding that was sought in late 1936. Jaro’s return to Europe saw him following up his focus on prosopography by concluding his Répertoire onomastique, an outline of data on families from Deir el-Medina based on the texts in their tombs, rather than teaching. His main correspondent was Jacques Jean Clére and in April, after Jaro had returned to Prague, he wrote to bring Clére up-to-date while planning a more intensive consultation when they next met up, in Paris or perhaps during the next season in Egypt.1064 His focus was a future that involved meeting colleagues and examining Egyptian material, not a present that involved unpaid lecturing.

1061 1062 1063 1064

FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to M. Werbrouck, 19 April 1936. AMSANO, File J. Černý, box 21, list of classes in the professorial application file. FERE, Correspondence, Černý to Werbrouck, 19 June 1935. GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 30 April 1937.

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Jaro’s summers were typically spent travelling, usually on the Prague-to-London route with a few variations, stopovers, and even occasional vacations. In 1935, his time in Prague was also used to organize his next trip to Belgium, planned for early July,1065 where Jean Capart had invited Jaro to give a public lecture (which carried the promise of an honorarium of 1000 francs) and another presentation at the upcoming next Semaine Égyptologique. This event was fast becoming a regular feature, and a forerunner of future congresses of Egyptology. Jaro decided to present the workmen (‘ouvriers’) from Deir el-Medina in his public lecture, and to offer his work on matrimonial property within the community to the programme of the Semaine.1066 Once in London, Jaro again set about copying papyri that he believed to be from Deir el-Medina,1067 and enjoyed the comforts of Lansdowne Road. Pavla Fořtová-Šámalová, a painter and the wife of his benefactor Šámal, visited in London in the summer of 1935 and Gardiner invited her to tea. Jaro also made a trip back to Prague in late June 1935, and stopped over in Berlin,1068 where Rudolf Anthes and Ibscher kept him company, on his way to to Brussels in early July. The Semaine Égyptologique took place from 7 to 13 July 1935,1069 and Jaro presented ‘Institution d’avoir conjugal au Nouvel Empire’, which was later published in the Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (BIFAO).1070 All the while, Jaro was travelling with some of the papyri he was working on, at least one of which, he remarked to Gardiner, ‘quite certainly belongs to the group formed of your will-papyrus and the two lists of objects belonging to the French Institute.’1071 The ‘will’ papyrus would be published by Jaro a decade later in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology as the ‘The Will of Naunakhte and the Related Documents’.1072 The papyri were ultimately part 1065

FERE, Correspondence, Černý to Jean Capart, 29 June 1935. FERE, copy of an invitation by J. Capart to J. Černý, 31 May 1935, and a reply from Černý to Capart, 29 June 1935, from London. 1067 On 30 July, Jaro copied some Deir el-Medina papyri; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.113, p. 34. 1068 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.62, 25 June 1935. 1069 AMSANO, file J. Černý, box. 21, fol. 29. 1070 Černý 1937b. 1071 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.62, 25 June 1935. 1072 Černý 1945. 1066

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of a family archive that was found by the Deir el-Medina team in 1928, the full extent of which would have probably also included the Chester Beatty collection. In 1935, Jaro returned to London for August and September,1073 and continued working with Gardiner while again staying in Lansdowne Road, sharing the generous atmosphere of the Gardiner household in his role as a paid amanuensis. In September of that year he started planning his next trips, agreeing details of his next visit to Belgium, which took place just before Christmas. His original plan for 1935 was evidently to stay in London until Christmas avoiding his university duties, as he related to Arpag Mekhitarian,1074 and a number of his letters from September to December were sent from London. Yet Jaro’s list of lectures suggests that he embarked on at least some of his teaching duties in Prague,1075 as in the winter term he seems to have opted to present his research on the workmen at the Theban necropolis in a series of classes, two hours per week. This would have been both a relatively easy course for Jaro to teach, and would have allowed him to test and further develop his ideas. If Jaro indeed taught in Prague that term then he must have condensed his classes into a brief visit or two, and perhaps more often than the two hours per week listed in the professorial application file, as it would appear that his time was mostly spent in London. The train journey between London and Prague took a little over a day, so the main barrier to Jaro moving between the two cities would have been the expense—and for that he had Gardiner’s backing. Evidently Jaro could undertake teaching duties in Prague toward the end of each year, for various lengths of time. The position of the IFAO regarding the upcoming year was usually clarified by the time Jaro was teaching in Prague. Fieldwork in 1936 was confirmed on 30 October 1935, when the IFAO nominated Jaro and Tadeusz Walek-Czernecki as attachés libres of the Institute for the academic year 1935/1936.1076 Shortly 1073 On 23 July he asked Gardiner and Faulkner to arrange a prolonged stay with the Home Office; GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.61. 1074 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to A. Mekhitarian, 21 September 1935. 1075 AMSANO, File J. Černý, box 21, list of classes in the professorial application file, winter term 1935/1936. 1076 AIFAO, Personal file J. Černý.

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thereafter, in December, Jouguet asked his superiors for a further 6000 francs for the 1935/1936 season, to finance Jaro’s activities.1077 By November 1936 it appears that his position with the IFAO had strengthened, as Jouguet applied for 10,000 francs.1078 Jaro also kept his Belgian connections alive by visiting Brussels and giving lectures. On 16 December 1935, he presented a lecture on the workmen of the necropolis at the Institut des Hautes Études,1079 and on the following day a talk on Une famille des scribes de la nécropole royale de Thebes at the Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth.1080 One or both must have been complemented by slides, as a few days before embarking on his trip to Brussels Jaro wrote to Capart, to say that was organizing ‘projections’ to accompany his presentation.1081 By this time Jaro had developed an essentially trilingual existence, moving easily from Czech in Prague, to French in Cairo, Luxor and Brussels, and English in London, with occasional forays into Italian. In July 1937, Jaro varied his usual routine by returning from London to Prague and then continuing on to Berlin. His original plan was to stop in Berlin en route to Prague, but he changed his mind and was in Berlin by mid-July, collating texts in its museum collections.1082 He also checked Kurt Sethe’s copies of various texts, as he noted to Clère.1083 Another typical itinerary that required mobilizing all of his languages was planned for the winter of 1937, as Jaro was to leave London in December, and travel via Leiden, Geneva and Turin, possibly with a short stop in Prague, before leaving for Egypt.1084 This did not go exactly as planned, as he stayed a little longer than intended in Prague, but Jaro did visit Geneva and Turin on his way there.1085 The reason for this route was that he was yet again travelling with artefacts, this time bringing papyri mounted by Ibscher back to museums from which they had been 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085

AIFAO, Personal file J. Černý, 20 December 1935. AIFAO, Personal file J. Černý, 26 November 1936. Reported to the Oriental Institute, see Archív Orientální 1936, VIII/1: 132. Compare AMSANO, fond Černý, box 21, fol. 29. FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 6 December 1935. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.24. GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 24 July 1937, Prague. GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 14 November 1937. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.55, 27 December 1937.

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borrowed, including Geneva and Turin. Gardiner at the time was paying both Jaro and Ibscher to help him achieve completeness in the texts he edited. On a later occasion he praised museums and their officials that agreed to exchange or cede artefacts that completed a piece held in the other institution: when Capart identified texts belonging to P. Turin 1882 in Geneva, the director Waldemar Déonna transferred the fragments to the Museo Egizio in Turin, which held the greater part of the document.1086 One lesser-known aspect of antiquities is that they travel surprisingly often. Artefacts such as papyri are light, making them rather mobile, and their mobility was not limited to export from Egypt (nor was it one-way). The contemporary process of moving them for study or conservation by the ‘Papyrus-Doktor’, Ibscher, could be risky, and required that they be accompanied by a travelling scholar. Financial support for Ibscher’s work in Berlin on papyri from different museums was often provided by Gardiner, who benefitted from being able to access to these papyri. This itinerant existence appears to have left Jaro’s links with Czechoslovak academia somewhat precarious, as apart from brief stopovers in Prague for his teaching commitments he spent very little time there. Jaro was nevertheless still in contact with Lexa, the Oriental Institute, and various scholars who commanded social and cultural capital in Czechoslovakia, and he evidently maintained a grasp on Czechoslovak academic politics and the need to cultivate openings for Egyptology. The programme of his trip to Brussels was reported at the Oriental Institute meeting on 10 December 1935,1087 and the record makes it clear that although he no longer had administrative responsibilities at the Institute, his activities were followed with some interest. The Oriental Institute in Prague also noted, based on Jaro’s information, that scholars in Brussels were working toward a major project for the betterment of communication in international Egyptology, namely the ‘Fiches bibliographiques de la Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth’. An announcement by the Fondation was duly published in Archív Orientální in 1936, 1086 1087

Gardiner 1948: viii. Reported to the Oriental Institute, see Archív Orientální, 1936, VIII/1: 132.

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to the effect that it assumed responsibility for the collection and distribution of bibliographical information in Egyptology concerning matters both philological and archaeological. It was felt, following the Semaine Égyptologique in July 1935, that the task of keeping up-to-date with the growing body of published material in Egyptology had exceeded the capabilities of individual researchers.1088 The cooperative aspects and informative value of such a project would undoubtedly have appealed to Jaro, who considered up-to-date information to be essential for research.1089 He immediately subscribed to the Fiches bibliographiques.1090 During Jaro’s summer vacations 1937, which he usually took in August, a reminder came from Brussels regarding his subscription.1091 All this time Jaro was writing. In early October 1935, Jaro wrote to Josef Šusta from 9 Lansdowne Road,1092 concerning a Praguebased project. Šusta had conceived the idea of a new multivolume work on world history, with general readers as its target audience. Jaro’s chapter for Šusta’s history was to be his largest Egyptological work published in Czech, as most of his professional publications throughout his career were in English or French. His 1088 The text of the report in Archív Orientální 1936, VIII/I: 134 is as follows: ‘Les égyptologues réunis en congrès à Bruxelles, en juillet 1935, ont émis le vœu que la Fondation Égyptologique leur distribue, à partir du 1er janvier 1936, des fiches bibliographiques semblables à celles qu’elle envoie, depuis 1932, aux papyrologues. L’instrument d’études le plus utile pour eux, ont-ils déclaré, est la masse abondante de références sur les divers problèmes de l’archéologie et de la philologie égyptiennes. Par suite de la grande dispersion des ouvrages scientifiques, c’est, pour chacun, une tâche presque irréalisable de se tenir au courant des publications récentes. La Fondation va donc entreprendre ce travail. Pour le mener à bien, elle croit devoir compter sur la collaboration et l’adhésion des savants et des organismes qui s’intéressent au développement de l’égyptologie. Elle espère qu’ils voudront bien lui signaler sans délai leurs nouvelles publications (spécialement celles qui paraissent dans des revues non égyptologiques) ou, si possible, les lui faire parvenir pour un compte-rendu dans la « Chronique d’Égypte ». Elle estime pouvoir recueillir ainsi, en moyenne, six cents références par année, qu’elle enverra périodiquement à ses abonnés sous la forme de fiches bibliographiques. Elle mettra de la sorte à la disposition des égyptologues un moyen d’information particulièrement sûr et rapide. La première série de fiches sera expédiée aux adhérents vers le début d’avril.’ 1089 This was to become more visible in times of crisis, when communication between researchers was limited by wars and political upheavals. 1090 FERE, Correspondence J. Černý to M. Werbrouck, 19 April 1936. 1091 FERE, Correspondence, 17 August 1937. 1092 NAP, Collection Šusta, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Šusta, 1 October 1935, from 9 Lansdowne Road.

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choice of language was probably practical. Jaro didn’t comment on his language choices until over a decade later, but specialist publications for the relatively narrow circle of Egyptologists were published in the languages of nations that had historically dominated the field, predominantly the French and the English (and English-speaking Americans), with significant contributions in German and Italian due to the historical roots of Oriental Studies in those countries. It is perhaps no coincidence that the dominant languages reflect nations had also held political dominance, with colonial ramifications. However, it may also be that English and French were relatively widely taught, even among those of Jaro’s non-elite, lower middle-class background. They encompassed a broad audience that was not composed solely of native speakers, but overlapped with a relatively cosmopolitan, or in any case interested, population of specialists and non-specialists across the world. A study written in French or English, or to a somewhat lesser extent German or Italian, was a ticket to international academia, as Jaro was well aware. He made the appropriate strategic choices for a published academic. He must also have been aware of the popularity of his subject, and that popularization of it was an important aspect of an Egyptological career, or he would not have dedicated so much attention to public talks that shared many details of Egyptological practice. Yet the Šusta-edited History of Mankind was an undertaking on a whole other level, as it was intended to a major educational and historical project for Czechoslovak audiences only, and one that presented world history as a complex narrative. Šusta himself was not against the idea of Jaro publishing in other languages, as he promoted Czech(oslovak) research as part of an international research network. Offering an internationally renowned Egyptologist the opportunity to publish in a high-profile Czech undertaking was simply consistent with his agenda of promoting internationally respected and viable Czech-led research,1093 and of garnering public support for it domestically. Jaro’s cooperation with Šusta signalled his residual allegiance to 1093

2003c.

See Lach on Šusta and his level of interest in international cooperation: Lach

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the Prague academe, and Šusta was certainly an academic ally worth having given his political connections, and the international research collaboration he promoted as a delegate to the League of Nations:1094 ‘In 1928–1939 he sat with Albert Einstein, Johan Huizinga and other intellectual leaders of his time on the Committee for International Intellectual Cooperation (CICI), which was one of the organizations established by the League of Nations.’1095 This Committee was a precursor to UNESCO. Šusta began preparations for his world history in the 1930s,1096 with the idea of ultimately publishing it in 1938 to 1939. He intended that it would include an introduction written by anthropologists that would precede the historical chapters, and his choice of contributors was inclusive. Specialists in anthropology, Classical philology, and Oriental Studies were included within the team of historians, and Jaro thus became part of a group that included some his teachers at university, such as Bedřich Hrozný and Vladimír Groh, and senior colleagues from the Oriental Institute such as Vincenc Lesný or Jaroslav Průšek.1097 He eventually agreed to write a chapter on Egyptian history from the Predynastic period to the Persian conquest. In spite of the Great Depression that was at first a source of concern, Jaro reaffirmed his cosmopolitan lifestyle, which he financed using income from French and British resources (both state and private), the latter largely thanks to Gardiner. The pattern largely follows what was typical of how Egyptological research was financed in these countries. British Egyptology still depended to a large extent on private sponsorship and benefactors,1098 as it had in the nineteenth century, while the French and German model was of institutionalization and diversified support that included state subsidies. The latter model had the corresponding effect of promoting a hierarchy among academic ranks, and it became increasingly difficult for private scholars to be part of the system. Czechoslovakian academia was a direct descendant of Austrian and German university systems, including 1094 1095 1096 1097 1098

Lach 2003b. Lach 2003b: 4. Šusta 1939. See contributors in Šusta 1939. Dodson 2019: 147–156.

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the problematic rank of a Privatdozent, which was Jaro’s position for his entire tenure at Charles University in Prague. This title incorporated de facto private scholars into the ranking system, with an implicit promise of further career development, but also allowed for a certain amount of freedom, as exemplified by Jaro’s decidedly part-time teaching in Prague. But it also denied them the security of paid employment. A lifestyle that afforded frequent travel might seem lavish, but Jaro was not profligate. He shared a flat in Prague with his mother, and both she and his brother were probably at hand to help out if needed, if only to a limited extent. Jaro endured the economic uncertainty of the Depression years mainly by using his extensive network and securing international backing, and by the second half of the nineteen-thirties there were signs that the world had withstood the economic uncertainty and was moving into a new and more complex era. March 1936 was momentous for Egypt, as talks between Egypt and Britain focused on a new treaty that would adjust the relationship between these two countries, and recognize the growing desire for Egyptian independence. A large share of the diplomatic work was undertaken by Sir Miles Lampson, a Foreign Office diplomat formerly responsible for Central Europe, and by his Egyptian counterpart Mostafa el-Nahhas Pasha. In his diaries, Lampson was cautious about the outcome, but hoped for the best: ‘Contrary to all probabilities, I have a “hunch” that the chances of success are greater than reason dictates.’1099 The negotiations were eventually to provide a basis for the treaty signed in August that year. Two royal deaths and subsequent successions shook Britain and Egypt in 1936. In January, King George V died at Sandringham, and in April King Fuad I passed away in Cairo. Both countries saw a degree of dynastic and political turmoil related to their new heads of state, Edward VIII and Farouk: King Edward was to abdicate, and King Farouk was only sixteen, and inexperienced. Yet historiographers tend to regard the beginnings of the young monarch’s reign as being marked with enthusiasm and the goodwill of his subjects. William Stadiem, Farouk’s benevolent 1099

Killearn 1972: 64.

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and somewhat sensationalist biographer, went so far as to suggest that: Yet no pharaoh, no Mameluke, no khedive ever began a reign with such unquestionable, enthusiastic goodwill as King Farouk. And none was as unprepared to rule. Here was a completely sheltered, virtually uneducated sixteen-year old, expected to fill the spats of his wily, politically astute father in a loaded tug-of-war between nationalism, imperialism, constitutionalism, and monarchy.1100

There was an element of willfulness and unpredictability in Farouk that was noted by Lampson, who was ready to characterize the new monarch as ‘a nice, outspoken lad’,1101 but who nonetheless regarded him as a young man in need of a tutor and supervision: ‘I must really ask His Majesty in his own interests to get busy with his work.’1102 Ever more worrying signals were emerging from Germany. In 1936, a scholar named Paul Kraus, who like Jaro had roots in Prague and allegiance to French academia, accepted a job in Cairo, becoming one of several German-speaking professors at the University.1103 Kraus was of Jewish origin, and like many Jewish scholars he had to leave Berlin in 1933 to avoid persecution. The years of wandering were well underway by 1934,1104 and in the following months and years racist attitudes in Nazi Germany were widely publicized—and criticized—including in a papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge by Pope Pius XI published in 1937. These attitudes took their toll in many less public, but no less poignant, personal histories.1105 Jaro’s world only seemed safe. On 14 September 1937, Jaro’s long-time benefactor Tomáš Masaryk died. It was Masaryk’s sponsorship, alongside his engagement at the French Institute, that had allowed Jaro to change careers and become a full-time scholar. In the ten years since he had guided Masaryk around the sites and cafés of 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105

Stadiem 1992: 128. Killearn 1972: 70. Killearn 1972: 80. Reid 1990: 95–96, 155. For an Egyptological perspective, see Gertzen 2017c. Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 210–215.

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Luxor, Jaro had matured into a respected specialist epigrapher whose publications and editions of texts were often concerned with details of lexicography and grammar. In those same ten years, Masaryk’s public image had solidified into that of a national institution. His funeral on 21 September was an occasion of national mourning. Six soldiers accompanied the PresidentLiberator’s casket, symbolizing the six nations of the Republic: Czech, German, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Polish, and Slovak.1106 It was a gesture of a unity that Masaryk had hoped for but never truly achieved. The pomp and circumstance of the state funeral was symbolic, but in retrospect looks like the entombment not only of the man, but also of his vision of a small, civilized, multinational and harmonious crossroads in Central Europe. In September 1937, only a few people were aware of the danger that, in almost exactly one year’s time, would engulf Czechoslovakia, when Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Edouard Daladier, and Neville Chamberlain would sign the Munich Pact. On 12 October 1937, a memorial evening for Masaryk was held at the Oriental Institute in Prague, but Jaro was not listed as attending.1107 He was in London with the Gardiners, where he continued to work, transcribing and writing, until mid-November. Nonetheless, Jaro was in Prague for the Christmas holidays of 1937, his routine allowing him to spend time with his family and presumably also his fiancée. 1938 The Europe that Jaro knew changed in 1938. Exiles from Germany already knew that things would have to get worse before, or even if, they ever had the chance to get better. The harbingers of change were the growing political pressures emanating from Hitler’s Germany, that manifested in the Anschluss of Austria, lent credibility to misinformation that sparked Czechoslovak mobilisation in May,1108 and finally erupted in the Munich crisis in September. 1106 1107 1108

Wingfield 2007: 194. Report in Archív Orientální 1937, IX/1: 438–439. Lukes 1996.

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Jaro’s position was precarious. He was increasingly tied to his international network, and depended on it for the continuation of his Egyptological career, but attempts were made to keep him in Czechoslovakia. Lexa asked that he give a series of lectures, and a friend of his introduced him to Ladislav Šourek of Radiojournal, Czechoslovakia’s first radio company.1109 Presenting Egyptology to the public still mattered to the Oriental Institute, and Jaro seems to have been asked to broadcast some lectures.1110 Jaro was still interested in public education, and seems to have been willing to engage with the new technology of radio, though his schedule meant that he was not always able to dedicate his time to public outreach. Around this time, in January and February, Šámal tried to secure for Jaro a chair, either in Prague or in Brno at the Masaryk University. The Ministry of Education, however, made its position known that such a move would be highly unlikely,1111 especially for a fully paid position, though a titular professorship was at least possible. Jaro meanwhile left for Egypt as usual. He apologized to Šusta in mid-February, from Deir el-Medina, for a substantial delay submitting his chapter for the History of Mankind, arguing that it would be beneficial to incorporate data from the most recent Egyptological work, and that postponement would enhance the quality of the final publication.1112 As it was evident that the chapter would be delayed regardless, Jaro was given a new deadline of February 1939. From Deir el-Medina Jaro returned to Cairo and renewed his acquaintance with Kazimierz Michałowski during a party at the IFAO. They also both became friends with a new member at the IFAO, an Egyptologist from the Louvre named Christiane Desroches.1113 Desroches had a flamboyant personality, was a great orator, and could be extremely convincing and energizing.

1109 Lommers 2012: 48–49, 230 n. 196, with further references. Radiojournal used the BBC as a model. 1110 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.18, on the recto of pp. 11–13 of a manuscript of some lectures on Late Egyptian, which had been used as scrap paper. 1111 AKPR, inv. No. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta. 1112 NAP, Collection Šusta, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Šusta, 15 February 1938. 1113 Andreu-Lanoë and Franco 2011.

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Desroches and Jaro would both, in their own way, become Egyptological institutions, but when they met in the 1930s Jaro saw a fellow professional, a charming and gutsy woman almost fifteen years his junior. She was interested in Egyptian houses and art, and had a deep interest in ancient life. She was also keenly enthusiastic on all aspects of the archaeological life, and their friendship would develop over the next thirty years. Like Jaro, Desroches-Noblecourt (as she was later known under her married name) was open to engaging with strangers, as she was brought up in an environment she remembered as being cosmopolitan and open.1114 Her parents were highly cultivated and her childhood was lived in rather more affluent circumstances than Jaro’s, free of most of the anxieties that dogged his early involvement with Egyptology. Like the historian Marc Bloch from a generation earlier, she could be said to have been born with ‘an academic silver spoon’ in her mouth.1115 Desroches-Noblecourt’s way into Egyptology was smoothed by her parents’ contacts, which brought her a personal introduction to Étienne Drioton, even if she had to overcome the obstacle of her gender. Yet her contacts with Jaro were social and friendly, mediated by Egyptology and a shared interest in music,1116 and were most likely quite natural and egalitarian; both had needed to overcome obstacles. In her view, Jaro became ‘un veritable frère’, and Jaro for his part was not shocked by a female in the venerable IFAO building, as some of his colleagues were: her presence complicated their daily habits, such as no longer feeling comfortable going down to breakfast in their pyjamas, as Desroches-Noblecourt later quipped.1117 The two worked together at Deir el-Medina, and in retrospect Desroches-Noblecourt came to think of it as a most interesting introduction to work in Egypt, noting the archaeological efforts that Bruyère undertook in order to uncover material evidence for the lives of its workmen, and that Jaro ‘had worn out his eyes’

1114

Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 15–16. Weber 1991: 247. 1116 The family of Desroches was musical, see Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 14–16. In later years she and Jaro attended musical performances in Paris; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2322, 18 May 1957. 1117 Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 54. 1115

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reading their histories.1118 Jaro was known to relate, enchanted, the little daily histories of the workmen and their families, just as he read them. Desroches later thought of Jaro not only as a fraternal friend, but as ‘French at heart’. Jaro also shared her view on the main virtue of an Egyptologist: to ‘be fully human and not only [an] Egyptologist.’1119 At this time the IFAO social scene encompassed more than professional debates. During a ball at the IFAO after the 1938 season, Michałowski and Jaro, both in black tie, went to get some fresh air after many glasses of wine. They marched for a while through the streets of Cairo before hitting upon a cab and riding back to the IFAO, where the ball was still going on unabated.1120 This, of course, would have been regarded as perfectly normal for men of their class, and the clubbable— even a little boisterous—Jaro who so often seems to slip unnoticed among the pages of ostraca transcriptions, was captured for once in the pages of Michałowski’s memoir. Jaro returned from Egypt for a stint teaching in Prague, where Šámal had been pressing for a solution that would have turned his precarious university position into something more definite. But at that point Jaro was focused elsewhere and outlined his plan for ongoing work to Gardiner on 19 May 1938, fully expecting that by the end of the year he would again be needed at the IFAO, either at Deir el-Medina or perhaps at Edfu. He exchanged with Gardiner his views on kꜢ ḏd, a peculiar phrase known in Egyptian letters which they initially thought meant ‘in other words’,1121 though later it was agreed that it probably signalled a change in topic; ‘something else to say’. There was much to say about Jaro’s situation, and indeed about the politics of Czechoslovak academia, but Jaro kept this out of his correspondence, assuming it was not of priority concern for Gardiner. At this time Jaro was also occupied with an ostracon he bought in Thebes: a large pottery fragment that reported on a domestic dispute between a certain Merymaat and his wife Takhentyshepse. 1118 1119 1120 1121

Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 73. Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 32. Michałowski 1986: 185. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.55A, 19 May 1938.

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It interested him as a letter, because Late Ramesside letters were part of his research agenda. The same letters, and a need to provide a chronological backbone for them, led to an analysis of twenty-first dynasty chronology. He came to the conclusion that the ‘Theban side, i.e., the sequence of the High Priests of Amun, is certain, but not the “Tanite” kings.’1122 On 20 May, the day after he wrote his report to Gardiner, Jaro visited Šámal at home, rather than at Prague Castle, to inform him that he needed to be free to pursue his activities abroad, and made it quite clear that a chair in Prague would complicate his commitments in Egypt and Britain. A titular professorship would not suit this arrangement. Šámal nonetheless persisted, and made a note to himself that a titulary, extraordinary professorship might allow for the various demands on Jaro’s time, and made further enquiries.1123 Despite his plan being rejected, he still viewed Jaro favourably. Meanwhile, political tensions were rising due to German demands regarding the Sudetenland, the region of Czechoslovakia that bordered Germany and held a high percentage of German or German-speaking people. Many Sudeten Germans were dissatisfied with the Republic and felt that they lacked meaningful participation in political life and the executive functions of the state. Several of their political parties had considered demanding special status or autonomy, and the expansionist Hitler now sought to use them as a tool with which to test the response of Czechoslovakia’s allies, notably Britain and France. 1124 The multinational Czechoslovakia of Masaryk’s vision was being targeted by nationalists on both sides of the border, as Germans who felt politically isolated in Czechoslovakia were swayed by the influence of Nazism, and gave voice to local ultra-nationalists such as the Sudeten German party led by Konrad Henlein, who later joined the Schutzstaffel (SS). These voices were loud enough to drown those of other, more moderate ethnic German politicians, such as those of Wenzel Jaksch and his Sudeten Ger1122

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.55A, 19 May 1938. AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta, D 837, May 1938; memo by P. Šámal. 1124 Smelser 1975. Several aspects discussed in Cornwall and Evans 2007, particularly by Mark Cornwall. 1123

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man Social Democrats. The German Reich also sought to put pressure on other countries to view the German position more favourably than the Czechoslovak one.1125 Tensions were rising, but June and July of 1938 were working months for Jaro and his network of Egyptologists. He went to Paris, where he met ‘Boreux, Bruyère, Clère et Posener’, and was taken with a ‘leather roll in two pieces still rolled, discovered in the Louvre by Posener some time ago’. In an excited letter to Gardiner, Jaro said ‘A few words which I could read through the holes revealed a quite thrilling thing: proper names’ followed by numbers and quantities, ‘something quite similar to your Wilbour papyrus’,1126 which was Gardiner’s preoccupation at that time. Jaro suggested the roll ought to be unrolled expertly by Ibscher in London, and prompted Gardiner to apply to Charles Boreux to propose such an unrolling. In August Jaro went on a holiday to a mountain resort, perhaps with his ‘girl’, as she was included among the salutations in a letter he sent to Gardiner just after the trip.1127 He was not holidaying so regularly or intensely as his old teacher Lexa, for whom sport and leisure time were an indispensable part of his lifestyle.1128 At least, he informed Gardiner that a holiday included about five hours of work per day, copying the entire manuscript of the Late Ramesside Letters again to achieve a more aesthetically satisfactory result. He traced the texts first in pencil to avoid any surprising word divisions or ungainly arrangements of hieroglyphs, and then wrote them in ink. This, as Jaro noted ‘doubled of course my work, but still it is done by now for the whole extent of the manuscript.’1129 He hoped to get much of the work done before planning to leave in late September to join Gardiner in Turin, travelling via Budapest and Trieste to ‘avoid German territory’. Gardiner was now receiving anxious comments on the European 1125

See also Zeman 1964: 154–155. The preceding quotes are from GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.53, 25 July 1938, and refer to the Ramesside Louvre Leather Roll; see Kitchen 1976; and KRI II: 789–799. The roll was first published by Philippe Virey (Virey 1897). 1127 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.52, 25 August 1938. 1128 Macková 2018: 39–64. 1129 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.52, 25 August 1938. 1126

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situation from others, including Mimi Borchardt. For the past year, Mimi and Ludwig Borchardt had been trying to save their library and research institute in Cairo, as well as themselves, and turned to Britons such as Norman and Nina de Garis Davies and Gardiner for help. The international network of scholarship tried to rally, but faced administrative limitations imposed by that traditional adversary of the cosmopolitan intellectual world, the nation state and its restrictions. Mimi had never lived in Britain, and hence ‘There was much readiness for an institute takeover, but there was none to gain citizenship for Mimi: the waiting time was 4 years.’1130 Ludwig died on 12 August 1938 in Paris, en route to Switzerland amidst mounting tensions, and Mimi eventually managed to set up a foundation in Switzerland to which the Institute was attached. Jaro couldn’t escape politics even on his summer holidays. In March, the neighbouring Austria had been subjected to an ‘Anschluss’ by the German Reich, the flow of émigrés fleeing Germany continued unabated, and the Sudeten Germans in the border regions of Czechoslovakia were hotly debating their future, with Henlein announcing the Karlsbad Programme in April, with an outline of autonomy for the Sudeten regions. The option of stronger links to Germany was now ascendant. Czechoslovakian politics—and society—were very tense. Jaro articulated his view that ‘we still hope that our government will not go beyond certain limits and endanger the existence of this state.’1131 He took the position that German requirements could not be satisfied, indeed were implicitly impossible to satisfy, as Nazi views on Czechs were too radical and assumed the innate unworthiness of the nation. Jaro did not realize that some representatives of his friend Gardiner’s country held similar views. Those Sudeten Germans who were led by Henlein campaigned for an increasing series of requirements: proportional representation in the Czechoslovak parliament (which the Sudeten Germans already had); then autonomy for the Sudeten regions; and ultimately they intended to ask for their own army, under local Sudeten German command. Once supported by Hitler 1130 1131

Pilgrim 2013: 261. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.52, 25 August 1938.

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and his diplomats they met with some international success. Edvard Beneš tried to avoid Czechoslovakia being isolated and perceived as a ‘troublemaker’ in international diplomacy, but his own reputation, as a man who ‘travels too much and talks too hard,’1132 did not help his cause. Neither did the attitudes of Sir Neville Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, or Sir Joseph Addison, the British minister in Prague until 1936, or indeed Sir Basil Newton, the British minister in Prague during the Munich crisis; they were initially reserved and then increasingly inimical toward Czechoslovakia.1133 In September 1938, Czechoslovakia ultimately found itself isolated as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain preferred appeasing the Reich, to avoid what he believed was an imminent war. He was ‘as a person and as politician … just like his umbrella: drab, stiff and rolled up tight.’1134 Chamberlain’s generation was disgusted at the prospect of another war, a disgust ultimately forged in the trenches of the Great War, and not entirely incomprehensible.1135 During that summer, when Jaro was working and walking in the mountains amid rising political tensions, Ahmad Husayn, one of the founders of the Young Egypt movement, visited Czechoslovakia and even attended a youth rally. He viewed Czechs favourably, believing that they ‘had “the resolve, the will, and the determination to defend their country and to die for the sake of its glory”.’1136 Britain, whatever its shortcomings as a colonial power, and even in the light of later post-colonial perspectives, cannot be compared to the organized inhumanity of the Nazi regime. Yet for Husayn, the principle of the struggle for freedom and independence by a small nation against a mightier empire, and the parallel timelines of Czechoslovakian independence and the nationalist movement in Egypt, must have been appealing. From the perspective of European history, it is paradoxical that he initially admired the Czech struggle and then proposed authoritarianism as an ideal form of governance in the

1132 1133 1134 1135 1136

Steiner 2005: 298–299; see also Bátonyi 1999: 183. Neville 1999. Cannadine 1989: 312. See also Smetana 2007: 143–167. Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 241.

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same year.1137 But it is perhaps not so paradoxical, given that some of the most belligerent Czech nationalists turned-coat and became ardent supporters of Nazism following the Munich Agreement of 1938.1138 Excessive nationalism and authoritarian regimes often go together. From the perspective of broad historical parallels, it is interesting that the Egyptian intelligentsia were relatively wellinformed about smaller European states such as Czechoslovakia, but that the Egyptian situation resonated only in select circles among Czechoslovak elites. Alois Musil was a key proponent of detailed knowledge about ‘the new Orient’,1139 but he was one of the few; not even Jaro considered himself well enough informed about contemporary Egypt. Despite his keen networking, Jaro did not did not attend the next major Egyptological event in Belgium, being occupied with his work and with the general uncertainty regarding the future of Czechoslovakia. Jean Capart, though, achieved professional success when he presided over the 20th International Congress of Orientalists, held in Brussels and other Belgian locations from 5 to 10 September 1938, Czechoslovakia was represented by Hrozný,1140 Egypt was represented by Taha Hussein, Gaston Wiet, Sami Gabra, and A. Azzam, and Jaro’s colleagues Charles Kuentz and Pierre Jouguet from the IFAO represented France.1141 September proved to be a fateful month in Czechoslovak history. During that month its key allies, Britain and France, accepted Hitler’s pressure to ‘free’ the Sudeten Germans. It took nine days, between 19 to 28 September, to accede to all German requirements, forcing Czechoslovakia concede border regions containing a large percentage of citizens identifying as German. Beneš chose what was, in his own view, the lesser evil by temporarily surrendering the Sudetenland, which he preferred to the potential destruction of the Czechoslovak state.1142 1137 1138

Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 249–252. Emanuel Moravec (1893–1945) being probably the most glaring case; see Pasák

1999. 1139 The publication Nový Orient (the New Orient), first published in 1945, was one of Musil’s long-term projects; compare Musil et al. 2019, passim. 1140 International Congress of Orientalists 1940: 6, 15. 1141 International Congress of Orientalists 1940: 5–6. 1142 The diplomatic process was discussed by Dejmek 2008, II: 152–180.

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There are several narratives surrounding the Munich treaty and its imposition on Czechoslovakia. One is of Czechoslovakia as the victim of treason by Western powers. Another uses arguments deriving from the Runciman Mission, headed by British cabinet minister Lord Walter Runciman in 1938, that Czechoslovakia was failing its non-Czech citizens: failing to instigate a sense of shared statehood that would offer them a home, and failing to open participation in its administration to Slovaks, Germans, and other minorities. Both narratives have been discussed amply, and used fervently, over the past eighty years. Czechoslovakia began mobilizing for war. Preparations for war were also underway in Britain in the days leading up to the signing of the treaty. The diary of Sir Miles Lampson, who was in London on annual leave, includes an entry dated 26 September in which he noted visiting King George VI: ‘he took me out on the balcony to see the bomb shelters which were being built in the garden below.’1143 Nonetheless, British foreign policy, burdened as it was with the preoccupations of Empire and the shadow of the Great War, succumbed easily to Chamberlain’s message: How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is, that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here, because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing… However much we may sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simply on her account. If we have to fight, it must be on larger issues than that.1144

Yet Chamberlain’s attitude was based also on something other than the expediency of not going to war. ‘For the English, at least in their self-image, the wider world has a meaning as a reference … You can go to Burma, or Argentina, or South Africa and speak English and run an English-owned company or an English style economy; ironically, you can’t do that in Slovenia, which is therefore much more exotic.’1145 For Chamberlain, and for those who

1143 1144 1145

Killearn 1972: 100. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in a broadcast on 27 September 1938, BBC. Judt 2012: 59.

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approved the policy of appeasement, Czechoslovakia was not close enough to the Empire to have really mattered. Although he was undeniably interested in the destiny of the British Empire and its wider implications, Winston Churchill was of a different opinion when it came to the Britain’s European allies, and made it known in his speech A Total and Unmitigated Defeat on 5 October 1938: I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have. The utmost my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.1146

Whether Beneš should have fought alone against Germany, at significant human cost but potentially unmasking Hitler’s intentions a year earlier while still retaining some sense of a Czechoslovak moral victory, will never be satisfactorily answered. As it was, he accepted the ultimatum, and the Munich Treaty was signed on 30 September 1938, ceding border areas of Czechoslovakia to Germany, Poland, and Hungary. Austria had already been annexed to Germany. What cannot be denied is the impact the treaty had on Czechs who needed to abandon their homes in the Sudetenland and other ceded areas. Impoverished, displaced people had to find new homes, and new work. Jewish families fared the worst, and soon had to face discriminatory laws in Czechoslovakia as well. Many began to consider further exile.1147 But even from the perspective of non-Jewish families, of people who had to cope with the consequences of the treaty in their daily lives, it was cruel and humiliating. From the perspective of the Czechoslovak 1146 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-hismajestys-government#S5CV0339P0_19381005_HOC_216 (accessed 9 February 2022). 1147 Buresova 2019: 18–19.

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military, which had prepared for war, it was mortifying to hand over an entire border fortification system into German hands. And from the perspective of political and intellectual elites, who believed in Masaryk’s ideals of a Czechoslovak state, it was the destruction of all their hopes and beliefs. Beneš felt humiliated, but he also felt betrayed, and the remainder of his international political career became an unrelenting quest for the annulment of the Munich Treaty at all costs. He was also no longer prepared to trust the West, and this was to have wider consequences—another blow for the possibility of democracy—when Czechoslovakia was subjugated by the Stalinist Soviet Empire ten years later. The circumstances surrounding the Munich Treaty, and the post-Munich changes in Central Europe, were far from simple,1148 but the undeniable outcome for Czechoslovakia was the destruction of a fledgling democratic state, which paved the way for an extended period of mass murder and shame. The Munich Treaty began the wholesale destruction of a state that, while far from being the perfect democracy its elites imagined it to be, was still a multi-ethnic democratic society that generally managed to live together tolerably well. Tensions fed by discontent among ethnic groups with separatist ideologies were the state’s undoing, just as they were the undoing of the Habsburg Empire twenty years earlier. Interwar Czechoslovakia was certainly not flawless, but there can be no comparison with the criminality of the totalitarian regimes that followed. Pre-Munich Czechoslovakia was distinctly less authoritarian that many of its neighbours, as the flow of German and Austrian émigrés in the 1930s demonstrates: They would hardly have left Nazi Germany for a similarly intolerant society elsewhere. Even before the Munich Treaty was signed, the delinquency of the Nazi regime was not wholly unknown:1149

1148 Covered in many publications; recently Smetana 2014; Goldstein and Lukes 2012; Neville 2018. 1149 Nazi practices of racial ‘cleansing’ and oppression were becoming increasingly well known in the late 1930s (Seul 2012), although reports on Nazi injustice were not always widely accepted, and fascists outside Germany actively opposed them. Critical voices were nonetheless strong enough to make some Nazi officials defend their policies, including institutions such as concentration camps. See Moore 2016 with further references. On early camps, see Goeschel, Wachsmann, and Osers 2012.

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The tragedy of Munich indeed rested ultimately in an inability to communicate the right message, an almost nightmarish powerlessness to get through what the Czechoslovaks knew to be the situation. Sitting on its borders and having welcomed so many of its exiles, they were well aware of the nature of the Nazi regime. Hitler’s ultimate ambitions were never a mystery to them … They could never convince either Daladier or Chamberlain of the lucidity of their views.1150

Some Egyptian intellectuals had a clearer view of the situation in Europe than Chamberlain. Ibrahim al-Misri noted that ‘each time that history records a failure for democracy, it records a victory of dictatorship,’1151 and his was not the only Egyptian voice that found the Munich Treaty to be a failure of Western democracies and a harbinger of war. Al-Misri and his contemporaries perceived that the danger to states born out of the turbulence of the Great War—such as Czechoslovakia and later Poland—was potentially a danger to Egypt as well. This did not preclude other Egyptian thinkers, such as Ahmad Husayn, from toying with authoritarian ideas, and strict ethnicity- and faith-based nationalism.1152 But then, such were also ascendant in the ‘rump’ of ‘Czecho-Slovakia’, as the leftover state was known after Munich. Jaro was one among the many who witnessed and recognized the collapse of democracy. The new Czecho-Slovakia, with ethnic minorities mostly beyond its new borders and Slovaks demanding more autonomy, began to copy German laws. This was disastrous, and the decision to emulate Germany has since raised questions about a veneer of democracy maintained between 1918 and 1938, a veneer somehow giving way all too easily to an authoritarian, chauvinistic, and ultimately racist and misogynist concept of society that became known as the Second Republic.1153 But narrow-minded nationalism was ascendant in most of Europe, often on the far-right of the political spectrum,1154 and many who 1150

Caquet 2018: 223–224. Cited Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 178. 1152 This topic has been debated extensively. For an overview of preceding scholarship see Gershoni 1999 and Gershoni and Jankowski 2010. The economic side of nationalism (‘buy Egyptian’) is discussed in Reynolds 2012a. 1153 See Gebhart 2004. 1154 An overview of far-right influence in Europe is provided by Steiner 2011: 9–10; a search for the roots of inter-war fascist popularity across several countries has been 1151

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believed in patriotism without nationalist blinkers found themselves side-lined and attacked. First Republic elites reacted in a variety of ways. Beneš left for London on 6 October, a day after Churchill presented his critical speech, taking leave of Šámal,1155 who initially stayed on to serve Dr Emil Hácha, the new president. Many Jewish entrepreneurs noted the danger and left Czecho-Slovakia, but many stayed on even though it was becoming increasingly clear that any state in thrall to Germany would be dangerous for them.1156 CzechoSlovakia also became less hospitable to refugees.1157 Jaro also left in October, though not yet with the idea of permanent exile. On 9 October 1938 he asked Šámal for an intervention so that he might leave and join Gardiner in London, and a day later Šámal informed him that the intervention had been made to ease all necessary travel formalities. But Šámal also had a duty for Jaro. Unlike earlier informal diplomatic tasks, where Jaro was simply required to be articulate and give a good impression of the Czechoslovak state, he was to deliver a memorandum, which Šámal composed, and distribute it among British intellectual circles. Jaro left for Paris via Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy, and the memorandum caught up with him in Turin along with instructions to translate the text into English, and to use Gardiner as a communication channel for its distribution. The memorandum was sharp, and remarkably undiplomatic: It is pharisaic to claim that the matter was directed by a principle of a national preservation of the Germans, by a principle of protecting them from oppression. The Germans had, after all, 3000 schools of all grades including their university … Britain and France achieved only one thing—they pushed a prosperous, decent nation into Hitler’s claws, and fortified Germany by a further 15 million people. A more glaring stupidity would be inconceivable.1158

attempted, among others, by Brustein and Berntson 1999; for an up-to-date and detailed analysis, see Mann 2004. 1155 Dejmek 2006–2008, II: 181. 1156 Dejmek et al. 2018: 273. 1157 Frankl 2014. 1158 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. Dr. J. Černý, cesta do Egypta; the Černý-Šámal exchanges in October 1938, no. 12375.

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It comes as little surprise that Šámal wrote to Jaro a few days later to say that the memorandum should not be used in full, and that only the main arguments were to be relayed to Gardiner and wider intellectual circles in Britain.1159 In November came further news from Germany. ‘Kristallnacht’ was a night of horror that deeply affected many German Egyptologists. Erman did not live to see it, and neither did Borchardt, whose wife took sanctuary in Switzerland. Bernard Bothmer eventually left Germany.1160 Georg Steindorff kept postponing his exile and waited far too long, and getting out of Germany proved a challenge despite assistance from pupils such as Hans Bonnet,1161 whom Steindorff had previously supported.1162 Jaro’s autumn and winter, up to mid-December, were spent with Gardiner, working in Lansdowne Road and pulling the curtains close against the darkness outside. Jaro had finished his Late Ramesside Letters for the Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, and the proofs reached him in London.1163 Jaro then planned to return to Prague via Paris, to spend Christmas with his family before departing for Egypt in early 1939. He arrived to Prague just after 20 December 1938, after a bit of a rough ride: ‘From London to Newhaven I travelled in an unheated carriage.’1164 Nonetheless, he managed to stop over in Paris for twenty-four hours, to see Posener and Jacques Vandier. He also managed to finish his paper on measures of capacity.1165 1159 AKPR, inv. no. 1024–Doc. dr. Jaroslav Černý, cesta do Egypta, 29. 10. 1938, ‘nemluvil-li jste doposud s Gardenerem, tedy nedávejte mu přesný překlad [underlined], nýbrž tlumočte mu věcné námitky.’ Trans: ‘If you haven’t discussed this with Gardener [sic] yet, do not give him an accurate translation, but relay the gist of the matter.’ 1160 Fazzini 1995: i–iii, and Eaton-Krauss 2019. 1161 Steindorff himself put Bonnet on his list as a ‘man of honor’ and added: ‘During my darkest days at Leipzig, after the pogrom of November 1938, he came to our house in Leipzig and invited me and my wife to go with him and find asylum in his house at Bonn, though to give us sanctuary might well have resulted in his confinement in a concentration camp.’ Letter reprinted in Voss and Raue 2016: 546, Abb. 5a; referred to in Thompson 2015–2018, III: 203. The growing pressure, and final onslaught, of autumn 1938 is discussed by Friedländer 1997, I: 269–293. 1162 Voss and Raue 2016: 65, 258–259, etc. 1163 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 16 December 1938; a letter accompanying the first proof of Late Ramesside Letters. 1164 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.51, 26 December 1938. 1165 Its original version remained as a manuscript, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.1.

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At the very end of December 1938, Jaro also provided some examples from something ‘forthcoming on my slips’ to Gardiner regarding the expression , which he translated as ‘papyrus’. His system of slips with vocabulary, built over the years of collecting and transcribing texts, was being put to good use; after approximately fifteen years it had become a functional resource. Gardiner at that time was consulting the topic of Egyptian fabrics and material, papyrus also being suitable for sandal-making, and Jaro could not avoid making a pun upon the political and economic troubles of the day by referring to Egyptians using proper materials, as they ‘did not need to have recourse to an “Ersatz” like totalitarian countries.’1166 The atmosphere in Prague had also changed. ‘The official social and cultural life of the Second Republic was populated by elements unheard of in the preceding era … Abandoning democratic and humanist ideals became commonplace.’1167 Those who supported Masaryk’s ideals found that exile, whether actual or ‘internal’, whether by leaving the country or by withdrawing into one’s own thoughts, was an increasingly appealing option, even if it brought heartbreak. The wounds ran deep, because the defeat of Masaryk’s concept of a Czechoslovak state was more profound than mere geopolitics; it challenged the very meaning of a Central European identity. Some intellectuals and public figures chose to soldier on, but at the price of public denigration by the new establishment of Czecho-Slovakia, and of an increasing feeling of futility. Jaro’s contact at Prague Castle, Šámal, left office in due course. His choice was an internal exile, at least for a while. On Christmas Day 1938, Jaro’s slightly older contemporary and acclaimed writer Karel Čapek (brother of the painter Josef Čapek; both were responsible for the word ‘robot’) died. ‘Though the cause of his death was registered as pneumonia, many Czechs believed it to be a heart broken by the Munich capitulation. With reason. Čapek had no truck with pan-Slav mysticism, but his patriotism was no less heartfelt … It was also a kind of patriotism singularly

1166 1167

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.50, 29 December 1938. Dejmek et al. 2018: 273.

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vulnerable to the betrayal that, for Czechs, Munich represented.’1168 Čapek, like many others, felt that Czech nationhood itself was at stake, and identified very strongly with the projected image and aspiration of a democratic Czechoslovakia firmly embedded in the West, but without losing its Central European characteristics. Both Čapek and Šámal were offered an opportunity to leave the country, and both declined it. Jaro was not a literary giant or a governmental official with assumed or imagined responsibility for the national future,1169 and so proved ultimately less averse to life abroad, but in late December 1938 and January 1939, he still allowed himself to consider a future in Czecho-Slovakia. He wrote to Erik Iversen that he planned to leave for Egypt, but that they should rendezvous in Prague in the summer (of 1939) to study Late Egyptian.1170 Iversen hoped to continue the tradition of scholars visiting Prague and being taught Demotic by Lexa and Late Egyptian and hieratic by Černý, and would, as Jaro pointed out, be following in the footsteps of Giuseppe Botti. Jaro even suggested that the classes could be conducted in French, if Iversen preferred. Whether Jaro’s plans were out of professional courtesy to a university that had taken advantage of him, or out of some perceived loyalty to a ‘nation’, the scholarship of which he had helped to cultivate, is impossible to say. The letter to Iversen shows Jaro’s internationalism, encouraging a Danish student to visit Prague for lessons in French, but this would have set him on a collision course with the new authorities soon enough. He might have felt allegiance to the imagined community of Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia, which had given him professional opportunities. But that Czechoslovakia was as dead as ash. It was mainly Beneš, now in London, who hoped it might rise like a phoenix.1171 Whilst Jaro may have believed (or convinced himself to hope) that there was some sort of future for Czechoslovakia, the international and national political situation would soon grow much more complicated. This was also true of Egypt. If Central Europe 1168

Sayer 1998: 22. Sayer 1998: 24. 1170 Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence, J. Černý to E. Iversen, 17 January 1939. 1171 Dejmek 2006–2008, II: 185–188. 1169

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was about to face one of the most difficult and devastating challenges to its existence and identity, Egypt was in the middle of questioning its own identity, perhaps not devastating, but dramatic and complex nonetheless. In December 1938, as Jaro was corresponding with Iversen and Capart from the comforts of Lansdowne Road, a small but rather symptomatic incident occurred at the Cairo railway station. King Farouk, his new queen Farida and their infant daughter were returning to their palace in Cairo. Queen Farida observed a new protocol by disembarking from the train just after her husband, but unlike him did not offer an official greeting to the dignitaries who were lined up to welcome the royal couple. Sir Miles Lampson observed that some were ‘scathing’ about ‘this new ritual’ and ‘flummoxed as to what the Court had become; it was neither European nor Oriental.’1172 This might seem a trifling detail of court protocol, but it also indicates the complex attitudes of the Egyptian elite. The royal family was seeking to use Egyptian nationalism, and a certain amount of anti-British sentiment, to cement the role of monarchy,1173 because ‘the monarchy was a crucial constitutive part of Egypt’s political and cultural imagination in the late 1930,’1174 and the image of the new royal family played a particularly important role. Yet the complexities of Egyptian politics reflected in this seemingly-minor event went beyond the role of the monarchy, to the issue of Egyptian identity itself. The queen was seen in Western dress, unveiled, and to conservative observers played the role of royal consort in name only. Yet she was in no way as Westernized as her mother-in-law, Queen Mother Nazli, who was regularly photographed in gowns with bare shoulders.1175 The status of women in Egypt—their rights and social position, and the role of women in religion—was a contentious topic to many who wished Egypt to be distinct from colonial European powers. What was to be the basis of Egyptian identity? The 1172

Killearn 1972: 100–101. For the formation of Farouk’s public image, see Ellis 2009. 1174 Ellis 2009: 206. 1175 In a wedding photograph showing Farouk and Farida, Nazli is seen in such a gown (wedding of King Faruk I of Egypt and Farida, 20 January 1938, at Cairo; Bridgeman Education, © SZ Photo / Scherl / Bridgeman Images, Image number SZT2078490). 1173

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modernity of the efendiya? The traditions of the notables outside Cairo and Alexandria? The ancient history? The Islamic tradition? Or all of these in uneasy companionship?1176 As in Czecho-Slovakia, nationalists sought to distinguish Egypt from a perceived ‘other’, even if the situation at the end of the interwar period provides the impression that ‘Egyptians failed to agree on even the most basic principles of their national identity, such as a clear definition of Egypt’s territorial borders, civil and political rights, and the supremacy of civil law over religious law.’1177 Egyptian history was caught up in this political melee, and Egyptological projects were caught, as before, between being seen as convenient tools of ‘soft power’ and as discrete intellectual projects.

Ostraca and other projects Jaro’s first fifteen years as fully-fledged Egyptologist were typified by fieldwork and, particularly, work with texts. His main interests then were editions of papyri and ostraca, though from 1935 to 1938 he was also collecting material for, and preparing an updated edition of, Late Ramesside Letters, to be published by the Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth,1178 In the series Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca.1179 Work on texts reinforced his involvement with Late Egyptian grammar, and eventually with lexicography and etymology. The Late Ramesside Letters did not contain facsimiles, but rather full transcriptions, with commentaries, of the hieratic originals rendered into hieroglyphs. They were also the result of extensive cooperation and access to Peet’s and Gardiner’s notes. His approach to using his colleagues’ notes was explained in the

1176

For further analysis see Ryzova 2014; Gershoni and Jankowski 1986. Whidden 2013: 192. 1178 GIA, Collection Clère, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Clère, 18 June 1937, from London. Jaro was working on correspondence des temps de prêtres, using British Museum material; the book title was later changed to Late Ramesside Letters. 1179 Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, H. O. Lange Collection; J. Černý to H. O. Lange, 14 July 1930. 1177

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introduction to the edition, which ultimately bore a publication date of 1939: In establishing my first text I had Gardiner’s and Peet’s note-books before me. It would have been fair to state, in every case where our readings differed, to whom among the three belongs the credit for the reading finally adopted. Such a statement, however, would have been irrelevant to the student and would have given the notes an impossible extension. Moreover, it would hardly have been just to those whose readings were rejected, as it is possible that they would have found the true reading, if given the opportunity to consult the originals again and again … It is for me to assume the whole ultimate responsibility, having been given ample opportunity to study the originals of all documents published in this volume.1180

Jaro was keen to explain the value of prolonged study and repeated consultation of hieratic texts for the purposes of quality control. He also remained in close contact with the conservator Ibscher, who ‘devoted much time and skill to remounting of the Geneva letters and some of the Paris Papyri, as well as to discussing with me various technical questions connected with my texts and their external form.’1181 Consequently, the Late Ramesside Letters contains a wealth of information on the material character of Egyptian papyri, including details about the arrangement of texts on a papyrus sheet or scroll, and on the folding of a missive. If Jaro’s earlier notes on the materiality of ostraca could be considered sparse (e.g. ‘sherd of pottery, reddish…’),1182 then his attention to detail regarding the materiality of papyri, which he developed in later editions, suggests that he was starting to consider them as more than just a text carrier. This interest culminated in 1947, in his lecture ‘Paper & Books in Ancient Egypt’.1183 Papyri were almost always part of Jaro’s research, and indeed his earliest publications were concerned with papyri from the large collection in Turin, but ostraca became his specialty. 1180

Černý 1939b: vi. Černý 1939b: vi. 1182 Short descriptions like this are included in the IFAO ostraca editions by Jaro (beginning with Černý 1935a). 1183 Published as Černý 1952c. 1181

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There are two main reasons for this. The first was practical: the Egyptian Museum, the IFAO, and eventually Gardiner paid Jaro to publish editions of ostraca. Jaro had gained a reputation as a skilled epigrapher through his work at Deir el-Medina and in Sinai, and quickly found himself a niche as a hieraticist, a skill that increasingly came to be in demand. The second reason was more personal: ostraca were key evidence for the community of workmen at Deir el-Medina, and his gainful employment had the notable side benefit of allowing him to collect sufficient evidence to pursue a study of this West Theban community. These ‘workmen’ no longer seemed to be the ‘proletariat’ that Adolf Erman thought them to be, although Jaro emphasized their relatively humble position to set his research apart from conventional Egyptological interests and to make it appealing to sponsors like Masaryk. Jaro created demand for his expertise by emphasizing the relevance of his subject matter. However, if the workmen were an unconventional topic, his approach still needed to conform with the rigorous conventions of Egyptological work, to be viable, and to be acceptable to colleagues with whom he aspired to work. Those working on texts had to be technically excellent, accurate, and to produce work that was legible. Jaro’s hieroglyphic hand developed over time, from the clear but not yet visually striking style he employed for Peet in the 1927 edition of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, to the regular and elegant style of his later years. As Peet had noted,1184 Jaro had talent, and it had to be nurtured, and the volumes of ostraca he produced in the 1930s show how his talent developed rapidly as he worked. Jaro developed a workflow and editorial procedure when working with ostraca from the IFAO and the Egyptian Museum. Ostraca were appearing in large numbers, if not initially in the thousands. He first separated the ostraca on the basis of handwriting style, because the more cursive and less elegant texts were usually administrative records and accounts, while neater hieratic was typically used for literary texts and letters. This was not foolproof, as a solid portion of well-written ostraca contained 1184 Griffith Institute Archive, Oxford, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.124.230, T. E. Peet to A. H. Gardiner, 13 September 1924.

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oaths and similar texts, but as Jaro became more proficient he found could spot individual phrases and expressions, grasping the gist of a text with a quick glance. Once he had identified the ‘non-literary’ portion that most interested him, ostraca were facsimiled using tracing paper and reproduced as either black-and-white drawings or, for some, a high-quality photograph. On occasion, both a facsimile and a photograph appeared in published editions. Even more exceptionally Jaro made full-colour facsimiles, but these were not included in catalogue volumes, perhaps due to the expense. Descriptions accompanying the ostraca were relatively brief: a fragment of pottery, a limestone chip, or similar. If the ostracon had a provenance mark (for instance KS for Kom Sûd), this too was provided. Transcriptions into the hieroglyphic script followed Gardiner’s recently established conventions, presented at the 1928 Congress at Oxford and published in JEA 15,1185 which was the only one then widely available. Jaro accepted it, in his own words, ‘sans réserves’,1186 echoing Gardiner’s ‘I am glad to say that I have won over to my way of thinking Dr Černý.’1187 In the preparatory manuscript of his grammar Jaro nonetheless noted that transcriptions were inherently problematic,1188 and later made it clear that he understood them mainly as an aid to the modern reader: The aim of our transcription is to reproduce exactly what can be seen in the hieratic original without giving a palaeographically faithful facsimile of the latter. Against this proceeding it should not be argued that an ancient Egyptian would have proceeded in a different way if he had had to transcribe the hieratic text into hieroglyphs. For an Egyptian, hieroglyphs served also an ornamental purpose; he would have therefore in many instances chosen a different grouping of signs to satisfy his aesthetic feeling.1189

1185

Gardiner 1929: 48–55. Černý 1935a: v. 1187 Gardiner 1929: 51. 1188 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.4, p. 4. 1189 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.9, I, p. 7, based on earlier notes in Černý Mss. 20.1. 1186

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Jaro, as a practical scholar with a large task ahead of him, implicitly accepted that a standardized hieroglyphic transcription, whatever its limitations, created fewer problems than reproducing hieratic in a ‘type’, as attempted earlier by Willem Pleyte,1190 or to a lesser extent by Theodule Devéria,1191 in their publications of Turin papyri. The decision was made in a highly practical context. Gardiner too characterized transcription as an ‘interpretation’, and was explicit as to its function: ‘Interpretation reduces diversity to unity, permits the comparison of one variant with another, facilitates translation, and performs a multitude of other valuable services. Interpretation is indisputably the primary function for which transcription is employed.’1192 The general scope of producing transcriptions was summarized as follows: To sum up, our transcriptions of hieratic texts of the New Kingdom should at once provide an interpretation of the original hieratic, and also enable the reader to form in his mind a sufficiently good picture of the reading presented by the manuscript. For my own part, I shall not hesitate to use dots and dashes and diacritical marks whenever these seem appropriate or will aid the reader’s visualization of the original. Our transcriptions ought most emphatically not to be translations into contemporary hieroglyphic; they are artificial substitutes for the actual manuscripts, substitutes the fabrication of which must be directed by the twin principles of interpretation and reproduction.1193

Gardiner also promoted the role of hieroglyphic transcriptions (as accurate as possible) as stand-ins for facsimiles of hieratic texts on the grounds of expediency, which among other things would help to reduce the cost of Egyptological publishing. The choices behind a particular format for presenting ancient texts were thus prompted by a fairly complex disciplinary and publishing ecosystem. Jaro operated within that same system.1194 Jaro went further than to produce quality editions to the accepted standard. In the case of ostraca, he also decided to voice more general methodological considerations, encapsulated in his 1190 1191 1192 1193 1194

Pleyte 1868. Dévéria 1868. Gardiner 1929: 49. Gardiner 1929: 50. This topic is further discussed in Navratilova in press.

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first presentation at the Semaine Égyptologique in Belgium. It was here that Jaro had the opportunity to outline the importance and peculiarities of ostraca, and to note what set them apart from other written resources: Textes littéraires ou textes non littéraires … ces deux classes d’ostraca ont pour la connaissance de l’Égypte ancienne plus d’importance que ne le ferait croire leur aspect modeste … chaque ostracon non littéraire est unique de son genre … très peu des ostraca conservés dans les musées ont attiré l’attention des savants et sont publiés d’une manière satisfaisante. L’entrée d’un ostracon dans une collection n’en assure pas du tout la conservation durable, car dans ces collections, surtout dans celles d’Europe, de nouveaux ennemis le menacent: la poussière et l’humidité … C’est donc, je crois, une des tâches les plus urgentes que de copier tous les ostraca et de photographier ou de dessiner ceux d’entre eux qui sont importants paléographiquement ou par leur contenu.

But his interest went further, toward organizing ostraca for a study that would allow him to unite material now dispersed among museums and collections. Quand j’en ai parlé, l’année dernière, à M. Capart, il m’a sugéré très aimablement que la Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth pourrait constituer le centre qui garderait dans ses archives les copies, photographies et facsimiles de tous les ostraca d’ont l’étude serait ainsi rendue accessible aux savants … Bruxelles étant déjà le centre bibliographique pour l’égyptologie, je crois très heureuse l’idée de M. Capart.1195

Meanwhile, the task of editing individual ostraca continued. The first volume of IFAO ostraca, published in 1935,1196 outlined the project (which is still ongoing but has since changed). The material was characterized as being among the inscribed finds from Deir el-Medina, but differentiated from outwardly-similar inscribed fragments of pottery and stone, such as jar dockets or inscribed weights. It was, as noted, subdivided into literary and non-literary texts, a subdivision that was later superseded by more nuanced selections but was then a necessary step toward the organization of an underappreciated resource. The ostraca discovered 1195 1196

Quoted from Černý 1931a. Černý 1935a.

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during thirty years of work by Bruyère and his team would become a basis for many studies relating to Deir el-Medina. Jaro also listed non-literary texts on ostraca from Deir el-Medina among the key resources for his budding Late Egyptian Grammar.1197 Planned publications included ostraca identified during excavations, ostraca from previous campaigns at Deir el-Medina that were already present in European collections (or pieces that joined with such ostraca), and ‘ostraca qui, sans avoir été trouvés dans les fouilles de l’Institut, entraient par leur contenu et leur écriture dans nos séries et qui par conséquent provenaient également de Deir el-Medina.’1198 The latter included pieces that Jaro and others had obtained from dealers who, in turn, were involved in procurement from illicit excavations. Collectors who frequented dealers reunited—or believed they were reuniting—a corpus of material connected with Deir el-Medina. This is how Jaro operated when collecting pieces for Gardiner. The concept of returning an abstract unity to a dispersed physical corpus was not unique to Jaro and his work with ostraca. He had a predecessor in Flinders Petrie, who sold the actual artefacts following publication. Petrie’s and Jaro’s methods and reasons were rather different, however. Petrie regarded the sale of artefacts as a means to an end, to provide funding for his projects. He also published very quickly as a consequence, and did not revisit or revise his interpretations of artefacts in a ‘material diaspora’ to which he had himself contributed.1199 Jaro never sold any finds for personal gain, but he regularly revisited readings of ostraca whose locations he knew. The ways that such ostraca arrived in their collections were not always transparent, but he considered their publication—and therefore accessibility to the research community—to be a priority. These publications somewhat counteracted the diaspora of ostraca (and potentially papyri), though the collecting process itself contributed to it. Jaro intended to apply his system of thematic, chronological, and finally name indexes to the publication of ostraca,1200 and 1197 1198 1199 1200

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.1, p. 10. Černý 1935a: iv. Stevenson 2019: 1. Černý 1935a: v.

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did so partially in the IFAO and Museum ostraca volumes. The work, and his studies in the Turin collection, soon began to produce historical and philological studies.1201 What many of these studies had in common was a sense of progress, from a text edition with commentary to more general considerations of the social phenomena to which the texts alluded. Another line of interest, again in accordance with the general research plan Jaro described to Lexa in 1926, was on chronology, and in particular data that could be used to more accurately date events.1202 His comprehensive interest in Theban history during the New Kingdom was mirrored in two reviews, of an edition of West Theban papyri and of a work about chronology.1203 The former was written by his close friends, Botti and Peet, and the latter by Raymond Weill. Generally, Jaro’s publications in these years can be divided roughly into those that were problem-oriented,1204 and those that were source-oriented.1205 This division is deceptive, as most of his problem-oriented papers also contained analytical excursuses on individual sources, and the source-oriented material typically referred to more general historical issues. For instance, his paper on the Louvre Leather Roll (AF 1577) was introduced: ‘Les documents juridiques de l’époque pharaonique étant toujours assez rares, chaque pièce nouvelle de ce genre devrait être bienvenue, même si elle n’apportait qu’un enrichissement modeste à nos connaissances.’1206 Jaro regarded editions of texts as steps along a long road that led toward knowledge of Egyptian history. The specific study case that held his interest revolved around the workmen of Deir el-Medina. A formal presentation of Jaro’s synthesis came at a significant disciplinary forum, the Congress of Orientalists at Oxford, on 29 August 1928. Jaro had turned thirty only seven days before.

1201 1202 1203 1204 1205 1206

Černý 1927a; Černý 1927c. Černý 1930; Černý 1929a; Černý 1936a. Černý 1928a; Černý 1928b. Černý 1934a; Černý 1935b; Černý 1935c; Černý 1937b; Černý 1937c. Černý 1929d; Černý 1931b; Černý 1932; Černý 1934b. Černý 1934b: 233.

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Jaro’s lecture in Oxford showed his focus on the empirical aspects of research, on meticulously compiling and evaluating a large selection of materials using both the monumental and nonmonumental written record, and to a certain extent its archaeological context. Jaro’s first major international presentation ended with a wish that with the complete uncovering of the settlement there might come further indications and information on the community. Jaro’s early professional training included Late Egyptian and Late Egyptian hieratic,1207 the former of which he further developed by teaching the subject, and the latter by transcribing and collating transcriptions. As Jaro himself observed, the reading and collating process was never finished. Even in 1932, for the publication of the Festschrift for Francis Llewellyn Griffith, he called himself a ‘beginner’, for whom it was not easy to offer a contribution that would ‘reach a standard worthy of so celebrated a scholar.’1208 Nonetheless, it was precisely in the paper dedicated to Griffith where Jaro’s growing erudition, including the etymological development of various Egyptian words, was visible. He had been compiling a dictionary (which Lexa referenced in his recommendation for Jaro’s habilitation)1209 and notes on palaeography, and the comparanda and references drawn from his notes were increasingly demonstrated in his publications. This was an approach previously applied by Gardiner and Peet,1210 so if Jaro was continuing their method he also extended and improved on their approach, though the influence of Gardiner is also beyond doubt and significant. His teaching notes began to develop into the basis for a new Late Egyptian grammar, a project he was to continue for more than three decades and never saw finished. The syntax and verbal system attracted him most: on 12 January 1932, he wrote a letter to Gardiner that is almost a draft paper on selected types of Late Egyptian negation patterns—bw and bn.1211 1207

Černý 1931c, 1937a, d, e. Černý 1932: 46. 1209 AAVCR, Collection Lexa, the handwritten draft of a recommendation for J. Černý’s habilitation, 1929. For copies of the final version see: AUK, personal file J. Černý; AMSANO, personal file J. Černý. 1210 Compare Peet and Gardiner text editions from the 1930s, e.g., Gardiner 1937. 1211 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.71. 1208

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As Jaro’s work in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo drew to an end in the early 1930s, it was replaced by his work for Gardiner. The publication process took longer, as Jaro now acted in multiple roles as a collector, agent, amanuensis, and co-editor. Their collaboration on transcriptions of ostraca and papyri took up much of the five years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the project only came to fruition in a later stage of Jaro’s career.

BOOK III Fortunes of war A man might rave against war; but war, from among its myriad faces, could always turn towards him one, which was his own. Frederic Manning1212

1939–1943 cairo 1939 The gathering storm Jaro’s war began in Cairo. He did not escape on the metaphorical last ship out of the collapsing First Czechoslovak Republic, like Olivia Manning escaping from Greece when the Germans invaded Athens in 1941, but was rather a settled Cairene, watching the inflow of refugees but having a room of his own. Yet he was nonetheless a refugee, and became one shortly after arriving in Cairo early in 1939. For the first time, but not the last, Jaro found himself cast adrift and needing to rebuild his position. He had a lucky escape from the fortunes of war, and a solid network of friends and colleagues to help him retain and rebuild his life. Momentous historical epochs are rarely convenient for those living through them, and witnesses to history do not always realize when a watershed moment is coming, being too busy with their daily lives and agendas. As far as Jaro was concerned, Egyptology was always the priority agenda. In January 1939, he was sorting out various technicalities in the last proofs of the Late Ramesside Letters and corresponding with Jean Capart about them.1213 Capart liked the project, and could see the potential for 1212 1213

1939.

Manning 1977: 182. FERE, Correspondence, Černý to Capart, letters dated 8 January and 12 January

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its development, noting that more letters of Djehutimose and Butehamun ought to be available, and hinting at the possibility of a future publication. He also saw a full translation of the scribes’ correspondence as equally desirable.1214 Jaro already had informal approval to publish a more comprehensive set of New Kingdom letters from Giulio Farina in Turin, from two years earlier,1215 and although he still considered Farina to be unpredictable, he had thus far encountered little difficulty in gaining access to the Turin ostraca and papyri. Jaro spent the winter of 1938 to 1939 in a short visit to Prague, mostly for work, and left for Egypt in February 1939 after having been delayed by a bout of influenza.1216 He was still hoping to hold a Late Egyptian study summer in Prague, with students including Erik Iversen, with whom he discussed formal arrangements for the trip just before leaving for Cairo.1217 He also planned, after meeting with Herbert Fairman, to assist with the publication of part three of John Pendlebury’s The City of Akhenaten, and to process the hieratic material.1218 One is left wondering how different Jaro’s life might have been if his bout of flu had proved more serious, and kept him in Prague a little longer. In an eerie semblance of a clichéd movie scene, the last vestiges of freedom and dignity in the former Czechoslovakia were collapsing behind Jaro’s heels as he headed for Egypt. In mid-March 1939, Czecho-Slovak intelligence was informed of German plans to invade. The president of what was widely perceived as a leftover ‘rump’ state, the increasingly fragile Emil Hácha, was summoned by Hitler to Berlin. There he was forced to acquiesce to Czecho-Slovakia becoming a German ‘protectorate’. His government acted with little foresight, neither fleeing abroad in the face of a German invasion nor destroying or at least removing the state’s military potential. The deputy 1214 As Černý and Capart discussed further toward the end of January; FERE, Correspondence J. Černý to J. Capart, 28 January 1939. 1215 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.55, 27 December 1937. 1216 As reported to Capart, FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 28 January 1939. 1217 Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence between J. Černý and E. Iversen, February 1939. 1218 As Fairman later reported to Gardiner; GIA, Gardiner Collection, AHG 42.94.161, letter from H. Fairman to A. H. Gardiner, 5 April 1939.

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chief of the intelligence service, František Moravec, had a (comparatively) reliable informant in Germany by the name of Paul Thümmel,1219 and tried to convince the government to act.1220 When that failed, he commandeered a Douglas Dakota owned by KLM, called eleven members of his staff, and fled the country for London with vital intelligence material, leaving behind their families and a country that was falling deeper into darkness. The plane struggled through a snowstorm, and the eerie atmosphere was allegedly reinforced by one of the pilots introducing himself as a descendant of Bohemian Protestant exiles to the Netherlands, where they had settled during the Thirty Years’ War.1221 On the night from 14 to 15 March 1939, German troops entered Czecho-Slovakia, arriving in Prague during early hours of the morning amid white flurries of the snowstorm that coincided with Moravec fleeing the city. This was the culmination of Operation Märzwirbel. The news of the occupation reached Jaro in Cairo, in his comfortable room at the IFAO. A fight for last remnants of a Czechoslovakian future began to rage at legations and consulates across the globe. German diplomats aimed at a general takeover, as Czechoslovakia, or rather Czecho-Slovakia, had ceased to exist. The head of the Cairo legation, Benjamin Szalatnay-Stachó was in a difficult position, both as a diplomat and as a man whose wife was still in occupied Europe. He stood between German expectations, which were ultimately not enforceable in Egypt, and the expectations of the Czechoslovak community. Several expatriates approached Szalatnay-Stachó requiring that the legation maintain its status, that he refuse any concessions to the Germans or, if defending the legation itself proved impossible, to at least ensure that the funds of the legation were removed to a safe place and placed at disposal of the anti-Nazi resistance.1222 Szalatnay-Stachó was cautious, and though he consulted with Sir Miles Lampson he refused to keep the legation formally open. Several members of the Czechoslovak community in Cairo, 1219

Šolc 1994: 35–38. Dejmek et al. 2018: 288–289. 1221 Šolc 1994: 46–47. 1222 Central Military Archive Prague, 37-14/1-91 Střední východ, k. č. 24, protocol no. 37-14-69. 1220

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such as Otto Skákal, František Czakrt and others, complained and accused Szalatnay-Stachó of indecisiveness and unwillingness to support the resistance, but with no government-in-exile yet established there was no-one to whom he could have claimed allegiance. No-one was certain, in March 1939, how diplomatic and legal arrangements would develop. Edvard Beneš and many Czechoslovaks hoped for a war that would liberate their homeland, but hope was not enough. The legation offices slowly began to operate again in April 1939, but it was not until the formal declaration of war against Germany in September that Szalatnay-Stachó began to work more openly, and to actively support the resistance. Egypt broke off diplomatic and commercial relations with Germany, and this was followed by the internment of many German nationals. Jaro lived through that difficult spring in Egypt but was in a very low mood, as some of his friends noted.1223 Some tried to keep him occupied; he met with Fairman, who had already enlisted Jaro’s help with the hieratic texts from Pendlebury’s excavations in Amarna. Fairman thought ‘Amarna only needs Černý’s arrival to be completed.’1224 Jaro closely followed the struggles at the legation and found it difficult to retain exclusive focus on his work. To Iversen he wrote: ‘I was just going to … give you some further details about my lectures, when the incredible news about the last desastrous [sic] events in my country made me change entirely my plans for the immediate future. I think that in view of the political ideas of the actual masters of Czechoslovakia it would no more be reasonable if I returned to Prague.’1225 Jaro still thought of his country in Masarykian terms as ‘Czechoslovakia’, and realized that the ‘protectorate’ was merely a means of Nazi Germany providing dubious legality to its conquest. He was quite clear on the reasons for his exile. It was not an escape; it was a result of circumstances. Jaro made a clear decision not to return, unlike his acquaintance Jiří Baum, who returned to Prague from his travels on 13 March 1939, and never had the 1223

Michałowski 1986: 182–183. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.161, 5 April 1939. 1225 Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence between J. Černý and E. Iversen, 25 March 1939. 1224

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chance to escape. Baum was Jewish, and his return to Prague spelled almost certain death,1226 although perhaps he could not have been aware of the full extent of the forthcoming inferno. The Final Solution had not yet been fully implemented. Czechoslovaks both inside and outside the new protectorate debated the best strategy to support their occupied country in its fight for freedom. One prominent exile, the entrepreneur Tomáš Baťa, Jr., later offered a summary, which was retrospective but reflected his own situation as well as that of his contemporaries: Should freedom-loving citizens try to escape or stay put? In my own opinion, people who are in acute danger for religious, racial or political reasons should make a run for it, and the same goes for anyone whose special talents or know-how may help defeat the enemy. As for the others, it may be better for them to stay and do whatever they can to frustrate the invader rather than abandon ship.1227

Jaro chose to stay abroad, Baum did not. Nor did Jaro’s benefactor Přemysl Šámal, although he was allegedly offered a way to emigrate.1228 This was ultimately a self-destructive decision for both of Jaro’s friends. In April, Jaro, and the entire Czechoslovak community, received a moral boost when he and a popular painter of Yugoslavian descent named Jaro Hilbert were decorated by King Farouq with the Order of the Nile. A report on this award even appeared in the Czechoslovak press.1229 Jaro was probably less pleased to hear that Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, until recently involved with a Czech trophy mistress, the actress Lída Baarová, visited Cairo briefly on 6 to 7 April 1939.1230 During an exchange of correspondence with Arpag Mekhitarian, mostly regarding the Late Ramesside Letters volume, Jaro noted on 18 April that his permanent address as of now was to be 9 Lansdowne Road, London, the Gardiner household.1231 Five 1226

Macková et al. 2012–2013, I: 246–248. Bata and Sinclair 1990: 72. 1228 Hajšman 1946: 23–24. 1229 Polední list, vol. 13, issue 105 (published 15 April 1939), p. 3. 1230 Voss 2013: 103–108. 1231 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to A. Mekhitarian, 21 March, 22 April, and 18 May 1939. 1227

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years after Alan Gardiner’s proposal that it ought to have become just as much a centre of Jaro’s life as Prague had been, London became his European home, but under circumstances that Jaro couldn’t have considered appropriate. He chose it because it offered a means of continuing his Egyptological work. Since 1934, he had been funded by French state resources and Gardiner’s private sponsorship, but his work for Gardiner depended on travel, and on Jaro’s ability to move freely between Egypt, France and Britain, including bringing Gardiner antiquities he had purchased in Egypt. Jaro returned to London from May to June of 1939 to continue his work with Gardiner—including work on the Amarna material—and spent a large part of that time as Gardiner’s guest at 9 Lansdowne Road. He also corresponded with some of his colleagues in Prague. The period between February and September 1939 was a trying time from the Czecho-Slovak perspective, as they bore the brunt of tightening German oppression. Exile communities formed, but there was little open enmity toward Germany. Hope lay in waiting for an impending war. Beneš settled in London, and British Intelligence was not averse to cooperating with Moravec. Jaro, though, worked on Egyptian texts, quite possibly helping Gardiner put the finishing touches on his publications, and finally saw the Late Ramesside Letters in print. In August he seems to have accompanied Gardiner on a trip to his country house at Wonston, near Winchester.1232 Outwardly, very little had changed. Late summer was spent in France, with Jaro as Bruyère’s guest at Chatou, including trips to Annecy and Paris to enliven the schedule. Annecy was close to the Alps, and offered a different experience to Jaro’s previous summer retreats in Czechoslovakia. It was a historical city, the ‘Venice of the Alps’, whereas Jaro normally chose rural settings or spa towns. Jaro still had income from Gardiner, and expected to be paid by the IFAO for his work at Deir el-Medina, but it was no doubt most helpful that he could stay as a house guest.

1232 This at least was the plan communicated to Iversen; Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, correspondence J. Černý to E. Iversen, 29 June 1939.

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It was in France that the news of war reached Jaro. The Second World War officially began on 1 September 1939 at Westerplatte, Poland, but it was on 3 September when the British and French formally declared themselves as allied combatants against Nazi Germany that things started to change for the Czechoslovak exile. Jaro may not have listened to the iconic speeches of Prime Minister Chamberlain and King George VI announcing the declaration of war with Germany, but he must have felt strangely relieved. It was the first step in a process that might actually see his country set free. Jaro initially took his exile as a matter of course; it was just another extended stay abroad. In the past decade he had nominally made London his home thanks to Gardiner’s patronage, but he cannot have felt it possible to erase all his links to Central Europe. Attempts to fully analyse Jaro’s identity and allegiances would likely be fruitless: he was very reticent about communicating emotions, especially negative or controversial ones, and generally kept his thoughts hidden. But his feelings about the countries he visited and the cultures he engaged with are often hinted at in his chosen languages. In the pre-war years, in his daily practice of Egyptology, he was largely Francophone and Anglophone, probably using both languages equally well by that point. As a traveller, he was also Germanophone, and was known also to use Italian without difficulty. But this does not necessarily reflect his internal language,1233 nor how comfortable he was using his arsenal of languages in professional and everyday situations. Languages and identities are difficult to disentangle. Jaro’s older contemporary and fellow exile in London, Sigmund Freud, expressed that ‘particularly painfully [is felt] … the loss of the language in which one had lived and thought, and which one will never be able to replace with another for all one’s efforts at empathy.’1234 Jaro lived and thought in a multiplicity of languages: Czech and German almost since birth, and French, Italian and English since adolescence. But which did he think in, and find easiest to articulate abstract concepts and feelings? His earliest professional writing was in French. The effusive politeness of his 1233 1234

Brothers and Lewis 2012: 180–195. Gay 1988: 632.

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letters rings the same in most of his Czech, English, and French correspondence; the style changes according to the addressee, not the language. He also thought about another complex language— Late Egyptian—in both Czech and English, and to a lesser degree in French and Italian.1235 His was a formidable capacity that was cultivated since an early age, leaving him in less of a quandary than Freud (who relied on German for most of his professional and personal life), but it leaves unanswered the issue of his internal language: in which languages did Jaro dream? Assuming he was generally comfortable with multilingualism, what about his physical and emotional displacement? He seems to have felt most at home when travelling, and was at ease in English, French, or Egyptian surroundings. Jaro had no particular interest in being tied to unsatisfactory jobs in Prague when he could pursue an international Egyptological career. Although he dutifully supported Lexa in promoting Egyptology in Czechoslovakia, he felt no particular obligation, especially as by the end of 1938 it seemed that the country of his birth was turning away from Masarykian democracy, away from the ‘myth of the Castle’, which ‘aided the development of a twentieth century Czech national consensus—or at least a discourse— about the value of democracy, the legitimate use of power, cultural tolerance, and many other values said to be represented by the West.’1236 However, lack of fixation should not be mistaken for lack of care about what was happening in Czechoslovakia, where his family and a number of friends still lived. His anxiety about his family and friends is repeatedly articulated in his letters, especially throughout the earlier part of war. Furthermore, if by October 1938 Jaro was likely well beyond any nationalist predilections, he was not careless of what was happening to democracy and cultural tolerance. The fact that he did not limit himself strictly to a single language or national community did not mean that he wanted to abandon personal relationships in his country of origin, nor that he felt no sense of general obligation to contribute to the renewal of what was lost, even though what was lost had already been lost in Munich. The 1235 This is shown in his notes on Late Egyptian grammar and syntax in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20. 1236 Orzoff 2009: 220.

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March 1939 disaster was immediately painful as it frustrated any idea of trouble-free travel between countries, changed his lifestyle and removed the emotional support of a family—and probably a partner—in Prague. The September 1939 announcement of war seemed a reprieve. Jaro’s younger fellow exile, Pavel Tigrid, noted that it was ‘the end of the crooked weakness, end of that misery, uncertainty and cowardice.’1237 It was electrifying, albeit it meant that Jaro now had to balance his allegiances to Britain, France, the Czechoslovak resistance, and Egyptology. Czechoslovak exiles, like Jaro’s allegiances, were divided. Beneš in London did not see eye-to-eye with Štefan Osuský in Paris, and the latter disapproved of the former becoming the de facto head of the resistance in exile. The once and future president, Beneš, was nonetheless heard on the BBC on 19 September 1939,1238 defending the Czechoslovak cause. Jaro tried to enlist in the Czechoslovak army-in-exile in Paris,1239 but was rejected for active service on the grounds of weak eyesight. Why would an intellectual with only a slightly adventurous disposition actively seek to enlist in the army? It might have been a gesture, and one that he knew would never be accepted, but Jaro was not a man of many empty gestures. His working life overwhelmingly shows reliability, some proofreading excepted. Before the war, people in similar life circumstances to Jaro (here an Oxford academic, Sir David Hunt) would have thought that: To join one of the services in peacetime could obviously not be contemplated except by someone cursed with inborn blood lust— it helped also, I believed, to be rather stupid. On the other hand, all but the pacifist fringe acknowledged that there were circumstances in which it was excusable … to take part in a war. But for an educated and civilized person such a decision could only come as a climax to a long period of mental stress with a sudden violence of conviction similar to a religious conversion.1240

1237

Tigrid 2017: 38. Tigrid 2017: 22. 1239 The Czechoslovak legation in Paris confirmed that it recognized his national loyalty and application on 11 September 1939; Central Military Archive, Prague, personal file Černý, 255-90206/48. 1240 Hunt 1990: 11. 1238

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Nonetheless, when the war came, Hunt ‘did not think of anything else but enlisting.’ And neither, it would seem, did Jaro. Although the versions of a ‘don’s war’ as lived by Hunt and Jaro were rather different, Hunt’s motivation to enlist might well have reflected preoccupations similar to Jaro’s. It was an automatic thing to do, if not a universal one. Herbert Fairman felt differently, and assuming he would be useless in the field—no more than cannon fodder—he offered his services to the Foreign Office and these were eventually accepted.1241 Jaro was however told to report to the legation offices in Cairo after he finished his archaeological work and thus decided to continue working with the IFAO, intending to leave for Egypt later that year in the company of Christiane Desroches and Bruyère. He accepted an invitation from the French institute, although Gardiner was at the time discussing the possibility of bringing him to London, perhaps in some capacity connected to political or diplomatic work,1242 and thinking that the Ministry of Information would be a suitable placement. Such a step might have brought Jaro into the orbit of men like Robert Bruce Lockhart and the ‘Czechoslovakian Odyssey’,1243 as Lockhart dubbed efforts to gain official recognition for the nascent Czechoslovakian resistance and its exile government led by Beneš. This would have been Jaro’s second brush with the world of politics, after Šámal’s rogue memorandum in the days immediately following Munich, and would have exceeded his informal roles as a more-or-less implicit representative of Czechoslovak soft power. Initially, Jaro was interested: ‘I think I could be much more useful in London that anywhere else.’1244 If he had been given a role in the Ministry of Information as Gardiner hoped, he would have made more use of his skills earlier in the war, when his limitations made him a less likely candidate for a field role, such as Walter B. Emery’s in the desert campaign, let alone that of Hunt.1245

1241

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.160, 6 September 1939. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.48 (2 October 1939) and AHG 42.56.46 (16 October 1939). 1243 Lockhart 1947: Book II. 1244 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.47, 4 October 1939. 1245 Hunt 1990: 11. 1242

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As a posting in London appeared less likely in the autumn of 1939, and the military had initially rejected his application, Jaro opted for the well-trodden path and wrote to Gardiner, hoping to soothe his benefactor, to say ‘I hope that you will agree that this is a certain job … Please do tell me at your earliest convenience that you are not angry with me.’1246 He had earlier written in more detail to say that since he was only good as an ‘auxiliary’ in the army (and was to report as such to the Czechoslovak legation in Cairo), he ought to pursue Egyptology (‘what else…’) as he found it impossible to be ‘idle’.1247 And by 26 October his position was settled: M. Jouguet asked me again to come to do some work for the French Institute. The committee met here last Friday and voted the necessary credits, and I naturally could not but accept the offer, so much so that the scientific staff of the French Institute is so considerably reduced by the mobilisation. M. Jouguet is anxious to have us all in Egypt.1248

Jaro also asked to have some of his notebooks sent after him to Cairo, as they had been left in Lansdowne Road. The work, which as his former bank colleagues noted was his ‘aim in life’,1249 was evidently his psychological backbone in difficult times. It was a refuge, even though there were times when keeping a strict focus proved impossible. He tried to finish his work for Šusta, but initially was not successful: I had no intention to slip away from my promise—and had begun my chapter already in January. Nonetheless, I must admit that it will be hard work to be able to provide you with the chapter in early July. There is much to do to earn my living, and an incalculable number of worries, troubles, and thoughts fill my other hours. You are right, we must work as much as is possible as if nothing has happened; normally, I am an optimist too.1250

1246

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.46, 26 October 1939. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.47, 4 October 1939. 1248 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.46, 26 October 1939. 1249 Onderka 2019: 33. 1250 NAP, Šusta Collection, Correspondence, letter from J. Černý to J. Šusta, 1 June 1939, from Lansdowne Road. His chapter nonetheless appeared in the first volume of Šusta 1939. 1247

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Jaro’s work also brought him his international circle of friends, on whose help—and to a certain extent, whose charity—he now relied. As long as Jaro saw a future that involved Egyptology he had perspective, but to imagine him the ‘pathetic’ workaholic glimpsed by Peet thirteen years before would be a mistake. Jaro was deeply worried about ‘his people’ in Prague, and was relieved to hear from Giuseppe Botti, who had for a while continued his Demotic studies in the occupied Prague, that his family was safe, at least for the time being.1251 At some point he also hinted to his Swiss friend Georges Nagel that he expected his ‘girl’ to emigrate and eventually join him in exile. This apparently did not happen, but around the time Jaro left for Egypt he sent messages to both his ‘fiancée’ and his brother via Nagel in Geneva. Nagel wrote back to say that ‘je viens d’écrire un petit mot à votre fiancée, la lettre pour votre frère partira dans quelques jours.’1252 Those not directly engaged in the war carried on as best they could, given the circumstances. Raymond Faulkner noted during the autumn of 1939 ‘that serious trouble has broken out in Bohemia. I am exceedingly glad that a new embarrassment has been imposed on the Nazis, but I hope that Černý’s people are not involved. I am sorry for him indeed; he must be torn with anxiety as to the fate of both his family and his library.’1253 It seems that Jaro’s library was becoming a matter of interest and respect among his colleagues. Jaro left France for Cairo as planned, and expected to be busy at Deir el Medina in the customary winter season. He assumed that he’d return to France and Britain for the summer, though Pierre Lacau sent him various recommendations of contacts in Cairo, just in case.1254 In the short term, and provided his notebooks could reach him, he could continue his studies of Deir el-Medina. Jaro’s ongoing projects suggest that he had almost no chance to be idle. He had his ongoing ostraca and papyri publication projects, with both Gardiner and the IFAO. There were graffiti to be mapped in the environs of Deir el-Medina. 1251 1252

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.48, 2 October 1939. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1466, G. Nagel to J. Černý, 29 October

1939. 1253 1254

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.96.24, 21 September 1939. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1319, 21 October 1939.

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He had a bagful of notes on Late Egyptian Grammar, twentyfirst dynasty chronology, and sundry other ideas about lexicographical and grammatical issues relating to them. Jaro also still needed to finish the Egyptian chapter for Šusta’s History of Mankind, his first historical synthesis.1255 But much was happening, not least in Egypt. The Egyptians found themselves in a complicated position, as Article 7 of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty specified that Egypt would support British forces in the event of war: The aid of His Majesty the King of Egypt in the event of war, imminent menace of war or apprehended international emergency will consist in furnishing to His Majesty The King and Emperor on Egyptian territory, in accordance with the Egyptian system of administration and legislation, all the facilities and assistance in his power, including the use of his ports, aerodromes and means of communication. It will accordingly be for the Egyptian Government to take all the administrative and legislative measures, including the establishment of martial law and an effective censorship, necessary to render these facilities and assistance effective.1256

This was a comprehensive provision and eventually became the basis for Allied presence in Egypt, but its efficacy depended on how it was or could be implemented. And its implementation depended in turn on the willingness of the Egyptian government and King Farouk to acquiesce to British demands. Even in a setting of anti-colonial resentment, it was hoped that Egypt as a social and political entity would be inclined to support an antiFascist and anti-Nazi cause. One historical narrative that began soon after the Second World War, and was developed in decades to come, pointed out that the Egyptian intellectual and political scene in the 1930s could have been viewed as somewhat sympathetic with Fascism, or indeed Nazism, and observations on the authoritarian leanings of, for example, the Young Egypt movement offer this narrative a degree of credibility. Yet an examination of 1255 NAP, Praha, Collection Šusta, Correspondence, letter from J. Černý to J. Šusta, 1 June 1939. 1256 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1936/nov/24/anglo-egyptiantreaty. Accessed 3 June 2022.

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pre-war sources by specialists in Egyptian nationhood Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski have shown a more nuanced picture. Certain elements among the efendiya were willing to regard authoritarian policies as an immediate remedy to the ills pervading Egyptian society,1257 and King Farouk, for different reasons than the efendiya, found some of these policies appealing.1258 Italo-German leanings were certainly not a figment of Lampson’s imagination. But the Egyptian political and intellectual scene was far from predominantly sympathetic to Fascism or Nazism, and the voices heard in the aftermath of the Munich treaty were not isolated.1259 Still, there were some political voices in 1939 which would have preferred a more neutral attitude than the expectations set out by the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. Ali Maher, the Egyptian Prime Minister at the time, acted in ways that seem deeply ambiguous. He moved against Germans in the first days of September 1939, interring some and confiscating their property, yet refused to remove his Chief of Staff Aziz al-Masri, a German sympathizer. His actions ‘were designed to tell the Axis powers that, although forced to co-operate with Britain, he was covertly thwarting them wherever possible.’1260 Egypt did not declare war on Germany. The complexity of the situation added to the Allied unease about Egypt. In London, Beneš had set his sights on establishing a government-in-exile, even though he had to contend with a rival in Paris. His efforts were rewarded. In December 1939, ‘the British Government recognized the right of a new Czechoslovak Committee headed by Dr Beneš, to represent the Czech and Slovak peoples.’1261 Some unsettling news arrived from Prague around this time: Jaro’s alma mater was closed by the Nazis on 17 November 1939, after student demonstrations on 28 October and the death of Jan Opletal, a medical student who was shot during this

1257

See also Ryzova 2014: 238–243. Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 45. 1259 This topic was extensively and articulately treated by Gershoni and Jankowski 2010; compare Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 210–215. 1260 Cooper 1995: 46. 1261 Lockhart 1947: 72–73. 1258

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demonstration and died two weeks later.1262 The academic home of Egyptology in Prague had ceased to exist, and Jaro’s former professor, Bedřich Hrozný, then the head of the Charles University, could do nothing to prevent it. He became the university’s ‘Last Chancellor’. In Egypt, Jaro settled within easy reach of Szalatnay-Stachó’s legation, in his usual Mounira lodgings. It was now ten years since the IFAO palace had taken on a more classicist façade, but inside the decorative elements still testified to an Art Nouveau and even neo-Roccoco fantasy. Jaro still roamed the same corridors and rooms with high ceilings, still continued his work with ostraca and papyri. In December he again stood in front of his wardrobe, packing for a trip to Upper Egypt. Whatever tensions he felt about Czechoslovakia, his family, and some of the notebooks he’d left in Prague, he managed to keep it under control. After all, he was one among the many, not among the few, and he had not been drafted into active service. He had the model of Gardiner before him, a man who fashioned himself as carrying on regardless, but there was another reason: Jaro had escaped. He was living as a free man, with friends in Cairo and elsewhere, as if nothing much had happened. He felt he ought to be fine. 1940–1941 Adapting The 1940 IFAO campaign in Deir el-Medina began early, in January,1263 with Jaro as part of the team. Along with his ostraca work he was engaged in a lively exchange of letters with Gardiner. Gardiner wished to honour his financial obligations toward Jaro, but was reduced instead to explaining the impossibility of sending money to Egypt at that point in time.1264 He suggested that Jaro was to rely on the IFAO (which housed him in Cairo) and could possibly ask other Egyptologists for temporary assistance. Gardiner hoped that Mimi Borchardt might have been around, 1262 Dejmek et al. 2018: 312–313, in detail with a personal perspective; Leikert 2001, with a large volume of oral history material collected by the author but no referencing apparatus. 1263 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 17.110, p. 3, dated 3 January 1940. 1264 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.712; a letter from 39 Belsyre Court, Oxford, on 28 January 1940.

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but she was in Switzerland and could no longer travel to Egypt.1265 The Borchardts’ institute, which had been considered a potential asset for British Egyptology (hence Gardiner’s trust in Borchardt’s help),1266 was then in the care of Bernhard Grdseloff,1267 who was good friends with Jaro. Practical difficulties notwithstanding, Gardiner urged Jaro to keep up a steady supply of papers for the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, which he more-or-less managed to do as the list of his published works dated to 1940 and 1941 attests.1268 Jaro also still frequented dealers’ establishments, for instance the one run by Sayed Mollatam, and purchased some ostraca.1269 It is possible that some of the ostraca still housed at the IFAO and known as ‘Ostraca Gardiner’ and ‘Ostraca Černý’ were obtained in this period, although perhaps the larger part would be ‘AG’ pieces from the 1930s.1270 Consequently, Jaro noted to Gardiner in mid-February, whilst still in Luxor, that his IFAO work on ostraca and graffiti was ongoing,1271 and hence he was for the time being in no particular need of money. He was still weighing the possibility of borrowing from Borchardt though he had heard, correctly, that she was in Switzerland for the duration of the war. Borchardt would have understood his position as she had been observing the growing exile community since 1933, though her options might have been limited because she had for several years worked tirelessly to settle and resettle a number of friends and family members.1272 Jaro wrote: As far as my finances are concerned, I have sufficient means with me here to live till the end of April, possibly for one month more. I have some £60 in my London Bank, which I hope it would be possible to get transferred to Paris. You have no obligations towards

1265

Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 425. Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 411–425. 1267 Pilgrim 2013: 263. 1268 Two papers appeared in 1941: Gardiner and Černý 1941 and Černý 1941c. 1269 As shown in Černý 1970a. 1270 With thanks to Nathalie Sojic for consulting the history of these ostraca. 1271 Some ostraca were specified to have been found in February 1940; see Černý 1951a: 9. 1272 See Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: Chapter 4, ‘Die Zäsur—1933 und die Folgen’. 1266

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me and you will not have any (unless I get into a real danger of starving), except for the balance of £50, which, as you will see from your small note-book, was left over in my favour when we made the last accounts in August last year. Perhaps you will be kind enough to pay them to my Bank some time, but only when it is convenient to you, because I am in no real need of money now, or you will allow me to draw up to that sum from Mrs. Borchardt. Of course, I do not even know if she is in Egypt, I have the impression somebody told me she was in Switzerland. My work here progresses quite satisfactorily: I added a number of new graffiti to those previously collected and well on the way towards the fourth fascicule of the ostraca, besides several smaller topics, e.g. interesting Coptic graffiti in a anachoret’s [sic] cell in the mountain. I shall stay here till the end of the excavations, i.e. till about March 20th, and move then to Cairo.1273

Jaro was also keen to keep Gardiner informed about the progress of his various papers. It might appear inconsiderate that Gardiner kept pressing for contributions to the JEA when his colleague and employee was in such complicated circumstances, but Jaro did not react to these exhortations in any way other than a willingness to be accommodating. This pattern, of a pushy Gardiner and an obliging Jaro, was going on throughout their wartime correspondence. Jaro considered himself to be technically Gardiner’s employee and felt obliged to tolerate any pressure. He also seems to have adopted Gardiner’s outlook, that publications were paramount and that research work was part of the war effort, this time on the cultural front. Gardiner was determined to contradict any notion that inter arma silent Musae. Despite the ongoing war, Gardiner was repeatedly insistent that ‘The work of science must continue and be carried on by us who cannot fight, so that barbarism does not have it all its own way!’1274 Gardiner’s hectoring sounds bombastic in retrospect, but in its day it was an encouraging battle cry for Jaro, who repeatedly sought enlistment with no success.

1273 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.44, 15 February 1940, on paper with the IFAO letterhead. 1274 GIA, Collection Černý, Correspondence, Černý Mss. 21.721, 7 July 1940.

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However, Jaro was significantly upset by Gardiner’s care, or lack thereof, of his precious notebooks with transcriptions: I received your second letter which acknowledges the receipt of my letter of 7th Jan, I got terribly upset on reading this second letter of yours, as I gather from it that my note-books have been sent merely registered. Of course, I should have strongly objected to their leaving the safety they enjoyed in your house, if I had known that they would not be entrusted to the Foreign Office, as you suggested in one of your former letters. The note-books have not yet reached me up to now, though two full months have elapsed since Richman [Gardiner’s butler] sent them off, and I doubt that they will ever reach me. After the loss of the majority of the scientific material left at home this is another hard blow and you will understand, how deeply distressed I am. It looks as if I should lose anything I had [sic] in the worries of the present time.1275

This letter betrays at once Jaro’s anxiety when he refers to the value of his unpublished material, gathered over many years, his immediate worry regarding the potentially permanent loss of papers he had left in Prague. It also reveals a loss of confidence in Gardiner, who had suggested using the Foreign Office to transfer these materials to Egypt. As the war proceeded, Jaro increasingly felt the assumed loss, especially as some of his notes in Prague contained work on material from Gardiner’s private collection, such as the Will of Naunakhte. Gardiner had two main contacts in the Foreign Office: Fairman, who was eventually assigned to the British Embassy in Cairo, and Sir Stephen Gaselee.1276 The latter was a flamboyant personality who must have appealed to some of Gardiner’s tastes, although Gardiner was generally rather more sedate. Gaselee, with almost as many friends as interests, a first-class classical scholar, a bibliophile, a bibliographer, a liturgiologist; Gaselee, who when playing tennis wore his hair in a net; who kept Siamese cats, fed with a revolting portion of cow’s lung preserved on a plate above his bookshelf; who had a fire every day

1275

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.44, 15 February 1940. Sir Stephen Gaselee, KCMG (19882–1943), a Foreign Office librarian and scholar, included Coptologist, Classical scholar, and medievalist among his many areas of expertise; Storrs and McKitterick 2004. 1276

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in the year because England has a cold climate; who founded the Deipnosophists’ dining club, where the members, robed in purple dinner-jackets lined with lilac silk and preluding dashingly on Vodka, would launch forth into an uncharted ocean of good food and even better talk; Gaselee, who read, wrote and spoke Ancient Coptic (which the Copts themselves had not done for 300 years); Gaselee, nightly puffing his long churchwarden whilst he expatiated on Petronius, vestments, Shark’s Fin and cooking problems; a lay Prince of the Church, Ecclesiastic Militant and Gastronomer Royal.1277

His sartorial tastes were always conspicuous without being disreputable—in Cambridge he revived a tradition of wearing ‘a top-hat with his gown according to the ancient but longabandoned habit of non-resident M.A.’s.’ His self-fashioning was such that he wore both his top hats and his eccentricities lightly, not making them incongruous, even though he ‘evoked an age more spacious that that in which he lived.’1278 Gaselee was still working at the Foreign Office, where he had been active in various capacities since the First World War.1279 He was deeply interested in aspects of Coptic Egypt, was involved in the Egypt Exploration Society—he became its president in 1941— and at first sight seems to have been surprisingly open to discussing archaeology with Gardiner during wartime. The war did not seem so serious in early 1940, when it was still the ‘phoney war’ and Italy had not yet entered the fray with its ideas of acquiring large swathes of the Sahara Desert.1280 But Gaselee kept these communication lines open even at the height of the desert war. The value of an academic project in wartime was no doubt considered in relation to its usefulness to cultural diplomacy, and Gardiner and Gaselee were part of a quirky overlap between university and government. C. P. Snow captured the relationship inimitably: ‘The links between universities and “government” were very strong. They happened, of course, as a residue of privilege; the official world in England was still relatively small and

1277 1278 1279 1280

Storrs 1943: 14. Gow 1943: 456. Gow 1943. See Kitchen 2009.

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compact; when in difficulties it asked who was a useful man.’1281 But Gaselee had personal motivations too. The iniquities of the world could not touch his confidence, and he used his privilege to both enjoy himself and to serve causes he found worthy. His disregard for personal danger was such that he had visit Istanbul to study manuscripts during a mutiny in 1906.1282 He believed that one should really not get perturbed just because of a political problem, even one so noticeable as a world war. Equally, Gaselee refused to be perturbed by his own health, which deteriorated during the war years. Gardiner was similarly capable of remarkable professional focus in the midst of wartime tension, and engaged in correspondence with Gaselee regarding several matters, such as the protection of Egyptian monuments or the establishment of a British research institute in Egypt.1283 Fairman wanted to take over the sequestered German Institute and Aylward Blackman offered himself as director.1284 At this early stage of the war, and apart from upsetting him by endangering his precious notebooks, Gardiner still pursued Jaro continuously with requests for papers for the JEA.1285 He was inadvertently comical in his single-mindedness, especially as the war progressed. The maintenance of morale a national as well as a personal concern, and for Gardiner, and at least in part for Jaro, this consisted of pursuing scholarship as normal, and of hopes that the war might soon end. Gardiner wrote to Jaro to say ‘I am afraid you will not have any very satisfactory news of your people in Prague, but I trust this horror will be over in a few months and you will then see them again.’1286 For Beneš, too, the solution to sustaining morale also lay in the dogged pursuit of work, and he focused on moving the status of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile from provisional to recognized. The position of Czechoslovaks was more complex than of other exile politicians or governments, many of which were (or were to be) set up in London, the epicentre of Allied 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286

Snow 1951: 305. Gow 1943. Outline in Lewis 2016. Thompson 2015–2018, III: 208. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.713, 2 February 1940. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.711, 23 January 1940.

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activity. Technically, there was still a government in Prague headed by Emil Hácha, although the protectorate was not officially recognized by most powers. Beneš had the further issue of not having fled his country after a struggle: technically, he had abdicated, and needed to have this abdication declared null and void.1287 Beneš set up a circle of politicians and began to organize a government, but patience for the Czechoslovaks was running low in London, and Jan Masaryk (the son of former president Tomáš Masaryk) began to sign off communications with his appointed Foreign Office liaison, Lockhart, with ‘Yours provisionally’.1288 In March, while continuing work on ostraca and graffiti, Jaro copied papyrus DeM 31 and a few others.1289 He was somewhat placated as his notebooks had finally arrived in February, and the Deir el-Medina season was declared a success.1290 This would prove to be the last season at the site until the war ended. Jaro returned to Cairo at the end of March. The Czechoslovak expatriate community had by now rallied around the legation and begun resistance work in exile, so Jaro reported to the military authority at the legation as instructed and tried yet again to enlist in the Czechoslovak army. This second attempt to contribute to the war effort ended very much like the first, as he was rejected due to his weak eyesight and the fact that he was already fortyone years old. He could not be accepted for active service, but was listed as potentially useful in auxiliary forces.1291 Gardiner also found Jaro a new task, to comment on the first draft of his commentary on the Wilbour papyrus.1292 Jaro was tackling a growing backlog,1293 but Gardiner was particularly interested in Jaro’s input as the Wilbour papyrus was a significant source for the economic history of late Ramesside Egypt— 1287

Dejmek et al. 2018: 326–327. Lockhart 1947: 106. 1289 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.113, p. 42 and passim. 1290 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.715, 7 March 1940. 1291 AMZV, Personal file J. Černý, memo for May 1944; Central Military Archive Prague, Personal file J. Černý, osobní spis, 255-90206/48, states that Jaro applied on 27 April 1940 to serve in the Czechoslovak army in Egypt, but was drafted only for the auxiliary service. 1292 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.42, 1 April 1940. 1293 See also GIA, Collection Černý, AHG 42.56.43, 28 February 1940. 1288

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it named individuals, the categories and amounts of land they held, and the commodities they cultivated—and Jaro might have known of parallels in his Deir el-Medina texts. Jaro was probably quite tired during the following Egyptian spring and summer, but plodded on with publications and other work. As an enclosure to a letter dated 1 April 1940 he submitted an article on temple names, identifying ḥw.t as a local Theban diminutive name for the large memorial (also known as ‘mortuary’ in modern Egyptological terminology) temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, in Western Thebes. This temple was particularly important in the West Theban supply network and significant for the Deir el-Medina community. In the same letter he noted that he set himself the task of finalizing the transcriptions of papyri at the IFAO, but did not forget to send Gardiner a full report on archaeological work that season, including ongoing work in Tanis and an Egyptian team clearing the causeway of Unas.1294 Life for Jaro now had two foci: the IFAO and his Egyptological contacts, and the Czechoslovak legation and expatriate community, particularly the Haises, who still lived nearby in Garden City. Jaro was careful not to mention his Czechoslovak connections in Egyptological correspondence, with very few exceptions, until 1942. This might have been due to many reasons, most of which are speculative. One obvious possibility is that he could not know who would be reading his despatches, and where the information might penetrate. The Allies increasingly regarded the Egyptian political scene as being not entirely fond of the British, or of Allied war effort in general, and that some elements among Egyptian political and military circles might take an interest in making the British situation more difficult. This was more related to anti-British sentiments than to a large pro-Nazi movement among the Egyptian elites, but was a recurrent annoyance in the war effort. An added problem was that rumours were being spread among ordinary Egyptians, where Axis propaganda even tried to sell the image of Hitler as a Muslim named Muhammad ‘Ider, who would lower the price of food and depose the British.1295 1294 1295

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.42, 1 April 1940. Cooper 1995: 100–101.

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Few Egyptian workers or journalists were seduced by this, and understood that such propaganda was both clear and naïve. The workers’ periodical Shubra, for example, supported Egyptian politicians who supported the Allies: Mustafa al-Nahas and Makram ‘Ubayd were placed at the side of Churchill, Eden, Roosevelt and Gandhi … This represented a certain boldness given that colonial domination continued and that certain currents in Egypt were leaning more to the Axis, whether because of anti-British sentiment or a fascination for authoritarian experiences.1296

This boldness demonstrates that there were many Egyptians capable of seeing beyond Imperial conceit, and of realizing that that the shared experience of humanity needed to be defended against an even greater danger. Churchill’s rhetoric on the matter found support, in statements such as: ‘We are fighting by ourselves; but we are not fighting for ourselves.’ The contrast with Hitler’s wars of racial egoism could not have been greater, and it did much to win the admiration of even that not inconsiderable number of foreigners who otherwise detested the arrogance and condescension of the British.1297

Nazi Germany would have made a highly dubious ‘ally’ for Egypt and the Egyptians, but Axis propaganda played the antiBritish card in both Iraq and Egypt, and Allied officers needed to be suspicious by default, and to develop counter-initiatives. Allied attention in May and June was drawn to developments in Belgium and France. ‘I think I cannot be expected to do very much useful work, while that enormous battle rages in Belgium, which will decide on lives of us all,’ wrote Jaro to Gardiner on 14 May.1298 Capart, Jaro’s steady correspondent, was ultimately left behind enemy lines, but Mekhitarian, being an Egyptian citizen, was able to leave for Egypt and soon managed the Fondation égyptologique dig-house at Elkab.1299

1296 1297 1298 1299

Gorman and Monciaud 2018: 301. Burleigh 2010: 166. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.41. Thompson 2015–2018, III: 208.

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Nonetheless, Jaro still managed to act as Gardiner’s buyer. In May, Olive Fairman, Herbert’s wife, informed Gardiner that: Černý has just received your letter of February 24th and he has been negotiating with the dealer for some time and he has agreed upon a price for the important ostracon. The price is very satisfactory and well below the maximum figure. There are, however, some difficulties (not on the part of Černý or the dealer) about getting the ostracon out of the country and Černý is trying to find a satisfactory solution before clinching the matter. He is having a talk with the dealer tomorrow … and hopes then to reach a final decision about the steps to be taken.1300

Fairman was able to keep Gardiner updated via letters he sent—speedily—via the diplomatic bag. Gardiner used the same arrangement for replies, addressing his letters to the Foreign Office in Whitehall, from whence they made their official way to Cairo. Meanwhile, Allied eyes were most intensely focused elsewhere. Between 26 May and 4 June, Allied troops were evacuated from France in what was officially called Operation Dynamo but what has in popular culture become known as the Little Ships of Dunkirk. The remnants of the Czechoslovak army that Jaro hoped to join in France were now on British soil, and nearly ninety Czechoslovak airmen would soon take part in the Battle of Britain, and together with their Polish colleagues, rank among legendary flying aces. Jan Masaryk wryly asked Lockhart whether the airman who died in the defence of Britain should be regarded as ‘provisionally dead’,1301 as provisionally as the Czechoslovak government was accepted in Britain. The war escalated. Italy declared war on the Allies, and such was the reputation of Italian colonizers in Libya and Ethiopia that Egyptian public opinion swung further from the Axis. Allied troops might have been considered a nuisance, but they did not pillage and rape. It was one thing to murmur about ‘Muhammad ‘Ider’ and fair prices for sugar, but quite another to have Hitler’s Italian associates rape your family, as they were known to do. Political prevarication did not exactly change, as 1300 1301

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.145, 23 May 1941. Lockhart 1947: 118–119.

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‘while the Egyptians were grateful for British help in keeping the Italians out of their country, they had no wish to be involved in the war between England and Germany.’1302 Nonetheless, Italian men of military age were interred, ‘which caused great inconvenience to everybody since they were mostly mechanics and electricians.’1303 Jaro doggedly carried on his own version of the war effort, despite the distractions, and submitted a paper on înn to Gardiner, destined for the JEA.1304 They still managed to communicate, sometimes by telegraph. Fairman, as an embassy employee, had an increasing role in maintaining open communication channels. On 7 June, Jaro reported enthusiastically about the group of ostraca that Olive Fairman had already mentioned to Gardiner, relating that he saw them in the possession of the dealer Tano, including some with legal transactions and a piece of ‘54 × 31 cm, I well remember the break, completing your big Sinuhe ostracon.’1305 This ostracon was to prove one of the largest and most complex Ramesside copies of a narrative that had originated in the Middle Kingdom but was copied throughout the New Kingdom, and even Gardiner’s grudgingly approved of it as a ‘classic’.1306 Gardiner was interested in obtaining this particular ostracon, and tried to advance monies for the purchase. The complete piece is now known as the Ashmolean Ostracon of Sinuhe.1307 Jaro was still settled at the IFAO in Mounira, where Vichy influence had not reached in full, although the Institute ‘was legally responsible to the Vichy diplomatic presence in Cairo.’1308 Neither Pierre Jouguet nor Charles Kuentz were Vichy sympathizers and instead supported France Libre. The IFAO ‘remained open but almost empty,’1309 with only Jouguet and Kuentz keeping 1302

Cooper 1995: 48. Cooper 1995: 47. 1304 GIA, Collection Černý, Correspondence, Černý Mss. 21.721, 7 June 1940. 1305 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.39, 7 June 1940. 1306 Parkinson 2002: 12–14. 1307 For the editio princeps of this ostracon see Barns 1952; for an overview of readings and interpretations of Sinuhe in general see Parkinson 2002: 151–168, and Parkinson 2009: 224–246, 254–256. 1308 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 209–210; quote p. 210. 1309 Thompson 2015–2018, III: 210. 1303

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Jaro company, though they would shortly be joined by Alexandre Varille, who came to have Vichy sympathies. Desroches had left for France in May,1310 to have a hand in protecting the Louvre collections, and later became active in the French resistance.1311 Other Egyptologists (alongside many other archaeologists, philologists and historians) were quickly drafted into the war effort. Pendlebury was deployed in Crete with much flair, continuing a ‘life of relished contrasts’ that was cut short when he was captured and possibly summarily executed by German soldiers near Heraklion.1312 Emery joined the intelligence service, rising from Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant-Colonel over the course of the war. Stephen Glanville became a Wing Commander in the RAF, and was placed in charge of Polish and Czechoslovak airmen in Britain.1313 Jaro still itched to take part, but having neither the physical prowess of Pendlebury nor the option yet to work directly for the Czechoslovak resistance, he instead continued work on his Theban material, collating Deir el-Medina papyri in August.1314 There was limited contact with Bruyère, as his Deir el-Medina colleague was in France during the fall; Jaro was no less upset about the fall of Paris and Dunkirk than he had been about the occupation of Czechoslovakia over a year earlier.1315 By the second half of the year, Jaro was without means. He had hoped for another French scholarship to be granted in November, and had received some promises by Guy Brunton and Octave Guéraud, another French Egyptologist at the Cairo Museum: Jaro would essentially borrow from them and repay them after the war, expecting that Gardiner would settle the sums due. Jaro also had the vague idea of preparing the Instructions of Ani for publication in the IFAO series and using manuscripts from Deir el-Medina and the Louvre as his basis, but as the 1310

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.40, 17 May 1940. Desroches-Noblecourt 2003: 107–118. 1312 Beevor 1992 includes information about Pendlebury’s wartime exploits (pp. 24–25, 70–71, 96–98, 140, quote p. 71). Further details can be found in the comprehensive biography by Grundon 2007. 1313 For an outline see Thompson 2015–2018, III: 211–214. 1314 On 30 August he was collating Deir el-Medina papyri from the 1940 season; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.113, p. 18; GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.38. 1315 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.38, 11 October 1940. 1311

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appropriate notebook was not among those posted from London he abandoned the plan. He also delayed his work on twenty-first dynasty chronology, expecting Pierre Montet to finish work at Tanis first.1316 Around the middle of 1940, Jaro began to rethink his research. He came to the conclusion that he was inevitably limited by focusing on the Theban workmen, though this had already led to numerous studies, and decided to instead concentrate on monuments closer at hand, within easier reach of Cairo: the monuments on the pyramid fields of Giza, Abusir, and particularly Saqqara, which held a large number of decorated tombs. He would document texts from monuments that he believed to be fragile and in danger. His friend Fairman was very interested in mapping endangered monuments, and it’s possible that the two hatched a plan between themselves. This also took Jaro away from central Cairo and the IFAO, where he might have been feeling trapped. He was accustomed to being on the move every few weeks or months, but was now uncharacteristically stationary. A few months after beginning this undertaking he felt obliged to explain his reasoning to Gardiner: I am afraid that by time when they are officially recorded and published, many signs will be illegible that I am still able to see now and my copies will most probably be highly welcome. I came convinced that my recording inscriptions in mastabas is valuable, so much so that most of them are considered as being saved and exhausted by the existing publication, which is, however, not true, many of them being practically illegible and some of these even omitted in published photographs. Moreover, the life in Sakkara being very simple, it is also less expensive. I therefore hope you will approve all this work of mine.1317

Thus, he began slowly, with trips to Mitrahina in October 1940,1318 and Abusir in November,1319 to copy Old Kingdom texts and other material. He was concerned with both primary and secondary material, as demonstrated in the mastaba of Ptahshepses where he copied both the Old Kingdom decorations 1316 1317 1318 1319

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.42. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.35, 10 February 1941. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.118, 6 October 1940 visit to Mitrahina. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.118: p. 3f.

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and—on another occasion—its New Kingdom visitors’ graffiti.1320 The workload was also a buffer against anxiety, as a typical passage from Jaro’s October letter to Gardiner reads: I have of course no news at all from my family and we know very little of our French friends and colleagues. Of these only Kuentz, Varille and Piankoff are here in Cairo. Vandier was when we heard of him last at St. Jean de Luz, Clère too was in the south of France though about to return to Paris. We do not know of Boreux, Weill, and Lefebvre; Chevrier, Robichon and Posener are, we hope, prisoners … Mlle Desroches was last heard of when she was transporting Louvre’s collections from the Loire castles to the south of France towards the end of May.1321

The anxiety is palpable in a list where even being held prisoner was a hoped-for status. Gardiner later had news from Posener, who had escaped and was active in the resistance.1322 In early October, Jouguet was replaced as director of the IFAO in Cairo by Kuentz.1323 Kuentz was Jaro’s colleague at Deir el-Medina and was supportive of his work, and so ensured that Jaro was on the list of attachés étrangers at the IFAO.1324 Jaro was by then borrowing money from Brunton, and as he was spending about fifteen pounds per month, he hoped that Gardiner would eventually repay this goodwill. Jaro’s Egyptological lifestyle was not significantly restricted as he still worked in the library of the IFAO and would occasionally visit archaeological sites. After a trip to Saqqara in October he related meeting various people from London who were more-or-less distantly acquainted with Gardiner.1325 Matters among the Czechoslovak government-in-exile were moving in London, though uncomfortably slowly as far as Beneš was concerned. As the ‘phoney war’ transitioned into a real war in the summer of 1940 the Czechoslovaks became increasingly, 1320

On the Ptahshepses graffiti, see Navratilova 2015a. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.38, 11 October 1940. 1322 Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 405. The news came via Posener’s brother Vladimir, who had emigrated to the USA. 1323 Vercoutter 1980: 23. 1324 AIFAO, Personal file J. Černý, a list probably dated to 1940 (as Jaro is shown to be forty-two years old), Cairo. 1325 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.38, 11 October 1940. 1321

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if grudgingly,1326 acknowledged as allies. The Battle of Britain had already begun, and Czechoslovak airmen had entered the Royal Air Force alongside their Polish and other colleagues, significantly bolstering Fighter Command. The group of politicians around Beneš was only acknowledged as a provisional Czechoslovak government in July 1940,1327 after Paris-based critics such as Milan Hodža and Štefan Osuský lost their footing after the fall of France.1328 Beneš had achieved a decisive position from which to shape the Czechoslovak resistance and government, but the adjective ‘provisional’ was increasingly regarded as irksome. Czechoslovak legations, including the offices in Cairo, were expatriate centres but their formal standing as diplomatic offices was in dispute because Czechoslovakia was only gradually acknowledged among the Allied countries, after the recognition of its exile government in London. The Cairene legation had survived,1329 and Egypt never discontinued de facto diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia despite the de jure challenges to the very existence of the state. Fully reciprocal diplomatic relations were officially renewed only in May 1941, when an Egyptian chargé d’affaires was accredited at the Czechoslovak governmentin-exile in London.1330 Amid this atmosphere of general uncertainty, Jaro briefly hoped to obtain a position at the Cairo University in the winter of 1940. It would have no doubt been of great personal satisfaction as well as very tangible material relief. Hermann Junker, as a Nazi party member and a German by birth, found his position untenable and he had been forced to leave his chair at the University in 1939, in favour of Percy Newberry.1331 Jaro had hopes for this chair,1332 but by then the Egyptianization of the university was well under way,1333 and the chair went instead to 1326

Brown 1998. See also Brown’s contribution in Conway and Gotovitch 2001. Němeček 2006, I: 5–8. 1328 Němeček 2006, I: 8. 1329 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, Egyptian legation, 18 November 1940; see also Smetana 2014: 153 with further references. 1330 Němeček 2006, I: 14 and 422. 1331 Reid 1990: 95–96. 1332 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.37, 16 December 1940. 1333 Reid 1990: 99–102. 1327

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a gifted scholar named Sami Gabra, one of Peet’s students.1334 Jaro was somewhat disappointed and complained to Gardiner about machinations behind the scenes,1335 but apparently did not bear a grudge even though the chair would have provided him a financial safety net in Egypt. His position as an exile in survival mode, appreciative of any form of assistance, was obviously different from the local perspective of the Egyptian scholars, who were interested in promoting Egyptian Egyptology and who needed to engage in faculty politics. Jaro instead returned to Saqqara, to keep his documentation project going. He spent some time with Grdseloff in an otherwise empty flat in the so-called Mariette House, which belonged to the Antiquities Service, and visited nearby monuments. Grdseloff had a car, so they could motor to and from Cairo. Jaro was fascinated by the monuments, though he thought only briefly about exchanging his customary New Kingdom hieratic for monumental decorations.1336 The Mariette House embodies realm of memory in Egyptology. It was this house, somewhat rudimentary but welcoming for those who wanted to stay on the necropolis, where Auguste Mariette had lived during his seasons at Saqqara in the 1850s.1337 It was here where Howard Carter and his inspector and gaffirs had a tense encounter with a group of drunken tourists, which ultimately cost Carter his job with the Antiquities Service.1338 From Jaro’s perspective, it was a convenient and highly practical place to stay, and also one where he might have live a simpler— and cheaper—life than in Cairo. Financial considerations were becoming more and more pressing, and Jaro was forced to reject every expense but the most necessary. Still, he managed to maintain a degree of social contact with Egyptologists stationed in Cairo,1339 who were mostly working either in the IFAO library or in the Egyptian Museum. There was his stalwart friend Fairman, who was stationed in Cairo in his capacity at the British

1334 1335 1336 1337 1338 1339

Reid 2015: 114–122, and Reid 1997. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.37, 16 December 1940. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.37, 16 December 1940. Lauer 1976: 25–28. James 2006: 118f. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.36, 21 December 1940.

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Embassy,1340 Reginald Engelbach in the Egyptian Museum, Alan Rowe in Alexandria in a curatorial capacity, and one of the doyens of research at Giza, George Reisner, was still living in his camp on the pyramid site.1341 Anxiety regarding his friends’ whereabouts remained. Toward the end of the year, he was relieved to learn that Bruyère was accounted for in Paris, but was still worried about Posener, who was also reported to be in Paris but, being Jewish, had an uncertain future. He met regularly with Fairman, ‘twice a week, once for cinema, once for Egyptological talk,’1342 and Fairman also visited Jaro at the IFAO to consult references in the Institute’s library.1343 Around this time Jaro had the opportunity to accept—via Battiscombe Gunn—an academic role connected with the University of Oxford. It was to supervise the BLitt thesis of Abd el-Mohsen Bakir, concerned with Egyptian personal correspondence, for whom Jaro was a suitable supervisor given his research interests and history in the study of Egyptian epistolography. Gunn found his time much occupied during the war,1344 and Bakir was due to return to Egypt, so Jaro in Cairo was ideally situated to help Bakir finish his thesis. The outbreak of war, as Bakir noted in the preface of his thesis, complicated matters substantially. Bakir was first at Oxford and then in Cairo, but Jaro’s notebooks, which contained muchneeded updated transcriptions of papyri in Leyden, Turin, and Strasbourg were in London and—even less accessible—in Prague.1345 Jaro first worked with Bakir long-distance, but when Bakir returned to Cairo, they forged a useful professional rapport, as well as a friendly personal relationship. The distractions of Saqqara could never entirely replace Deir el-Medina, and Jaro’s work soon turned again to the papyri from the 1928 cache, including those at the IFAO which he believed 1340

‘Egyptology in the University of Liverpool’, 1948. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.36, 21 December 1940. 1342 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.37, 16 December 1940. 1343 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.31, 19 December 1941. 1344 Gunn was elected to the British Academy in 1943, whilst struggling with the dissolution of his first marriage and trying to pursue Egyptological tasks. See Simpson 2004; Dawson 1950; and Bierbrier 2019: 198–199. 1345 Bakir 1941: iii. 1341

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might join the Will of Naunakhte papyrus in Gardiner’s possession. His notes on the Will were in Prague, however.1346 Jaro hoped for a while that he might be paid for work on the papyri of the Cairo Museum, but evidently there was no money with which to pay him. Jaro then began to worry about air raids over London. Here his perspective differed strongly from that of many Brits in Cairo, who saw it as heartening that the Battle of Britain had ended in an Allied victory, but from their purely localized perspective ‘the war was still very far from Cairo.’1347 Jaro and his Egyptological colleagues were among those who were fully informed and aware of the differences between London during the Blitz (or occupied Czechoslovakia) and the still well-supplied Cairo, where locally-stationed British officers still bothered about dress codes among colleagues who had urgently arrived from the UK. Captain Gordon Wakefield, who brought with him plans for the destruction of the Addis Ababa to Djibouti railway (drawn up to complicate matters for the Italians during their campaigns in Eritrea and Ethiopia), was confronted with a distinct lack of concern for his mission, but considerable concern for his shorts, which were deemed unsuitable for most of the Cairene establishments frequented by British officers.1348 Even so, 1940 saw Allied presence in Egypt strengthened, military infrastructures built, and supply lines organized, mainly for raw materials as food and even luxuries were still plentiful.1349 In Britain it was well understood—and Churchill certainly understood—that Egypt was pivotal to the war effort. The Suez Canal offered the quickest route from the European theatre to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, including access to the oil fields of Iraq.1350 Beyond Suez lay the way into Palestine, and the Nazis were not likely to limit their Final Solution only to regions under their direct control.1351

1346

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.36, 21 December 1940. Cooper 1995: 4. Which does not signify that the strategic importance of Egypt was misunderstood. See Morewood 2005. 1348 This story was related by Cooper 1995: 3–5. 1349 Cooper 1995: 5 and 45. 1350 See Churchill 1950. 1351 See also Browning 2004. 1347

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By January 1941, Jaro had resumed his mission of visiting sites in the vicinity of Cairo, copying Old Kingdom material. The last day of January saw him working at Giza in the tomb of Khufukhaf, and producing textual records accompanied by plans of the tombs, very much in the style of Rosalind Moss for her Topographical Bibliography.1352 Jaro also visited Reisner in his camp near the Giza pyramids, relating in a letter to Gardiner that he found him in a rather bad shape, nearly blind. The tone of this letter suggests that Jaro was starting to become relatively sanguine about the fortunes of war, although he still noted that ‘we are without any news from Prague and I have not heard from my family for nearly a year now. I am afraid to write to them as the last time I did so, the Gestapo immediately started to watch them. Still, I hope they have not been molested.’1353 The letter hints at the tension in his mind. The pressure on his family must have been considerable, as the Gestapo systematically pressurized both German society and non-Germans in states and regions controlled by the Nazi regime. Although manipulation, blackmail and terror are perhaps bestdocumented Gestapo policies,1354 anyone singled out for attention could expect to be shunned by frightened neighbours, and to face risks to their personal safety and economic security. An atmosphere of denunciations, suspicion, and surveillance was unfolding across Germany and its occupied territories. There is no specific reference to ‘his girl’ of the pre-war years. Evidently Jaro did not meet her in the exile, or if he intended to then the meeting did not go to plan. In Cairo he was without intimate companionship. Toward the end of January, he successfully concluded the supervision of Bakir’s thesis. Bakir considered himself indebted to Selim Hassan, who had recommended him for government scholarships, and was very thankful to Jaro. Their prefatory words complemented each other in a fine example of academic courtesy. Bakir said of Jaro that ‘he was unsparing in his efforts to forward the work.’1355 Jaro in return wrote: 1352 1353 1354 1355

Dated 31 January 1941; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.121, p. 2. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.35, 10 February 1941. Gellately 1990. Bakir 1941: v.

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For several months I have had the pleasure of following and directing Abdel Mohsen Bakir’s work in connection with the thesis and during all the time he showed great energy and zeal, as well as intelligence in the pursuit of his scientific investigations. The thesis itself represents the first survey ever made of ancient Egyptian epistolary style, and contains a number of new and interesting discussions on both philological and archaeological points connected with the subject. In addition, the thesis embodies several hitherto unpublished transcriptions from hieratic originals, and translations of Egyptian letters. I consider the thesis to be an important contribution to the science of Egyptology.1356

This comment reveals Jaro’s concept of Egyptology: a ‘science’ with philological and archaeological components. Jaro further recommended publication of the thesis ‘following the example set by the Doctoral Theses of those students who accomplished their studies in Berlin,’ making it clear that recommendations of good practice in scholarship took no sides, not even in a war with Germany. The accompanying evaluation by Engelbach was likewise effusive, and he opined that it was the best example of research that any Egyptian Egyptologist had yet produced.1357 The thesis was typed up and bound in Cairo,1358 and sent to Oxford. The resulting book was—with many hearty endorsements—eventually published by the IFAO.1359 In February Jaro moved again to Saqqara. On the 12th and 13th he was copying texts along the Causeway of Unas,1360 and between the 7th and 15th spent time in the complex of Mereruka, copying the texts in the tomb of Mereruka’s wife, including later graffiti.1361 He also copied Old Kingdom texts from the mastabas of Ti and Mereruka, and, as far as they were accessible, on blocks from the causeway; ‘especially these last are very interesting.’1362 1356 A copy of letter by Jaro, dated 27 January 1941, enclosed with the Bodleian Library copy of Bakir’s thesis; Bakir 1941. 1357 A copy of a letter by R. Engelbach, dated 16 February 1941, enclosed with the Bodleian Library copy of Bakir’s thesis; Bakir 1941. 1358 As referred to by Bakir in its preface, and corroborated by the calligraphic frontispiece in Bakir 1941. 1359 Bakir 1970. 1360 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.120, 12–13 February 1941, p. 56f. 1361 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.119, p. 2f., on 7 to 15 February 1941. 1362 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.35, 10 February 1941.

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Jaro was also working on proofs of some papers that would be published in 1941. These were mostly shorter publications on aspects of life in Western Thebes, with a particular focus on oracular practices and local toponymy.1363 His grammarian’s interests were still buttressed by Gardiner, and these resulted in an effectively co-authored paper, ‘ˆInn in Late Egyptian’. The paper aimed at resolving of the meaning of the eponymous word, or rather words, and Jaro drew on his knowledge of nonliterary texts and comparanda from Coptic.1364 Gardiner was impressed, as he noted in the published version, although he was more critical when exchanging letters with Jaro. Gardiner mentioned in the first footnote of the published version that ‘At my friend Černý’s wish and suggestion I have edited this paper somewhat drastically, and part of the responsibility for it, though none of the credit for its admirable conclusions, must therefore rest upon me.’1365 Jaro trusted Gardiner, and may have felt a little overwhelmed by his demanding, if self-instituted, research programme. He had built up his own workload to resolve—or perhaps deafen—wartime anxiety. Another of Jaro’s papers in 1941, on a Coptic word for the name of Manetho, appeared (in Latin) in a Vatican Museum Festschrift.1366 This was another projection of the etymological interests that he would continue for the rest of his professional life. As in the previous year, Jaro was beset by financial difficulties. Gardiner eventually managed to alleviate these, but only in the later part of the year, by arranging for Jaro to draw funds from Brunton or a ‘Mr Mackintosh’, an acquaintance of Gardiner’s.1367 Jaro still considered himself Gardiner’s employee, to some extent, and was alert for papyri and ostraca that might be purchased and exported, notably the export of the impressive joining fragment to the Ashmolean Ostracon of Sinuhe. Gardiner was evidently looking forward to receiving it, but was sanguine: 1363

Particularly Černý 1941b and Černý 1941c. Jaro gradually built a research archive for Coptic (GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 18), and a Coptic grammar index (GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 23.1–23.3). 1365 Gardiner and Černý 1941: 106. 1366 Černý 1941a. 1367 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.35, 10 February 1941. 1364

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I really do not want to possess [emphasis Gardiner] these documents, only to get an opportunity to preserve them and study them … there might not be any difficulty about obtaining permission to export the other half of the large Sinuhe ostracon, since permission was given as regards the part which I have presented to the Ashmolean Museum.1368

Jaro was not convinced about this permission, and warned Gardiner via Fairman: ‘Černý particularly asks me to request you to avoid all allusion to or mention of Sinuhe in correspondence or elsewhere. There would have been no possibility of obtaining the desired permission if Sinuhe had been declared to the Antiquities Service.’1369 This sounds paradoxical, or at least like a change of heart, as Jaro had himself first reported the ostracon to Gardiner, by name, in 1940. Comments such as these might be perceived as damaging, with Gardiner pretending to care about the artefacts whilst caring only for his professional dominion, exercized by controlling access to objects. This might be so if the comments were in the public domain, but instead they were in private correspondence, between colleagues, where face-saving was unnecessary. Rather, they show that the fate of objects on the antiquities market was known to be contentious, and collectors’ greed perceived to be highly problematic, and Gardiner was instead reinforcing his motivations. 1941 was something of an interim year, with Jaro mostly spending his time between the pyramid fields near Cairo, and Cairo itself. He spent most of his efforts on mapping ancient monuments, but what he may or may not have realized was that his observations would become fodder for a debate that was both professional and political: Fairman had used Jaro’s comments on his experiences at Saqqara to bolster his rather alarmist letters to Gardiner, who mediated them to the Foreign Office.1370 The letters began in 1941 and were mostly concerned with danger to Egyptian monuments during the war.

1368 1369 1370

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.725, 24 February 1941. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.144, p. 2. TNA, FO 371/31585.

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When Jaro wrote to Gardiner or other colleagues about either his surveys at Saqqara, or about Egyptian excavations there, he was typically very matter-of-fact. Then, in June, he wrote to Gardiner very enigmatically, stating that he had had a job that he had to leave for unclear reasons after a month of ‘hard work’. It must have been non-Egyptological work, as after it ended he stated ‘I am back in Egyptology again.’1371 He then embarked on processing the texts from Saqqara, producing lexicographical slips, hoping to build a study resource that might replace his notes and notebooks for Thebes, which had been left in Prague. This resource informed his later work at Saqqara. Meanwhile, news arrived that one Egyptologist colleague, Pendlebury, had died on Crete. It is reported he was wounded and then executed by the Nazis, although the actual cause of death might have been embolism rather than a gunshot. Irrespective of the cause, his was the death of a fighter.1372 Fairman was a friend, collaborator, and a trusted member of Pendlebury’s team at Amarna.1373 He must have been shocked when he learned at least the gist of what happened, which took some time as contravening reports blurred information concerning Pendlebury’s last moments.1374 The EES Committee meeting ‘received with great regret’ the news of his death, alongside the passing of Norman Davies, as late as January 1942.1375 Officially, Pendlebury’s death was noted in the scholarly world only after the war.1376 In the meantime, scholars, and explorers were being assigned wartime duties in adventurous settings. One such was the Long Range Desert Group (nicknamed the Scorpions, because on their badge),1377 which developed its operations significantly during 1940 to 1941. The LRDG was led by Ralph Alger Bagnold, who

1371

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.54.34, 21 June 1940. Janssen R. 2010; accounts of his death were unclear from the very beginning. See Beevor 1992: 141–142. 1373 Grundon 2007: 145, 158–159, 180, 182–183, 193–195, 199. 1374 Grundon 2007: 315–327. 1375 AEES, GCM 1942–1955, p. 1. 1376 Darvill 2008. 1377 These badges are preserved in the Imperial War Museum, in the uniforms and insignia collection; e.g., INS 43110 or, as part of an Arab headdress, INS 43109. 1372

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was assisted by Peter Clayton, William Shaw, and Guy Lenox Prendergast, who later replaced Bagnold as its commanding officer.1378 The LRDG was formed based on the need to operate with confidence in the Libyan desert, to gather detailed knowledge of the area, to prevent it being used by Axis forces. During 1941 to 1942, the LRDG often operated behind enemy lines and observed roads.1379 According to his own later recollections (and his obituarist), Emery was attached to the LRDG in some capacity,1380 making him another Egyptologist in active service. Emery must have seen service during the German offensive, though the official list of those serving in the LRDG from 1940 to early 1943 does not contain an officer named Emery. His role might have been (within the time frame) either unrecorded for political reasons,1381 or concealed under the role of ‘Intell[igence] and Topo[graphical]’ officer (with the rank of captain) in the list of personnel.1382 He was mentioned in despatches on 15 December 1942, and recommended for a military MBE with the rank of captain,1383 by Clayton,1384 and was later transferred to Military Intelligence in Cairo, away from field and combat roles. Compared to his friends and colleagues in active service, or at least in diplomatic and intelligence roles, Jaro must have found his position increasingly exasperating, and heaped work upon himself not only to drown his anxieties but also to make some sense of his own existence. As Gardiner would have it, he could be a soldier of culture.

1378 Shaw published an early account of LRDG activities shortly after the war ended: see Shaw 2015 [1945]. This was a memoir and contained some necessary omissions and changed names. An official early report/history of the LRDG was compiled for government use: TNA, CAB 44/151. Drafts of a history of the LRDG are also preserved in the Bagnold Bequest: Papers of the Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold, The Churchill Archives, Churchill College, University of Cambridge; BGND C, Long Range Desert Group. 1379 Detailed reports TNA, War Office, WO 218/90. 1380 Smith 1971. 1381 Appendix 3 of the ‘The History of the Long Range Desert Group June 1940 to March 1943’; TNA, CAB 44/151. There were several unnamed members of the team. He was however on a general list, and his regimental number was 108571, as shown in WO 373/77/137. 1382 TNA, CAB 44/151, Appendix 5 (231); see also CAB 44/151, pp. 82–84. 1383 Appeared in London Gazette in October 1943, TNA, WO 373/77/137. 1384 TNA, WO 373/77/137.

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In June 1941, Jaro also reported some wartime news from Czechoslovakia: Do you remember that Czech lady who came to London in 1935 and had a tea with us and admired your library? Her husband, formerly Chancellor to our President and a good friend of mine who used to help me a lot in my studies, died in a concentration camp. This is the kind of news we receive from home, if we receive any. My university was abolished … It must be a real hell in my country.1385

This was a short, concise, wartime reference to Přemysl Šámal, the man who had opened the world of professional Egyptology to Jaro. Jaro kept any bitterness he may have felt about the circumstances of Šámal’s death from his correspondence, instead conjuring first an urbane recollection of tea with Mrs FořtováŠámalová, but he could not remain entirely stoic when confronted with news of Šámal’s death. Jaro’s news must have been slightly inaccurate, as Šámal did not die in a concentration camp, but in a Berlin hospital,1386 though only after spending several months in Nazi prisons. The interrogations he underwent would have taxed anyone, but were devasting for a man who was seventy-three upon his arrest. And yet his fellow prisoners claimed that he had borne his imprisonment and torture with pride and grace.1387 His death was noted by the Foreign Office,1388 and he was warmly remembered by Jan Masaryk in BBC broadcasts that could be heard in the protectorate. Merely listening to these carried the death penalty.1389 Worse was to come in the protectorate. On 27 September 1941, a new Reichsprotektor was installed in Prague. Reinhard Heydrich had zero compunction where suppression, elimination and destruction were concerned, and was tasked with eliminating the Czech resistance and severing lines of communication between 1385

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.54.34, 21 June 1940. Narodní listy, 13.3.1941, c. 72, p. 3. 1387 Hajšman 1946: 5–6. 1388 TNA, FO 371, Foreign Office: Political Departments: General Correspondence from 1906–1966, 371–Czechoslovakia, FO 371/26400. 1389 Masaryk 1947: 116–117. Šámal was well-remembered immediately after the war, notably in a laudatory book by Hajšman 1946, and then forgotten after political change in Czechoslovakia in 1948. 1386

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Prague and London.1390 Beneš remained resolute, making it clear that if Czechoslovaks could fight in the RAF and in the Middle East, then the resistance in the homeland could make sacrifices and keep up the pressure on the occupiers. At this time the desert war had taken a dangerous turn. The Italians were now supported rather more systematically by Germans troops, and Erwin Rommel was actively campaigning with the idea of ultimately capturing Egypt. Czechoslovaks in British units were being sent from Syria to Tobruk,1391 and their exploits made a significant contribution toward the recognition of both the Czechoslovak resistance and the government-inexile. The units were successful partly because of their skilled technicians and mechanics: it was said that the Czechoslovaks only needed a crank-handle to give you back a car.1392 Their technical abilities were valued as was the growing desert experience of these relatively small units guarding the perimeter at Tobruk, the remote protection of which was also among the main aims of the LRDG. Jaro’s interests in the desert seem to have remained Egyptological. In August 1941, the long procedure of exporting a large collection of significant ostraca, first reported in 1940,1393 was finalized for Gardiner, settled with the help of Fairman and the antiquities dealer Tano. Fairman reported to Gardiner that Jaro chose to send the box containing the ostraca via Cape Town and cleared its permissions with the Antiquities Service. The joining piece to the Ashmolean Ostracon of Sinuhe was about to travel to Britain at the height of one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.1394 1941 was also the year in which Brunton approached Jaro with photographs of the rock texts and figures documented in the Sudanese Wadi Allaki, an area of ancient gold mines. This was 1390

Gerwarth 2011: 226–230. Brod 1967; see also Hrabica and Hrabica 2006, with quotes from memoirs, but unfortunately without systematic references. 1392 Hrabica and Hrabica 2006: 143; U děla na středním východě 1944: 92. 1393 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.32, 2 October 1941; regarding ostraca still waiting for a suitable ship via South Africa in 19 December 1941, see GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.31. 1394 It was fortunately stopped on its odyssey in South Africa and waited in Durban until 1945; Barns 1952: ‘Preface’. 1391

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an interesting proposition as Jaro had never visited the Nubian location, and had worked only from photographs and notes of others, which was unsuitable as his preferred approach was to ‘pay attention to topography and archaeology.’1395 Jaro had at least used information from visitors to the Wadi, Mr and Mrs Murray. George William Murray was the Director of the Topographical Survey of Egypt from 1937 to 1947, and visited Wadi Allaki during study trips made in the Egyptian deserts. His survey results were published in 1950.1396 In a subsequent paper, Jaro noted that ‘the photographs were taken in December 1940 by Mrs. Murray during her and her husband’s trip through the Wadi el-‘Allaki.’1397 He began to use these photographs to transcribe and translate the graffiti for that publication. He also appears to have become dissatisfied with his plan to survey the monuments at Saqqara systematically, and that it was not working exactly to his expectations. In October he wrote that his idea of redirecting his attention toward Old Kingdom monuments was not successful,1398 though his notebooks tell a different story, as they offer a large collection of recorded texts including both primary and secondary epigraphy. The later view by his colleagues was that the Memphite intermezzo had broadened his horizons considerably.1399 Jaro’s apparent despondency may be explained as the feelings of someone who felt unable to contribute meaningfully to the war effort, and in a precarious position. He was also working ‘hard’ again on the Late Egyptian Grammar, because he was asked to give some private lectures to his colleagues—Grdseloff, Alexandre Piankoff, Joseph Leibovitch, Varille, Bakir, and Mekhitarian—on the topic, while waiting for Gardiner’s recommendations on whether to process some of the Saqqara material further.1400 Fairman noted: 1395 Letter to Lexa from 6 January 1926, AAVCR, Collection Lexa, Correspondence, J. Černý to F. Lexa. 1396 Survey of Egypt: Survey Department Papers. No. 49, The Egyptian Desert and its Antiquity; No. 50, The Survey of Egypt, 1898–1948. By G. W. Murray. Cairo, 1950. 1397 Černý 1947: 52. 1398 In this particular letter of 2 October 1941: GIA, Collection Gardiner, correspondence, AHG 42.56.32. 1399 James 1971. 1400 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.32, 2 October 1941.

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Černý is now in the throes of Late Egyptian Grammar … He was asked to give a private series of lectures and is lecturing on the verb and is finding it a valuable opportunity of collecting and marshalling his evidence. I know Černý is well pleased with his results and I know the lectures are being appreciated.1401

The notes for these lectures are probably among a fascinating collection, in French and English, now in the Griffith Institute, which contain an appeal to his colleagues to express their interest in gathering further samples of Late Egyptian grammatical forms.1402 Jaro had to keep another project, twenty-first dynasty chronology, on hold as he could not synchronize his earlier observations with new information from Montet’s excavations at Tanis. In December, Jaro had a very nasty series of visits to his dentist,1403 and was in a poor position financially. Gardiner yet again tried to help. Fairman followed up with a report after the dentist had done his work: ‘Černý is well. He has had a very bad time indeed with an abscess but is much better now. He is doing really magnificent work in his lectures on Late Egyptian grammar and his grammatical research and is making some really valuable advances and discoveries.’1404 Jaro for his part reported to Gardiner that ‘the whole system of L.[ate] E.[gyptian] Grammar appears to be nearly clear before my eyes. Of course, the solution of the problem of î.îr.ƒ sḏm is not entirely my merit, it was Polotsky who put me on the right way.’1405 Like most of the better-informed expatriates in Cairo, Jaro anxiously followed the fortunes of his friends in France (‘Posener … seems to be safe, though he is a Jew’) and in Czechoslovaka. The fortunes of war made regular appearances in otherwise Egyptological correspondence throughout this period, and when it did it was with increasingly strong words. If previously Jaro had hoped for that his people were not ‘molested’, he now realized the inadequacy of his language. Jaro had access to newspapers 1401 1402 1403 1404

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.144, 17 August 1941. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.2–20.3. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.31, 19 December 1941. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.136, December 1941,

p. 6. 1405

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.31, 19 December 1941.

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from the protectorate, and came across the names of several of his friends: ‘I have no [direct] news from home. Since my last letter things became much worse. I heard also of the death of two friends of mine. One of them was tortured to death by the Gestapo.’ Gardiner at this time was living outside London to avoid the worst of the Blitz. There was no direct damage to any of Gardiner’s properties, but an accident involving water damage to his notebooks and to the Will of Naunakhte papyrus compounded the inaccessibility of Jaro’s photographs and notes in Prague.1406 What Jaro—and probably even Szalatnay-Stachó—was not privy to were the exchanges in London between Beneš, his staff, the Foreign Office and, increasingly, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Beneš had reason to be sanguine throughout the second half 1941, as Operation Barbarossa brought the Soviet Union into the war. Earlier, in July, Beneš had scored another success with Churchill and the Soviets by having the Czechoslovak government-in-exile fully recognized as acting in the name of the Czechoslovak republic by Anthony Eden in July 1941.1407 Nonetheless, the effectiveness of the Czechoslovak resistance was called into question (unlike the clear record of Czechoslovak soldiers in Allied forces).1408 This was not due to absence of resistance, but rather to its limited sabotage activity. The topic of a Czech uprising, ideally timed to coincide with a major Allied offensive or bombardment, was reiterated by the SOE on several occasions.1409 As with other parts of Europe, the SOE was tasked with promoting and supporting local resistance groups in Czechoslovakia, especially those engaged in sabotage. The protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was of interest in part because it was one of the industrial and transport hubs of the Third Reich,1410 and major

1406 Quotes from GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.32, 2 October 1941. 1407 Personal memoir by Lockhart 1947; diplomatic documents outlined in Němeček 2006; see also Dejmek 2006–2008, II: 322–324. 1408 TNA, Kew HS 4/9. For more on Czechoslovaks fighting for Britain see the outline in Dejmek et al. 2018: 340–341; further information can be found in Kudrna 2016: 32–43. 1409 TNA, Kew HS 4/9. 1410 Leong Kok Wey 2012.

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sabotage operations were being considered by early 1941.1411 The idea gained new impetus after Heydrich was appointed, and the SOE, Beneš and Moravec formed a plan, codenamed Operation Anthropoid, of high-profile resistance in the protectorate, with Heydrich as the target. Success would strengthen the Czechoslovak position, including that of Beneš’s provisional government-in-exile. Accordingly, on 29 December 1941, at 2:24 AM, a Handley Page Halifax bomber dropped its human cargo. They were originally supposed to land near Pilsen—the city of Jaro’s birth— but Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčík, the two Czechoslovak soldiers chosen for the task and trained by the SOE, ended up rather closer to Prague. Other agent groups, codenamed Silver A and Silver B, were dropped from the same flight on separate missions. Kubiš and Gabčík eventually joined forces with the local resistance in Pilsen, which increased their chances of success but also the scope for German reprisals, so it took five months to plan and execute the operation.1412 The attack on Heydrich eventually took place on at 10:30 on 27 May 1942 in Prague, and while it did not go flawlessly the agents fatally wounded the Nazi commander, who died a week later in hospital. Beneš’s efforts were paying off. During winter of 1941 to 1942 he had worked on officially reinstating the network of legations, including that in Cairo.1413 But one quality his position still lacked was the clear repudiation of the Munich agreement. Beneš had no guarantee that the pre-Munich borders of Czechoslovakia would be restored even following a decisive Allied victory. From the Allied perspective his single-minded interest might have come across as selfish, but the failure to nullify Munich was exceedingly trying for Beneš.1414 1411 TNA, SOE, HS4/9, January 1941. This is a Note of Support sent to Sergěj Ingr, the general commanding British-Czechoslovak cooperation, for Czechoslovak personnel taking part in SOE operations. British military intelligence had been in touch with Moravec since 1939 with plans to support the resistance, to train personnel to be deployed in the protectorate or held in reserve, to prepare a revolution and, in due course, to form a parachute unit. 1412 For Moravec’s role in the plan see Šolc 1994: 147–153. For an outline of the SOE’s role see Stehlík 2012. 1413 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, file Cairo. 1414 Dejmek 2006–2008, II: 333–336.

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Czechoslovakia’s diplomatic presence was de facto uninterrupted in Egypt, but Szalatnay-Stachó maintained a relatively low-profile presence until full recognition of the government in 1941.1415 Once the mutual diplomatic representations between Egypt and Czechoslovakia had been restored the legation began to broaden its work, which had a direct impact on the Czechoslovak community in Cairo. The back-and-forth of Allied and Axis troops along the northern coast of Africa was keenly observed in Cairo. Claude Auchinleck’s Operation Crusader had succeeded in pushing back Axis forces, and indeed temporarily relieving the besieged Tobruk,1416 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 made American participation in the war a realistic possibility. But the Royal Navy had suffered severe losses in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and rumour had it that King Farouk had celebrated when it became known that the aircraft carrier Ark Royal had been sunk.1417 Such rumours did nothing to calm expatriates in Cairo. It was in this charged atmosphere that Fairman began to petition Gardiner about promoting the establishment of a British institute, or a school of archaeology in Egypt, or a British-led international initiative to map all accessible Egyptian monuments. Jaro’s name was used to promote this, and Fairman’s proposals were to develop and expand during 1942 and 1943. Gardiner presented his reports also to the Egypt Exploration Society,1418 hoping to build momentum for the undertaking. 1942 The Flap In January 1942, it appeared that Jaro’s future was once again secure when Kuentz hired him at the IFAO on an annual salary of 22,000 francs, theoretically payable in four instalments.1419 The activities of the IFAO were in essence limited, even if Kuentz 1415

Němeček 2006. Kitchen 2009: 179. The operation has been extensively studied; an outline can be found in Ford 2010. 1417 Cooper 1995: 146. 1418 AEES, GCM 1942–1955, p. 2. 1419 AIFAO, Kuentz memo dated 19 January 1942, in personal file J. Černý. 1416

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did for a time consider surveying and copying in Theban tombs, abandoned after Davies’s death, as a new opportunity for the Institute’s activities. Kuentz even intimated to Jaro that he nurtured hopes of a return to Deir el-Medina and of continuing his work on its ancient graffiti. The main tangible benefit to Jaro was that he could maintain his lodgings in the relative comfort of the IFAO, with access to its library. Gardiner also transmitted some monies that alleviated Jaro’s immediate material concerns. He could finally settle his bill with the dentist. Jaro remained close to Czechoslovak expatriates, though the legation at Qasr el-Aini moved into a more modest setting of an apartment block in Midan Ismail Pasha, leaving behind a villa now deemed too expensive. Jaro meet other Czechoslovaks in this relatively safe space to exchange news and express concerns, especially in weeks when Fairman was absent, such as when he was in Sudan in early 1942 visiting Anthony Arkell.1420 Jaro’s wish to become part of the resistance finally came true in February when he was offered work at the Czechoslovak legation. The legation became part of the diplomatic and propaganda apparatus emanating from the London-based government-in-exile, and Jaro cherished his involvement. He saw it as a logical development of his previous informal role, which he had experienced in the days following the Munich treaty. In a later document, he stated that he ‘did not see active [military] service, but was an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and undertook general propaganda of Czechoslovak matters in England, France and Egypt, since Munich.’1421 This was an embellishment, but it reflected his desire to be part of the war effort. In reality, Jaro’s language skills and capacity for articulate expression were put to use in the role of legation press attaché; a public relations officer. There is no hint of any other activity, such as the intelligence work that many of his fellow academics were assigned. Jaro never mentioned it and there are no surviving records that might indicate such a role. Most employees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs growing in London or in legations were simply workers and part-time consultants. 1420 1421

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.30, 28 January 1942. Central Military Archive Prague, personal file J. Černý, 255-90206/48.

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They were part of an information machine. It is around this time that a British subject with Czech parentage, and—like Jaro— an alumna of the Prague university, Mrs Marie Sargant (born Marie Anna Hloušková), took a job at the Ministry in London. If Jaro’s story bore affinities to dons at war, then Marie’s narrative was that of a patriot feminist. Jaro was also given sundry tasks related to his local knowledge, such as being a guide to archaeological locations around Cairo for Czechoslovak units that were then forming in Palestine and Egypt. Many of these troops were experienced in combat after service at Tobruk, though new soldiers were drafted in spring 1942 and their units reformed into an anti-aircraft regiment (Czechoslovak 200th light anti-aircraft regiment).1422 His beige suit was more worn and his light-coloured fedora was more battered than when he was the personal guide to President Masaryk in 1927, but his enthusiasm remained. In a later lecture Jaro recalled with a degree of patriotism: In the course of the war, Egypt has unexpectedly entered the history of our nation, as the eastern unit of our foreign army was stationed there for a long time. Would it occur even to the wildest of pre-war fantasies that Czecholsovak soldiers would one-day camp on the beaches of Alexandria not individually as tourists, but as a combat unit, and that they would protect Egypt at Tobruk from a joint German-Italian assault? Could I ever have thought that I would once lecture to the pupils of the Czechoslovak officers’ school at the pyramids and next to the Sphinx?1423

Unlike the tramps who had twenty years earlier shocked consul Antonín Blahovský and amused minister Cyrill Dušek, the troops were in larger number and more consistently dressed, but like the tramps they had travelled a long way. A large number of Czechoslovaks had escaped to Poland between March and September 1939, and those who wished to enlist to fight were moved to the USSR and then finally to the Levant. The units, trained by the British, had gathered near Tel Aviv and the railway line connecting Haifa with Egypt. From this rather idyllic 1422

U děla na středním východě 1944: 14–15. A lecture titled Češi a Egypt. A typescript of the lecture is preserved in the ANpM, collection Černý. 1423

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location among the orange trees (discounting the heat and dust) they were sent to Egypt and then further west to take part in the desert war.1424 Jaro found some friends among the troops, especially during the days of intense broadcasting work, which was part of his role as a press attaché. Some of them had intense and rich recollections of life in Cairo. Eduard Rulf, one of Jaro’s fellow broadcasters, had many recollections of troops from across the British Empire, and admired the Indian troops in particular:1425 although one might expect a positive bias towards fellow white people, he had a hard time appreciating the Australian sense of humour. Rulf warmly recalled Jaro’s visits to their offices, which were later maintained in Kadi el-Fadel Street in downtown Cairo, a short walk from the IFAO.1426 Within the legation, Jaro was valued as a skilled writer for various official communications,1427 and was increasingly proud of his position. He reported his ‘big news’ to Gardiner in retrospect: The Czechoslovak government appointed me in February as attaché to the Czechosl[ovak] legation in Cairo. The news came suddenly by cable and in a few hours, I changed from an Egyptologist into a diplomat, for I am on the diplomatic list, a circumstance which has brought to me many new duties and a few advantages. Of course, it was impossible for me to refuse: first of all, it was my duty to help my country wherever possible, secondly, my salary allows me to take a considerable burden from your shoulders, a burden you have been so kindly and generously for many months now helping me to get over what will probably be the most difficult period of my life. I hope my services will be needed till the end of this war and that from now on I shall be able to live on my own earnings. Please do not imagine that I have a car and give and am invited to, great dinners and parties. All what I get are £35 a month, and my wardrobe, my teeth and other things (like radio I am supposed to have) swallowed the great part of what I got, but I managed to stay on in the Institute and people understand that in the war-time we Czechoslovaks must live very modestly.1428 1424

Rulf 2000. Rulf 2000: 104–105. 1426 Rulf 2000: 175. 1427 As shown in a report sent after Jaro had ended his stint at the Cairo legation in 1944; AMZV, LA, file Legation Cairo, report by Jaroslav Šejnoha. 1428 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.29, 14 May 1942. 1425

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Jaro was tasked with organizing Czech broadcasting from Cairo and to produce any reports the legation needed, especially those for which English was required, continuing: ‘My knowledge of English is extremely useful; I am ashamed that it is so imperfect, but it seems even so that I was the only and the best person among my country-men in the whole Middle East.’ He was also pleased to relate that his superior, Szalatnay-Stachó, was forbearing when it came to any Egyptological demands on Jaro’s time. ‘My chief in the office, our Minister here, is an excellent man, and I like him very much. He understands perfectly well that I would like to continue my Egyptological work and makes it possible to find time enough to carry on.’ Fairman, unperturbable and never one to assume Jaro might not be available, simply noted Jaro was getting busy as ‘he has been appointed Attaché at the Czech Legation and is supervising their propaganda broadcasts.’1429 Jaro indeed carried on, preparing a paper on oracles for the BIFAO and reading the latest JEA, which made it to the IFAO library in April or May. Jaro enjoyed reading Gardiner’s paper on taxation,1430 and together with Fairman and Grdseloff embarked on copying the Coptos decree of King Haremheb for Gardiner.1431 He gave up on a paper on measures of capacity, as to finalize it he would have needed access to his notes in Prague, which believed to be ‘irreparably lost’, because now he was officially a ‘rebel’ against the Nazis.1432 He must have thought about the possible repercussions for his mother and brother with much apprehension. The brutality in the protectorate was becoming common knowledge. Some of this was due to the pen of the anti-appeasement activist Shiela Grant Duff, editor of the Czech section of the BBC, who insightfully portrayed (using some material by Czechoslovaks who left during protectorate’s early days) the

1429

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.135, 24 February 1942. Gardiner 1941. 1431 GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.94.134, 3 June 1942. 1432 The protectorate government deprived him of his citizenship in 1944, as referred to in the NAP, File J. Černý; and Central Military Archive Prague, personal file J. Černý, 255-90206/48. This act became void with the end of the war, but it was nonetheless the first loss of citizenship to which Jaro had been subjected. 1430

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different atmosphere in an occupied country as opposed to a country at war: These atrocities must be taken fully into account if the present situation is to be judged properly or the future of the Czechs fully assured. There can hardly be a man or woman who has not lost a friend, nor a family which has not lost one of its members, through the horrible dealings of the Nazis. The Czechs who have been murdered, have not been killed on the battlefield with arms in their hands and the possibility of retaliation, but murdered in cold blood, sometimes after days, sometimes after months, of unspeakable torture … This living in the midst of horror which is going on around them behind barred doors, and where all the power is on one side and one side only, without hope of retaliation or self-defence, produces a terrible psychological strain. To this must be added the whole strain of war … The ordinary privations and ordeals of war, which are just tolerable if exacted from a civilian population in order that its fighting strength may be increased, become absolutely intolerable when exacted on behalf of the fighting forces of the enemy.1433

Grant Duff undoubtedly wrote with an eye on the promotion of the Czechoslovak cause, which mattered to her,1434 but this should not devalue the fear she captured in her writing, which now constituted lived experience in the protectorate. More and more information was coming in about the Holocaust.1435 But there was also good news for Jaro: ‘I was very glad to receive cable from the Ashmolean Museum telling me that the case with ostraca has safely reached Durban.’1436 Sinuhe was at the southernmost point of his voyage. Jaro was equally enthusiastic to note Gardiner’s plan to write a reference book as an introduction to Egyptology.1437 Jaro’s reference to ‘great dinners and parties’ in his letter of 14 May was occasioned by the legendary atmosphere of wartime 1433

Grant Duff 1942: 240–242, quote p. 240–241. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/apr/03/guardianobituaries. Accessed 3 June 2022. 1435 Fleming 2018: 206–225. 1436 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.29, 14 May 1942. 1437 And Gardiner was asking Newberry for materials—GIA, Collection Newberry, File NEWB2/289—Gardiner, (Sir) Alan Henderson, correspondence, letters 1941–1942. 1434

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Cairo. The city’s hotels might have been ‘lousy with generals’ as Cecil Beaton put it,1438 but there was fun to be had in private parties too. There were formidable ladies gracing these gatherings, including Betty Lampson, the niece of Sir Miles, who, when occasionally AWOL from her role as a military ambulance driver, ‘thought nothing of crawling under the barbed wire surrounding the camp in an evening gown of silver lamé, to meet her admirers who waited on the other side with pounding hearts.’1439 The city was full of dons and socialites all bent on the war effort, but not wishing to give up the pleasures of socializing, conversing, flirting, drinking, occasional gambling, and gossiping. Social circles and friendships formed, although Charles Johnston noted that ‘Cairo friendships are luxuriant but non-transplantable,’ describing one of the parties in the Riaz household as ‘something out of Arabian Nights.’1440 ‘At the top end of the society, the rich and educated mixed freely.’1441 Jaro had Egyptian Coptic, Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, British, French, and Czechoslovak friends, but did not brush with glamour as often as Lawrence Durrell or Patrick Leigh Fermor, the latter a chronicler of Jaro’s disappearing Mitteleuropa in the 1930s.1442 Jaro might have engaged with this boisterous world, but he typically divided his time between the legation and Egyptology, whether in the IFAO library or the museum. Given his interest in dancing and good company this must have been a self-imposed limitation, perhaps occasioned by financial necessity. Sedate coffees and teas with Fairman were all right, but he would not have objected to a little frivolity. Perhaps there was an occasional event at the legation, although the glittering social life of the 1930s, with Jaro looking like an illustration from a fashion plate in his black-tie ensemble,1443 was long gone. 1438

Mostyn 2007: 156. Cooper 1995: 82. 1440 Quoted in Cooper 1995: 222. Sir Charles Hepburn Johnston GCMG, KStJ (11 March 1912 – 23 April 1986) was a senior British diplomat and translator of Russian poetry, and First Secretary in Cairo 1945–1948; archive in King’s College London, GB0099 KCLMA Johnston C H; Bullard 2004. 1441 Cooper 2013: 139. 1442 See Fermor 2002 [1979]; Fermor 2013. 1443 As shown in a photograph probably taken in the early 1930s; ACEgU, a gift of A. Allott and N. McIntosh. 1439

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Not all parties were simply about gaiety (which lasted throughout the war) and champagne (which ran out in 1943). Social meetings played into the subtle purposes of propaganda, such as the gatherings organized by the writer and explorer Freya Stark from her flat at Gezira. She was in the employ of the British Ministry of Information, built an Egyptian network distributing pro-Allied information,1444 and went on to spread that message in Iraq. At parties and elsewhere, the propaganda war was full force as news from the Middle Eastern and African fronts was not good. The importance of the Middle East in Allied strategy was manifestly clear when the region was in danger, as it was when Rommel pushed the Allies back forcefully in January 1942, and the danger was heightened when Germans harnessed local antiBritish sentiments. The Nazis did not care one iota about national revivals and self-determination of Middle Eastern and North African communities, but were prepared to make use of it: ‘The Arab Freedom Movement is, in the Middle East, our natural ally against England,’1445 stated Hitler, and although he mainly had Iraq in mind in that directive, there was a fifth column in Egypt connected to Egyptian military circles. Among them still was alMasri, and a bevy of officers such as Anwar Sadat.1446 This is not to say that German propagandists were successful, or that Egypt had an active and fully-fledged fascist political scene; there was also a history of anti-fascist thought. Even some Egyptian ‘fifth columnists’ realized that Nazi alliance might have been perceived as means to a (miscalculated) end rather than a matter of an ideological adherence.1447 As before the war, so during the war: ‘[w]hen deliberating between the new and apparently insatiable imperialism of Italy and Germany and the familiar and satiated imperialism of Great Britain and France, Egyptians almost always preferred the latter.’1448 The problem with Egyptians flirting with fascism (or at least with not opposing the Italo-German invasion) was that some of 1444

Cooper 1995: 97–99. Directive from Hitler no. 30, Middle East, 23 May 1941; quoted in Churchill 1950: 223. 1446 See Cooper 1995: 103–104. 1447 Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 271–282. 1448 Gershoni and Jankowski 2010: 273. 1445

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them were in key positions. In February 1942, Lampson had to deal with a government crisis following the resignation of the prime minister, Ismail Sirry. Sirry’s government had, among other things, severed diplomatic ties with Vichy France without consulting the Egyptian king, so Lampson persuaded Farouk to name a government that was openly willing to support the Allied war effort, and to remove suspected fifth columnists from the palace, by surrounding the royal palace with tanks. Meanwhile, demonstrators at the Cairo University allegedly shouted ‘Long live Rommel’ along with ‘Long live Farouk’.1449 From an Allied perspective the games played by the Egyptian monarch were a highly annoying element in a much bigger picture, and in retrospect one might wonder at the belief of any Egyptians who were willing to consider Germans as ‘liberators’. However, the strength of Egyptian anti-British sentiment was too strong to be underestimated, and Lampson’s response did not go down well. Although the king had already begun to lose some of his popularity, humiliating him was still humiliating Egypt itself, and on that account the king’s dislike of Lampson, whom he nicknamed ‘Gamoosa Pasha’,1450 and the general dislike of Britain and its allies converged. Lampson’s gambit was nonetheless successful, and after the evening of 4 February 1942 Egypt had a pro-Allied government led by Mostafa el-Nahhas, though German efforts to build their network in Cairo only intensified in the coming months of 1942.1451 From an Egyptian perspective, Lampson’s response was another in a long line of Britain’s heavy-handed colonial moves that began with the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. It may have been understandable in the context of Axis power endangering Egypt and Allied interests, but it was deeply problematic. It was as if Lampson had treated the Egyptian sovereign (and by extension Egypt’s authority) openly in the same manner as he spoke about him occasionally in private: like a misbehaving boy who deserved a stern rebuke. It was emblematic of how the three influential parties of the day as Lampson defined them— 1449 1450 1451

Killearn 1972: 209. Literally ‘Buffalo Pasha’; Cooper 1995: 25. Kitchen 2009: 280–283.

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the Egyptian government (and specifically the Wafd Party), the Palace, and Britain—could not manage an honest conversation; the burden of previous and still-ongoing colonial policies ensured that this was impossible. Even from a Czechoslovak perspective, British foreign policy was a litany of heavy-handed and miscalculated moves (and the prejudices that motivated them). The Munich treaty, not yet four years old and still not officially annulled,1452 was a case in point. Yet, for Czechoslovaks in Cairo (and thus also for Jaro) this was not the time to criticize Britain, but rather to be wary of anyone whose motives might strengthen the enemy. It is therefore pertinent to ask how much Allied annoyance with the behaviour of Egyptian elites is conveyed in Fairman’s (and Jaro’s) view of some Egyptian colleagues. In the summer of 1942, Fairman was pursuing his ‘sermon’ (as he defined it) about the need to protect research and heritage in Egypt through European—and specifically British—involvement: We all feel that it is only a matter of time before the last European, and therefore the last vestige of knowledge, science, capability and devotion, is eliminated from the Antiquities Service, and that even if I entered the Museum now, it would only be for a year or two … We feel that a British Egyptological Institute is necessary as a means + centre of scientific work here, as a training ground for young British Egyptologists, as a possible means of training or influencing Egyptian archaeologists, as a centre of British influence and last and by no means [least] as a potential means of fostering and informing Anglo-Egyptian relations.1453

‘We’ included Fairman’s friends, and probably included Jaro even though he was not named. Emery was still around, tacit about his military roles but still managing to undertake occasional work in Saqqara, and Fairman was keen to enlist him to support this nascent institute. Yet he was not always forthright about his plans. Jaro’s growing field expertise was being used in ways he probably didn’t realize because Fairman, with dutiful service at the British Embassy as a cover for his Egyptological correspondence (and even exchanging books via the diplomatic 1452 1453

It was considered annulled on 5 August 1942. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.134, 3 June 1942.

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bag), increasingly used Jaro’s observations to further his agenda of establishing a British-led survey of Egyptian monuments, or a British-led institution in Egypt that could act on the same scale as the IFAO or the (then closed and looted) German Institute. Attempts at large-scale surveys appeared periodically: Walter Wreszinski had proposed a photographic survey of Egyptian tombs in the 1930s with the involvement of the EES.1454 Fairman was an excitable man who at that point did not regard matters of his personal interest in a wider perspective. Gardiner had received letters proposing the establishment of an institute since the end of 1941, with Fairman quoting Jaro and Grdseloff as opining that the future of Egyptology and Egyptian monuments were in peril. That might well have been the case, up to a point, but Fairman added a rather bitter anti-Egyptian tone that continued over several months: I believe that the position and future of Egyptology in Egypt and the prosecution of scientific work in this country is in very great peril … it is an opinion shared by all archaeologists whom I know, and of Emery and Cerný in particular … There are a crowd of Egyptian excavators working at Sakkara, ruthlessly opening tomb after tomb, and leaving no record of their work except the obvious … The Unas causeway will soon be illegible, yet Cerný armed with a permit from Drioton was driven off it … Then one notices the appalling intellectual dishonesty and incompetence of the effendis.1455

One rather infamous comment by Fairman, and the one that feels the least palatable, is the latter part of his statement that ‘Egyptology has been built up by efforts of scholars of all nations and has been a truly international science with the exception that the Egyptian contribution has been nil.’ The international scholar in Jaro is likely to have agreed with the first part of this statement, but there seems no reason to believe he would have agreed with the second. His mentorship of Bakir only a short time before had brought him into contact with Egyptian Egyptologists 1454

Kasper-Holtkotte 2017: 396–399. TNA, FO 371/31585, Egypt and Sudan, file no. 524. Extract of a letter from H. W. Fairman to A. H. Gardiner, dated 27 December 1941; the original is in the GIA, Collection Gardiner as AHG 42.94.136. 1455

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he very much respected. And while he had visited the Unas causeway there is no evidence that he encountered any problems, and Fairman’s comment may have been more for effect than a statement of fact. Moreover, none of Jaro’s comments on his trips to Saqqara describe the state its monuments in such dramatic terms. There are other reasons to conclude that Fairman used Jaro’s general comments on the vulnerability of exposed monuments to promote his own agenda, blowing his friend’s comments out of proportion. Whether his pronouncements should be classified as ‘the despairing cries often heard as colonial officials depart,’1456 or were more of a reflection of Fairman’s character and wartime tension is probably moot, because they might have been both. The ‘colonial’ aspect, though, can be seen in the perspective of similar British observations, and eventually with Fairman’s own admission that ‘it is essential for an excavator to keep in practice and to be progressive and to train new blood, both European and native.’1457 Fairman’s statements were discussed by Foreign Office officials, including Gaselee and Lampson, in March 1942. Lampson devoted considerable attention to the matter and on 20 March he wrote: It is not true that ‘there are a crowd of Egyptian excavators working at Sakkara, etc.’ Only one Egyptian, Zaki Effendi, is at this moment clearing the so-called Persian tombs. King Farouk is financing his work. Zaki is not a bad specimen … Drioton says he is reasonably satisfied with Zaki’s notes on the work … The great causeway of Unas is closed to the general public, as well as the Giza Necropolis. This is all to the good, and as far as my information goes, any respectable adult armed with an antiquities card is not refused access.

This did not preclude his support of a British research institution in Egypt, but its foundation was not coined in terms of saving an impossible situation:

1456 1457

1942.

Reid 1997: 146. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.141, probably dated to

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I think it would be most advisable to establish a British School of Archaeology in Egypt, whether or not we take over the German Institute. Indeed, it has long been a matter of surprise and regret that Great Britain, in view of her interests in Egypt, should never have had a School of Archaeology in this country.1458

Lampson was not convinced that Egyptians were in position to do everything necessary to protect ancient sites (though perhaps nobody was at time), but he did repeatedly note that Fairman had been somewhat ‘wild’.1459 Nevertheless, Fairman’s forceful letters continued throughout the spring of 1942, effectively repeating similar comments and remarking on the situation in the Egyptian museum. He repeatedly pointed out how Reginald Engelbach had found himself in a difficult situation in 1941—alongside other museum officials—after a theft was uncovered,1460 and Engelbach was ‘reclassified’ as a technical advisor at the Egyptian Museum when Mahmud Hamza became the Chief Curator.1461 Margaret Murray later approached Sir Robert Vansittart, who until 1941 served as Chief Diplomatic Adviser to His Majesty’s Government, about the Engelbach affair, despite the fact that it had resolved itself.1462 It all looked somewhat like a storm in a teacup,1463 but the problem with storms in teacups is their tendency to extend beyond the teacup. Lampson wrote a long letter outlining the Engelbach case.1464 Some officials, including—for a time—Étienne Drioton, the French head of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, believed that Engelbach had neglected his duties in the museum, which provided an opportunity for the theft of material from Tanis. Lampson opined that Drioton and others were led to believe this due to persistent rumours started, in his opinion, by Hassan. Drioton was not happy with Engelbach, but upon receiving the 1458

TNA, FO 371/31585, letter from M. Lampson to S. Gaselee, dated 20 March

1942. 1459

TNA, FO 371/31585, in his letter dated 29 March 1942. The Engelbach situation was discussed at the Foreign Office and the EES: TNA, FO 371/31585 and FO 371/35588; and AEES, GCM 1942–1955, Minutes from 1942 and 1943. 1461 Reid 2015: 334–336. 1462 Rose 2011. 1463 TNA, FO 371/35588, Egypt and Sudan, File no. 952, 1943. 1464 TNA, FO 371/31585, Lampson’s letter is dated 10 April 1942. 1460

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embassy’s views and explanations exonerating Engelbach from any serious breach of duty, was willing to support him with a renewed contract. Other sources show Engelbach himself disagreeing with the judgemental attitudes of Fairman, and speaking in favour of Hamza.1465 It seems likely that some Egyptian Egyptologists had taken advantage of the international situation to secure their positions and influence.1466 Jaro did not refer to this in any of his letters to Gardiner, so it is difficult to say how much he knew of Fairman’s continued use of his name, even as Fairman ramped up his efforts to convince Gardiner that ‘the danger is not merely in the pretty obvious intrigues directed against European officials and scholars, aiming at their complete elimination, but the far wider question of the safety of the monuments and the national collection and the progressive obstacles that are being put in the way of excavation and study and copying by non-Egyptians.’1467 It cannot be excluded that Jaro, like Engelbach, was being used by Fairman without much regard to what his friend might have thought. Fairman was regarded in the Foreign Office as blowing things out of proportion, and given the German and Italian advances across North Africa the preoccupations of Egyptological circles in Cairo, however laudable in their own right, were not only ill-timed and perhaps undiplomatically phrased, but simply not a priority. The year of 1942 was both difficult and pivotal from an Allied perspective. The strategy in Europe changed when Arthur Harris took over Bomber Command at High Wycombe in February 1942,1468 and began to promote the idea of area bombing and other aspects of aerial warfare that had hitherto been regarded as ‘ungentlemanly warfare’. The SOE, though, had been engaged in this sort of conflict for some time, including high-profile projects such as the one that would end in the death of Heydrich a few months later in Prague. Forces on the African front were struggling. Following a German assault in January both Axis and Allied sides regrouped, 1465

Reid 1997: 146–147. Summary in Thompson 2015–2018, III: 220–221. 1467 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.136; a sentiment already expressed in December 1941. 1468 Longmate 1988 [1983]: 138–140. 1466

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and the next large battle, at Ghazala in late May 1942, proved to be a disaster for the Allies, ending in a retreat to Egypt and the loss of Tobruk. One of the problems facing the British Eighth Army was its unpreparedness for desert warfare and the resulting lessening of morale. The men serving under Auchinleck had mostly been thrown into the alien desert environment after only cursory training. Censorship reports from summer 1942 conveyed that the men faced physical exhaustion and the ‘realisation of the horror of battle and the loss of comrades.’1469 Bernard Montgomery later succeeded in part because his ‘battle schools’, realistic training sessions, ensured that his troops were used to at least some aspects of desert warfare before they saw action,1470 but previously most of the men were about as ready for combat as Jaro would have been, except they were generally younger and not myopic. Jaro, at least outwardly, bore increasing wartime pressure with seeming ease. Ostensibly he was diligent in his new role, but didn’t neglect his Egyptological research and still recorded atrisk inscriptions in the Memphite area. By this time he had developed a formidable body of knowledge about monuments from many parts in Egypt, considerably broadening expertise that had previously centred on the Theban region. His colleagues later assessed the war years as a challenging time that reaped substantial rewards. Harry James, for example, observed that: Unable to pursue his regular studies, Černý devoted himself, as opportunity offered, to other interests and found more time for reading than formerly. The war years, although forming a period of great personal difficulty, were also a time of consolidation and of expansion of knowledge. Gardiner once remarked that after the war Černý emerged as an ‘immensely learned’ scholar with deep knowledge of subjects and periods which had little interested him before the war. This was the Černý known to most scholars today—the man to whom one naturally turned for the answer to some difficulty, for the apposite reference to an obscure publication; this was the scholar who was never too busy to help someone whose problems were genuine, who always noted down a difficulty he could not deal with immediately, and who never failed to deal with it subsequently.1471 1469 1470 1471

Fennell 2011: 22–23. Fennell 2011: 233–234. James 1971: 187.

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Jaro was indeed willing to be constantly at hand, either for Gardiner in the Museum, for Grdseloff of Fairman to consult, for his own work on Late Egyptian, or for mapping texts in Saqqara. He maintained his old routine of using any leisure time aptly. It may have been on a Sunday, such as 1 March, when he visited the pyramid site of Abusir, south of Giza but north of Saqqara, to collate a New Kingdom visitors’ graffito in the mastaba of Ptahshepses. The previous copyist had been Wilhelm Spiegelberg, and Jaro noted that the graffito had suffered since Spiegelberg’s day,1472 again showing that he understood the value of secondary epigraphy and how vulnerable it was in Saqqara and Abusir. He even admitted ‘neglecting’ Late Egyptian somewhat in his new position, but outlined his improved understanding of the îw.ƒ sḏm, îw.ƒ r sḏm, and îw.ƒ ḫr sḏm forms: ‘Late Egyptian is a precise language.’1473 Jaro’s meticulous attention to verbal forms and their use in syntax, which permeates his notes on grammar,1474 was stated expressis verbis just a few years later: The Late Egyptian has completely abandoned the original distinction of imperfective and perfective and has assigned to every verbal form or construction a definite temporal meaning. Here too Late Egyptian has practically reached the state later found in Coptic, and is, therefore, much more advanced in this respect than the Classical (Middle) Egyptian, in which the temporal value of verbal forms is still somewhat vague.1475

Jaro was fascinated with the development of verbal forms and continually returned to their formation in every incarnation of his notes on Late Egyptian Grammar. What neither Gardiner from afar, nor James in retrospect, nor possibly—for a long time—even Fairman who saw him every few days in Cairo were able to fully recognize, was the extent of Jaro’s personal and professional difficulties in wartime. Jaro had a capacity for masking his anxiety with social graces. He kept himself busy at Saqqara and the legation, and hid any sense 1472 1473 1474 1475

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.118, p. 20 verso. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.29, 14 May 1942. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20, passim. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.18, p. 7, dated 1945.

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of his growing unease. He had been doing this successfully for several years since the beginning of the war, but the stress was intensifying, and his apprehension increasing. In late May 1942, Operation Anthropoid came to an effective end when Kubiš and Gabčík attacked Reichsprotektor Heydrich and mortally wounded him. The ‘Butcher of Prague’ died on 4 June and all hell broke loose. The Nazis did not bother even trying to cover the brutality of their response.1476 Atrocities in concentration camps, which developed into their extermination camp phase in Poland during the first half of 1942, were known to the Allies in outline and incrementally increasing detail,1477 but were deemed too gruelling and perplexing by some in the Nazi regime to be fully revealed.1478 But the ‘Heydrichiad’ was conducted rather more in the open, and contributed to information on Nazi war crimes becoming progressively well-known to the Allied public. Reports on extermination camps were finally featured in British newspapers at around the same time.1479 The retaliation for Heydrich was so extreme that there was little danger of the public assuming it was simply Allied war propaganda: ‘The reprisal massacre of Czechs at Lidice whose scale made it easier to comprehend, independently prompted British calls for retaliatory bombing of Germany.’1480

1476 The Nazi regime sought to cover up some of the concentration- or extermination camp activities, especially in the so-called General Government area in Poland. There were further attempts to hide the truth toward the end of the war, resulting in death marches and the death train transportation of prisoners to different camps as the fronts moved: see Terry 2018; Dejmek et al. 2018: 318–319; Wachsmann 2015; Friedländer 1997, II. 1477 Wachsmann 2015: 492–496; TNA, HW 16/10, Daily proforma returns contained in the GPCC series (decrypts from German police transmissions by the Government Code and Cypher School) for 1942–1943 monthly reports include daily intakes and deaths for ten concentration camps including Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau, with inmate totals listed by nationality, headed by Jews. Further information was circulated in the UK and US, originating with the Jewish and Polish resistance in Poland; Fleming 2018: 206–225. BBC Czech broadcasts had a role in explaining the atrocities to protectorate audiences; see Kocourek 2013: 34–36. 1478 The problem of reliability and public acceptance of news about the Holocaust was addressed by Isaiah Berlin in his role at the Foreign Office; see Fleming 2018. 1479 Burleigh 2010: 448–454. 1480 Burleigh 2010: 451.

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The reality of life in Prague in June 1942 became one of mass imprisonments, summary executions, and abridged trials to bring prominent political prisoners to the gallows. Hundreds of friends and family members of the Operation Anthropoid agents were taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp, once the agents had been identified and betrayed by Karel Čurda. Lidice was the first, but not the last, village to be completely destroyed: the men executed, the women taken to the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, and the majority of children despatched to the gassing vans at Chelmno.1481 The fate of Lidice was shared by other villages in Central Europe and Greece, and more still in Poland. But Lidice became a symbol for many to make a stand against the horrors of a regime that advocated annihilation. Its fate was one of the strong arguments for supporting Beneš and his push of the immediate annulment of the Munich treaty. The brutality of German reprisals strengthened Beneš’s position, and some historians have suggested that this had in fact been part of his plan from the inception of Operation Anthropoid, though these claims are still disputed.1482 The legation personnel in Cairo, and especially those working in broadcasting, were fully aware of this catalogue of horrors, and would have realized what risks their activity posed to their families in the protectorate. Jaro would have to have been naïve to suppose that the Nazi apparatus would have considered him too unimportant to persecute. The Nazis always had sufficient manpower for persecution, as shown in the last years of war when railway infrastructure, manpower and fuel were diverted for use in extermination schemes, despite German losses on the battlefield. Personal danger became imminent as the Afrika Korps advanced toward Egypt in June 1942. Jaro was struggling to stay ahead with writing broadcasts and press releases as long as they were needed, and desperately trying to keep his anxieties under control. Another friend, I. E. S. (Eiddon) Edwards, himself a new arrival in Cairo, eventually saw through the mask:

1481 1482

The role of Lidice as a symbol of war suffering is examined in Rapson 2012. See Venezia 2013.

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In reality he was an anxious man, deeply concerned about the fate of his friends and members of his family in Czechoslovakia and particularly of his mother, to whom he was deeply attached. The present writer remembers clearly one evening at Cairo in the summer of 1942 when he realised the struggle which Černý was making to overcome the state of despondency to which he had been reduced by worry.1483

Jaro had reason to fear, but his reasons for maintaining the pretence of stiff-upper lip are hard to identify. Recent research on suicidal tendencies in men, who are traditionally seen as less likely to seek help, suggests that male behaviour in a crisis, ‘like most things, is based on specific individual, contextual, and situational factors.’1484 Yet among the contextual factors it seems limiting to attribute his unwillingness to seek help purely to models of masculinity based on a superficial understanding of stoicism that advocated enduring strength.1485 Would Jaro believe it was unworthy of a man to give in to anxiety? Would he feel that openness about his state of mind would make him less acceptable to his friends? There was, after all, a war on, so why should he be any less resilient than they? He may have underestimated the responses of his British friends, who might have understood the uncertainties of his position: his family, his career, his country, and his personal and professional future were all at risk. He was forty-four years old, without family money and without secure job prospects. His position could not be compared to those of Gardiner or Gaselee, who were affluent gentlemen at the height of their careers. Nor could his position be compared to those of Fairman or Emery or Edwards, whose careers in Egyptology were all but secure, and yet who were citizens of a country that was still fighting, not of a crippled protectorate with an exiled government struggling for recognition. Among his social network he could only have compared himself to Czechoslovaks with families in the protectorate; people experiencing the same range of issues, 1483

Edwards 1972: 371. Vogel and Heath 2016: 685. 1485 And which are, to a significant extent, a misunderstanding of stoicism; the stoic philosophy and many of its interpretations are concerned with the measured, rational judgement of life situations, not with the suppression of emotions. For a concise, accessible and articulate outline, see Sellars 2019. 1484

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the same sense of menace. No personal note from those days has survived to explain what he felt or thought. Then came the Flap. Rommel had pushed from Tobruk to a small railway station named el-Alamein, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) to the west of Alexandria. The end of June saw panic in Egypt, apart from some Italians who thought it best to form a welcoming committee, and some shopkeepers who thought it opportune to welcome Axis spending power.1486 Rumours abounded, one of them being that Cairo would experience an aerial invasion, as had Crete in 1941. On 1 July 1942 a plume of smoke began to rise from the gardens of the British residency, and pieces of charred paper carrying ‘imperial secrets gusted through the streets.’1487 The British administration began to organize the evacuation of British and Allied personnel, including the Czechoslovak legation, to Palestine because the first battle of el-Alamein had barely kept the Afrika Korps from Alexandria. The Germans, meanwhile, were preparing to unleash the full extent of their brutality upon Egypt, buying into local anti-Semitic sentiment and applying their usual technical approach to planning mass murder: ‘In anticipation of the occupation of Egypt a special unit of the SS (Einsatzkommando, EK) was made ready to murder the Jews.’1488 EK units were being readied after their ethnic cleansing by mass shooting, perpetrated in the ‘bloodlands’ of Eastern Europe.1489 The Jewish population of Egypt, while not fully aware of these bloodlands, knew enough about the Final Solution to realize that this was a matter of life and death.1490 Czechoslovaks like Jaro, or anti-Nazi Germans like another of his Cairene friends, Louis Keimer, who had left Germany for Czechoslovakia and then left Czechoslovakia for Egypt,1491 were in no better position. On 2 July, Lampson attended an audience with King Farouk where he suggested that the monarch too should be prepared for the eventuality of an evacuation. ‘It struck me at once,’ he wrote, 1486 1487 1488 1489 1490 1491

Cooper 1995: 193–194. Rodenbeck 1998: 191. Kitchen 2009: 278. Snyder 2010: 188–201. For the circulation of information, at least from 1942 onwards, see Fleming 2018. Bierbrier 2019: 249–250.

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‘that he was entirely changed. I surmise that the near approach of the Germans had pulled him up and made him realise what it means.’1492 Lampson was being his usual patronising self, and apparently found it difficult to abandon the idea of Farouk as the ‘boy king’ that he had been upon his accession. The conversation left a relatively positive impression on Lampson after they had discussed evacuation options, yet he also knew that the king was not to be entirely trusted as he had tried to keep open lines of communication with Hitler, via his father-in-law Ali Zulfikar Pasha, who was the Egyptian ambassador in Tehran.1493 Szalatnay-Stachó followed British orders, burning the legation ciphers and codes and beginning the evacuation of the legation and some members of the Czechoslovak community.1494 In the ensuing commotion, people began making the desperate dash for overcrowded trains leaving Cairo for Qantara, which was linked by rail to Haifa, or for Port Said or Suez to board ships destined for South Africa. This was the route travelled by the Sinuhe ostracon a few months earlier. It is remarkable how the railway network, one of the defining elements of Jaro’s cosmopolitan world in the 1920s and 1930s, would become an emblem for both misery and hope in the Second World War. From Holocaust trains to the Winton Train, from military trains to evacuation trains, rail transport became one of the symbols of the war and later served to create places of memory, like the Gleis 17 memorial at Grunewald Station in Berlin, or the twinned Trains to Life, Trains to Death sculptures by Frank Meisler at stations such as Friedrichsstrasse in Berlin and Liverpool Street Station in London. The evacuation train from Egypt to Palestine was meant to carry its passengers to safety, but organizing the evacuation proved a taxing job. ‘Such was the panic that people were offering huge bribes to get themselves on the train.’1495 But what then? Would evacuees from Cairo become just another in the long line of refugees who, as Olivia Manning stated in the words of her literary 1492 1493 1494 1495

Killearn 1972: 225. Kitchen 2009: 281. AMZV, Londýnský archiv, file Legation Cairo, 1942. Cooper 1995: 185–196.

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alter ego Harriet Pringle, ‘had come jittery out of Rumania and then out of Greece, and now she lived in expectation of being driven out of Egypt’?1496 Perhaps, as long as there were tasks to do, Jaro managed to function. He helped to organize the withdrawal of the Czechoslovak legation. Then, en route, Jaro lost the degree of control he had so far managed to exert over his deep-seated anxieties. As the evacuees reached Qantara in the Eastern Delta, he met, in a distant echo of Sinuhe—another exile leaving Egypt with deep inner turmoil— his own taste of death. Unlike his literary Egyptian predecessor, Jaro was not driven to the edge of despair by thirst and loneliness, but by circumstances which at that point appeared to lead inexorably into hands of an enemy that was evidently devoid of any humanity. There seemed to be no hope for the future. He envisaged a world without the freedom to travel and work, a world where he could no longer be a cosmopolitan scholar. He saw himself instead as a perennial exile; as a prisoner of war. He saw the enemy approaching. Seeking a way out, Jaro cut his left wrist with deep slashes. His legation colleagues intervened as he collapsed in a torrent of blood. Was this an impulsive moment of despair, or was there premeditation? Several prominent suicides of the war years, including Stefan Zweig and Virginia Woolf, had been considering their situation in deep sadness and despair, but with an element of rational planning. Zweig wrote: After the world of my own language sank and was lost to me and my spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself … to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom—the most precious of possessions on this earth.1497

1496

Manning 2003: 25–26. The original suicide letter, written in German, is preserved in the Stefan Zweig Archive in the National History of Israel and has been published on a number of occasions, including online; Petropolis, 22 February 1942, National Library of Israel. 1497

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Woolf feared a German invasion of Britain and was sure she would become a target of the Gestapo.1498 Her suicide was publicized and derided in the British press. Jaro had similar reasons to fear, but unlike Zweig or Woolf he had no attested history of depression before the war. What he did have was hidden anxiety dating back months, if not years, ever since the war began. ‘People’s normal reactions to poor living conditions and uncertain status are hard to disentangle from symptoms of an anxiety disorder or depression.’1499 The method of Jaro’s suicide attempt might have been the only one practicable from his point of view. If he packed his toiletries he would have had a razor, although he might in the circumstances also have had a firearm and was capable of using one. Perhaps he thought about opening his wrists as Seneca’s way out, the classical way to end one’s life. In some later studies of suicide attempts it has been stated that cutting does not always indicate a genuine attempt but rather a cry for help,1500 as it is deemed a ‘low-lethal’ method.1501 However, any perceived lack of determination appears to be contradicted by reports on his subsequent hospitalization and the deep wounds he inflicted upon himself, and a suicide may not have as clear an idea about the lethality of their intended method as the medical profession does.1502 Some years later, a specialist on suicide attempts, an Austrian émigré to Britain named Erwin Stengel, was to note that ‘carefully planned acts of suicide are as rare as carefully planned acts of homicide.’1503 On 8 July, Szalatnay-Stachó’s evacuation train reached Palestine and he wired his news to London. It was laconic, and included a reference to the fact that ‘during the evacuation attaché Černý opened his veins’ and had to be admitted to a military hospital in Qantara,1504 which specialized in psychiatric disorders.1505 1498 1499 1500

Lee 1999. On her suicide, see also Lee 2005: 218. Underwood 2017: 684. For the problematic of perceived lethality of suicide methods see Freedenthal

2007. 1501 1502 1503 1504 1505

Brausch, Williams, and Cox 2016. Freedenthal 2007: 59. Quoted in Nock 2017: 452, from Stengel 1964: 74. AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo. The no. 41 Neuropathic Hospital at Qantara, see Harrison 2004: 123.

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Ministry despatches followed the tragic circumstances in some detail. On 17 July, consul Josef Kadlec in Jerusalem was pondering whether it might be better for Jaro to convalesce in Palestine, or even elsewhere. He was still deliberating in early August,1506 but any move was prevented by Jaro’s poor state of health, as the wounds on his left wrist were suppurating.1507 By then the evacuees had begun to return to Egypt, as the immediate danger of a German invasion appeared to have been forestalled. SzalatnayStachó was also not pleased with Kadlec’s tendency to take charge in the matter of a Cairo legation employee, and wished to reassert his authority. At this time, while the British high command and diplomats had their hands full with what seemed an imminent German advance, Gardiner was attempting to communicate with Fairman concerning the latter’s rather ham-fisted campaign for monument protection, using all of the channels his contacts at the Foreign Office gave him. Gardiner wrote: May I venture to offer you a small piece of friendly counsel. I have friends at the Egyptian university who tell me that they find their pupils most amenable to guidance and most friendly provided that they are treated with tact and consideration. Much allowance must be made for the fact that their standpoints and upbringing are different from our own, and after all Egypt is their own country … all improvement in the conditions of archaeology in Egypt must be gradual and liable to temporary setbacks.1508

Gardiner was thus coming onto similar conclusions as Lampson and Gaselee, at least for the moment. His ‘friends at the Egyptian university’ might have included Newberry. Many of the evacuees had returned to Egypt by the beginning of August, including Szalatnay-Stachó. On 3 August, Churchill visited Cairo after ‘a dangerous flight over Gibraltar and the North African desert’,1509 where he rather vigorously reshuffled the Middle Eastern command. Auchinleck was replaced by

1506 1507 1508 1509

AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 5 August 1942, pro domo. AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 21 July 1942. TNA, FO 371/31585, 13 July 1942, A. H. Gardiner to H. W. Fairman. Kitchen 2009: 286.

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Harold Alexander, and further changes were made that specifically affected the command of the Eighth Army, which eventually fell to Montgomery.1510 The Czechoslovak cause received a significant boost on 5 August when Eden wrote to Jan Masaryk: In order to avoid any possible misunderstanding, I desire to declare on behalf of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom that as Germany has deliberately destroyed the arrangements concerning Czecho-Slovakia reached in 1938, in which His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom participated, His Majesty’s Government regard themselves as free from any engagements in this respect. At the final settlement of the Czecho-Slovak frontiers to be reached at the end of the war they will not be influenced by any changes effected in and since 1938.

Jan Masaryk’s reply culminated in this statement: My Government accepts your Excellency’s note as a practical solution of the questions and difficulties of vital importance for Czecho-Slovakia which emerged between our two countries as the consequence of the Munich Agreement, maintaining, of course, our political and juridical position with regard to the Munich Agreement and the events which followed it as expressed in the note of the Czecho-Slovak Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the 16th December, 1941. We consider your important note of the 5th August, 1942, as a highly significant act of justice towards Czecho-Slovakia, and we assure you of our real satisfaction and of our profound gratitude to your great country and nation. Between our two countries the Munich Agreement can now be considered as dead.1511

Many exiled Czechoslovaks saw this as a turning point. Marie Sargant, still a recent recruit to the ministry in London, kept a photograph recording the nullification of the Munich treaty in her private papers, alongside portraits of Beneš and both Masaryks.1512 Two rather different pieces of evidence also bear the date of 5 August 1942, when Jaro was still in the hospital at Qantara. One was a letter to Gardiner, in which Jaro puts on a brave face and 1510

Hamilton 1987. Full text https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/munich1.asp (accessed 1 April 2020). 1512 Photographs kept in the Archive of CEGU, Fonds Černý, a gift of A. Sargant and N. McIntosh. 1511

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most of the letter, written in his usual neat hand using every space available on the sheets of airmail paper, concerns his work on Late Egyptian and plans for a Late Egyptian grammar. The fact that he was in a hospital was referred to only in passing, and the reason for being there as an ‘accident’. He then briefly appended in a laconic footnote: ‘I tried to commit suicide cutting my wrist but was saved. My arm is healing in a satisfactory way.’1513 Gardiner was shocked, but the wartime conditions might explain the situation, given evidence of recent high-profile wartime suicides. He also received detailed reports in despatches from Fairman, but references to Jaro were destroyed and cannot be read in the archive.1514 The legation despatches told a different story, of a painful and not-at-all satisfactory therapeutic process. On the same date that Jaro was writing to Gardiner about Late Egyptian grammar being his foremost preoccupation, his legation colleagues had reports from medical officers that he was still hallucinating about an imminent German attack, and not healing well. Szalatnay-Stachó again reported these circumstances in his despatches to London.1515 A week later it also transpired in the despatches that the wounds had affected the mobility of Jaro’s left hand.1516 Jaro was not entirely left alone in Qantara. Szalatnay-Stachó visited him regularly once he was himself back in Egypt, though it entailed a dusty 400-kilometre round trip from Cairo to the Eastern Delta. Careful censoring of Fairman’s letters prevents any suggestion as to whether he also visited Qantara, or whether he simply observed from afar until Jaro was transferred to Cairo. As an embassy employee, Fairman would have probably had some leverage with medical officers in the hospital where Jaro had been admitted. Szalatnay-Stachó reported to London in mid-August that Jaro was still in the military hospital, but that a move from the mental health ward was highly recommended after ‘six weeks 1513 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.29 [should be 29a], 5 August 1942. 1514 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94 series, the letters from 1942. 1515 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 5 August 1942. 1516 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 13 August 1942.

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exclusively in company of mentally disturbed patients.’1517 Ideas were floated about an evacuation to South Africa, but Jaro was apprehensive about a completely unknown environment and the loneliness that would have awaited him in a South African military hospital. He wanted to remain in Egypt, and in particular to return to Cairo despite the misapprehensions of medical personnel as ‘the military surgeon is concerned about a relapse when Černý is moved closer to the war zone.’1518 The transfer was eventually achieved when Szalatnay-Stachó moved him from Qantara to a sanatorium in Helwan, substantially closer to Cairo, and to Jaro’s social circle, friends, and colleagues.1519 He was now at a spa resort in a residential suburb of Cairo that grew in the late nineteenth century as a ‘climatic health resort’ and was popular among affluent visitors and residents of Cairo.1520 Its popularity grew in the twentieth century, and its leafy streets filled with Art Nouveau villas. It was still a hospital, but perhaps a more comfortable one than a military hospital in the Eastern Delta. Jaro turned his attention to work, specifically to Late Egyptian. It was time-consuming, and required his full attention. Asylum and hospital patents of the period were allowed such activity so long as it did not disturb the medical setting. For example, Ivor Gurney composed music and wrote poetry, and innumerable letters, during his years in psychiatric hospitals, hoping for a release that never came.1521 Jaro, however, had those willing to help and even pressure the authorities into releasing him from hospital and back to a noninstitutionalized life. Szalatnay-Stachó was positively impressed with Jaro’s willingness to continue his work at the legation, and came to the conclusion that a suitable environment in Cairo could contribute to Jaro’s convalescence rather better than ongoing isolation in hospital.1522 1517 Szalatnay-Stachó, quoted in a dispatch on 13 August 1942; AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo. 1518 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 13 August 1942. 1519 Szalatnay-Stachó placed Jaro in Helwan for a month; AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch on 20 August 1942. 1520 Prestel 2017: 172–185, with further references. 1521 Kennedy 2021. 1522 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, File Legation Cairo, dispatch 13 August 1942.

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Jaro was in the Helwan sanatorium for a number of weeks in September and possibly October, before returning to Cairo where Fairman, Grdseloff, Kuentz and others awaited. His legation colleagues and circle of Egyptological friends were at hand. Gardiner watched from afar, worrying over Jaro’s state of mind and his future as an Egyptologist (and perhaps his ability to continue as an amanuensis). Fairman, who visited Jaro in Helwan, sought to allay Gardiner’s apprehension: ‘my personal impression is that there is nothing to fear. He appears to have a very high sense of his duties and he carries permanently on him a list drawn up by both of you jointly of the work that lies ahead of him, and he has repeatedly shown it to me and spoken of the ostraca and other enterprises.’1523 This particular letter has been censored, and the resulting impression from what can be read is that Gardiner and Fairman cared rather more for Jaro’s research output than for his personal wellbeing, but that is perhaps due to partial nature of the letter; personal feelings may have been contained in parts that were redacted. True to form, Jaro returned to his Egyptological work as much as possible under the circumstances, including excursions to sites in the neighbourhood of Cairo. By mid-December, less than six months after his psychotic break, he was in the Tura quarries copying hieratic inscriptions.1524 The reading of the Coptos decree, promised to Gardiner many months before, was also finalized by Jaro with the assistance of Fairman and Grdseloff. Jaro was keen to prove he was his old self, but compared to his pre-crisis character was starting to demonstrate some volatility: ‘The difficulties in reading them [hieroglyphs of the Coptos decree] are immense but those sharp eyes of Černý’s are gradually making discoveries and he is infuriated when a morning passes without a new reading. He has quite a number of readings and additions.’1525 There were good reasons for optimism in Cairo: the danger of a German invasion had receded. The battle of Alam Halfa, and 1523

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.133, 29 September 1942. Copied the hieratic hymn in Tura, 16 December, pp. 3–5; in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.130. 1525 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.132, 6 December 1942. 1524

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the subsequent second battle of el-Alamein, had ended in Allied victory, and during October and November the Afrika Korps was in full retreat. The Operation Torch landings were successful, and brought more Allied troops to northern Africa.1526 On 12 November, the British Eighth Army recaptured Tobruk, and soon afterward American soldiers joined the military presence in Cairo, albeit that the Americans were not fond of the British Empire:1527 ‘The intensity of America’s disapproval really became apparent thirteen years later. Eisenhower, who had seen the British and French colonialism in North Africa at the time of TORCH, was to react devastatingly in 1956 when the British and French tried to crush Nasser and take back the Suez Canal.’1528 1943 Recovery January 1943 began a year of dramatic warfare, major diplomatic negotiations, and some significant personal changes for Jaro. Recovery and the continuation of both diplomatic and Egyptological work were his priorities, and he was again in Mounira, appreciating the relative comfort of the city and his support network of friends—particularly Grdseloff and Fairman—and the small Czechoslovak expatriate community. The winter was cold and damp, with an unusual number of rainstorms in the Cairo region,1529 but Jaro’s relationships were warm, except with some French colleagues at the IFAO. Jaro was again meeting with Fairman at least twice a week, and in a later letter reported ‘to have a thea [sic]—and ice-cream soda in the hot summer—and a Turkish black coffee and these meetings are a pleasant frame for exchanging Egyptological informations [sic] and ideas and remembrances of our friends and their work.’1530 Letters to Gardiner were always rather formal, as Jaro was at home in a rather formal style of English. Cairo again seemed relatively unaffected by the war, but the impression was deceptive. Its barracks were teeming with Allied 1526 1527 1528 1529 1530

Kitchen 2009: 352, 356. See Renders 2017: 31–37 on Nigel Hamilton’s analysis of Roosevelt and Churchill. Cooper 1995: 226. Cooper 1995: 233. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.27, 11 September 1943.

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troops; its underbelly a perceived hotbed of espionage. Shortages caused by the war pushed up the price of food considerably, and Egyptians were still far from content with what many perceived as the wars of others being fought on or close to their country. Lampson was elevated to become Lord Killearn on 1 January 1943, and was soon to again welcome Churchill to Cairo. As the immediate pressure from German troops receded, and everyday life and travel was almost unaffected by the ongoing war except for troops stationed in Cairo and Alexandria, the city was becoming a suitable place to host diplomatic meetings. In January and February, Egyptology became the focus of Jaro’s life, and became an important part of his recovery; a powerful motivating force. While the Casablanca meeting between the Allied leaders was taking place in early January, Jaro left for Upper Egypt in company of Grdseloff and, for at least for part of the trip, Fairman. Grdseloff was the chauffeur. They visited Luxor, Karnak and Mo’alla,1531 and copied various hieroglyphic inscriptions (such as the entire text on the kiosk of Senwosret I at Karnak).1532 Jaro might have even stopped in Deir el-Medina, as some of his copies of Coptic graffiti from the local temple could have been made at that time.1533 Jaro was clearly keen to continue his epigraphic sorties, partly because they helped to maintain and improve his proficiency in writing and reading the various phases of the Egyptian language, but there was perhaps the lingering possibility of the nascent mapping and surveying project. How much he knew of Fairman’s plans is uncertain, or even whether Fairman told him that his name was connected to the project in cables to London. By 20 January, Jaro had returned to Cairo and visited the Tura limestone quarries, to continue copying a fascinating hieratic graffito containing a hymn to Amun-Re in Gallery 38.1534 Tura 1531 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.138: 7 January 1943, copying hieratic texts in Karnak (p.23 vso–24 rto); 13 January; in Theban tombs and Luxor (p. 26); 10 January, a brief trip to Mo’alla, p. 89. 1532 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.27, 11 September 1943. Mistakenly in referring to the kiosk as belonging to Senwosret III. 1533 Coptic graffiti were added to Černý’s notes, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.139, p. 96ff. 1534 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.130.

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contained a set of stelae and rock inscriptions and one of their earlier surveys was published by Georges Daressy,1535 whom Jaro suspected of being less than reliable. By coincidence, the Tura quarries were of interest to the British military as potentially offering a bomb-proof site.1536 The military alerted Engelbach, who in turn alerted Bakir and Jaro. As Bakir recalled: Major Manning very kindly allowed Dr. Černý and myself to visit the site and examine the inscription. Our visits, however, stretched over a long period … Before proceeding to deal with the inscription itself, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr Černý for his collaboration and encouragement, to Mr. Engelbach for the opportunity he has kindly given me, to Mr H. W. Fairman for some suggestions, and to Mr Leibovitch.1537

Jaro and Bakir returned to Tura once again in February to continue work on the text, and the Hymn to Amun-re was published by Bakir (with the above endorsements) in the Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte.1538 His acknowledgements indicate the working group of Egyptologists in wartime Cairo that was not closed to Egyptian scholars, although tensions still lingered (certainly for Fairman), and in later years tensions would grow with respect to scholars of Jewish origin or sympathy, which made life more difficult for Leibovitch and Grdseloff. Jaro, though, was open to Bakir, whose BLitt thesis he valued, and maintained contact with both Egyptian and Jewish colleagues. He also consulted on Bakir’s DPhil thesis at Oxford, which was written during later war years and defended in 1946.1539 The copying of individual inscriptions, and filling pages of handwritten notebooks, may have felt like rather small steps, but Jaro maintained his overall research plan. He was, as before, focused on collecting texts from potentially vulnerable monuments, and was interested in places that demonstrated Egyptian craftsmanship, workforce organization, and social life. Hence, 1535 Daressy 1911. Outlines of hieroglyphic texts from Tura are provided in PM IV, 74–75 and LÄ VI, 807–809. For an overview see Hikade 2001: 190–194. 1536 Harrell 2016. 1537 Bakir 1943: 83. 1538 Bakir 1943. 1539 Bakir’s DPhil thesis, Slavery in Pharaonic Egypt, was published as Bakir 1952.

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perhaps, the visit to the quarrying site of Tura, although the challenge of hieratic texts in a quarry setting might have been sufficient motivation. Study trips and new notebooks were a positive sign, after the Flap, of Jaro returning to a routine of text collecting, provisional editing (if only for his private research archive), and further intellectual work. His attendance at the legation must have been relatively limited at that point, but his work was evidently satisfactory as he was later missed. A former superior recalled him as an efficient colleague, despite his illness and his evident interests outside the legation job, with a curious mixture of effusiveness and dryness: ‘He was an asset for the legation given his detailed local knowledge, language skills, and expert hand in writing desired contributions for the press.’1540 Other colleagues had warmer recollections, and the army broadcaster Rulf called him an ‘old friend’.1541 In April 1943, and probably unknown to Jaro, Gardiner continued his discussions with the Foreign Office about promoting British Egyptological research in Egypt. Gardiner’s news regarding Jaro probably arrived mainly via Fairman, and he considered it satisfactory enough to focus on other Egyptological matters. Difficulties in Engelbach’s situation re-emerged on 7 April via a letter from Margaret Murray in correspondence with the Foreign Office. Engelbach had been deprived of his position and only partially reinstated following a scandal involving artefacts from Tanis in the Egyptian Museum going missing, and Murray thought that Engelbach, being an open and outspoken man, was an easy target. An unrestrained typewritten enclosure attached to her handwritten letter to the Foreign Office outlined the minutiae of the case. In her view, Engelbach’s perceived predicament was likely the outcome of strong anti-British sentiments in Egypt, and Murray interpreted the case as one that aimed to prove Britain could not protect its citizens. Engelbach, however, felt himself sufficiently reinstated in his position at the Egyptian Museum after the theft scandal had died down. 1540 This is from a later evaluation after he had left Cairo, in a May 1944 letter by Jaroslav Šejnoha, AMZV, Londýnský archiv, Prague, OSO file J. Černý. 1541 Rulf 2000: 175.

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Her view indicates the potential for misunderstanding and sinister attribution on both sides of British-Egyptian relations. Equally imprudently, she also suggested that Drioton sympathized with the Vichy government in France, which shows that she was out of touch with his real opinions; Drioton was not in favour of Vichy.1542 Gardiner, meanwhile, had been informed, by Cyril John Gadd, via the Foreign Office, about the possibility of further damage in the Luxor area.1543 Despite Fairman’s tendency to exaggerate conservation issues Gardiner entrusted him with a survey of the status quo in Beni Hasan and other Egyptian sites.1544 Gardiner lost his principal correspondent at the Foreign Office in June 1943 when Gaselee died, but the debate continued. This single-minded dedication to the problem of a research survey in Egypt was altogether notable given the circumstances. Comparatively speaking, Egypt was becoming increasingly safe, as the desert front receded toward the west, culminating in a significant turning point with the surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia in May. The war was even starting to directly affect Germany with the advent of new air raids, such as the Ruhr air campaign and Operation Chastise, the so-called ‘Dam Buster’ raids. Given these developments, it is fascinating to browse the exchanges between Gardiner and the Foreign Office in 1942 and 1943, and their ability to focus on antiquities in the midst of a catastrophic conflict. Some aspects of the discussion were coined in terms of British prestige, and hence had a political dimension, but the desire to preserve Egyptian heritage in the context of ongoing world war is quite specific, and perhaps challenges narratives of an imperial race for antiquities cleverly engineered as a diplomatic game. Egypt and Britain had a tense relationship during the war, and discussions about who should control antiquities could have been interpreted as further British meddling, and would not have gone down well in Egypt, as the Foreign Office—and indeed at one point Gardiner—had already noted. Strategically, it was perhaps not a prudent idea, but Gardiner, 1542

Bierbrier 2019: 134–135. TNA, FO 371/35588, Egypt and Sudan, File no. 952, 15 April 1943; a letter from C. J. Gadd referring to damage done to tombs at Luxor. 1544 TNA, FO 371/35588, 14 July 1943. 1543

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probably still induced by Fairman, continued to correspond with Glanville (who as a Wing Commander in the RAF probably had his hands full) and Blackman with rather dogged determination. Gardiner believed that a survey of monuments was important, not necessarily for Britain or for reasons of diplomatic stability, though Fairman never missed an opportunity to emphasize that British-Egyptian relations would benefit from a British-led and internationally-backed survey of Egyptian monuments. Especially if it provided an opportunity to train both Egyptian and international specialists.1545 Back in Cairo, Jaro had also different, and somewhat petty, problems. After returning from hospital he had been looked after by Grdseloff, Fairman, and friends at the legation. In May he underwent further surgery, most likely to repair the damage to his left arm and hand. Following this, Kuentz was happy to have him back at the IFAO; Varille was not. Jaro records him objecting ‘to my getting back to the “popote” (informal meals) thought he gladly accepted Mekhitarian. So I am having my meals at a Czech pension which is just on my way from the Legation to the Inst[itute].’1546 Jaro was upset by this. He observed that he was among friends ‘and it is cheaper’ at the pension (with the Haises), but that he intended to refuse any help to Varille in the future, calling him a ‘nasty little man’ and adding to Gardiner ‘I shall tell you things about his attitude.’ Fairmain drily observed to Gardiner that Varille was pro-Vichy,1547 but even if Jaro could not bring himself to express his feelings so succinctly it is telling that a petulant tone should have intruded into the civility and formal register of his correspondence. Only emotional upheaval could have brought about such a tone.1548 The summer of 1943 has been called ‘glittering’ by Artemis Cooper, one of the best historians of wartime Cairo. It was as if the war, fast receding into the west, stopped being a concern 1545 Throughout the Fairman/Gardiner exchange of letters in 1943; GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence AHG 94.42. 1546 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.28, 1 October 1943 (in retrospect). 1547 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.140. 1548 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.28, 1 October 1943 (in retrospect).

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and became instead an interesting topic of conversation. Artists began arriving in Cairo to entertain the troops: Noël Coward, Vivien Leigh and Josephine Baker all performed there.1549 Jaro, who was later known to enjoy a variety show, didn’t mention a word of this, so it unknown whether he indulged. Perhaps he was still so short of cash that he couldn’t afford such entertainment. Perhaps he compartmentalized this aspect of his world, which Gardiner—or any censors reading their letters—was not meant to see. He could nonetheless enjoy good food in Cairo, something that amazed visitors arriving from ration-stricken Britain,1550 and his upcoming years in London would prove much more deprived in that respect. Instead, Jaro duly reported where he went in June, on study trips connected with Fairman’s mapping project in Upper Egypt, while the exchange of correspondence between Gardiner, his colleagues in the UK, Egyptologists in Egypt, and the Foreign Office continued.1551 In July, Gardiner again promoted the need for the protection of Theban tombs, and secured support from such members of the international Egyptological community as Harold H. Nelson, who was working for the Chicago Epigraphic Survey and was thus familiar with large epigraphic or other surveys of important monuments.1552 The Foreign Office still found the time and energy, amid organizing Churchill’s diplomatic visits, to address matters relating to antiquities. In August 1943 it was felt that action should be taken to convince the Egyptian government that a remedy was needed, and in September a report on British archaeological interests in the Middle East stated that ‘If the situation continues accusations will be made that His Majesty’s government were indifferent to higher interests of culture.’1553 The idea of a detailed archaeological survey was still being discussed, at least in theory, though thus far there were no indications that Gardiner considered Jaro to be a prospective participant of this endeavour. Their correspondence

1549 1550 1551 1552 1553

Cooper 1995: 245–258. Cooper 1995: 250–251. TNA, FO 371/35588. On Nelson, see Thompson 2015–2018, III: 94, 373. TNA, FO 371/35588.

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from 1943 was exchanged at longer intervals, perhaps replaced in part by wires transmitted through Fairman. Jaro had by now apparently recovered, and continued organizing his notebooks while writing legation press releases and perhaps still appearing in its broadcasts. He also gave further Egyptology lessons to his Cairene friends and acquaintances, who included Grdseloff’s friend, the lawyer Aly Ibrahim Harari. Jaro, ever the networker, had developed a circle of local contacts via his Egypt-based friends.1554 The appearance of Egyptian contributors in the ASAE during the war (Bakir, Fakhry, and others named as qualified employees of archaeological missions) confirms that Egyptology had the potential to change with the times and be more inclusive.1555 Even Fairman, begrudgingly, foresaw Egyptian training and participation in the British-led or internationally-sponsored survey he envisaged. Through its ‘wartime Egyptianisation’,1556 Egyptology had become more nuanced, and was opening the possibility of more organic cooperation between Egyptian and international researchers, though it did not realize its full potential, just as the chance to develop ‘empires of the mind’ at the end of the war also went fallow.1557 It was eventually decided by the Czechoslovak legation that Jaro should be transferred to London—which from his perspective meant being closer to Gardiner—and his diplomatic passport bears repeated visas permitting him to quit Egypt. A number of his colleagues serving in the military were also being transferred

1554

Referred to by I. Harari in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1028. Thompson 2015–2018, III: 430–431. 1556 Reid 2015: 334f. 1557 Gildea 2019: chapter ‘Imperialism of Decolonisation’; Gildea here refers to Churchill’s idea, interpreted as the peaceful coexistence of universal empires: ‘The empires of the future would be the empires of the mind.’ Yet in the original setting of his speech at Harvard University (6 September 1943; transcript available at https:// winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/the-gift-of-a-commontongue/, accessed 29 March 2022), Churchill referred to Anglo-American cooperation, and to international cooperation fostered by education in a language shared across nations. In theory, one could argue that enemies of Churchill’s ‘empires of the mind’ would include both petty nationalists clamouring for their nation states and linguistic exclusivity, and the racist types of colonial administrator who were not in favour of education. 1555

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to Britain in the second half of the year.1558 Jaro’s UK visa, being ‘good for entry into the United Kingdom and transit through British Territories en route,’1559 was issued in June 1943, and Egyptian permissions were reissued in July, August, October, and November. Jaro was still formally attached to the Czechoslovak legation in Cairo in the second half of November, because his transfer was repeatedly postponed due to authority approval and an available berth on a ship failing to coincide. He was no doubt still useful to the Cairo legation in the meantime. By September, Jaro’s departure was imminent, and he was deciding which of his precious notes would travel with him and which would be left behind. ‘The only thing I shall bring with me to London,’ he noted, ‘will be the manuscript of the Deir el-Médineh papyri, the whole book of materials for the Late Egyptian Grammar and my Coptic slips.’ Jaro was still quite taken with grammatical studies and enthusiastically reported on the approach used by Hans Jakob Polotsky and on his own Coptic studies,1560 which both observed the development of Late Egyptian verbal forms into Coptic forms. Gardiner already knew from Fairman, and now had it directly from Jaro, that he had ‘even lectured on Coptic grammar for a few friends at the French Inst[itute],’ and now learned that he was also studying fragments of Old Kingdom Annals in the Cairo Museum, the result of many Sundays in the museum spent working with Fairman.1561 Following his convalescence, Jaro seems to have preferred the museum to outings at Saqqara. In the end, Jaro left a large portion of his notebooks and other research material in Cairo at the Czechoslovak legation.1562 The notes and slips taken with him signalled a renewed enthusiasm for language and linguistic history. For example, in October he examined a calendar of lucky and unlucky days housed in 1558

U děla na středním východě 1944: 113–115, 124–125. ANpM, Collection Černý, Diplomatic passport, page 8. 1560 Jaro and Polotsky had discussed Coptic grammar since at least 1938, as Polotsky noted in his introduction to Études de syntaxe copte (Polotsky 1944). 1561 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.27, 11 September 1943; the fragments of these Annals were more recently assessed in Wilkinson 2000. 1562 As he later referred to this in his letters and, indirectly, in his Wadi Allaki paper (Černý 1947). 1559

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the Egyptian museum, noted a complete list of months on this document, and recalled a past interest in the names of months, particularly Tybi. The resulting brief communication was prepared in a matter of weeks.1563 Drioton meanwhile suggested that a publication of the ‘lucky and unlucky days’ papyrus, obtained by the Egyptian museum during 1943, was in order, and Jaro duly began comparing it with papyrus Sallier IV. He did not object to Bakir eventually undertaking the publication,1564 probably because he had plenty of other tasks at hand and had a positive working relationship with Bakir, both as a mentee and a collaborator at Tura. Jaro’s days were now more contented. In correspondence he sounded excited and pleased, whether relating war news, that a letter from Bruyère had been obtained through the Red Cross, or successes in Egyptological work be they his own, or Fairman’s, or Polotsky’s.1565 He had also taken a different view on the matter of collecting. During 1943, Grdseloff was contacted by a prospective seller of an interesting group of papyri. He had the impression that one of them might have contained a king-list similar to the Royal Canon of Turin. There were no names given in the correspondence between Fairman and Gardiner on the matter— allegedly the papyri might have come from a private individual, or at least a local discoverer and an unnamed ‘efendi’ were indicated as the sellers, via a dealer. Gardiner was willing to buy the papyri, but Fairman and Jaro gave a clear advice as to what should happen. Fairman stated: ‘Ever since we knew of their existence Černý and I have maintained that, however nice it might be to send them to Europe or America, they would have to remain in this country.’ Negotiations with the owners, which was conducted by Grdseloff, petered out in 1946 to 1947 without result. Edwards, who was in Cairo at that time, also probed some options, and Fairman was not above suspecting him of intending to export the papyri to London.1566

1563 The issue was related to Gardiner on 1 October 1943; GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.28. 1564 Bakir 1948. 1565 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.28, 1 October 1943. 1566 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.125, 5 January 1944.

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This appears to have been a visible turning point for Jaro. Previously, he might have been willing to help to make a collection of papyri or ostraca in Europe complete so that they could be studied as meaningful, contextualized assemblages of artefacts, and on that account had helped Gardiner by acting as his buyer in the 1930s. He was also willing to camouflage the export of the second piece of the ostracon of Sinuhe, because as a complete text it was priceless and the first part was already in Britain. But now he saw no reason to remove a collection of papyri from Egypt when it could just as easily be studied there. It seems he was neither fundamentally worried that his Egyptian colleagues were essentially incompetent as a group, or were so malevolent as to prevent him and other international scholars from accessing the artefacts, even though such concerns might have been aired among his peer group in Cairo. Rather, it is likely he noted a change in the development of Egypt, a change in which Egyptian professionals strove to develop Egyptology in their own country. He was acquainted with professionals who had skills and credentials he could accept. Fairman was more critical, but in the end was willing to accept that some colleagues he first suspected of glaring incompetence were in fact quite good professionals.1567 Notable among these was Labib Habachi, even if he was initially unsure if the short excavation campaigns Habachi conducted in the Delta were sufficient for the sites concerned.1568 But the purchase and exchange of books mattered greatly for a timely exchange of research data, and Fairman noted that Habachi was a ‘real friend’, on hand to procure publications issued in Egypt.1569 Fairman here exhibited a known psychological development often called ‘groupthink’: Egyptian colleagues as a category were difficult to trust (in turn, the ‘efendis’ of Fairman’s letters often did not trust their Western counterparts), but individuals could be accepted and respected. Groupthink has to be disrupted by personal experience and, gradually, this was happening to Jaro and his friends. 1567 A facet common throughout correspondence between Fairman and Gardiner from 1941 to 1946; e.g., GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94. 1568 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.120, 6 May 1944. 1569 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.68.

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The end of 1943 saw more significant Allied meetings on African soil, and in Cairo it was an amusing winter. The threat of war had receded, but the glamour of a city of warriors’ repose remained. This was the time of the villa named Tara, in the Zamalek district of Gezira Island, where Fermor, William Stanley Moss and Sophie Tarnowska held court over a location that was famous (or perhaps notorious) for wartime Cairene socializing: ‘The young warriors of Tara were bathed in a dangerous glamour that no other Cairene coterie could emulate.’1570 The villa was also the setting for a plan to kidnap a high German officer on Crete, General Heinrich Kreipe. This was another SOE action, and just as daring and problematic as Anthropoid had been, but this time was presented as being entirely Cairo-driven, to ‘minimize the risk of reprisals.’1571 The lessons of Lidice had been learned. Beneš stopped in over Cairo in December 1943 en route to visit Joseph Stalin,1572 but Jaro was no longer involved with the Cairo legation, having left for London. Missing the great diplomatic games in Cairo, he had finally departed Egypt aboard the HMS Almanzora, as she was then known, a former merchant cruiser turned troopship,1573 which was capable of carrying 2890 troops as of 1943.1574 The trip from Port Said to the River Clyde ran the gamut of naval warfare; the armed convoys and U-boats of the Battle of the Atlantic, later fictionalized so effectively by Nicholas Montsarrat in The Cruel Sea. For Jaro it was a unique experience, but the ship herself was an old hand, since she already served in the Great War as an armed merchant cruiser,1575 and reprised the role in the 1570

Cooper 2013: 169. Cooper 2013: 174. 1572 Beneš was under the impression that the Soviets respected the Czechoslovaks and the Western allies, though this soon proved to be a deception on Stalin’s part; see Department of State, Office of the Historian, Historical Documents Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Volume III Document 576 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1943v03/d576, accessed 8 April 2020). On Soviet strategy regarding Beneš, see Mastny 1972; Zeman 1997: 187–190, 219–220. 1573 The history of the Merchant Navy serving the war effort between 1939–1943 was outlined by Munro 2006. 1574 Munro 2006: 476. 1575 The service record of the Almanzora was amply documented by one of the men on board, Phillip Needell (1886–1974); papers related to service on HMS Almanzora, 1977/233, the National Museum of the Royal Navy. 1571

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Second World War. Her main area of operations was the Atlantic,1576 but she also ferried troops to and from the Middle East. Her journeys led initially around the Cape of Good Hope (the route taken by the Sinuhe ostracon in 1942, and by Czechoslovak soldiers in the summer of 1943),1577 and were tedious for the troops on board. The ship had been adapted for her troop-carrying role, but sea travel in wartime conditions and under wartime limitations had its demands. Its earlier wartime occupant, Harry Gould, had travelled to Egypt via the route around Africa in 1941 and used one word with unrelenting regularity: ‘sick’.1578 Most of the journey was spent indoors, and the season ensured stormy weather. Quarters was Spartan and the troops usually slept in hammocks. None of this would have been taxing to someone accustomed to life on an archaeological expedition, or in Sinai caves, but Jaro was not in robust health. Moreover, he needed to cope with the fact that he left had Egypt, which had now ceased to be a theatre of war, and was heading toward the thick of the warfare still raging in Europe. At least he did not have to undertake the same lengthy passage endured by Gould, as the Almanzora sailed through the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic,1579 onward to her usual base on the Clyde where she weighed anchor at the beginning of December. Upon landing, Jaro was followed by a letter from Leibovitch asking if he had met his ‘âme-sœur’.1580 1944–1945 london Jaro arrived to a rather different Britain than the one he knew before the war, of which he had recalled upper class sociability and academic debates. In 1944 there was the blackout, rationing, 1576 The routes taken by HMS Almanzora from September 1915 to November 1918 as part of Northern Patrol (10th Cruiser Squadron), Central Atlantic, North Atlantic Convoys, and Central Atlantic Convoys have been traced in great detail: see https://navalhistory.net/OWShips-WW1-08-HMS_Almanzora.htm (accessed 25 January 2020). 1577 U děla na středním východě 1944: 124–125. 1578 Recalled in the diary of Harry Gould: see https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2 peopleswar/stories/38/a1989138.shtml (accessed 3 June 2022). ‘WW2 People’s War’ is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. 1579 The Mediterranean route re-opened in May 1943; Munro 2006: 379. 1580 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1330.

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and a general sense that the war effort permeated every waking hour. Following his work as a press attaché in Cairo, Jaro was appointed to the Information Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Jan Masaryk. Jaro most likely travelled from the Clyde to London by train and reported to the Ministry on 12 December 1943. On Christmas Eve of that year,1581 his position was settled to include a salary of £40 per month.1582 There was a whole Czechoslovak world in London, complete with cultural institutions, a club, the Czechoslovak Institute, periodicals, and newspapers. Czechoslovak organizations were spread across London in formal locations such as governmental offices and informal ones where events and meetings were held. The latter included the Grosvenor Hotel,1583 in Buckingham Palace Road, a favourite of Moravec. A small Czechoslovak ecosphere had been transplanted to London, including its factions and bickering, but also patriotic enthusiasm and genuinely wellmeaning efforts. The exile community had been growing ever since the Munich treaty had been signed in the autumn of 1938, and its growth had accelerated with the occupation in March 1939 and the loss of most of continental Europe to the Nazis in 1940 to 1941. Indeed, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile was one of several from occupied European states that had sought refuge in the United Kingdom. The Czechoslovak position was not always helped by Beneš’s gritty pursuit of ‘annulling Munich’, or his idea of removing the German population from Czechoslovakia.1584 His visit to the USSR via Cairo, which took place around the time Jaro was steaming toward Britain, heralded stronger ties between Czechoslovaka and a highly problematic ally, Stalin, and sent mixed signals to other Allied governments. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile had not always been particularly good at assessing or articulating its position, or in evaluating the international situation from other perspectives. Beneš could came across as single-minded and unprofessional. Even the Czechoslovak war 1581 1582 1583 1584

AMZV, Personal file J. Černý. Equivalent to between £1700 and £1800 per month in 2018 or 2019. The hotel currently (2022) operates under the name The Clermont Victoria. Zeman 1997: chapter ‘The Uphill Struggle’.

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effort in the protectorate itself was in some doubt. Its industrial base was not insignificant to the German war machine, and although Operation Anthropoid was a striking gesture, the Allies would have preferred it to be followed by widespread sabotage and other acts of resistance aimed at disrupting German military production. ‘Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, talked about creating subversive organizations behind enemy lines, while the War Office was emphatically calling for “active effort to combat the serious loss of confidence in the British Empire which has arisen”.’1585 Unlike the clearly expressed contribution by its pilots in the RAF or agents in the SOE, the government-in-exile and the resistance in the protectorate did not always appear to act candidly or even helpfully. In April 1943, the SOE declared its full support for the Czechoslovak war effort, but criticized Czechoslovak citizens as unwilling to make further sacrifices: ‘Violent subversive action by the Czechs would result in the decimation of the home population and the destruction of their industry, and they may well think that, by making a minimum subversive effort, they will save their people and industry and still have their State restored to them.’1586 The SOE therefore considered Beneš’s government indecisive or unwilling to begin an operation that would incur strong reprisals in the protectorate. The two organizations did not see eye-to-eye about their expectations: Beneš didn’t want to risk his government’s popularity among the exiled citizens, which he might have had he engineered widespread resistance that spurred further reprisals. The ‘Heydrichiad’ was an instructive lesson in the capabilities of Nazi repression. Miscommunication between the decision-makers on both sides is perhaps understandable: London, even during the height of the Blitz, was very different from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, which had to deal daily with the Gestapo and the SS,1587 and neither the British nor Czechoslovak governments could truly know what that entailed. Nor was there much respect. The SOE 1585

Gerwarth 2011: 2. TNA, HS 4/9, Czechoslovakia, Politics, report dated 23 January 1943. 1587 Gerwarth 2011: 2–4, 8–9; see the latter pages for local resistance organizations’ doubts regarding the strategic impact of plans from London, beginning with the assassination of Heydrich. 1586

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felt that ‘the Czech government and GHQ is largely composed of mediocrities.’1588 Moravec was described in this particular 1943 memo as baleful and a bottleneck for any cooperation, but Beneš confided in him. Moravec wanted sovereign control over Czechoslovak matters and was not fond of any action that could be understood as ‘meddling’, yet the SOE needed transparency within Allied intelligence circles, not an easy principle to realize in any intelligence environment.1589 Moravec had a reputation for being difficult within the government-in-exile as well, because he—like the British—considered its members to be mediocrities, and had little respect for politicians other than Beneš.1590 Still, the SOE memorandum ended on a favourable note, stating that ‘despite these unfavourable conditions there is no reason why we should be inhibited in our attitude toward the Czech effort,’1591 and a later assessment by a military historian suggests that there were indeed tangible results,1592 even if they were achieved in a charged atmosphere. Wartime demands on all sides needed to be understood ‘in the context of many other peoples with no less legitimate national agendas,’ which Beneš often failed to do. From an overarching Allied perspective, the final defeat of the Nazi regime was what truly mattered, and from that perspective some Czechoslovak demands, especially Beneš’s insistence on the declaration of pre-Munich borders, came across as ‘sectarian’, or just plain difficult. Especially as ‘working fifteen hours a day and seven days a week does not improve anyone’s temper, and all wartime bureaucrats were chronically tired and emotionally ragged.’1593 Tired people can become entrenched in their positions, and consequently become more easily frustrated with alternative entrenched positions. Despite the frictions, there was also cooperation, and moral and material support often at a very personal level. The task of creating the image of Czechoslovakia for British politicians and 1588 TNA, HS 4/9, Czechoslovakia, Politics. On the SOE’s relations with the Czechoslovakian governing authorities. 1589 Šolc 1994: 169–174. 1590 Šolc 1994: 102–103, 112–113. 1591 TNA, HS 4/9, Czechoslovakia, Politics. 1592 Šolc 1994: 174. 1593 This quote, and the preceding, are from Burleigh 2010: 448.

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society fell to the Information Service, Jaro’s new employers. The head of service was Jaroslav Kraus, and ministry officials worked closely with the Czechoslovak section of the BBC. Jan Masaryk was a regular in its programming. Jaro’s working time was usually spent in the Fursecroft building, a 1930s brick and stone façade pile in George Street, Marylebone,1594 just off Edgware Road, within short walking distance of his lodgings at 51 Gloucester Place. This part of London had expanded significantly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to form a succession of long avenues of brown brick buildings with characteristic white window frames, rather like its more renowned neighbour Baker Street. It was to be Jaro’s home until the end of war. At the time of his arrival, and for a few weeks thereafter, London was relatively safe, though still much closer to theatres of war than anywhere Jaro had been, except for Egypt during the Flap. Memories the Blitz and the Battle of Britain were still fresh. Much had changed in London. The city was scarred and burnt, but unbeaten, fighting, tired, and proud like St Paul’s cathedral immortalized in Herbert Mason’s photograph over three years earlier. ‘Wreathed in billowing smoke, amidst the chaos and destruction of war, the pale dome stands proud and glorious—indomitable.’1595 And so stood London, proud without being tragic. Jaro was not part of a small Czechoslovakia, but of a wider and formidable fighting community. Nonetheless, expatriate Czechoslovaks, with their contributions to the war effort and human pettiness, became part of Jaro’s daily life. Jaro also needed to settle into a new routine, which involved more than office work at the Ministry. Wartime retains its peculiar pattern, of unceasing hard work (Michael Burleigh’s ‘fifteen hours a day and seven days a week’) and hurry—to the shelters, to decode coded messages, to bring in supplies, to deliver a speech or a broadcast on time regardless of circumstances—but also waiting, sometimes to the point of tediousness—waiting in shelters, waiting for reports or news, waiting for the planned invasion of Europe. 1594 1595

The building is, as of the time of writing, an apartment block. Jardine 2009: 23.

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Many people in London, just as in Cairo, found the war to be a particularly sociable time, of parties and clubs. Another Czechoslovak arrival from Cairo to London, Colonel (later General) Karel Klapálek, found the partying tedious and was itching for action, though he enjoyed dancing with Mrs Churchill.1596 Not everyone found it tedious, however. Lockhart noted the particular atmosphere of wartime socialising when the club he was attending was bombed: I was shot off my chair on to the floor. I looked up slightly dazed. The generals and admirals—and indeed, everyone else—were flat on their stomachs. The only standing figure in the room was a naval captain. He was very erect. In his right hand he held a full glass of port. As I raised myself, he asked me if I were hurt. I told him no. He lifted his glass and emptied it slowly. ‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘that didn’t spill’.1597

Jaro now had a new set of colleagues at the Ministry. On or around 20 January 1944 he met a slender, attractive woman of about his age, Mrs Marie Sargant. They were both alumni of the Charles University in Prague in the 1920s, though there is no hint that they had ever met or even been introduced to each other before that January day in Fursecroft building. With his introduction to Marie, Jaro for the first time had a relationship that left a detectable trace in the archive, beyond a few scattered clues open to speculation. They never met during their years in Prague. After university, Marie visited France several times, attending courses at the universities of Bordeaux and Montpellier, and becoming comfortably Francophone. It was on one of these trips in the mid-1920s that she met Thomas Sargant, who was six years her junior. In 1925, a barely twenty-year-old Sargant was travelling through Montpellier on a European tour. There must have been a fairly serious romance, as in 1927 Sargant was trying to convince Marie that she should move with him to London and marry him.1598 His parents thought their son was not yet ready for such a step. Norman Sargant wrote to Marie’s parents: ‘I think that both 1596

Hrabica and Hrabica 2006. Lockhart 1947: 103–104. 1598 Their early correspondence is not preserved and was instead reflected in the family recollections of Mrs A. Allott; personal communications, 2017–2019. 1597

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Tom and Manya have a lot to learn about love: As soon as I am sure that a strong and lasting love exists between them, I will get in touch with you.’1599 Eventually, though, Thomas had his way and Marie moved to London. Her first job was as a teacher in the Channing School for Girls in Highgate, North London, where she taught French. Norman Sargant noted to her parents that she was growing accustomed to ‘English life and customs’, and she had to learn English on the fly. Tom and Marie Sargant were married in Islington on 7 September 1929, she a thirty year-old woman with qualifications and job prospects, he a twenty-four year-old assisting his father in the family business. Marie lost her Czechoslovak citizenship and became a British subject. This was primarily due to a discriminatory inter-war Czechoslovak law that automatically deprived women who married foreigners of their citizenship,1600 and one of several elements of Czechoslovak interwar legislation that show the rather complex position of women in the republic,1601 and the fraught relationship between gender and citizenship.1602 The Sargants had two daughters born in the 1930s, Anna in 1930 and Naomi in 1933, and continued to live in North London close to Thomas’s parents. Marie regularly visited her Czechoslovak family in Boskovice, and remained particularly close to her sister Anna, called Anduli within the family. However, her marriage began to fragment several years after the youngest daughter Naomi was born. It was probably in or around 1936 when Thomas began a relationship with another woman, and the couple separated. Marie was left to care for their daughters, and initially was opposed to a divorce. She left the family home in Hornsey Lane and moved with her two daughters to a flat in Shepherd’s Hill, probably in 1936 or early 1937.1603 She also began to work on her qualifications, and enrolled at University College.1604 1599 The Allott family archive; translation A. Allot. Norman Sargant thoughtfully wrote the letter in German, so that Marie’s parents might read it without another person, a translator or interpreter, intervening in private family matters. 1600 Feinberg 2007. 1601 Feinberg 2006: 72–98. 1602 Feinberg 2006. 1603 Personal communication, A. Allott. 1604 Her university card is preserved in the private family archive of the Allott family, courtesy A. Allot.

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The daughters were educated at good schools and Thomas contributed to their maintenance, but Marie’s overall financial position was far from secure. She had a growing circle of British friends and kept her Czechoslovak connections,1605 but the Munich treaty and subsequent German invasion of Czechoslovakia meant disruption. Indeed, she was visiting Boskovice with both daughters in September 1938 but had to leave in a hurry to avoid being caught in an increasingly unstable situation. She was not to see her Czechoslovak family again for several years. She also moved her daughters to Harpenden, a town in Hertfordshire, and from 1941 they were sent to a boarding school in Saffron Walden, away from London.1606 She initially tried to build on her position as a teacher, but with the outbreak of war felt she could be of more use to the Czechoslovak resistance in London. She began lecturing on various Czechoslovakia-related themes, and contacted Czechoslovak officials asking for slides and information materials. Her contact at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was Viktor Fischl (better known as the writer, literato, poet, and diplomat Avigdor Dagan).1607 Marie was determined to become part of the war effort and in March 1942, within a year of developing her role as a lecturer, submitted a memorandum outlining her activities to Max Lobkowicz, a Czechoslovak envoy in London.1608 Lobkowicz had just begun his tenure.1609 Marie outlined her abilities and existing links with British charities,1610 and Lobkowicz noted her contribution and potential. In April 1942, her position at the Ministry was made official in a letter stating that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted her ‘existing propaganda work in British and Allied circles’ and named her an ‘external collaborator of the Information bureau’ with the task of pursuing further educational activities at British 1605 This part of her life is not well documented in either official documents or family archives, or at least not in documents that have yet been identified. 1606 This is partly reconstructed from family recollections and the archive of A. Allott. 1607 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, k. č. 537 (box), March 1941. 1608 Hazdra 2015: 205ff. 1609 About context of Bohemian artistocracy in the republican Czechoslovakia see also Glassheim 2005. 1610 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, k. č. 537 (box), March 1942

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schools and women’s organizations.1611 Her monthly allowance to cover expenses was £20,1612 half of what Jaro’s salary was in 1943. In 1942 she also finally agreed to a divorce from Thomas, who remarried shortly thereafter. By the end of 1942 she was thus a government employee, a teacher, an educationalist, a mother in wartime, and a divorcée. Marie continued to live at London addresses, such as Brompton Square or Holland Park, which gives the impression that she occasionlly lodged with friends, or had to move because of damage to buildings during the Blitz. Perhaps her renewed professional position—and growing selfreliance—gave her the confidence she needed to end her marriage. Marie contributed, from a government-sanctioned position, to a long list of activities by various Czechoslovak charities, which had been established in the United Kingdom by members of the expatriate community. Some of these activities, including meetings, lectures, or musical and theatre performances, were oriented largely toward the Czechoslovak community, but others had a broader remit.1613 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs found it useful to inform and educate the British public on Czechoslovak matters, and vice versa. The words of Neville Chamberlain about ‘a faraway country’ and ‘people of whom we know nothing’ resonated bitterly,1614 as did those of a poem by František Halas: ‘There tolls the bell of treason, the bell of treason. Whose hands have swung its rope? Sweet France, proud Albion.’1615 Britain played host to Czechoslovak exiles and was the headquarters of the resistance during the war, but distrust and disappointment lingered.1616 The flow of information within the Ministry needed to address Czechoslovaks in exile and in the protectorate, the

1611

AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, k. č. 537 (box). According to the Measuring Worth website calculator: https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/ (accessed 3 June 2022). 1613 See Srba 2003 for activities of groups supporting exiles since 1938; see also Buresova 2019. 1614 BBC National programme, N. Chamberlain’s speech broadcast on 27 September 1938, quoted in ‘Prime Minister on the Issues’, The Times (28 September 1938), p. 10. 1615 Translation after Caquet 2018, frontispiece; for a different version see Lukes and Goldstein 2012: 269. 1616 See in general Smetana 2014. The early Cold War legacy of Munich has also been addressed by Kramer and Smetana 2014: 55–85. 1612

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British public, and Czechoslovak and British politicians. This was the psychological side of the Allied warfare.1617 From her office in the Fursecroft building, where several of its luxurious flats were in use by the Czechoslovak governmentin-exile,1618 Marie could easily visit a number of Czechoslovak, British, and European organizations: from expatriate clubs to established charities, from Bloomsbury to Ladbroke Grove.1619 Her principal objective was to target the British public and charities, and was in a good position to approach British women and educational institutions from the networks she’d fostered as a teacher. Her activities mainly revolved around lecturing and public talks. She presented discussions on Czechoslovak life, its education system, and on the history of the Republic. In December 1942 she was added to the Women’s Institute’s official panel of speakers as a specialist on Czechoslovakia. Typically, ‘counties would get in touch with you direct when they needed a speaker, and would make all arrangements.’1620 Her schedule from 1942 to 1945 included attending meetings of the International Women’s Service Group, the Czechoslovak Red Cross,1621 for whom she had successfully fund-raised, and various local branches of the Women’s Institute across London and the Home Counties. Marie’s correspondence consists of the countless letters, telegrams and references to phone calls that were required to organize her visits. She financed her own travels from her Ministry salary, which was raised to £26 monthly in 1943, and therefore requested no fees or honoraria from her hosts. On one occasion, she had to insist on the installation of a telephone line in her Holland Park flat (strategically located close to the Council of Czechoslovak Women at 155 Notting Hill Gate), as this was crucial for her work: ‘my work at the Czechoslovak Foreign Office has been hindered a great deal owing to the 1617

Tigrid 2017: 106–107. Tigrid 2017: 83. 1619 Outlined in Srba 2003: 67–72. 1620 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, 1942, k. č. 537 (box), 30 December 1942; in a letter from the National Federation of the Women’s Institutes, the Assistant Secretary H. Crichton informed M. Sargant that she had been recommended as a speaker concerning Czechoslovakia, and hence her name had been added to the panel of official WI speakers. 1621 For its activities see Buresova 2019: 101–118, on fundraising 114–118. 1618

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lack of a telephone.’1622 She even enclosed an endorsement from a Ministry official named Karel Erban that confirmed her job. Marie was tireless in identifying potential addressees for her educational work. She was very good at grassroots work, and spoke at several rallies of the Girl Guides, thus appealing to younger female audiences. She was also in contact with the Czechoslovak section of the BBC, and campaigned for major publication projects such as that of the Spirit of Czechoslovakia, a periodical printed by Unwin Brothers. For the latter, she approached Lady Violet Bonham-Carter (Baroness Asquith)1623 and the Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, the Duchess of Atholl, as potential sponsors, both of whom were eminent opponents of the appeasement.1624 The periodical collected views in support of Czechoslovakia from a wide range of public figures, both those who were respected and on occasion those who were controversial, such as Douglas Reed, known for some antiSemitic views.1625 Items were taken from both Czechoslovak and British contributors, with regular appearances by dignitaries from the government-in-exile, including Beneš himself. There were frequent contributions that could easily be labelled ‘propaganda’, but the periodical, however keenly pro-Czechoslovak, was not a monolith of homogeneous opinions. During 1944, Marie had a busy schedule that included talks at the various branches of the Women’s Institute and The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, and travelled across London, between London and various towns in southeast England such as Walthamstow, Great Missenden, and Bracknell, and on longer trips to Manchester.1626 It was an intensive schedule and it brought Marie into contact with a wide range of social groups and diverse communities, all connected by interest in education and potentially open to what she had to say about her country of origin. By that time, she must have had excellent English, and the ability to work with a range 1622 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, k. č. 537 (box), letter to the Telecommunications Office, 4 February 1943. 1623 Pottle 2004. 1624 Sutherland 2004. 1625 Reed wrote for The Spirit in 1942; The Spirit of Czechoslovakia, v. 3–4, 1942–1943. 1626 AMZV, Londýnský archiv, 1939–1945, zaměstnanci, Sargant, k. č. 537 (box).

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of the British audiences. She at least had the advantage of a previous life in Britain, as opposed to refugees who came from Czechoslovakia after 1938 and needed to undertake a crash-course in the challenges faced by exiles, particularly regarding language and culture.1627 As a British citizen of Czechoslovak origin, she had dual allegiance to two Allied states, and her job was to boost the morale of both and to help ensure their ongoing cooperation. Jaro’s and Marie’s relationship developed, perhaps slowly at first. Jaro was much occupied and not only at the Ministry. He was again directly available to Gardiner and their correspondence became more concise as their meetings gradually became more frequent. Gardiner kept his residence outside London in Wonston, Hampshire, and Jaro would visit him in the country. In April, Jaro tackled transcriptions from one of the Strasbourg papyri,1628 and struggled to keep his notes safe. He probably still had no idea what had happened to the papers kept in his and his mother’s flat in Prague, or those he left in Cairo. He now had as much access to the British Egyptological collections as the wartime limitations allowed, though not those from UCL or the British Museum as they had been placed in safekeeping for the duration of the war. Those in Gardiner’s possession and in Oxford were available, however. One papyrus that was to occupy him greatly was the so-called Will of Naunakhte in the Griffith Institute, which was then part of the Ashmolean Museum. This document transported Jaro back to the world of the Deir el-Medina workmen, and the minutiae of their daily lives and households. He wrote: It often happens that documents which have come down to us from Pharaonic Egypt mention the same persons. Nor are these always persons of high rank, but may be quite unimportant people. Above all, the workmen and scribes employed in the work on the Royal Tombs of the New Kingdom at Thebes and members of their families are mentioned again and again alike in hieroglyphic inscriptions and in hieratic documents, so that it is frequently possible for us to obtain a glimpse of their lives and to become acquainted with details of their personal affairs.1629 1627 1628 1629

Compare Buresova 2019: passim. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.53. Černý 1945: 29.

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Naunakhte was first recorded as the wife of one of Jaro’s Deir el-Medina Ramesside protagonists, the scribe Kenherkhepeshef, and their marriage was probably childless.1630 After the scribe’s death she remarried and had children. Her will is concerned with the very end of her life, when she felt abandoned by some of her children and intended to ensure that only her deserving and thoughtful offspring should become heirs to the family property, which she had accumulated throughout her lifetime. The uncaring ones should be disinherited.1631 The affairs of Naunakhte altogether comprise four papyri. Two of the documents came to light in the French Institute’s excavations at Der el-Medinah in the spring of 1928; the two others appeared on the market several years later and were acquired by Dr. Gardiner, in whose possession they now are. It seems that, though coming from the same place, the purchased documents were not found at the same time as the other two, but subsequently in the course of one of those illicit digs so often indulged in by the modern inhabitants of the Theban Necropolis. Dr. Gardiner and the Director of Excavations of the French Institute, M. Bernard Bruyère, have kindly entrusted the present writer with the publication of the documents in their respective charge, and the Director of the Institute, M. Charles Kuentz, has consented to let me edit the Institute’s two documents here in advance of the full official publication of the Institute’s papyrus finds, so that they may serve as illustrative material to the main papyrus, namely Naunakhte’s last will.1632

Jaro still held the opinion that he was a mediator of ancient texts that formed a gateway to ancient lives. He included in his edition a detailed description of the materiality of the documents, including some notes on their discovery and emergence in Egyptological research. Jaro was well aware that the Naunakhte family papyri were part of the same set of documents uncovered by the IFAO mission in 1928, but considered his work on them to be a logical and necessary continuation of work on papyri and ostraca found in legitimate excavations at Deir el-Medina. However, he 1630 An account of her life and affairs has recently been published. It is intended for the general public but is very informative and readable; see Donker van Heel 2016. 1631 Černý 1945. 1632 Černý 1945: 29.

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had by now arrived at a more nuanced understanding of the conditions that led to illicit excavations, and of the questionable ways that papyri reached colectors such as Gardiner, so the published description of the papyri’s origin was concise and technical. There are occasional glimpses of Egyptology exuding into Ministry work. For his contribution to a celebratory pamphlet on the occasion of Beneš’s sixtieth birthday, Jaro was inspired by the Czechoslovak presidential standard that carries the motto Veritas Vincit, ‘Truth Prevails’. He wrote a short paper on ‘Ma’at, symbol of moral order in ancient Egypt’, which introduced the Egyptian concept of order and social justice. Jaro emphasized good family relations and social consensus as essentials of Egyptian social cohesion, and kindness and correct conduct as one of the key elements of Egyptian ethics.1633 The pamphlet betrays a desire to show the strengths of humanity that the world of 1944 was lacking. The pressures on wartime London increased in June with the appearance of ‘doodlebugs’ or buzz bombs, German V-1 flying bombs. Then came the D-Day—Operation Overlord—and hopes that the war might eventually end. The front line began slowly to recede, although the danger of air raids was not yet past. Jaro carried on working on the Will of Naunakhte, and in September visited Oxford to consult the papyri. The rail connection was reasonably good and people regularly commuted between Oxford and London, as the University city was deemed to be safer than the capital. Rudolf Bing (1902–1997), the opera impresario and one of the driving forces behind the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in the 1930s, moved his household there from London, hoping that rumours about an unspoken agreement to spare university cities such as Oxford and Heidelberg were at least partly true.1634 He did so despite having to commute every day on the train. Bing’s memoirs also captured a scene that Jaro must have witnessed, or perhaps experienced: the approach of a V-1: During the buzz-bomb days, one would stand in line [at a bus stop] listening to the droning sound of the self-propelled bombs 1633

Černý 1944. Bing 1972: 75–78. During the war, Bing was an employee of John Lewis, a British chain of high-end department stores. 1634

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flying overhead, and then the buzzing motor would cut off, indicating that the bomb was coming down. We would all scatter to the wall or fall to the ground, hoping for protection; then we would hear the explosion elsewhere, and re-form the line, everybody always in the same place he had been before the bomb.1635

In November, Jaro was courting Marie according to the means available in wartime London. He occasionally invited her to lunch, with a Chinese restaurant in Wardour Street being a favourite venue. He evidently came to appreciate even the rationed dining scene of London, and included Soho in his knowledge of city attractions. Marie and Jaro might have patronized a Czech restaurant ‘in Portsea Hall, 61–3 Edgware Road’,1636 but there is no reliable source to confirm that this was a favoured dining option. Jaro was fast becoming a West Londoner, walking from his home to the office and back, and perhaps to other destinations. He might have visited the Czechoslovak Institute at Grosvenor Place (a half-hour walk across Hyde Park or along Park Lane), but whether he visited Bush House, where his colleagues serving the Czechoslovak service of the BBC were located,1637 is not known. Marie almost certainly did, and would have enjoyed its unique atmosphere, in which ‘surprised by a friendly medley of people from all corners of Europe’ the exiles noticed that ‘Europe is, after all, connected by unbreakable bonds of its civilization and culture.’1638 Jaro and Marie were steadily moving from colleagues to friends to something more. Whether they become lovers within several months of their acquaintance is unknown, but likely. A wartime romance could have blossomed between Jaro and Marie.1639 Marie sought to protect her reputation by writing and telegraphing as ‘Anon’, even though anonymous communications were not allowed during the war, as Jaro noted at the end of November.1640

1635

Bing 1972: 77. Buresova 2019: 204. 1637 On the programme and its contents, see Harrison 2015; for an insider’s view, see Tigrid 2017. 1638 Tigrid 2017: 74. 1639 As was the case for many others; see Doumanis and Herzog 2016. 1640 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2270, 29 November 1944. 1636

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In a world punctuated by the threat of random death, the need for companionship, whether friendship or intimacy, can take on an immediate intensity, and the constraints and obligations of normal society can be relaxed. Times of war have their own sexual habits. ‘Sexuality had escaped from the marital framework in the years when the world turned upside down.’1641 The uncertainty of living to see the next day was, in principle if not in degree, the same in London during the Blitz as it was in Atlantic convoys or RAF sorties. Relationships were faster and more permissive, and to a certain extent it can be said that the Second World War prefigured the sixties, albeit with a lower selection of reliable contraceptives. Narratives of wartime sexuality encompass issues of liberation as well as of exploitation and control,1642 but women in wartime were certainly not regarded ‘only as the controlled or victimised objects of male power.’1643 However complex intimate relationships might be in wartime, Marie entered this relationship of her own free will and maintained it of her own free will. And she was also capable of making own reproductive choices by using such birth control as was available.1644 When 1945 opened, Jaro and Marie were friends and more, but they still lived at different addresses and were not involved in one another’s private lives on a daily basis. Marie eventually settled in a leased house in Highgate, North London. Given their schedules, it is appealing to see their relationship as an affair conducted in stolen time, with the added frisson of fleeting moments, perhaps touches, or a kiss in the office when nobody was looking. Perhaps they kept an electrifying distance. There was certainly chemistry between them, which Marie’s daughter observed,1645 and which photos from shared leisure moments walking in London parks capture only insufficiently. These photos show that Jaro had been good-looking since his youth, and 1641

Doumanis and Herzog 2016. Delano 2000 and Summerfield and Crockett 1992. 1643 Summerfield and Crockett 1992: 451. 1644 She must have had either an amenable physician or visited a Marie Stopes clinic, without emphasizing her status as a divorcée, as birth control clinics were long accessible only to married women. Even the advent of the Pill in the early 1960s was initially controlled; Kynaston 2015: 589–591. 1645 Excerpts from the diary of Anna Sargant; courtesy A. Allot. 1642

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although his difficult period in Cairo had left some marks he was still an attractive man with a keen interest in conservative but stylish clothes, inasmuch as he could afford them. Marie matured into a remarkably fine-looking woman with a distinctive face, and although her hair was prematurely white it waved gently, and was always carefully arranged. Hers was a homemade elegance (in later years her daughters helped their mother and each other; visiting the hairdresser was expensive), but it was important. Marie made sure to give a good impression, as she had to be convincing and presentable in her public role. As a woman in the war effort, her careful dress and hairstyle signalled, as did the lipstick of the Wrens, resilience and dignity. ‘Beauty was a duty.’1646 The couple met up, walked, dined, and occasionally escaped behind closed doors. Jaro was not always available, not even for weekend trysts. There was Gunn in Oxford and Gardiner in Hampshire, and Glanville to write to, his wider network to maintain, and ostraca and papyri to read. The year of 1945 became increasingly exhilarating as the war in Europe rushed toward its end. Jaro was still working on governmental press releases, but had to consider his options for both personal and professional reasons. By this time the full horror of the Nazi regime had become known, as both the Western and Eastern fronts moved deeper into the occupied territories of Europe and the first camps were liberated. Knowledge that had trickled in since the 1930s, and was attested by escaped survivors and observers in the 1940s, now poured in, an unspeakable waterfall of death. The first major camp to be uncovered was the concentration and extermination camp at Majdanek, in July 1944, by Soviet troops. Auschwitz was entered in January 1945, and still more were found in Western Europe, mainly in April. The Allies publicized the evidence widely. When the British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen in April, the BBC ran extensive coverage as they had an eyewitness on-site, Richard Dimbleby. His summary of the liberation ran ‘This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my 1646 Quote by Amber Butchart, fashion historian, English Heritage, in a tutorial on 1940s makeup. http://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/historical-makeup-looks-you-can-tryat-home/ (accessed 12 June 2020). ‘Wrens’ was the popular name for members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS).

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life.’1647 Yet the worst ‘death facilities’, extermination camps like Majdanek or Treblinka, were still without adequate explanation.1648 Whilst the two Allied fronts hastened to meet in Berlin and end the horror, a new threat was forming—a new form of darkness—and it was becoming palpable.1649 The division of Europe was not viewed by all of the liberators as a temporary strategic objective. Winston Churchill recognized this: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.1650

Churchill saw that the division was likely to remain, and become the foundation for a new world order. The world had just endured something unimaginable, and it must have been hard to envisage a return to the cosmopolitan ways of the interwar period, upon which so much of Jaro’s international career depended. If he was to return to ‘his’ country, what would he return to? The Beneš government had decided to enter Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Soviet advance, and was in the eastern Slovakian city of Košice in April, but were unable to reach Prague before the bloody uprising of May 1945. The war ended for Jaro in London on 8 May, but the last shots and explosions in Prague were heard twenty-four hours later, when the streets were full of blood and the Old Town Square was in ruins. The Soviets were delayed, but that would not have presented a difficulty for the resistance if US divisions standing in Pilsen (of all places) had been permitted to move in and aid the insurgents. But the demarcation lines 1647 Richard Dimbleby, ‘Liberation of Belsen’, BBC News, 15 April 1945. http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4445811.stm (accessed 3 February 2019). 1648 Snyder 2010: 382–383; see also Wachsmann 2015. 1649 Steiner 2011: 1067. 1650 W. Churchill, ‘The Sinews of Peace,’ 5 March 1946, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, transcript at www.winstonchurchill.org.

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determined at the Yalta conference had to be observed. Nominally, Czechoslovakia was a region to be liberated and not conquered, but Soviet troops did not refrain from rape and pillage; not even from raping women liberated from concentration camps.1651 Retrospective painted images of local girls welcoming the Red Army with armfuls of blooming lilac branches were unrealistic, at best. But it was, finally, the end of the war in Europe, and an exhilarated atmosphere prevailed: ‘the Czechs’ gratitude was often genuine and not just politically contrived.’1652 It was in this animated mood, at the start of June, that the Charles University in Prague reopened. Very soon thereafter, on 9 June, the proposal to instate Jaro as a professor extraordinary for Egyptology was renewed, using documents from the attempt made before the war.1653 The professorial congregation of the Faculty of Arts voted for his nomination by nineteen votes to one, with one abstention.1654 This occurred while Jaro was still an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London, restricting research in Egyptology to the weekend: He visited Oxford on 16 and 17 June 1945 to copy ostraca in The Queen’s College,1655 and continued work on a copy of his own ostracon (purchased before the war) on 24 June.1656 He occasionally managed to find time from the Ministry on weekdays as well, for example on 6 August, when he copied texts from material in the Griffith Institute.1657 News from the war in the Far East still punctuated the calendar: it was on this day that the first atomic bomb was deployed over Hiroshima, heralding the last act of the Second World War and the Japanese surrender on 15 August. Repatriating the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, including its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was a gradual process. Jaro was told that it might be possible for him to continue in the diplomatic

1651 Helm 2016: chapter ‘Liberation’; Zoltanski 2006: 77; see also Beevor 2002 on rape in German territories generally. 1652 Wingfield 2007: 297. 1653 AUK, Personal file J. Černý, no. 275/1945. 1654 AUK, Personal file J. Černý, no. 275/1945. 1655 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.49, pp. 19, 21, 23. 1656 He worked on O. Černý 21, bought in 1939, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.49, p. 34. 1657 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.49, p. 28.

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service, possibly in The Hague,1658 where his language skills would no doubt have been an asset. Jaro had enjoyed his stay in Britain while it lasted, but he was aware of his eventual repatriation. He also knew of nascent efforts to keep him in the UK as an Egyptologist. Glanville informed UCL that he was likely to leave for Cambridge to take up the chair as professor of Egyptology, and discussed options for his successor. He evaluated six candidates, and said of Jaro that he was ‘led by his study of social and economic conditions into “philological fields where he was the best scholar working today”.’1659 Glanville actively campaigned for Jaro, as UCL in his opinion might have benefitted from a professor with a linguistic or philological disposition. But unless this proposition became a reality, Jaro needed to consider an imminent return to Prague, and of again tackling the unenviable situation of being a Privatdozent at Charles University. In the meantime, he maintained his disciplined approach to Egyptological work, and 29 September again found him in Oxford, collating ostraca from the Queen’s collections.1660 He returned to Czechoslovakia in early October 1945, in one of the Consolidated B-24 Liberators used for repatriation, taking leave of Marie at Highgate tube station. He later wrote a blowby-blow description of his journey to Prague. They parted early in the morning: 7:45 am found Jaro in the airways’ office, 9:30 found him at the airport in Croydon.1661 The flight departed shortly after noon and arrived in Prague at 4:15 pm, after a little over three hours in the air, landing at Ruzyně Airport (now Václav Havel Airport) in Prague.1662 An adapted bomber was a far cry from the trains of the 1930s, and the flight was not comfortable, but it was a suitably adrenaline-charged return to a country he had not seen since March 1939. It was also a return to a very different routine than that of his bachelor lifestyle was across two continents during the war. Jaro brought with him memories of dust and ash in Cairo during the Flap, of the smell of his own blood dripping on the floor at Qantara station, of the 1658 1659 1660 1661 1662

AMZV, Personal file J. Černý. After Janssen R. 1992: 54–55. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.49, pp. 19, 21, 23. Curiously, Jaro didn’t mention the date. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2271.

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disinfectant of the military hospital, of HMS Almanzora, of the doodlebugs, but also of ice cream sodas with Fairman in Cairo’s glittering summer, club dinners with Gardiner, and the warmth of Marie’s bed. He was returning to the middle-class Central European domesticity of his mother’s apartment—a mother who was unaware of his wartime experience—and to the expectations of Lexa and the waiting students at the reopened faculty. Upon arrival, Jaro telephoned his brother Miloslav, who was supposed to meet him and take him home to Košíře, to the old flat he’d shared with his mother. This did not quite work out, and thus Jaro had his first post-war lunch in Prague at the airfield canteen—bread, butter, sausage and a dubious coffee—and boarded a repatriation bus that finally took him home at 8:00 pm. In twelve hours, a Londoner, a diplomat, and a lover had turned into a Praguer, a son, and a brother. But he remained an Egyptologist. Jaro had not seen his family for almost six years, and the meeting was no doubt emotional. He had some food parcels from London among his baggage, which were very welcome.1663 From his old flat in Košíře, still a leafy if not particularly affluent suburb, he had to walk to reach a tram for the city centre. That part of Košíře lies on a hillside and the walk downhill in autumn or winter time must have been rather adventurous, but Jaro was soon travelling the path regularly to reach the reopened university. Lectures began on 30 October, with seven hours of various classes of grammar and reading per week, all focused on Late Egyptian.1664 There was no forthcoming offer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His repatriation was rather confused, with his cases from London arriving late and to a Ministry address. The university had no money, but expected him to take up his duties immediately. Within a fortnight of being at home, Jaro observed to Marie: ‘on the whole I am fed up with things and though I am quite glad and happy to be at home, there is nobody to sooth [sic] me down like there was in London.’1665 Jaro was caught in a bittersweet 1663

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2271. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2272. 1665 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2272 (quote), and 21.2273 (details about his cases). 1664

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homecoming; a double loss of the space that had hosted him during a trying period of separation, and of the imagined home to which he couldn’t truly return. Both he and his home had changed.1666 1945 ends: between London and Prague Seeing Prague scarred by war might have been moving if not for Jaro’s experience of London in flames after an air raid. Despite several buildings being bombed out during Allied strikes, the Old Town Hall being burned down in the last few days of the war by the intransigent SS troops, and a fair few façades being pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel (often marking spots where citizens died making their last stand), Prague had escaped relatively unharmed. Other wartime damage was less visible, but not less critical. Changes were underway, driven by fear and suspicion of what Western powers intended. In part this was a legacy of Beneš’s political manoeuvring among diverse exiled political groups, and the Soviet-backed Communists were gaining momentum. Soviet soldiers were slow to leave, and Soviet influence in Czech politics was due to remain.1667 Even the university was already inclined to follow new trends. The ‘Last Chancellor’, Hrozný, was ill, and it was expected that Jan Rypka, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, would step in. The exile government, however, named Jan Bělehrádek as Chancellor. Bělehrádek was more openly leftwing, and more acceptable to pro-Soviet exile politicians: the left-wing and pro-Soviet factions were already exercising their influence. Rypka and the professorial convocation accepted the government’s decision after some deliberation.1668 The post-war university environment was also de-Nazified, which effectively meant the closure of the German University in Prague and some purges at the reopened Czech University. The intent was to remove Nazi sympathizers but the result was disputable, as ‘investigation of national reliability’ was already being used to 1666 After Brothers and Lewis 2012: 180–195, paraphrasing Hans-Georg Gadamer: Gadamer 1993: 366–372. 1667 Dejmek et al. 2018: 378–379. 1668 Zilynská 1998: 236.

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remove anti-Communist personnel in 1945. It was also an expedient tool of personal revenge.1669 One perceptive observer of the upcoming regime change was another returning exile, the twenty-year old soldier and scholar Ernest Gellner, who wrote:1670 One of my main recollections of Prague in ’45 was a communist poster saying ‘everyone with a clean shield into the Party’, that is, everyone whose record was good during the Occupation. It meant in reality exactly the opposite: ‘If your shield is absolutely filthy, we’ll scrub it for you; you are safe with us; we like you the better because the filthier your record the more we have a hold on you.’ So all the bastards, all the distinctive authoritarian personalities, rapidly went into the Party, and it rapidly acquired this kind of character.1671

The protectorate years left many scars in the mentality of Czechoslovak citizens. The Egyptological representative at the German University, Theodor Hopfner, was arrested and died in prison without trial.1672 Sudeten Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia (the expulsion became known as a ‘removal’, odsun), first in a messy violent purge and later in a more organized, but still substantially inhuman, procedure: ‘German sources name 18,889 people who died in the odsun, 5596 of them violently. Unnamed casualties would raise the real count to perhaps 50,000,’ though some sources suggest that the number of casualties directly and indirectly caused by the expulsion could reach five times that number.1673 The realities of the expulsion were suppressed among the Czech public, but anecdotal evidence and recollections of those involved recount stories of brutality, from killings to gang rapes. Often, there was little or no distinction being made between people who sympathized with the Nazis and people who simply identified as German. Families were split, with German-speaking relatives being forcibly removed, 1669

Zilynská 1998: 238–243. Lukes 2004. 1671 John Davis interview with Ernest Gellner, Davis 1991: 64. Also available at http:// www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/gellner/InterGellner.html (accessed 4 March 2020). 1672 See Sicherl 2003: 409–411 and 417–418, and Macková et al. 2012–2013, II. 1673 Quote and approximates from Sayer 1998: 243. 1670

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while their Czech-speaking members struggled to prove national allegiance. A single family could easily have experienced both Totaleinsatz (removal to the Reich for forced labour) and the imprisonment of some members by the Nazi regime, and later the expulsion of others by the nationalist Czechoslovaks of the Communist regime.1674 The multinational character of Central Europe and its shared roots was being decimated, with strictlydefined national units emerging in its stead. This was a legacy of wartime negotiations, in which large-scale population movements were sanctioned by the Allies on the condition that this was done humanely.1675 That idealistic condition was not remotely met. For some Czechoslovaks the response was an act of revenge, impulsive or premeditated. For others it was an opportunity to lay their hands on property that had been declared German. For Beneš’s government it meant cleansing the state of minorities now perceived as a threat. The experience of Munich cast a long shadow, and the brutality of a war that raged until the very end, with the Soviet ‘liberators’ being among its worst perpetrators, changed perceptions of what was permissible, or even conceivable. The openness of so many Czechoslovaks to the upcoming Communist regime and Soviet influence was partly a response to the threat of ‘fascism’ returning, if only imagined and hypothetical, but it was felt strongly. With Stalinism as the alternative, however, Czechoslovaks were on a course that led from the proverbial frying pan straight into the fire. The Communist Party in 1945 was already hard at work penetrating the security services,1676 even as the public façade of Czechoslovak politics was of ‘building bridges’ between East and West, between socialism and Western democracies.1677 Amid this atmosphere of a slowly tightening grip of political influence and on academic freedom, the Prague University reopened its doors. The extraordinary summer term 1945 started not 1674 The author’s great-grandfather was drafted for forced labour in Germany. Upon his return he was faced with the expulsion of his sisters and was required to provide proof of his own and his nuclear family’s national reliability. The family was largely bilingual, with some preferring German and some preferring Czech as their main language. This was by no means untypical. 1675 Dejmek et al. 2018: 346–347. 1676 Pynsent 2000. 1677 Dejmek et al. 2018: 387.

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even a month after the end of war, and lasted until 7 September. The winter term followed at the end of October.1678 Its international relations were barely disrupted, as in the following year Chancellor Bělehrádek was among a government delegation at a UN meeting in London, and used the occasion to visit the University of Oxford and to express his thanks for its role as a surrogate alma mater for Czechoslovak students during the war.1679 Jaro returned to Prague just in time for the winter term of 1945, and was expected—and probably also expected of himself—to teach and thus reinstate Egyptology to its proper place. His students were waiting, and Lexa—his wartime retirement cancelled—and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts were supportive, but no finances were forthcoming. Jaro initially had to live off what little money he had brought from London. The faculty administration was searching its pockets for at least an allowance, if not pay.1680 Czechoslovak Egyptology depended at that point entirely on individuals like Lexa and Jaro to maintain its existence. There were several students, two of them—Zbyněk Žába and Eva Jelínková—being particularly active. Lexa tried to ensure that Jaro was retained as lecturer, but by coming out of retirement and resuming his professorial post he effectively blocked Jaro’s chances of securing the job. Negotiations to confirm a second paid Egyptological post were swiftly renewed, but to no avail. To be fair to Lexa, he clearly told his university superiors that he wished and expected Jaro to take on a large part of his duties, and to be appropriately remunerated for it. Lexa argued that he was not only of an advanced age, but also required whatever time remained to finish his Demotic grammar. In addition, he emphasized Jaro’s expertise in teaching and research, and added idealistically that Jaro had been an employee of the government-in-exile, and hence a participant in the Czechoslovak 1678

Zilynská 1998: 246–247. Zilynská 1998: 253. See also P. Addison: ‘Wartime Oxford was a magnet for politicians and academics exiled from Europe. The University responded with hospitality and support. Study facilities were granted to three Czech universities; a Polish law faculty, which awarded its own degrees with an Oxford seal attached, was established with the assistance of the law school.’ Addison 1994: 177–178. 1680 AUK, FF, personal file J. Černý, no. 776, FF 1945/46, December 1945. J. Rypka to the Ministry of Education. 1679

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resistance.1681 This characteristic was soon to become a serious career blemish. In theory, there was every reason for the faculty to ensure that Jaro remained in Prague, and to provide him with a fully salaried post and the prospect of a career. In practice, Jaro was employed by the Ministry until 30 September, landed in Prague in October, and took on unpaid faculty duties in the same month. And he worked for free, teaching seven hours a week: three hours of Late Egyptian, two hours of Egyptian texts (presumably Middle Egyptian), and another two hours dedicated to reading Late Egyptian.1682 On 21 November 1945, the exasperated Rypka arranged for a loan from his own office, amounting to 5000 crowns. Nothing was forthcoming from the Ministry of Education. Rypka had to remind the Ministry again the following month to provide for teaching duties that ‘he is already discharging.’1683 The Dean was fulsome in his praise: The professors of the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University applied to the Ministry [of Education] for the approval of sessional teaching by Privatdozent Dr Jaroslav Černý. It was also proposed that he become an ordinary professor of Egyptology. Dr Černý is already teaching. He has returned from abroad where he spent 7 years (in Egypt and England), and being without other employ is entirely without financial means. I petition the Ministry to pay him a sustenance amounting to 8000 or 10,000 crowns, as an advance for remunerating 5 hours of teaching and 2 hours of seminars weekly. I beseech the Ministry to oblige kindly my petition, and recommend a solution to this situation.1684

Ministry officials finally acted the last day of the year, and forwarded 10,000 crowns.1685 Meantime, Jaro was observing the situation in Prague, waiting for news from Gardiner and Glanville, and exchanging regular communiqués with Marie who, apart from their long-distance relationship, had other matters on her mind. She was deliberating: 1681 1682 1683 1684 1685

AUK, Praha, Personal file J. Černý, folder 1945, no. FF 90/1945-46. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2272. AUK, Praha, Personal file J. Černý, folder 1945, enclosure to no. 275/1945. AUK, Faculty of Arts, 776, FF 1945/46, December 1945. AUK, Personal file J. Černý, file 1945/1946, enclosure to no. 1236 FF 1945/46.

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should she return to Czechoslovakia or remain in the UK, where her daughters were studying? Her own finances were precarious after she lost her income from the Ministry, alternately renting her own lodgings in London and living with friends in Harpenden. Jaro, for his part, penned a letter a few days after landing in Prague to say that ‘London is a beautiful past and we must try and hope that future [sic] may bring some happiness after the sorrows of the present moment.’1686 He later wrote again in more detail about his life in Prague, relating that November 1945 was spent studying the Egyptian texts that Jaro had in his own possession,1687 in teaching, in preparing lectures, and in planning a public talk for the Oriental Institute on the topic of whether the ancient Egyptians had money.1688 The topic was perhaps ironic, for Jaro certainly did not. In mid-November Jaro caught a cold, but by the end of the month was still fully embroiled in teaching preparations. Studying these papyri and ostraca brought him once again into the midst of Egyptian households and economic troubles; it was as if human beings hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening time since Deir el-Medina. While he was working unpaid for his own university, and was uneasy about his future with Marie, he managed to finish editing a neat little text that he believed told of a cantankerous family’s quarrel, which he first began reading before the war.1689 Its protagonists were two sisters (or close relatives, as Egyptian family terminology is ambiguous); once again women provided insights into the history of Egyptian social and economic life, just as Naunakhte had. In the text, Takhentshepse argued with her sister Iye about the need for more substantial family support for her new household, which she had set up with an apparently irascible husband by the name of Merymaat. The text perhaps raised 1686 A letter to Marie Sargant from 18 October 1945; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2271. 1687 In early November (2 November 1945) he was working on a papyrus in his own possession, and on Prague ostracon 1826. 1688 In GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2273; Jaro noted he was working on a talk for the Oriental Institute. 1689 Prague ostracon 1826, now known more accurately by its new number, P 2027; see Fischer-Elfert et al. 2018.

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more questions than it answered, and was first published in Czech and so did not immediately resonate among Jaro’s Egyptological colleagues, but it was registered by Czech historians.1690 Publications in English were not neglected though, as he also completed his paper on the Will of Naunakhte. Jaro may have reported at length about his Egyptological work and experiences in Prague, but he was also keen to be involved in Marie’s life, in matters great and small. In mid-December he ordered some stockings as gifts for Anna and Naomi, and discussed possibilities for Marie’s future. Jaro thought she ought not to unsettle her daughters and hence should not leave Britain, at least not for the time being. He evidently had some hopes of returning to London himself,1691 despite his loyalty to Prague institutions. Both Jaro and Marie addressed the practicalities of daily life in their correspondence, alongside Jaro’s ambiguous job prospects. Rationing was still in operation in both countries but different commodities were affected differently. Jaro was particularly affected by rationed tobacco, and he relished the cigarettes sent by Marie. In turn, his mother Anna thanked her son’s lady friend for a supply of Corinthian raisins, which were promptly used in ‘vánočky’, a Czech variant of a Christmas stollen. If Anna was informed about Marie, then Jaro was open and serious about their relationship, although it is unlikely that he would have shared all the intimate details with his family. At one point, Miloslav was asked to help with a bathroom problem in Boskovice and members of both families corresponded directly, so it would appear that Jaro intented to maintain this relationship, despite having probably lost one long-term relationship during the war. The uncertainty of their personal future was but a small cog in the machinery of change affecting post-war Europe, and for the time being Jaro simply enjoyed a Christmas at home ‘after five Christmases of separation’.1692

1690 A brief note about the publication appeared in Český časopis historický, vol. 48–49, 1947–1948, p. 346. 1691 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2275, on 13 December 1945. 1692 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2776.

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Grammar in the making Jaro’s research immediately before and during the war was mainly centred around editing texts and philological tasks, those that he had set for himself or those in cooperation with Gardiner. His network of philologists was growing apace, as was his multilevel approach to Egyptian texts. The Late Ramesside Letters provided Jaro an opportunity to delve into an attentive study on the materiality of papyri, which became an increasingly important part of his work. There he observed that the physical form of a letter is different from that of a longer document, which he analysed and—for the convenience of his readers—represented with a drawing. Here Jaro was both able to use his own experience and to consult with Ibscher (and the man’s published work),1693 as both were Gardiner’s houseguests in the 1930s. He also addressed epistolography formulae, albeit only in a brief outline. Studies in the materiality and formulae of letters were soon developed by Bakir in his 1941 thesis at Oxford. This was done with Jaro’s considerable input; Bakir even used Jaro’s schematic diagrams of letters to show how they were generally written.1694 Bakir was a thoughtful student, and quickly grasped the importance of materiality. He somewhat took over where Jaro, building on his descriptions of letter forms and address formulae. Bakir also included diagrams to show how papyri were folded and information on sealings, as these had not been yet discussed in detail by Jaro. Bakir’s work finally appeared in print in 1970— extended and with indexes—and was welcomed.1695 It remains a thorough overview of the subject and a standard introduction to Egyptian New Kingdom epistolography.1696 Jaor’s last pre-war volume on the Deir el-Medina ostraca in Cairo appeared in 1939.1697 He also further developed his knowledge of the Theban region—the home of the ostraca and their writers—in 1939 and 1940, resulting in a paper that identified one of the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna tombs.1698 His focus then shifted 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698

Ibscher 1913. Bakir 1941: 20. Griffiths 1971. And only recently superceded in parts; compare Haring 2009. Černý 1939a. Černý1940.

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to studies of hieratic material and grammar, as fieldwork at Deir el-Medina was interrupted after the 1940 season. Jaro’s work with (and for) Gardiner was a motivating force for his analysis and publication of artefacts bearing texts, but also drove the mobility of those artefacts. Gardiner’s focus was on editing texts, which he collected so that he would have free access to them. Jaro was both his agent and his amanuensis. The former required some difficult decisions on Jaro’s part, as he seems to have become increasingly uncomfortable with the needless removal of cultural artefacts from their country of origin, but his priorities at this time remained preservation and accessibility. Ensuring that texts would be available to suitable Egyptological hands must have seemed expedient. His attitudes changed over time. The leader of the excavations at Deir el-Medina, Bruyère, accepted buying texts from dealers even if they were suspected of having been obtained illegally, so long as they could be recontextualized with other artefacts in museum collections. This highlights one of the complexities of Egyptian archaeology, as specialists who honestly believed in preserving knowledge of the past accepted the social and political status quo, prioritizing artefact collection from dealers who operated publicly while exposing themselves to judgement from their fellows and, increasingly, the Egyptian public. So, toward the end of war, Jaro changed his position. He came to believe that the export of inscribed artefacts should be avoided without transparent and secure permission from the Antiquities Service, and even suggested that complete and accessible collections should be left in Egypt. Some of his previous actions—though technically legal given the existing framework— could in hindsight be regarded as improper, and he decided that he didn’t want to repeat them in the future. Jaro had changed. Nonetheless, whether textual artefacts were collected privately or accessed in museums or in the IFAO, Jaro’s professional focus still regarded them as means to an end: he could refine his knowledge of the ancient Egyptians by improving his knowledge of the Egyptian texts, and in turn he could get to know the texts by improving his understanding of Late Egyptian grammar. Jaro’s British philological circle felt strongly about the need for a new Late Egyptian grammar, preferably from the hand of

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a knowledgeable and cultured specialist who could appreciate the complexity of both the language and the culture that produced it.1699 Erman’s grammar, though its second edition was welcomed by Griffith,1700 did not appeal to Gardiner, Peet or Gunn, although none of them was entirely dismissive. Gardiner had an interest in developing major works of Egyptological literature in English, but his terminology differed from that of Erman or Sethe. The Berlin school both inspired and piqued Gardiner.1701 Peet went further than Gardiner in outlining the limits that Egyptologists (and by extension their audiences, whether specialists or laymen) faced when seeking to appreciate Egyptian literature (which was of specific interest to him), writing that ‘the literature of a people is a reflection of its mentality and a people’s mentality may be regarded as partly natural, or at least the product of causes far too remote in time to be observed by us, and partly the product of its known history.’1702 Jaro was most interested in non-literary texts, which were more difficult to understand as they often had no parallels, or multiple copies to act as comparanda about writing, syntax or grammar. To understand and appreciate both non-literary and literary texts, one had to understand and appreciate the ancient texts in considerable detail, and to provide adequately eloquent translations for the modern audience. Preoccupation with social and cultural history thus led Jaro seamlessly to a preoccupation with grammatical categories. In that respect, he had not deviated from his original intention of writing the complex histories of Egyptians, but rather was taking the necessary steps to that end by amassing notes on Late Egyptian grammar. Where Erman, Griffith, and Jaro agreed was the strong conviction that Late Egyptian had to be viewed as a stage in a continuous and systematic development of the Egyptian language. Griffith had earlier praised Erman’s first edition as a foundation for unravelling a confusing mass of grammatical information gleaned from texts, ‘analogous to … a rope thrown to a drowning 1699

Peet 1931: 3–5. Griffith 1933: 604–606. 1701 Thomas Gertzen, personal communication, based on his extensive studies of the Berlin School and its impact. See also Gertzen 2015. 1702 Peet 1931: 6. 1700

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man … its leading feature was the adoption for the first time of the historical method.’1703 Jaro’s work on Late Egyptian grammar led to him develop a feel for the nuances of its verbal system, but he found himself distracted by comparative and etymological considerations, which took up time but ultimately helped him with other Late Egyptian work. Consequently, he was also somewhat occupied with Coptic,1704 and during the war years in Cairo produced a number of studies focusing on its etymological details.1705 He was interested in the transmission of classifiers as well as in the origins of words claimed by Herodotus or Manetho to be Egyptian, and often drew on his growing knowledge of Coptic to reconstruct probable intermediary forms. These studies were generally brief communications on a particular problem, with limited reference apparatus. For instance, the rules of pronunciation and its diachronic development were often taken as being self-evident to the reader. Jaro had cultivated a system of working with etymologies and the war, particularly its early years in Cairo, provided him with an opportunity for self-directed study and regular output. This was what Gardiner expected of him. He was interested in the approach taken by Polotsky, as they both found it useful to apply Coptic comparanda to Late Egyptian.1706 He used material from documents he’d studied early in his career, such as the Great Tomb Robbery papyri, which contain a wealth of grammatical forms that are repeated across multiple sources,1707 to which he added excerpts from diverse Deir el-Medina texts. The card index resulting from his grammatical studies grew and changed over the years, and reflected the trajectory of own language; its earliest pages containing notes mainly in German, with some in French, but gradually moving more broadly to English, probably even in the pre-war period.1708 This likely reflects Jaro’s increasing cooperation with Peet, Gunn, and Gardiner, as 1703 1704 1705 1706 1707 1708

Griffith 1933: 604. Černý 1941a. Černý 1940b; Černý 1942a; Černý 1942d; Černý 1943a; Černý 1943b. Polotsky 1940. Compare notes on methodology in Winand 2018b. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 26.1–26.3.

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his studies of ancient Egyptian became more closely related to his Anglophone network. His was a dual development: his analysis of an ancient language accompanying changing preferences for the languages used to articulate his professional output. What Jaro observed was a changing verbal system. In 1945, when he was preparing some teaching notes (in English, presumably those that were later used for a lecture at UCL),1709 he noted a: … limited number of verbal forms. As to its supply of verbal forms the Late Egyptian stands half-way between the Classical language and Coptic. Compared with the latter the Late Egyptian is not yet confined to the two verbal forms, the only ones Coptic knows, namely the Infinitive and the Qualitative, but it has lost nearly all the riches of the suffix-conjugation and suffered serious losses in the nominal verbal forms, i.e., Participles and Relative forms. This reduction in verbal forms the Late Egyptian shares with the next following stage of the language, the Demotic; both the Late Egyptian and the Demotic, however, keep the last remnant of the old finite forms, the sḏm.ƒ form, which is practically lost in Coptic. To replace its losses the Late Egyptian develops the tendency of forming various verbal constructions by means of auxiliary verbs and either Infinitive or Qualitative, the sole proceeding later inherited by Coptic. The development of the Egyptian from the Classical language through the Late Egyptian and Demotic into the Coptic, illustrates well the universal phenomenon of economy of languages endeavouring to discard the waste caused by difficult and complicated verbal forms and to reach as few forms as possible to express the idea denoted by the verb.1710

A more recent definition of this process is that Late Egyptian would ‘separate morphological from lexical information’.1711 Jaro came to the conclusion that Egyptian had developed, as had many of the world’s languages, according to the concept of linguistic ‘economy’ espoused by his contemporary André Martinet, who proposed ‘the principle of least effort’ to which languages tended. Martinet later articulated this concept in his 1709 1710 1711

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.18. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.18, p. 1. Winand 2018a: 1.

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Waynflete Lectures,1712 but in 1951 had already stated that ‘structure in language does not result from petrifaction, but from the normal economy of linguistic activity.’1713 He was, in turn, influenced by the Prague linguistic circle, which approached language from a functional perspective in which economy of structure was valued as an important feature, and articulated this in some 1930s publications.1714 One even bears the date 1929, the same year as Jaro’s habilitation,1715 but evidence linking Jaro’s thoughts about grammar directly with the work of the Prague circle is missing. As with economic history, one is left with the somewhat hazy assumption that the intellectual milieu of Prague academe in the 1920s and 1930s might have influenced Jaro’s research interests and concepts. In an earlier 1929 note about verbs, Jaro described Late Egyptian as ‘analytical’,1716 and his admiration for the precision and eloquence of Late Egyptian does not seem to agree with the generalizing assumptions of some of his predecessors and contemporaries, who considered Egyptian in a Darwinian terms to be a ‘primitive’ language.1717 Limitations of any such evolutionary assessments,1718 and ‘how totally Egyptian literature is still misunderstood,’1719 were pointed out even by scholars who generally followed the idea of linear progress toward modernity.1720 The appreciation of grammar as an entry point to culture was —and is not—lost on linguists. In that respect, it is intriguing that more explicit references to parallel developments in linguistics are missing from Jaro’s publications. He may simply have followed Peet (and Gardiner), who developed their interest in a more detailed understanding of Egyptian as the gateway to an appreciation of Egyptian culture specifically, without seeking parallels with other languages and cultures. As a more recent linguist has noted, ‘A grammar will capture the unique genius of 1712 1713 1714 1715

Martinet 1961: 139. Martinet 1952: 7. Sériot 2014: 86, 249. For an outline of the circle’s activities and concepts, see Vachek and Dušková

1983. 1716 1717 1718 1719 1720

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.1, p. 212, §134. Mathieu 2013. See Baines 2003: 2–3 for an outline of these limitations. Peet 1931: 15, note 2. Peet 1931: 11–16; the progress toward modernity: 128–136.

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the language—the way meanings are expressed, and how categories are realized. This is how we can understand how languages differ, and why, and what cognitive and other mechanisms they may reflect.’1721 Eventually, the idea of structuring culture as a communication system was proposed by Jaro’s contemporary Claude Lévi-Strauss, and received renewed attention after the Second World War. But as with the developments of the Prague school, Jaro’s work does not show that he was substantially or directly influenced by structuralist ideas. Jaro originally began structuring his presentation of Late Egyptian grammar for teaching purposes. His earliest surviving notes are in Czech,1722 suggesting that they were created for lessons in Prague, and perhaps that he initially thought of tackling of a grammatical study in his mother tongue, though this is disputable given his ability to operate comfortably in several languages. The tone is, for example, the same as that in his early notes in English. His grammatical work in wartime Cairo seems to have led Jaro to organize his earlier lectures on Late Egyptian—and its relation to Coptic—and another written outline for a Late Egyptian grammar was probably the result.1723 These lecture notes alternated between English and French, berhaps because his audience would have been bi- or multilingual. The process of building a grammar from a collection of manuscripts with slip indexes was complex, and Jaro didn’t produce a finished product in his lifetime. It is impossible to say whether he planned his grammar mainly as a teaching tool, as a reference grammar, or as some combination of the two. Surviving manuscripts include both the original notes by Jaro and later texts copied by his colleagues for their private use.1724 The result was undoubtedly a grammar in the making, one that grew slowly but steadily, but it was not his sole interest. Epigraphic work in the Memphite necropolis, for example, was not tied solely to the programme of study anticipated by Gardiner, though it did coincide with the interests of other British friends, such as Fairman. 1721 1722 1723 1724

Aikhenvald 2014: 2. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.1. Possibly preserved in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.2–20.3. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.4, 20.5, 20.8, and 20.20–20.21.

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Jaro’s multilingual approach led him to publish in French for the BIFAO, in English for the JEA, and to alternate between the languages for periodicals such as the ASAE. Apart from the courteous and practical solution of writing in French for a French bulletin and in English for an English journal, there may have been another reason: Jaro responded to the milieu in which he communicated. His research notes are multilingual in part because they reflect his location, and the presence of colleagues using a particular language.1725 Thus, transcriptions from the Turin Museum were likely to have marginalia in Italian, excerpts from German publications were in German, and teaching notes for Prague were in Czech. His wartime publications therefore reflected the diverse milieux of his Cairene and London circles. He discussed etymology and objects from the Egyptian Museum in English with Grdseloff and Fairman and published accordingly; his Theban and Deir el-Medina-related studies were conducted and discussed within the IFAO team in French. There was, of course, a certain amount of flexibility. A study of the name of Medinet Habu, near ancient Thebes, was destined for the JEA and was therefore published in English.1726 But generally speaking, interactions with colleagues seem to have influenced Jaro’s working language.1727 He must have been proficient in code-switching, though there is no reliable record of him ever switching between languages during a conversation.1728 During the war years Jaro maintained his interest in aspects of life and funerary customs among the community of workmen at Deir el-Medina, but also developed an interest in issues of twenty-first dynasty chronology, as these related to his studies of Late Ramesside correspondence. A study of this chronology

1725 This is also evident in his notes on grammar and card indexes with lexical and grammatical features of Egyptian; e.g., GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 26, 20.1, 20. 18. 1726 Černý 1941c. 1727 ‘Participants in multilingual interactions can be said to activate links between language and actions, mental activities, perception, thought patterns, knowledge systems etc.—in short, all mental and cognitive processes involved in communication—which are active both universally and in each individual language.’ House and Rehbein 2004: 2; with further references. 1728 Such aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism have attracted considerable attention; see, e.g., Auer 1998; Gardner-Chloros 2009.

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was published soon after the war ended,1729 and helped him to orientate in the happenings in the Late Ramesside Letters,1730 and even more pertinently in the letters from El Hiba. He was intrigued by two tablets in the British Museum that allowed him to reconstruct a text on the provision of ushabti for Lady Neskhonsu, which was then compared to Book of the Dead chapter 166. Two dozen pages are spent on the minutiae of the text, and particularly on words that indicate a transaction: Jaro considered that this transaction had wider significance, as ushabti were not to be understood as replacements for the deceased,1731 but rather as servants bought or paid for, and therefore obliged to serve the deceased (whether purchased by him- or herself, or provided by a deity as texts on those as Neskhonsu claimed). This suggested to Jaro the legality of a transaction was as valid in the netherworld as it was in living world. His search for the etymology of the words used to describe the purchase again indicates his growing etymological corpus, as it was initially based on Middle Egyptian attestations in the Wörterbuch,1732 and then expanded by study of Late Egyptian and Coptic. Jaro was also involved in making more data on oracular practices accessible,1733 though he thought that more texts were needed to properly assess oracular principles in Western Thebes. One specific ‘oracle’ was a set of locations, perhaps drawn to identify where a (stolen) object might have been hidden. His paper ‘La tirage au sort’ also opened with a clear attestation that his contemporary Egyptian workers were regarded as real people and colleagues: ‘Aly Abou Bakr, habitant de Gournah, et depuis des longues années employé par M. Bruyère aux fouilles de Deir el-Médineh mérite d’être mentionné à propos de la découverte qui fait l’objet de cet article.’1734

1729

Černý 1946. He followed up on the chronology with later correspondence and publications, for example in a debate with Vercoutter on the Piankhi stela on 3 March 1947; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1927, J. Černý to J. Vercoutter. 1731 Černý 1942b. 1732 Compare the listings in Wb IV: 68 and Černý 1942b. 1733 Černý 1942c. 1734 Černý 1941b: 135. 1730

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Jaro’s output during the war shows that he often had a purpose beyond simply dissecting a syntactical, grammatical or etymological feature: characteristically, his papers ended with a proposition for a historical interpretation of something, such as ushabti as bought or paid-for servants, or oracular practice. But his focus on maximizing the understanding of written resources cannot be doubted.

BOOK IV Professor in rationed Britain … what was coming was totally clear to me, and it cured me of the emotional hold which Prague had previously had over me. I could foresee that a Staliniod dictatorship was due: it came in ’48. The precise date I couldn’t foresee, but that it was due to come was absolutely obvious for various reasons. Above all, in ’45 the Czechs expelled 3,000,000 Germans with considerable brutality. I think the estimate of the number of killed in the process was 200,000; thought I don’t know how reliable that is. And at the same time everyone was scared stiff of the Germans and remembered Munich, so they handed themselves bound and helpless to Stalin as the only protection against the German revanchism which they confidently expected at the time. They don’t expect it now, interestingly enough; but they did then. All this occurred in conjunction with the quite skillful communist exploitation of the situation. And I wanted no part of it and got out as quickly as I could and forgot about it. Ernest Gellner1735 … whilst British society was not entirely xenophobic, its sense of superiority over other peoples was legendary …. Jana Barbora Buresova1736

1946–1949 new job, new household, new borders January opened a on very different year from those of the war, which held challenges but also a sense of purpose. Now, it seemed as if everything was stagnant; a dead end. Jaro was sitting in Prague and writing to Marie,1737 reporting that Dean Jan Rypka was trying to find him a paid position at the faculty. Alan Gardiner meanwhile reported that matters in London were at standstill. 1735 1736 1737

Davis 1991: 65. Buresova 2019: 270. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2778.

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Then, things started to move. Jaro was offered a contract for a book on Egyptian art by Bohumil Janda, previously publisher to František Lexa and presently the head of two publishing houses, Sfinx and the European Literary Association.1738 It came with a promised honorarium of 90,000 crowns, but also a sharp 1947 deadline. This was a challenge: Jaro was interested in the Egyptian material world and artefacts, but he was not an art historian. Still, the honorarium was considerable, even generous. His lecturing schedule wasn’t particularly demanding, but it was mostly unremunerated.1739 In late January he was teaching three hours on Thursdays, followed by meetings at the Oriental Institute on Fridays, and had been promised a further advance payment of 10,000 crowns. He noted to Marie that he had met with Zdeněk Nejedlý, the Minister of Education and a strong communist sympathizer. Nejedlý is a curious figure among the Communist establishment: ‘It was a long and cluttered past that Zdeněk Nejedlý brought with him to the Ministry.’1740 A scholar of undoubted capacity and dedication, he was a specialist on the composer Bedřich Smetana who became obsessed with rigid Czech nationalism and with ‘Czechness’ in history and music. Merging communist sympathies with nationalism became a Czech speciality.1741 In many ways this appears to be a continuation of nationalist tendencies from before the war,1742 but Czechoslovakia was far from the cosmopolitan world into which Jaro was born, where academia was regarded by Tomáš Masaryk as a political ally in the field of cultural diplomacy. This minister was unlikely to become an ally with whom Jaro could cooperate, but instead represented a Czechoslovakia that was increasingly more difficult to identify with. Jaro, perhaps inevitably, addressed the position of Czechoslovak scholars and their obligations to the international community 1738 Letters exchanged between J. Černý and B. Janda, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1165; 21.1166. The matter was also referred to by Jaro in a letter to Marie; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2278. On the life and activities of Janda, see Forst 1985: 91–96; Tomeš 1999, I: 576. 1739 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý 21.2279, 25 January 1946, describing his schedule. 1740 Sayer 1998: 308. 1741 See the discussion and references in Navratilova and Podhorný 2019. 1742 Sayer 1998: 310.

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from the perspective of language. In a talk given at the Oriental Institute he summarized his predicament: A Czech Egyptologist—as indeed any Czech Orientalist after all—faces a rather complex dilemma—which language to use to acquaint the public with his work. Egyptology was, is and probably will be mainly cultivated by nations using English, French and German, and it is in these languages that about 90 per cent of the Egyptological literary production—be it specialised or popularising—has been published. Egyptology thus is an international science and the Czech Egyptologist must answer the problem how to write: in Czech so that his compatriots may access Egyptological knowledge, or in English and French (German also, until the last war), so that the results of his careful and toiling labour would become public property and Czech scholarship would contribute to the international research culture and represent its nation among international research community. Czech Orientalists compromise in order to solve this dilemma and how successful the compromise will be is not always within the powers of the Czech researcher, as many forces play a part.1743

It is telling that he initially defined the knowledge makers in Egyptology as ‘nations using English, French and German’, first because this implicitly indicates the problematic status of Arabic —Egyptian scholars at this time did not typically publish in Arabic—but also because he then referenced the lost status of German, acknowledging the impact of the political situation on research communications. As Jaro’s relatively light university schedule at least allowed him time for other Egyptological work, and he corresponded arduously with Gardiner and his Belgian colleagues, evidently hoping that Gardiner might find a way to bring him back to London,1744 and that some traces of the Belgian-inspired international network of Egyptology could be salvaged. He was keen to let Marie know about Gardiner’s efforts: ‘it may be through him I shall get back over to the other side of the Channel’ [sic; Czech syntax].1745 He signed off with a nickname from their 1743 Typescript of the lecture, ANpM, Collection Černý, ‘Předneseno 3. IV: 1946 v Orient. ústavě.’ 1744 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2279. 1745 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2280.

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private language: Abushay.1746 The tradition of family nicknames lived on. In January, Jaro concluded his letter by reporting on visits to the dentist. The problems with his teeth that Jaro had battled in Egypt were not resolved. In February and March, although Jaro did not yet know it, it seemed that his hopes of returning to Britain were not entirely unfounded. Stephen Glanville had still to secure a successor for his post at UCL before leaving London for Cambridge. He was asked to consider potential candidates and wrote a memorandum to that effect. In a postscript he stated that he favoured Jaro over another possible candidate, Henri Frankfort, and suggested that Walter Emery should be offered a readership.1747 This, Glanville assumed, would secure a broad disciplinary setting for Egyptology at UCL, with Jaro viewed at that point as an historian and Emery contributing the archaeological perspective, which was important for the expected profile of the discipline at the college. Later, the writing of Egyptian history was often echoed in Glanville’s thoughts, interpreted by Thomas Schneider as ‘historiography can be construed not as a discipline among other Egyptological subfields, but as a comprehensive endeavour of Egyptology as a whole,’1748 although he himself considered the task of writing Egyptian history to be demanding and complex.1749 Finding a placement for Jaro at UCL would have therefore seemed quite logical, although Frankfort was also a historically-minded specialist,1750 and would have had the added benefit, for Jaro, of securing him a fully paid position in the UK. In Prague, Jaro began to dedicate more time to his teaching. The terms were long, as everyone at the university was desperate to make up for lost time during the enforced wartime shutdown. He stepped out of his usual role of teaching language, 1746 Probably from Abu Shay, the ‘Father of Tea’ in Arabic. As Donald Reid has suggested in a personal communication, this might have been occasioned by his friends and family seeing him at tea time, when he broke off work for a little relaxation. It also tallies with his inter-war predilection for drinking both tea and coffee, later to be replaced by a preference for coffee. 1747 Emery had at this time accepted a diplomatic posting in Cairo; for an outline of his career see Bierbrier 2019: 149–150. Janssen, R. 1992: 42–52. 1748 Schneider 2010: 1. 1749 Glanville 2014 [1947]: 35. 1750 Wengrow 1999.

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and used his knowledge of artefacts ‘to give my pupils a rapid account of how Egyptians lived, what the real objects were like,’ and explained that ‘I give my pupils … archaeology combined with vocabulary.’1751 Gardiner was not informed, in detail,1752 about Jaro’s fling with non-textual material (though Glanville would have approved), but Marie was. She was a listener in conversations about his work. Whether she was at that point also a partner in a dialogue is not known—her letters were shorter than Jaro’s, although not less frequent. The new term was to start on 4 March, so most of February was dedicated to preparation. Some initial notes for a lecture have survived to illustrate Jaro’s approach to ways that philological and archaeological knowledge could be combined, in a draft manuscript with the title ‘Egyptské reálie’, literally Egyptian life and institutions.1753 The bundle of notes opens with a concise abstract, intended perhaps as an outline to introduce the course: Reading a text does not mean just translating it, it also involves understanding what did the objects look like. In Egyptology this is a difficult task. The Egyptian lexicon has about 13,000 words. We have museums full of objects, the Egyptian names of which are unknown. The task is to find objects for names and names for objects. To speak of ‘ancient Egyptians’ is often to create an image of a nation that did not change in 3000 years. We need to set limits for our task—in time: N[ew] K[ingdom], in place: Thebes, and in social context: the royal workmen.1754

The notes proceed with a lexicon of selected geographical terms and toponyms. Then the physical, archaeologically attested form of Egyptian houses is described, using Theban material, with names for different architectural elements. This is followed by an almost technical drawing of an Egyptian lock, details of an oven, an illustrated list of furniture with Egyptian terms and descriptions, an illustrated list of types of bread, names for food, and a tentative description of clothing based on depictions in

1751 1752 1753 1754

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2281. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.21, 4 February 1946. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 19.63. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 19.63, 1.

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visual art.1755 Most of the objects Jaro describes relate to archaeological finds from Deir el-Medina, or are considered to have Deir el-Medina as their provenance. Curiously, he did not use ostraca that appear to be lists of items of clothing (‘laundry lists’).1756 One might, of course, critique this approach as being ‘too little, too late’, and invoke anthropological ideas of the day as an exemplar of what Jaro should have done to develop a theoretical framework. Jaro does not seem to have followed the intellectual exploits of contemporaries such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose Structural Anthropology is a collection of texts that originated between 1944 and 1957.1757 But then, Jaro had started to develop his own complex historical aims over twenty years before, attempting to identify comparable elements of economic and social life in Egypt only to find that he had to collect a suitable base of sources first, and to perfect his understanding of ancient voices second. The dilemma of awareness regarding broader historiographical tasks, the perceived insufficient quantity of material that might be used, and his unsatisfactory understanding of the Egyptian language were Jaro’s ongoing preoccupations, which took precedence over forays into the structures of ancient Egyptian society. Yet he was not averse to experimenting with such forays, provided he felt his data allowed for it. Given later reconsiderations of the rapport between Egyptology and the writing of history,1758 Jaro hardly appears to be a man behind his times. His simultaneous attention to the organization of Deir el-Medina and his interest in individual lives suggests that his approach to past societies implicitly considered both structure and agency. In a rather incongruous but apparently seamless blend of the personal and the professional, next to his teaching plans Jaro added how much he appreciated the ongoing supply of cigarettes from Marie, defending his smoking habit: ‘A cigarette helps me enormously when I have to work and think hard.’1759 1755

Compare Kemp and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2001: 165. For which see Vogelsang-Eastwood 1992; Janssen 2008. 1757 Lévi-Strauss 1963: ix. 1758 Redford 1979 and Redford 2003; in context of social sciences and anthropology, Baines 2011. 1759 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2281. 1756

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Through his wide network, Jaro sought to follow happenings in continental Egyptology, although many details were still unknown, so soon after the war. He was in steady contact with Gardiner, Battiscombe Gunn and Georges Posener.1760 In early 1946, he considered an attempt to have the Berlin Wörterbuch project transferred to Prague.1761 He even pulled in some wartime contacts, such as General Karel Klapálek, who at that time was the military commander of Prague.1762 The transport of materials from Berlin did not happen, but the proposal was given serious consideration, and shows Jaro’s dedication to the development of Egyptology at his alma mater. Whether he intended to keep his options open, or thought of the Wörterbuch as a suitable parting gift to Lexa and his pupils, is once again a matter for speculation, compounded by missing correspondence. In March, the UCL committee, ‘considering the future of Egyptology at UCL, did indeed agree that the choice lay between Černý and Frankfort, and that it was desirable that the members should meet the former.’1763 Glanville and Gardiner kept hinting as much to Jaro, who held his nerve as London was his favoured option. His relationship with Marie was very much on his mind, and in his letters to her Jaro returned to happy memories of their time together, including their meetings at the Fursecroft building. When rereading her letters he was saddened by the fact that she had left the place where they had met: ‘Reading the last letter from “Furzecroft” made me rather melancholical [sic.], it was a nice time we spent there, despite the war and I will always keep the memory of it.’1764 This is one of the few genuine expressions of intimacy in their correspondence. Decades later, the British writer Terence Blacker noted that ‘it is technically difficult to convey passion in a way that is not absurd.’1765 Perhaps Jaro thought the same, or perhaps letters from Czechoslovakia were not as private as they ought to have been. 1760

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1622–21.1725; 21.118–21.119. GIA, Collection Černý Černý Mss. 21.2281, 21.2282. 1762 See Hrabica and Hrabica 2006. 1763 Janssen, R. 1992: 55. 1764 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2282 and 21.8283 (the quote is from the second letter). 1765 Blacker 2015. 1761

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Jaro’s feelings echoed those peculiar times of war that many of his British contemporaries came to remember as their ‘finest hour’; the memory of personal delight mingled with the glorification of a difficult but pivotal time. It was entirely different from the maddening, painful, and yet deadening and mortifying experience of German occupation that his family—and indeed Marie’s family—had lived through in Czechoslovakia. There is a world of difference between the psychologies of a tortured prisoner and of a wounded warrior. One could be bloodied but unbeaten in wartime London, but not in Prague, shackled by the Gestapo and chronic terror. Jaro had lived through a very different war, and he had fallen in love and found emotional as well as physical release. The end of war spelled the end of that, at least for a time. Despite uncertainties in Prague, Jaro was expected to be at the disposal of various institutions, including the Oriental Institute. 1946 would be his teacher Lexa’s seventieth birthday: ‘I am rather very busy in connection with his [Lexa’s] anniversary, for I am apparently the only person here who can write a few articles on him for our papers and reviews, deliver a broadcast and a speech in a meeting in the Oriental Institute. All that besides the regular lectures.’1766 The theme of being ‘the only’ person suitable to discharge a particular task had surfaced in his wartime letters, and no doubt revisiting it came with an element of irony mixed with self-satisfaction. Lexa’s birthday was on 5 April, and apparently it went rather well. Jaro’s memorial lecture on 3 April mixed his personal recollections of Lexa with wider considerations of Egyptology. The model of Czechoslovak excavations and the systematic development of archaeology in Egypt generally was articulated: ‘It is a universal problem, that Egyptian archaeology is mostly neglected compared to philology; all countries are affected. Synthetic works in archaeology are limited, and even literature published in traditional Egyptological countries is producing mostly excavation reports.’1767 In the format of a popular lecture Jaro came close to articulating a challenge to the dominant philological paradigm in 1766 1767

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.19, 25 March 1946. ANpM, Collection Černý, typescript of the talk, 3 April 1946.

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Egyptology, as well as the difficulties posed by prevalent attitudes to cataloguing and reporting rather than synthetic works. A paper by Jaro commemorating Lexa also appeared in a new periodical, The New Orient—Nový Orient.1768 The name of this magazine, published both in Czech and (later) in an English, revived the concept of understanding the ‘modern Orient’ as a new partner for Czechoslovakia in the world, recalling the efforts of Alois Musil in a new guise. On 5 April, Jaro delivered a lecture on the history of Czechs in Egypt that was broadcast to mark Lexa’s birthday.1769 Back in London, Marie tried to listen to his talk on the wireless but couldn’t get decent reception.1770 The tradition of Czech involvement in Egypt, beginning with Bohemian travellers, was commemorated in Jaro’s talk alongside its culmination—the establishment of academic Egyptology in Prague. His approach appealed to public interest in ancient Egypt. Jaro planned a trip to Moravia in mid-April, first to Strážnice,1771 to visit a former aristocratic pupil (probably Count Herberstein), and then to Boskovice. Jaro related this to Marie, as her parents and sister lived in Boskovice. At this time, Gardiner and Glanville began to make decisive moves to bring Jaro to London for discussions about his future post. Jaro replied that some formalities had to be addressed first: You probably realise that travelling is not such an easy thing nowadays as it used to be before the war. All kind of persons travel to and fro on all imaginable pretexts, but for a private person—and I am such—it is not enough to make up his mind and to have the required means. In dealing with both British and our authorities I shall have to produce some kind of proof showing the importance and urgency of my journey.1772

Jaro needed an invitation from Gardiner in order to apply for a British visa. The invitation was duly despatched, and Jaro wrote to Marie triumphantly on 17 April that he was to travel to 1768 1769 1770 1771 1772

Černý 1946a. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2282. Anna Sargant’s diary; excerpts, 5 April 1946, courtesy A. Allott. As shown in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2284, 7 April 1946. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.18, 10 April 1946.

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London in about a month’s time.1773 His old diplomatic passport was extended,1774 and Jaro received the visa in early May.1775 He also very conscientiously informed his faculty colleagues that he was going to London ‘to consult my English colleagues regarding development of our research cooperation,’1776 and that he would of course replace any missed teaching by rescheduling his classes. On 16 May, Jaro arrived at 2 St Michael’s Terrace, where Marie was temporarily staying with her daughter Anna. Jaro had thought of the young lady. According to Anna’s diary, Jaro arrived ‘at 6 pm —just as nice as ever—he brought me the most heavenly garnet heart.’1777 Apparently ‘Mummy was quite excited.’ Two days later they had lunch, and ‘he made them all laugh.’ He made Marie happy in private too, though Anna noted ‘Mummy makes rather a fool of herself over Dr Černý.’1778 Marie also accompanied Jaro officially on a visit to Cambridge. The meeting at University College on 20 May, effectively a job interview, went well. One of the officers of UCL, Ifor Evans (later Baron Evans of Hungershall), formally relayed the offer to Jaro on 27 May.1779 Jaro needed to return to Prague on 2 June, and related to Marie that he had a stormy flight back. But the professional going was good.1780 Toward the end of June, Glanville reported that the matter was, except for some formalities, essentially settled. Jaro immediately began to make plans for a new life in the UK, a life he would share with Marie. He opined she was used to the English way of life, and that while they should be together they should also retain some measure of their respective freedoms.1781 He was clearly hoping that Marie would not put into practice her speculative plan of returning to Czechoslovakia, a plan that her daughters did not find particularly attractive either. 1773

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2285, 17 April 1946. NAP, File J. Černý, on extending his diplomatic passport. 1775 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.17, 8 May 1946. 1776 Dated 15 May 1946, AUK: no. 3792 FF 1945/46. 1777 This might have been the jewel Anna was wearing several years later on her wedding day, seen in a wedding photograph of Anthony and the new Anna Allott that is now in the ACEGU, Collection Černý. 1778 Quotes from Anna Sargant’s diary, 1946; courtesy A. Allott. 1779 UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3: Professor J. Černý. 1780 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2286, 3 June 1946. 1781 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2287, 25 June 1946. 1774

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Nonetheless, Marie sub-let 2 St Michael’s Terrace in anticipation of her daughters lodging at their boarding school, with friends, or with their father, and imagined herself spending longer periods of time with her parents in Czechoslovakia. In the meantime, an election on 26 May 1946 brought the Communist Party to power in Czechoslovakia. To most people it would have been unimaginable that this was to be the last free election until 1990. Communism seemed to be the answer to social woes remembered since the Great Depression, and a guard against fascism. Heda Margolius, the wife of a communist and only a reluctant sympathizer to Communism herself, later wrote: I have often thought that many of our people turned to Communism not so much in revolt against the existing political system, but out of sheer despair over human nature which showed itself at its very worst after the war. Since it is impossible for men to give up on mankind, they blame the social order in which they live.1782

A leftist agenda won elections elsewhere as well, including in Britain for Clement Attlee some months before Communists in Prague celebrated their success. It seemed that socialism offered an answer, proposing a seemingly more just and balanced world system. However, unlike in Britain, which had a more complex, pluralist society, Czechoslovakia was structurally undermined: no longer pluralist; ethnically cleansed; deprived of a large part of its intellectual and political scene; not having enough voices to offer alternative views. Very soon, still in the 1940s, even leftist British intellectuals would revive the debate about how much state intervention was too much. J. B. Priestley was to say in 1949 that ‘the area of our lives under our own control is shrinking rapidly.’1783 In Czechoslovakia, such debate was stymied. There was limited dissent and a growing tendency to purge the opposition, even in academic circles.1784 The tightening grip of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia was probably not foremost in Jaro’s thoughts at that point, though as his comments to Gardiner and Glanville showed he must have realized that the complicated, convoluted world of borders and 1782 1783 1784

Kovály 2012: 53. Kynaston 2007: 320. Petráň 2015: 168ff.

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blocs was no longer the relatively open, cosmopolitan world of the inter-war period. In summer of 1946, Jaro probably thought in personal terms of the freedom needed to maintain his Egyptological work, including an as-yet hypothetical return to fieldwork. He must also have thought of Marie’s status. She was a working woman, and although the end of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile spelled the end of her career close to diplomatic circles, her interest in educational activities persisted, as to a certain extent did her own network and connections to educationalists in the UK. Whether Jaro could at that point visualize how they would function as a shared household, or if he had a clear idea of his role in respect to Marie’s two daughters, is debatable. So far, he had lived only in diverse—and staffed— living arrangements (in excavation houses and camps, in Gardiner’s household, in boarding houses or hotels) or with his mother, who presumably attended to most of his domestic needs. This did not bode well for domesticity with a partner and her teenage children. On 8 July, Jaro replied to Evans formally to say ‘I consider it as a great honour to be offered this post and shall be able to take up my duties from 1 October.’1785 On the same day he also wrote, again very formally, to Rypka:1786 I take the liberty to inform you that the University of London offered me the chair of Egyptology (Edwards Professor of Egyptology), and I have accepted this offer. As I am taking on my duties on the 1 October 1946, and according to the offer I am expected to teach in London until I reach my pension, which is provided by the university, I am no longer in a position to act as a privatdozent at the Charles University, in effect from the winter semester 1946/1947. I beg your kind intercession in conveying to the professorial convocation of the Charles University, that I am grateful for their support in the matter of my nomination for an ordinary professor and also that I shall extend every effort in my new position to contribute to the good name of the university, of which I am an alumnus.

1785 1786

UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý. AUK, Personal file J. Černý, letter from J. Černý to J. Rypka, 8 July 1946.

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This was the end of an unstable, and to some extent exploitative, relationship between Jaro and University. He discharged his remaining duties, promised his pupils to stay in regular contact, and began preparations for his move to London. His mother, who had enjoyed his presence in their shared lodgings for less than a year, was saddened, though would only mention this later. Marie and her daughters travelled to Boskovice in August to visit her parents, and made a stopover in Prague where she met Anna Černá.1787 The trip was far from easy; they took a boat from Dover and then trains across France and Germany, countries that were still scarred by the war. Their train pulled into Prague station at 9:00 am on 2 August 1946. Anna recalled that they ‘feasted on cake and fruit.’1788 Jaro was invited to join Marie on her journey to Boskovice, but eventually deemed it too time consuming in the context his preparations. He noted that whilst still in Prague, ‘I must start to take leave of such friends I still have here.’ This seems a sad testimony to his feelings about the ambience of post-war Czechoslovakia. Yet London clearly held his future, and he explained to Marie that ‘I cannot conceal that I shall be looking forward to seeing you back in London and to starting to plan things.’1789 Jaro had not yet organized lodgings in London—Marie decided to continue living with friends in Harpenden, renting out her home in Highgate—and so he decided to leave his library and other personal belongings in Prague, at least for the time being. He arrived on 9 September 1946 at Croydon Airport, London’s main passenger airport at that time, where Glanville was waiting for him. Glanville arranged the last necessary formalities, including Jaro’s work permit.1790 It wasn’t new to him; he had left only a few months ago. There was no culture shock in the ‘austerity Britain’ that David Kynaston famously described, beginning with ‘no supermarkets’ and ending with ‘make do and mend’: ‘Suits and hats, dresses and hats, cloth caps and mufflers, no leisurewear, no “teenagers”. 1787 1788 1789 1790

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2289, 16 August 1946. Diary of Anna Sargant, 1946, courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2289, 16 August 1946. As Jaro reported to Marie; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.865.

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Heavy coins, heavy shoes, heavy suitcases, heavy tweed coats, heavy leather footballs, no unbearable lightness of being.’1791 London wasn’t very different from Prague. But rationed food and clothing were bearable for a man of forty-eight who had spent the war in exile, then moved back in with his mother, and finally had a chance at an independent life while actually being paid for what he wanted to do. Lightness of being consisted not in lightness of daily life, but in the fascinating vista of being an Egyptologist without the constant need to worry about tomorrow. Jaro settled temporarily as a guest of Eiddon and Elizabeth Edwards at 4 Merivale, Southgate, in North London, commuting from the modernist brick building of the Enfield West station (now Oakwood, on the Piccadilly Line). He finalized teaching preparations for the new term at UCL but also found time to hunt for antiquities (and the texts they held) in London auction houses, such as Spink, which he visited only ten days after his arrival.1792 He was no in position to buy them, but catching a text in transit at least offered the opportunity to register the artefact and ultimately make its contents accessible, even though it was probably unprovenanced and destined for a private collection. The idea of trying to register unprovenanced objects and record select information about artefacts in private collections was later taken up by the Topographical Bibliography, headed by Rosalind Moss. He was also increasingly involved in publication projects shared with, or of interest to, his British colleagues. Akin to Jane Austen’s Anne Elliott at her new (albeit temporary) home at Uppercross, it was now incumbent on Jaro to clothe his imagination, his memory, and his ideas as much as possible in Britain. This does not seem have been too onerous. He had already decided to make London his ‘home’ in 1939. But this time there was a sense of permanence, or at least of long-term commitment. He was no longer privately funded, but part of institutional Egyptology in Britain; no longer a transient bachelor, but a man planning to establish a household.

1791 1792

Kynaston 2007: 19. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.49, p. 35.

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His new schedule also required adjustments. Jaro now held a full-time university post with all of the termly duties, administration, and socializing associated with his role. This was a very different one to the relative flexibility of the independent—and independently funded—researcher he was before the war. Jaro, however, initially took on offers of publication in the same high numbers that he had previously. Beginning in 1946 there were two Festschrift projects, a memorial volume for Ippolitto Rosellini, and a thanksgiving volume for Gardiner. Gunn and Raymond Faulkner were to be Jaro’s co-conspirators in the Gardiner project, which they kept secret from the laureate.1793 Gunn also pushed Jaro to drop the Czech diacritics in his name as ‘they are only a nuisance in England.’1794 Some wartime tasks needed to be finished, the foremost of which was the graffiti in Wadi Allaki, which duly were submitted to the JEA (then edited by Faulkner).1795 His professional network had to be maintained and developed. Gunn welcomed Jaro’s former student Eva Jelínková (later publishing as E. A. E. Reymond) to Oxford.1796 Jaro also planned weekends there, mainly to see Gunn and discuss Coptic,1797 though he stayed in contact with Jelínková. Teaching began at UCL in October, while Jaro was still living as guest of the Edwardses. He wrote to Marie, still in Harpenden, about health troubles that involved an ongoing struggle with dentistry and some stomach problems, which he tried to calm with the consumption of milk.1798 One wonders whether some of these health issues could have been psychosomatic. Jaro had moved countries, began a new job, and the partner with whom he hoped to set up a home was still living outside London. His private life was thus unsatisfactory and Jaro saw Marie only occasionally, on weekend visits to Harpenden.1799 Marie’s friends noticed this, her daughter writing that ‘M. and Černý must marry 1793

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.623–21.625. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.963, from B. Gunn, 23 September 1946. 1795 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.613–21.615; 21.618–21.619; 21.620–21.621. Appeared as Černý 1947. 1796 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.960. 1797 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.961, from B. Gunn, 18 September 1946. 1798 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2290, 10 October 1946. 1799 Hinted at in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2292. 1794

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as it would not be possible for a university professor to live in such a way.’1800 The pair were still planning to live together in Highgate, in North London, where other émigrés such as Ernest Gellner also lived. Jaro even mentioned the plan to his student Zbyněk Žába.1801 Žába in turn mentioned a newspaper article ‘about the British Council, with much praise for Mrs Sargant’ from 7 October 1946.1802 Žába himself wrote from Prague very often, and in very long letters, like an abandoned lover making his pleas sound both dejected and comical. I think of you constantly. When I realise how far away you now are, I am in a deep blue mood, although I am well aware, I have not lost you entirely. When you were still here, I was simply in denial about your impending departure. But now, I am all gloomy, as it were. The faculty is going to be such an empty place without you.1803

Jaro asked him to discharge some book purchases for his own library, which was still in his Košíře flat, and Žába seized the opportunity to strengthen his relationship with his absent teacher (and to use the library). Žába could not let the theme of abandonment go, and was not above some mild emotional blackmail, merging his own professed emotional state with hints at the feelings of Jaro’s mother. There is such a profound sense of emptiness in your library. Your mother told me on Sunday, that it is so pleasant to see me working in your room, as if you were there still. I have something to tell you, on that account—and please do not castigate me—do write home, Professor, please write often, and write very long letters. Your mother is deeply distraught and complains of a lack of correspondence.1804

1800

Diary of Anna Sargant 1946, courtesy A. Allott. A matter referred to in a letter from Z. Žába to J. Černý on 8 October 1946; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1994. 1802 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1994. 1803 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1993. 1804 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1994, 8 October 1946. 1801

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Given that Jaro had started a new job and left Prague only four weeks earlier, such emotions might have been understandable coming from his eighty year-old mother, but seem somewhat excessive for a twenty-nine year-old student. Žába evidently enjoyed a dramatic style of correspondence. Jaro had some thoughts about helping his pupils, and it was still possible to obtain travel support for academic purposes. Jelínková had managed to travel extensively in France, Belgium and the UK, was attending classes with Gunn in Oxford, and was toying with the idea of following her teacher Jaro into the study of Late Egyptian.1805 Jelínková may have relied on Jaro’s professional support but she could be surprisingly and casually insolent—or sarcastically disrespectful—to her teacher: ‘Your observation that whilst editing a papyrus one ought at least to try to work with the original is more or less of no use.’1806 Žába nicknamed her ‘Hatshepsut’, and initially appeared to be on collegial terms with her,1807 but later found her ambition increasingly unbecoming as it intersected with his own. Moreover, while ‘Hatshepsut’ eventually had the chance to meet Jaro during her 1946 visit to Oxford, and was thus according to Žába ‘on cloud seven’, Žába himself immediately painted another picture of himself in disconsolate tones of dark hilarity: Your poor forsaken pupil, so far from heaven, working his hands to the bone from dawn to dusk, and being desolate, as there is no one to fulfil his Sunday desire for a discussion on our dear lovely ancient Egyptian. How desperate is his longing for a missive adorned with a royal and imperial countenance from London.1808

Jaro, unless he was in an episode of melancholia, must have chuckled at this, but tolerated Žába’s effusiveness in view of his former student’s willingness to organize further book purchases in Prague.1809 Keeping abreast with the books and periodicals of 1805

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.970, letter from B. Gunn. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1199. 1807 As evidenced by letters to Jaro in 1946 and 1947; ACEGU, correspondence from Z. Žába to J. Černý. 1808 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1995, 21 October 1946. 1809 Their 1946 and 1947 correspondence is strewn with notes on book exchanges and book purchases; GIA, Černý Mss. and ACEGU, correspondence between Z. Žába and J. Černý. 1806

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international Egyptology was one of Jaro’s preoccupations, and the war had harmed the circulation of offprints and books both in European countries and Egypt. Happily, one of his Cairene acquaintances, Joseph Leibovitch, was able to help with access to some Egyptian periodicals, proposing to supply Jaro with the ASAE.1810 At this point Jaro still thought about developing research projects in Prague, including a dictionary project as a viable option to boost Prague’s philological credentials when an archaeological mission seemed unlikely. One possibility—if the Wörterbuch could not be obtained—was the idea of relocating Walter Ewing Crum’s Coptic dictionary, which was discussed by Jaro and Gunn.1811 By late 1946, Jaro’s students in London appeared to have formed good relationships with their new professor, though teaching Egyptian in English came with its own challenges. The rest of the year was predictably spent mainly on tasks at UCL. In December, Jaro contacted the Provost on the matter of a lectureship for Anthony Arkell. Jaro valued Arkell as an organizer and an altogether capable man, and felt it his responsibility to help secure a decent position (and a liveable salary) for a colleague, much as he had recently been helped. Jaro’s British contacts now were ready to be further invigorated and developed. He visited Percy and Essie Newberry in Godalming on several occasions, beginning in October 1946.1812 Newberry was keen to discuss Egyptology and Jaro almost certainly knew Newberry from his years in Cairo. Being a guest of the Newberrys was less formal than other households of Jaro’s acquaintance: Newberry made it clear that evening dress was not expected.1813 In early December, Glanville invited Jaro to contribute to the Egyptian volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History, the Egyptian chapters of which had a proposed deadline of October 1948.1814 Jaro, on top of his other commitments, began work on a manuscript concerned with Egyptian religion—and was not 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814

Cairo, Černý Mss. 21.1332, 10 October 1946; from J. Leibovitch. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.984. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1501–21.1503. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1503. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.868; S. Glanville, 3 December 1946.

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pleased with this task.1815 He also had to prepare his UCL inaugural lecture, which was to be dedicated to material aspects of writing in ancient Egypt and was later known under its published title Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt. The one slightly discordant tune was still played by the unsettled private life. Anna, an insightful observer, noted that in late November she and her mother met with Jaro in town to do some shopping, but it was only her who then had lunch with him, as her mother ‘won’t let him see her,’ suggesting that not every aspect of their previously intimate relationship had yet been resumed.1816 Jaro also met with Jelínková in London. She had been asking for academic recommendations and information in her somewhat caustic style, which was the exact opposite of the saccharine Žába. She wrote to her teacher that he gave her a ‘sermon’ when they met,1817 yet next spring asked for more recommendations.1818 The international Egyptological network eventually regained its momentum. Jaro wrote to Jean Capart in early December, updating his Belgian contact about what had happened to the UCL museum collections during the war (unlike those of the Ashmolean, which had never been relocated).1819 Still in December, Capart asked for Jaro’s assistance in organizing a visit by an acquaintance, a Madame Lacroix, to England. Jaro was in touch with another Belgian contact, Frans Jonckheere, a physician interested in Egyptian medicine, but their correspondence was brief.1820 Jaro’s Swiss friend Georges Nagel was pleased to hear about Jaro’s new post when they resumed their pre-war communication, especially as Nagel was soon to visit Egypt, and could provide Jaro with information on IFAO ostraca in return for much-needed access to photographs of papyri held in the British Museum.1821 Throughout 1946 and 1947, Jaro also exchanged notes on papyri in the Louvre with another old friend, Christiane

1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821

In the recollections of A. Allot. Diary of Anna Sargant, excerpts, 30 November 1946, courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý 21.1200. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý 21.1202; 21.1204. FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to J. Capart, 4 December 1946. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1207–21.1208. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1467–21.1468.

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Desroches-Noblecourt.1822 Technical data on these papyri contributed to him condensing his ideas about the materiality of this medium, about the rather standardized appearance of different types of document. Jaro had left for Christmas in Prague before the term ended, as he was already there on 18 December. His early departure was partly motivated by persistent stomach problems, which he hoped to discuss with his Prague physician. He was eagerly awaited by his enthused pupil Žába, who maintained his starcrossed-lover style of letter-writing: ‘your photograph at my desk … draws my sight, whenever I raise my eyes from my work … the time has flown quickly, and I have never ever looked forward to Christmas as I do this year, I cannot wait to talk to you.’1823 More practically, Žába reported that a new stove had been purchased for Jaro’s old study, which promised a comfortable stay. Jaro thus enjoyed a family Christmas in Prague, in the domestic comfort of his mother’s home. He returned to London in mid-January 1947, directly to a new home at 2 St. Michael’s Terrace where the Sargant ladies were ‘busy cleaning up the house.’ Electricians were swarming all over the place, carpets were being laid, furnishings unpacked, and ‘armchairs arriving’. And then, ‘Černý arrived—masses of luggage, and bringing us wonderful food,’ a gift from Marie’s parents who thought that Britain was still struggling with shortages. Jaro was ill with a fever and the Sargants ‘coddled’ him, although he was far from an undemanding patient. He refused to give up smoking, and cut a sad figure with a heavy cough aggravated by self-inflicted billows of smoke. Nonetheless, Anna’s friendly verdict was that ‘he fits in quite well.’1824 Jaro undoubtedly wished to fit into his new home, because he saw his future with the Sargants, but he was accustomed to living on his own and a period of a more-or-less successful adjustment was to be expected. One aspect was finally renewed as soon as he was sufficiently recovered: intimate relations with Marie resumed.

1822 1823 1824

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1531–21.1538. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1997, 9 December 1946. Excerpts from the diary of Anna Sargant, January 1947, courtesy A. Allott.

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Their lifestyle was influenced by the rhythms of the academic year and his regular obligations at work. Jaro took Marie with him to functions, and soon began to suggest that they ought to wed, to make their position official. But in strong contrast to archetypical wedding-obsessed women, it was Marie who hesitated. This was not because she was averse to commitment, but rather because her experience had been that such commitments were not always kept. She had overhauled her life, followed Thomas Sargant to London, changed her citizenship and her state, and had then been left to largely fend for herself and her two children. Beneath the professional identity and social position she had built up during the war was smouldering anger and resentment. She was an independent woman with her own professional standing, her daughters were adolescents, almost young adults, and she had made friends and built recognition on her own merit. She had found another partner, but was there really a need to submit once again to the constraints of marriage? Jaro had entered a household of comparatively independent women who fended for themselves, but who now had a lodger and consequently more work on their hands. The winter of early 1947 was very cold, with a cold snap that lasted from the end of January until March, in which power cuts were exacerbated by still-rationed coal supplies (although the Attlee government had just moved to nationalize the mines).1825 It was difficult to run a household in such circumstances, yet the Sargant’s did reasonably well. Their home was heated, though badly, and kept as tidy as possible with a man in the house. Gender roles, despite the upheavals of war, were still relatively well-defined and still quite far apart. For some they were kept apart for quite some time.1826 Jennifer Worth, a midwife employed in the working-class East End, noted in the 1950s: ‘So, like Jane Austen, who in all her writing never recorded a conversation between two men alone, because as a woman she could not know what exclusively male conversation would be like, I cannot record much about the men of Poplar, beyond superficial observation.’1827 It was probably 1825 1826 1827

The winter of 1947 is portrayed in Kynaston 2007: 185–205. Kynaston 2015: 584–587. Worth 2009: 18.

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not quite so for the Sargant family (the young Jennifer was working as a midwife attached to a convent, and thus in a particularly feminized environment), but they were accustomed to being self-sufficient and—when at home together—mostly within an all-female circle. Jaro must have initially missed most of the domestic tension, not fully realizing there were problems in communication. He was busy at UCL. The department was returning to full operation. The Kahun papyri were unpacked from their wartime protective cocoons, and it was the UCL library, not Prague, that eventually received Crum’s Coptic library after he died in 1944.1828 The students were rather taken with their new professor’s idiosyncratic use of English (it took them some time to decipher that a ‘ratty’ form was mean to be a ‘relative’ form),1829 as he was articulate, erudite, and humane. He could also be quite unassuming, unlike the flamboyant Wing Commander Glanville, despite them looking alike in contemporary photographs: similar haircut, round glasses, and neat clothes.1830 Later oral history and memoir evidence, collected by Rosalind Janssen from among his former students,1831 provides a taste of those aspects of his personality that they saw most often. Although Jaro was well-versed in many aspects of Egyptology, he was apparently not overbearing. For instance, he had an excellent hieroglyphic hand, but when a student produced lessthan-satisfactory quail-chick ( ) hieroglyphs with bulbous stomachs (in a class visited by Gardiner himself) Jaro was said to note ‘he has had a big breakfast.’1832 This was a surprisingly delicate answer from someone who had elegantly autographed volumes of his own and Gardiner’s work, and who would always emphasize the need for good hieroglyphic handwriting as a foundation of professional Egyptological practice. But Jaro also knew how it felt to be an underdog, and cared for his students. 1828

Janssen, R. 1992: 61–62. R. Janssen, interview with Diana Kirkbride, 22 January 1992, EES Archives, London. 1830 Compare the portrait of S. R. K. Glanville by Antony Barrington Brown, 2 ¼-inch square film negative, 14 January 1954; NPG x104729. National Portrait Gallery. 1831 Janssen, R. 1992: 56–59. Audio files of the interviews, EES Archives, London. 1832 Janssen, R. 1992: 59. 1829

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His kindness was not limited to the avoidance of bullying in class, but included material assistance too. One of his more advanced students was given the opportunity to take over Jaro’s private (paid) tuition with a wealthy amateur.1833 One reminiscence runs as an undercurrent through the recollections of his London—and later Oxford—students: Jaro was an excellent teacher in evening classes for mature students. He liked to talk to the general public, and they liked to hear from him. One 1947 talk on ancient Egyptian oracles prompted several enthusiastic letters, such as from a Londoner named Eric Marx. Jaro read the positive reaction with satisfaction and replied ‘I should like to give more lectures of this kind if only they did not demand so much preparation.’1834 He had a gift for one-toone tuition, but was rather less impressive with freshers in beginners’ classes. He ‘could not be described as much of a teacher at undergraduate level.’1835 His early teaching in Prague had often involved classes for mature students, or for people driven by enthusiasm who had already done the legwork by learning the basics of Egyptian grammar. This legacy was now being felt. Jaro was liked and likeable, perhaps because he managed to convey his knowledge without lapsing into insufferable know-itall mannerisms. Consequently, his students would often invite him to their parties, and even ‘clubbed together to take him to the Player’s Theatre in the West End to hear Leonard Saxe and his old-time music band. Here they sang Victorian musicals, their professor sitting in rapt attention, avidly reading the programme, and attempting to sing along with his students.’1836 Variety shows and comic operas are a London tradition that few cities can match, other than perhaps Paris or New York. The refreshing absurdity and timeless humanity of comic operas by the 1833 Most his students’ recollections were taken from Janssen, R. 1992: 56–59. This particular student was James Mellaart; interview by R. Janssen, EES archives audio file. 1834 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1373. 1835 Janssen, R. 1992: 59, based on a personal recollection by one of Jaro’s later Oxford students. 1836 Janssen, R. 1992: 57. Leonard Meyer Sachs (1909–1990) was a South-African British actor who came to London as a Jewish émigré. He starred in a film about the authors of a related genre of comic operas, The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953). The Player’s Theatre reopened in 1946 in Villiers Street, Charing Cross, after transferring to a suitably subterranean venue during the war (Sheridan 1952).

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likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, with their ‘ingenious paradoxes’,1837 and hybrid cultural spaces,1838 have secured a popularity that has outlived their creators by over a century.1839 They were all the rage when Jaro was a young boy (though mainly in the Englishspeaking world), were still en vogue in the inter-war years, and were still beloved when he retired.1840 Jaro was in his twenties and thirties during the highly musical and theatrical years of Prague’s Liberated Theatre (Osvobozené divadlo),1841 and if the style was not identical, Player’s repertoire from the still-earlier music hall tradition, with its variety numbers and songs, must have seemed refreshingly familiar. Jaro seems have enjoyed a wide range of musical genres throughout his life, including variety performances,1842 although he was later known mainly for his predilection toward classical music in general and Mozart in particular.1843 The musical evening is a rare hint at a temperament and enthusiasm in Jaro that he generally kept subdued. He could teach (apart from freshers) with both clarity and passion,1844 and could lose himself in music, but then revert to his quiet, unassuming façade. Another hint at this side to Jaro’s personality comes from a student’s remark that their professor was occasionally prone to rather confusingly use the English language, but whenever he became carried away with his subject in an animated discussion his ‘English would dramatically improve.’1845 Veiled passions fomented the transformation from a stereotypical, slightly awkward, bespectacled scholar into a spirited guide through the ancient world. 1837

Wren 2001. Williams 2010: 260–264. 1839 Sir Arthur Sullivan invited the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák to Britain. Smith 2013: 20. 1840 Wren 2001: 294–312. 1841 For which see Schonberg 1978. 1842 He was later known to visit variety performances in Paris; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2322, 18 May 1957, from Turin. 1843 James 1971: 189. 1844 I owe this expression to Charlotte Delaney, writer in residence at TORCH’s Women in the Humanities in 2019, and to the opportunity to discuss life-writing at the workshop held on Tuesday 5 February 2019 at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. 1845 Janssen, R. 1992. 1838

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It was perhaps characteristic that Jaro never showed off, as he never considered his own training and professional formation to be completed. He was even willing to hone his skills in reading classes with Gunn at Oxford after his appointment at UCL, where they were later joined by Gardiner after he moved from Wonston to Iffley in 1947. If his own knowledge was perpetually in the making, so was that of his students. Events of the late 1940s show that Jaro cared deeply for his subject, and for the colleagues and students who shared his passion. He maintained his remote mentoring of Žába, and was he was not entirely unresponsive to Jelínková’s struggles even if her complicated letters made for heavier reading than Žába’s.1846 Jelínková worked to find her way professionally in France and the UK, before settling in Manchester.1847 In March 1947, he recommended Jelínková to the ailing Capart, arranging for her to study in the library of the Fondation in Brussels. Capart graciously replied that mademoiselle would be most welcome.1848 He was now also in touch with Egyptologists in Germany, who contacted him for professional reasons, as a consultant, and as a connection to an academic ecosphere that was less devastated than German universities.1849 The world Egyptology was starting to rebuild in the years after the war, and Jaro maintained a close eye on developments. He still considered the circulation of information to be critical, as he had since Capart’s attempt to set up a research centre for world Egyptology in Belgium in the 1930s, to prevent the fracturing of the discipline and the duplication of work across national and linguistic boundaries. In May 1947, another contact, Jozef Janssen, appeared in his list of correspondents.1850 1846

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1026, 21.1198–21.1203. Jelínková found work as a research assistant at CNRS, France (1950–1957), and in Cambridge (1955–1960), before becoming a lecturer and then reader in Coptic at the University of Manchester; see Bierbrier 2019: 391. Her papers, including correspondence and diaries, are deposited in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. 1848 FERE, Correspondence J. Černý to J. Capart, 3 March 1947 and 14 March 1947 (a carbon copy of Capart’s reply). 1849 GIA, Collection Černý, correspondence with Rudolf Anthes (Černý Mss. 21.214– 21.227 and 21.2037–21.2039), Günther Roeder (Černý Mss. 21.126–21.136 and 21.1737– 1747), and Hermann Junker (Černý Mss. 21.92, 21.1212–21.1215). 1850 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1184. 1847

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Janssen had been a student of Adriaan de Buck in Leiden, had finished his thesis the previous year, and had published bibliographical notes in the journal Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux in the occupied Netherlands. Janssen was to assume a significant role in the Annual Egyptological Bibliography, together with another long-term acquaintance of Jaro’s, Baudouin van de Walle, developing Jaro’s long-held idea of timely circulation for Egyptological information. He was still with concerned with Arkell. In February 1947, Jaro approached the Provost about the vacant lectureship post, nominating Arkell as a man of energetic character who had a good record in organizing and managing collections. This was something UCL was in acute need of because its collections still needed unpacking and reorganizing after the war, and Arkell had been a driving force behind a reorganization of the museum in Khartoum.1851 The recommendation must have helped, as Arkell took up the position in 1948 and pursued the ‘accommodation of the Flinders Petrie collection’ attentively.1852 Arkell had been an administrator in Sudan but had also been an active soldier,1853 and therefore had credentials that Jaro might have believed himself to be lacking, or might have appeared to be lacking. They complemented each other, and Jaro certainly needed assistance with teaching as his self-imposed schedule included a lot of research. While Jaro was settling into full professional participation in British Egyptology, he was also settling into a domestic pattern. Things were still not easy for him or the Sargants, but he fervently wished to become a part of the family, and the initial upsand-downs of the developing relationship seemed manageable. In early months of 1947, Anna noted that ‘the Professor is behaving very well, he has fitted in like one of the family; he is so funny, with all his weak jokes, his cigarettes, his hot water bottle, and his “Well Mummy”,’1854 the latter being his favourite familial way of addressing Marie. Anna’s observations are unique, if not entirely 1851

Janssen, R. 1992: 57f. This from the wording of a grant of £16,000, awarded for the purpose in 1947; Janssen, R. 1992: 62. 1853 Bierbrier 2019: 22. 1854 Diary of Anna Sargant, February to April 1947, courtesy A. Allott. 1852

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neutral, insights into a changing family dynamic. At this point, he was ‘Professor’, but she knew the nature of his relationship with her mother either by observation or intimation. But a man who had mainly lived ‘on the road’, and in circumstances that included domestic service, was inevitably prone to ineptitudes however hard he tried hard to fit in. Marie would have welcomed more help and appreciation from Jaro, who on the contrary made frequent faux pas—all the time being ‘nauseatingly “sweet”,’ as Anna put it.1855 Clubbable small talk and approachable, kindly shop talk had worked well with Jaro’s professional colleagues and friends, and had been mastered in at least four languages, but these were hardly of use when resolving the practicalities of daily life. Jaro seems to have enjoyed being waited on, could snap when tired and not best pleased with dinner, and would invite guests to the family home and expect Marie and Anna to provide them with food and drink and to be gracious hostesses. Anna noted, on several occasions, that ‘M. feeling fed up with life and Prof.—she is always doing the housework while he sits and gets waited on— however, there are no scenes.’1856 Clearly, a balance had to be found. Jaro was also willing to repay the family in the way he knew best, by offering his intellectual capabilities. He liked being coddled when ill (and there was no scarcity of colds, flus, and sore throats in the bad winter of 1947, with fuel shortages threatening), but he would find time to work with Anna on her language classes. Later, he was supportive of Anna’s academic aspirations, to the point that: ‘Jaro keeps saying … he wishes that I had decided to study Egyptology, with [given] my brain,’1857 and was at hand to help her tackle homework and various assignments, such as Latin and, later, Czech and Old Slavonic university coursework. Jaro was always a traveller, and in 1947 developed a pattern of short trips, to Oxford or Cambridge or Belgium. He still intended to visit Czechoslovakia during vacations, at Christmas, Easter, and during the long summer vacation, which would please his mother. 1855 1856 1857

Diary of Anna Sargant, August 1950, courtesy A. Allott, family archive. Diary of Anna Sargant, 15 October 1947, courtesy A. Allott, family archive. Diary of Anna Sargant, courtesy A. Allott.

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Late March 1947 found him in Prague,1858 for about a month during the Easter break,1859 working on his inaugural lecture and providing comfort to his mother Anna, who was ill.1860 Marie sent dates and satsumas with him to Czechoslovakia, and Jaro obtained a parcel from Marie’s parents in Boskovice in return. That spring he also renewed work on the Wadi Allaki graffiti, after his notebooks and photographs from Cairo finally reached him in London.1861 The manuscript, a transcription and translation of all texts visible in the Murrays’ photographic collection was submitted to the JEA in time to be published in the 1947 volume. It included a brief commentary on the better-preserved texts, and Jaro identified one of the scribes as ‘a much-travelled person’ on the basis of his name appearing in other graffiti throughout Nubia.1862 Spring in London brought the inaugural lecture, ‘Paper and Books in Ancient Egypt’, which Jaro presented on 29 May in the Eugenics Theatre, Gower Street. What Jaro, a one-time pupil of the hesitant eugenicist Břetislav Foustka, thought of the hall’s name was not recorded. Perhaps he ignored it. Anna and Marie helped him hone his pronunciation the day before and the lecture then ‘went excellently.’1863 Colleagues, including Gunn, were invited.1864 In the same month a colleague from Leiden, Bruno H. Stricker, wrote to say that he was ‘glad that your long wanderings in Europe and Africa have now taken an end in such a happy way and that you will be able to display your forces in a place as inspiring as London.’1865 Inspiring, perhaps, but beginners still ‘had to press their professor into giving them elementary Egyptian,’ contrasting

1858

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2293, 25 March 1947. Anna Sargant noted that her mother accompanied him to the airport on 23 March after an aborted attempt the previous day (the flight did not take off), and that they were expecting him back on 22 April. Diary of Anna Sargant, March to April 1947, courtesy A. Allott. 1860 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2293. 1861 Černý 1947: 52. 1862 Černý 1947: 57. 1863 Diary of Anna Sargant 1947, May, courtesy A. Allott. 1864 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.995, 18 May 1947, from B. Gunn. 1865 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1871, 3 May 1947, from B. H. Stricker. 1859

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with individual tuition in which he was ‘immensely helpful, enthusiastic and inspiring’, as recalled by another former student.1866 After the term had ended and, after another trip to see the Newberrys,1867 Jaro went to Europe to spend the long vacation travelling, writing to Marie regularly. He first visited Paris to meet Bernard Bruyère and Desroches-Noblecourt. This was their first reunion after the war, and the future of the Deir el-Medina project was discussed. Bruyère had started renewed excavation work there in 1946, but had yet to secure sufficient financial backing from the IFAO to invite pre-war colleagues to join him. Jaro enjoyed Paris, but wrote to Marie that ‘life in Paris cannot be compared with that before the war, even women dress less [scil. less exquisitely], but they have kept their exquisite taste.’1868 This was another effect of the war. Clothing was still rationed in Britain, and it would be another year before good-looking and affordable (if not exquisite) clothes would be widely available, with outlets such as Marks and Spencer striving to offer clothing suitable for ‘factory girl and duchess alike’.1869 Jaro reached Prague in mid- to late July, and used his library (one motivation to keep it there, rather than move it to London, may have been so that his books would be available during his regular visits) to work on his assignment about Egyptian religion, the ‘Schmerzenkind’ of Egyptology, as Adolf Erman once termed it.1870 Jaro was not best qualified for the task, but collected a large body of resources and treated religion as he would economic history, by first providing a detailed overview of the sources. Unlike for economic history, he did not elaborate further. He also acted as host to Anna when she visited Czechoslovakia from the end of July to early September 1947.1871 Jaro would accompany her to and from the station, and took her sightseeing in Prague and to see Carmen at one of Prague’s theatres.1872 Some of his correspondence shows that Jaro ventured into areas 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872

Janssen, R. 1992: 59. Planned since early May; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss.21.1508–21.1509. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2294, 14 July 1947. Hennessy 2007: 18–19. On Erman’s own work see Nagel 2005 and Gertzen 2015. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2295, 21.2295A. Diary of Anna Sargant, July to September 1947, courtesy A. Allott.

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of Egyptology beyond his usual specialization in that summer, as he exchanged notes with William Stevenson Smith about Queen Meresankh.1873 This is perhaps not surprising given his extensive visits to Old Kingdom monuments in wartime Cairo. It is around this time that Jaro became involved in an initiative to promote international collaboration in Egyptology. In August he flew from Prague to Copenhagen and took part at an international meeting,1874 the first meeting of the putative International Association of Egyptologists, which took place from 17 to 23 August 1947. The meeting was truly international, including Sami Gabra as an Egyptian representative. Belgium had a female representative, Marcelle Werbrouck. De Buck was elected president, and the administrative necessities of running a secretariat and treasury were entrusted to locals, Constantin-Emil SanderHansen, Paul Brandt, and Erik Iversen. Moss took part and became a member of the subcommittee for an archaeological index of Egypt. There were some apologies, but not necessarily for absence: ‘MM Gardiner, Gunn, et Lacau, qui, pour des raisons différentes, ne pensaient pas pouvoir prendre par à l’organisation.’1875 There were thirty participants, and seventy-three letters from specialists endorsing the establishment of an organization, but Gardiner and Gunn had reservations that mainly concerned German involvement. The fallout of war was still very much in evidence, although the attempt itself was consistent with the more open, transnational concept of scientific cooperation that heralded the foundation of UNESCO.1876 The UNESCO charter was adopted in November 1945 and stated, among other things, that: Ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.

It continued that the parties concerned…

1873 1874 1875 1876

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2296. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2298. Anonymous 1948: 102. Fox 2016.

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… believing in full and equal opportunities for education for all, in the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth, and in the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, are agreed and determined to develop and to increase the means of communication between their peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other’s lives.1877

The agreement between the United Nations and UNESCO was approved in December 1946. The report on the Copenhagen meeting listed Jaro as a representative of Czechoslovakia. He was nominated as a member of the dictionary committee, to be chaired by Volja Erichsen (with Jacques Jean Clère, William F. Edgerton, and Charles Kuentz as members), and as chairman of the publications committee (with Aylward Blackman, Kuentz and Posener as members).1878 The next meeting was planned for the 1948 Congress of Orientalists in Paris, but the idea of dedicated Egyptological congresses—or a regular association—did not take off until 1976. The one idea that took off immediately was that a regularly published specialist bibliography was essential, and chiefly because de Buck had available manpower in the form of Janssen. Janssen wrote in retrospect that, When the International Association of Egyptologists was being founded in Copenhagen … everybody present agreed that one of the most urgent tasks in Egyptology after the Second World War was to have a bibliography with summaries. At the time … I was just a novice, having presented my thesis in December 1946, and was not aware of the complications of compiling these excerpts. The President, my teacher A. de Buck, asked me (strangely enough not in Dutch but in English) if I would be willing to do this work. Of course, I accepted, be it hesitatingly, but all the Egyptologists present promised to do their utmost to help me. For many people this promise seems to have been sufficient.1879

1877 Constitution of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, Reprinted in Hajnal 1983: 403. 1878 Anonymous 1948: 103. 1879 Janssen 1963: xv.

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Jaro became a focused contributor in later years,1880 but in the meantime returned to London via Prague,1881 from where he conveyed his family’s greetings to Gardiner along with the regards of a specialist in Roman law and papyrologist named Jiří Cvetler (1902–1991), who had been freshly appointed to the Masaryk University in Brno. It took a little longer to get back to Britain, as Jaro needed a permit proving he had employment in London,1882 and this was apparently delayed in the post. Faulkner heaved a sigh of relief upon Jaro’s reappearance: ‘you have at last succeeded in returning to London.’1883 Marie had spent the late summer sorting out renovations to the house, such as planning bookshelves, and Jaro was thrilled at the prospect of their shared household developing.1884 Before beginning his teaching duties, Jaro travelled with Gardiner to Turin from late September to early October, to collate hieratic texts.1885 He still maintained the secret of Gardiner’s Festschrift, which it had been decided would be a dedicated volume of the JEA. A long debate had preceded this decision, and Gunn and Jaro were looking for sponsors. Glanville provided an expansive list of options,1886 from approaching the IFAO to asking Chester Beatty (who declined) or the Rockefeller Foundation,1887 but the JEA was the most viable option. Wherever it was published, Gunn insisted that no German scholars were to be involved, as Gardiner was opposed to Germans in any international association: ‘I am sure Gardiner does not want to see any of them figuring in the JEA.’1888 Jaro, who corresponded freely with German scholars, was not so intransigent as his mentor, but acquiesced. Upon his return to Britain, Jaro was contacted by the Cambridge University Press regarding his contribution to the Cambridge

1880

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1190ff. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.14, 25 August 1947. 1882 Copies of his permits were sent to UCL; Personal file J. Černý. 1883 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.627. 1884 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2297. 1885 On 3 to 4 October 1947 he was collating texts in Turin; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.15, p. 81 recto. 1886 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.983. 1887 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1000. 1888 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.625. 1881

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Ancient History, and a contract was signed.1889 He began arrangements for his next trip to Belgium at the Fondation’s invitation, to give lectures at the Institut d’Hautes Études and at the Fondation itself. There was to be an honorarium, which Jaro planned to spend immediately on new Belgian publications.1890 In the meantime, he and Glanville helped Nagel secure photos of British Museum papyri, foremostly Books of the Dead.1891 Jaro had intended to resume his pre-war lifestyle of fieldwork in Egypt and travel to European collections, though there were administrative hurdles to this. He appears not to have fully realized that he had new responsibilities, to Marie and her daughters (mainly Anna, who was living with her mother). Typically, his travels required the household to put in extra effort, such as on 25 November when Jaro left for Brussels on a trip to copy ostraca and to meet his Belgian circle of friends.1892 From his perspective, it was a necessary and welcome trip, but the domestic ‘backstage’ harboured thoughts of mutiny, albeit enlivened by a hearty dose of friendly sarcasm: ‘All up at six to see the Prof off to Belgium—it is so simple and peaceful when he is out of the house. Men are a nuisance.’1893 Jaro enjoyed himself in Belgium, staying as guest of Arpag Mekhitarian and,1894 on the advice of Posener,1895 recycling his inaugural lecture from London into French. He also bought further books, which had to be sent to London.1896 In December he resumed communications with the Museo Egizio in Turin, which had a new director named Ernesto Scamuzzi.1897 At first, 1889 A memorandum of agreement between Jaro and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 10 October 1947, Cambridge; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.873 (one typewritten page as an enclosure). 1890 FERE, correspondence between J. Černý and A. Mekhitarian; letters dated 9 October 1947 (copy of a letter from A. Mekhitarian), and 13 October 1947, from J. Černý to A. Mekhitarian. 1891 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1469. 1892 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.34, pp. 29–30, 27 November 1947. He obtained 1200 francs as a reimbursement, 28 November 1947, Brussels; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss.21.1058. 1893 Diary of Anna Sargant, November 1947, courtesy A. Allott. 1894 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1388. 1895 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1636. 1896 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to A. Mekhitarian, 12 December 1947; see also Černý Mss. 21.1390–21.1391. 1897 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1792, 4 December 1946, from E. Scamuzzi.

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Scamuzzi wrote in Italian and Jaro replied in English, but later their correspondence was conducted mostly in Italian. In December, the publisher Janda reopened negotiations with Jaro regarding a book on Egyptian art, following their previous meeting in London, as Janda was still keen for Jaro to sign a contract. Negotiations proceeded into early 1948, though Jaro did not want to promise more work. He no longer depended financially on such contracts and already had enough on his plate in London.1898 He left for Prague in mid-December 1947 for his customary Christmas visit, and Maria and Anna sent some cigarettes after him.1899 When he later wrote to Iversen, Jaro referred to the Christmas in Prague as leisurely, except for packing the sixteen cases of books that were to follow him back to London. Iversen was at that point in Sudan and Egypt,1900 trying to resolve the problem of Jaro’s remaining possessions at the Czechoslovak legation, and himself on a collision course with Fairman. Jaro noted of Fairman: I was and was not surprised by your experience of Fairman. I have had opinions and judgements from several persons, all rather unfavourable, but my personal experience has always been excellent and he proved to be a very devoted friend of mine, while I was in Egypt. Still, you yourself are a very kind colleague, and if he cannot manage to satisfy you, there must be really some fault on his side. 1901

This passage suggests that Jaro had been aware of Fairman’s antics during wartime that had managed to exasperate both Miles Lampson and Gardiner, but still maintained a good working relationship with him and appreciated that Fairman had stood by him during his difficult time in Cairo. Even when Iversen fell out with Fairman, Jaro did not take sides and remained a friend to both. 1898 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1164–21.1166, with the chronological sequence 21.1165, 21.1166, 21.1164. The correspondence with Bohumil Janda continued in January and February 1948. 1899 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2332. 1900 See also GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1079. 1901 Royal Danish library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence, J. Černý to E. Iversen, 23 January 1948.

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Jaro returned to St. Michael’s Terrace on 14 January 1948, ‘at 11 pm with lovely china, food and chocolates galore, and lovely silk stockings’ for Anna sent by her Aunt Anduli from Boskovice.1902 Jaro was very keen to show goodwill and interest at home. On some days it seemed that all was well, such as when Anna recalled an evening when Jaro and her mother sang Czech songs after dinner, as she did the washing up: ‘ridiculous but lovely’.1903 Yet frictions in Highgate could not be answered simply with a shower of goodwill or gifts, and pressures that had started to mount in the outside world did nothing to help. In January 1948, Jaro’s friend van de Walle issued a warning that echoed the political tension of the day and encapsulated the politicized changes in international contact and travel: Je vois que vous restez le grand voyageur d’avant la guerre qui un jour est en Angleterre l’autre jour en Belgique, en Tchecoslovaquie ou plus loin encore. Attention seulement à ne pas être bloqué un beau jour derrière le ‘rideau de fer’.1904

The view of Czechoslovakia as a Russian satellite was becoming firmly embedded in diplomatic discourse from the Foreign Office, although it was still believed—or hoped—by Clement Attlee and his new envoy in Prague, Pierson Dixon, that it could be prevented from slipping completely behind the Iron Curtain, but instead would maintain its proclaimed role of a ‘bridge’ between East and West. British foreign policy would have preferred that option, but British means to achieve such an end were limited.1905 On 18 February, Jaro delivered a successful lecture at the EES in London on ‘Workmen of the Royal Necropolis of Thebes in the New Kingdom’.1906 But the Cold War had just begun in earnest. Jaro might have brooded over van de Walle’s letter, whilst having not ‘one good word to say’ about Anna’s cooking and housekeeping when her mother was out visiting Naomi,1907 but 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907

Diary of Anna Sargant, December 1947 to January 1948; courtesy A. Allott. Diary of Anna Sargant, January 1948; courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1945, 10 January 1948, from B. van de Walle. Smetana 2007: 143–167, esp. 160–167. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.95. Diary of Anna Sargant, February 1948; courtesy A. Allott.

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the political situation had deteriorated so much that household frictions were overshadowed. Edvard Beneš may have imagined a Czechoslovak bridge, but at the end of 1947 and beginning of 1948 it was evident that Communist Party members, under Soviet influence, were planning to overthrow the remnants of democracy. These Communists tricked the government’s democratic members (though not Jan Masaryk) into resigning and simply took over, using a provoked strike among workers, Soviet support, and the thinly veiled menace of an intervention.1908 Masaryk’s presence in their new government simply provided the illusion of continuity. The conspirators even ensured that the army was unwilling to intervene and thus tacitly agreed to the coup. This was the army led by generals such as Klapálek and Ludvík Svoboda, who were soon to fall victim to the new regime. It is tempting to wonder why people who had recently been liberated from one of the most oppressive regimes known to history would have walked straight into the fetters of another. The developments of 1945 to 1948 suggests that it was very much because of the experience of Nazi occupation. People who were ‘around twenty in February 1948’, those younger than Jaro’s students, were particularly vulnerable. As Zdenek Mlynář noted: My generation was made prematurely aware of politics by the stormy events of the period; at the same time we lacked political experience. The only experience we had was of the war years and the Nazi occupation … One of the chief results of this was a black-and-white version of the world.1909

It was relatively easy to turn to the electorate with a message of a radical and necessary change. And Czechoslovakia was no longer a pluralist society: ‘What was left was a denuded landscape, shorn of its ethnic and social complexities and ripe for the imposition of a unitary national script.’1910

1908 1909 1910

Dejmek et al. 2018: 453–462. Mlynář 1980: 1. Sayer 1998: 248.

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The idea of ‘a new world, dark in its own way,’1911 no longer simply loomed; it had arrived. Marie could no longer even consider moving to Czechoslovakia. In March, she was shocked to learn of the violent death of her former superior, Jan Masaryk, who was found dead beneath the windows of his flat at the Ministry on 10 March.1912 She had admired and harboured many fond memories of someone who was closely connected to her wartime work, when she was a respected, professional activist for the Czechoslovak cause. Marie believed that an international life was perhaps still possible, and this was something she shared (perhaps unknowingly) with Jaro. They had both agreed that Anna should study Russian and Czech, but with the Iron Curtain cutting off Prague this now seemed redundant. In the end, Anna preferred Russian as potentially being more useful. There were now widespread concerns about the situation in Europe. On 14 March, Posener wrote: Les nouvelles de Prague sont pénibles. Je regrette que tu ne sois pas ici pour me les commenter, car il y a des choses que je comprends mal: pourquoi les Russes ont-ils voulu remplacer un allié sûr et fidèle par un satellite, sans doute obéissant, mais amorphe avec une partie de la population hostile? … As-tu des nouvelles de ta famille?1913

The question evoked the turbulent times of war; and that another war had just begun. The death of Masaryk shows that it also had its fallen. A memorial service for Masaryk was held at St Margaret’s Church on 18 March. Anna recalled Attlee being present, and that ‘it is so sad that the last link with TGM has gone.’1914 Like her mother, she felt strong ties of loyalty to the Masaryk family. Not every friend or colleague of Jaro was aware of the happenings in Prague. J. Martin (‘Jack’) Plumley sent him a letter full of a narrative of his own domestic bliss in England, dated 1911

Steiner 2011: 1067. The death of Masaryk was presented as a suicide and still remains without a satisfactory explanation. See a revision of ongoing research by Kremličková and Kalousek 2005. 1913 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1641. 1914 Diary of Anna Sargant, March 1948; courtesy A. Allott. 1912

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25 February 1948.1915 Curiously, however, even Jaro’s friends in Prague appeared to act as if nothing serious had happened, at least for a while.1916 But Jaro was not naïve. He managed to find out that men and women who had served in London and in the RAF were being curiously sidelined back in Czechoslovakia. He was not alone: František Moravec, a well-informed intelligence officer and one of the architects of Operation Anthropoid, decided not to await developments. In his memoir he claims to have arranged for him and his wife to escape while their daughters were on a prolonged study trip in Britain.1917 Other representatives of Czechoslovak democratic parties were persecuted.1918 It seemed to Jaro that the events of the Communist takeover again cut him off from his mother and brother, although he held out hope that the Sargants, being protected by their British citizenship, might still secure some contact. In spring, he and Marie sent Anna off to Paris, with recommendations to his French circle: Anna met Posener and attended a lecture by Desroches-Noblecourt,1919 who was impressed by her young English visitor.1920 The new boundaries that had started to appear in Europe left Jaro with little appetite to follow his British friends in suspending communication with German Egyptologists. He even kept up communication with Hermann Kees, who had been suspended from his post in Göttingen for his pro-Nazi attitudes,1921 exchanging books and research notes.1922 Günther Roeder was almost sentimentally grateful for Jaro’s approachability in a time of general perceived unfriendliness.1923

1915

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1595. For example, a March 1948 letter from Boris Šmíd; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1849. Lexa wrote about Míra Bendová, who was supposed to study at UCL; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1342. 1917 As he had stated in his autobiography; Moravec 1975: 239. 1918 Dejmek et al. 2018: 504–506. 1919 Diary of Anna Sargant, April 1948; courtesy A. Allott. 1920 Desroches-Noblecourt letters, GIA, Collection Černý, 25 March 1948, Černý Mss. 21.1541 and 21.1542. 1921 Kees had been the Göttingen chairman of the DNVP in the early 1930s, and like Roeder and Grapow was suspected of ongoing Nazi sympathies by both Georg Steindorff and Rudolf Anthes; see Gertzen 2017a: 374–375, 379–383; Schneider 2015. 1922 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1251–21.1258. 1923 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1737; see also Gertzen 2017a: 374–383. 1916

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Further research on the workmen of Deir el-Medina turned up as a ‘filler’ between other tasks, such as when William Christopher Hayes supplied information on sḏm ꜥš in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.1924 Jaro intended to undertake a systematic hunt and asked for copies of accession cards of objects from Deir el-Medina, with photos, if possible.1925 Jaro was immersed in a considerable workload and a ridiculous amount of correspondence. Letter writing had become a daily chore.1926 He often found himself mediating requests from various institutions and specialists, such as putting Scamuzzi in touch with the IFAO, and obliging him by obtaining information from the Wellcome Collection (referred to as the ‘Medical Museum’) in London.1927 He was, of course, teaching, and had begun to assemble his notes for the Cambridge Ancient History. He continued work on the prosopography of Deir el-Medina, chasing up documents in museum collections he could not visit, expected to take up fieldwork in the coming winter season, and 1924

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1059, 20 April 1948, from W. C. Hayes. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1061, J. Černý to W. C. Hayes. 1926 The corpus of preserved (and datable) letters from 1946 to 1970 (GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21) show two peaks in Jaro’s written communications, the first shortly after the war, culminating in 1949, and second following the Suez crisis in 1957 and 1958. His post-war letter writing soon topped 200 per year. 1925

Letters 1947 - 1970 250 200 150 100

0

1927

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

50

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1796.

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still hoped to attend the Congress of Orientalists in Paris in August. Following his correspondence with Hayes he renewed contact with Nora Scott at the Met,1928 searching for further artefacts related to sḏm ꜥš. Although no longer under any contractual obligation, he undertook a major chore for Gardiner— autographing the Ramesside Administrative Documents for publication.1929 He also attending meetings of the Egypt Exploration Society, which provided another opportunity to catch up with professional friends and colleagues who did not live in London, such as Faulkner.1930 Finally, there was work on Festschrift for Gardiner; perhaps unsurprisingly, Jaro later had problems meeting the deadline.1931 Under this sort of workload, Jaro came to the impression that others weren’t working as hard as he. Yet again, he misinterpreted his partner and her daughter, who were used to a different lifestyle during the war. Being a full-time housewife was not Marie’s idea of a future, and her daughter had the clear goal of achieving good grades and going to university. At some point during 1947 Jaro seems to have grasped the gist of the problem and tried to secure hired help for Marie, but nothing materialized, and with his return in autumn, Marie and Anna again felt the brunt of additional household duties. The early excitement of a new household had worn off, and they realized that, in purely practical terms, life was considerably less complicated when Jaro was travelling. This doesn’t mean they stopped liking him, but would have welcomed him lending a hand with domestic drudgery.1932 It did not really help that domestic roles were thrust upon Marie (though with help from Anna) suddenly, so soon after she lost her job at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although she was still lecturing occasionally, she had once again become financially dependent on someone else, this time a man who was both her partner and her lodger. It was a tense situation, and not an easy proposition for a woman who was used to earning her own keep, or a large part of it, and to have had a job 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1813; for Scott see Bierbrier 2019: 421. Gardiner 1962: 52. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.635. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.638. Diary of Anna Sargant, 1947, courtesy A. Allott.

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of consequence. It was clear that Marie enjoyed her work. She was invited to teach at a summer school in Durham in 1948, and her daughter noted upon her return that Marie was ‘looking blooming, everyone had liked her very much.’1933 From Marie’s perspective, she had been presented with a life as something of an appendage to Jaro, expected to perform his domestic services. The role of ‘domestic goddess’ had little appeal. It was increasingly clear that both parties had a long way to go before they found a suitable model of domestic coexistence, and the greater responsibility perhaps lay at Jaro’s door as he was the newcomer, and had unspoken expectations. Marie was tired, uncertain of her future, worried about the education and future of her two daughters, had become financially dependent on Jaro for rent, and was frequently ill. Anna was seventeen years old, a young adolescent woman with schoolwork to attend to beyond looking after her mother’s new partner when Marie was engaged in various professional and social obligations. And Jaro expected them to run an open house for his visitors, iron his shirts, and— still a frequent bone of contention—cook homemade food, which he understandably relished after years of vagrant living, but which was not easy to come by during rationing. In June, Highgate welcomed sixteen crates of books and the shelving to provide a home for Jaro’s library, which had arrived from Prague. Žába had been instrumental in the packing and dispatching process. Still, Jaro was forever searching for new works. When George Reisner’s library was put up for sale, Bernard Bothmer wrote: At the suggestion of Prof. Seele we are sending you herewith a copy of our list of duplicate books from the library of the late G. A. Reisner and from other sources which are being sold by this Department. Those that are no longer available have been marked with a cross. We shall be glad to quote  you prices on any items you may be interested in.1934

The bookcases caused a ‘frightful mess’ upon arrival at 2 St. Michael’s Terrace, and most of June was occupied with setting up Jaro’s room. There were moments of recreation, though, 1933 1934

Diary of Anna Sargant, August 1948, courtesy A. Allott. B. Bothmer to J. Černý, 26 April 1949, courtesy P. der Manuelian.

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as Anna’s diary recorded walks in Hampstead Heath where she ‘raced’ Jaro over the heath.1935 Marie was lecturing at various summer schools during July 1948, so Anna took over the household and her diary entries recorded a merry-go-round of washing, cleaning, cooking, and looking after Jaro’s things. Jaro was prevented from going to Paris (apparently an administrative problem, the nature of which was never clearly explained in his correspondence), but ‘the world came to London’ for the ‘opening ceremony of the first post-war Olympics’.1936 Jaro apparently ignored the sporting event, but wrote to his Egyptological contacts, including warmly to Hermann Grapow. By mid-1948, Jaro was advocating ‘constant contact’ between Egyptologists.1937 In a world with closing borders—he had been blocked from going to Paris—Jaro felt still more strongly that communication across divisions would be increasingly valuable. Keeping abreast with publications meant corresponding with those whom his colleagues might have considered pariahs, including Hermann Junker. Georg Steindorff found Junker to be a man without character,1938 but Jaro saw him as a fellow Egyptologist, though their exchange was limited to information about publications and offprints.1939 He also stayed in touch with Roeder, a man whom many Egyptologists found unpalatable after the war.1940 What Grapow, Junker and Roeder shared was a career that survived the Nazi regime at the expense of their NSDAP membership. Their opportunism was difficult to digest. Roeder was one of the German correspondents to whom Jaro offered assistance beyond conventional expectations: he sent food rations to Göttingen (in the British occupation zone) as well as engaging in the usual exchange of books.1941 Roeder worried that such as generosity in a time of rationing was harming Jaro’s own family, to which Jaro replied ‘I am not married though I do have 1935

Diary of Anna Sargant, June 1948, courtesy A. Allott. Kynaston 2007: 291. 1937 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.916–21.918. 1938 On Steindorff’s ‘j’accuse’ letter, see Raue 2013 and Schneider 2013. 1939 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1212–21.1215. 1940 Bierbrier 2019: 397–398. On the diverse sides to Roeder’s character see Gertzen and Arp-Neumann 2019. 1941 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1737–21.1747. 1936

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a household, however, in the summer I was on my own in London and had more recourse to restaurants than usual so that the food ration gradually accumulated at home…’1942 This was not entirely accurate, as Jaro was at home with Anna. Jaro’s lost visit to Paris meant Anna had no respite from the domestic routine, but Jaro took his fatherly position seriously this time, and even though he enjoyed (and on occasion demanded) being looked after he began to work on spending quality time with his family. On 31 July, with Marie lecturing in Durham, Jaro and Anna went to a fair after supper and had fun. They went in bumper cars and on swings and Anna thought for the first time ‘perhaps he realises how much I am doing to look after him.’1943 A fifty-year old man and a seventeen-year-old girl might have raised a few eyebrows, but not if they were enjoying themselves as a family. This was the other Jaro, the Jaro who was not averse to having fun, even riotous fun at times. Anna in turn looked after a guest from Paris, a Mademoiselle Legrand,1944 who also helped with the cooking. Jaro missed his friends in Paris, and even until the last moment Posener still planned a dinner and an evening of theatre.1945 Several letters arrived from Paris containing messages of friendship.1946 Marie returned from her lecturing tour in August, but only for a few days before leaving for Czechoslovakia by train. Anna was in charge of the household for the following few months, but also took some time away. The dynamics at home were still somewhat unsettled. When Jaro was appreciative, or took Anna into his confidence regarding his worries about the political situation, or shared his happiness by ‘running downstairs’ when a letter from Marie arrived, they were on the way to becoming friends as well as family. When he snapped about tough liver at supper Anna was not amused, but things were generally getting better. She agreed with Jaro that he should lend a helping hand in the kitchen, for instance by assisting with the washing up. Her growing proficiency as a cook helped to 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1741. Diary of Anna Sargant, July 1948, courtesy A. Allott. This individual has not yet been identified. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1648. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1789.

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boost her confidence and she derived considerable pride from her culinary skills. They were starting to become a domestic team.1947 Jaro and Anna went for walks, to the cinema, and managed to look after the household. Jaro was always on hand for academic consultations, and clearly treated Anna as an adult. In late September, full of expectations of Marie’s return, Jaro and Anna met in town and ‘went off to buy M. a fur coat. I was trying them all on—we got her a beauty for £30 … quite a progress for Prof.’ The final remark shows that Anna was gaining insights into the developments that the thus-far-single, and looked-after, man had made. But Jaro had always enjoyed fashionable clothing if he could afford it, and extending his generosity to his partner probably came quite naturally. Meanwhile, Marie was happy to be with her family in Boskovice, but not all was well. People were being imprisoned. Her sister Anduli (Anna) felt as if she was being watched and pressured at work. From within and from without, Czechoslovakia was transforming into a totalitarian state, fully dependent on Soviet international policies and subject to Soviet diktats.1948 Dixon, the British ambassador to Prague, noted that the bridges intended by Beneš (who had already resigned) were being ‘recklessly’ burnt.1949 Marie was also deliberating her next step with Jaro, and possibly began to consider discussing both his past life and their shared plans for the future somewhat more thoroughly. When Marie returned from Czechoslovakia at the beginning of October, she was somewhat shocked when they radiantly presented her with the furs. The tsunami of correspondence raged unabated, and in the following weeks Jaro was busy at UCL in consultation with his colleagues. Jean Sainte Fare Garnot consulted him on his work on Hor and Suty,1950 and Lexa was glad to obtain books via Jaro.1951 Žába wrote in his characteristic way about Marie, whom he met in Prague: ‘Mrs Sargant was very much to my liking. I was quite 1947

Diary of Anna Sargant, August to October 1948, courtesy A. Allott. Dejmek et al. 2018: 465–466. 1949 Dejmek et al. 2018: 469. 1950 7 December 1948, Paris; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.832. 1951 He particularly thanked Jaro for Davies 1915, which had been obtained for the seminar; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1343. 1948

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astonished at her Englishness, whilst she maintained an excellent Czech conversation … she fulfilled my expectations where honourable English ladies are concerned.’1952 Soon thereafter Žába pursued Jaro with a request to contribute to a planned Festschrift for Bedřich Hrozný.1953 Jaro assisted Žába by handing his thesis on Ptahhotep to Gunn.1954 Jaro continued to invite guests to the household, introducing Marie and Anna to Gardiner on 15 December. Anna noted approvingly ‘M. is quite established now.’1955 Another of his friends, Sainte Fare Garnot, addressed his Christmas wishes both to Jaro and Marie,1956 alongside a collegial letter offering help with anything Jaro might need in Paris.1957 Christmas 1948 was the first they spent together in Highgate as a family. On Christmas Eve, Marie went to town to have her hair done, and they combined Czech and British approaches to Christmas by consuming the first of their Christmas puddings that evening. Christmas and New Year were quite enjoyable, including a visit from Naomi on New Year’s Eve. The early months of 1949 passed quietly. Both Jaro and Anna had university duties, albeit of different sorts as Anna had matriculated at UCL the previous term. Rypka wrote and suggested proposing Jaro’s membership in the upcoming Academy of Sciences, but Jaro replied politely that he would rather not gate-crash where he was not exactly welcome.1958 Jean Yoyotte and Gérard Godron stayed for supper in February, and Anna enjoyed the conversation in French. Godron was a grateful houseguest who subsequently wrote to thank the Sargants for their hospitality.1959 Despite the good times, Jaro was living with increasing tension. Beyond the political circumstances and concerns for his family and friends in Czechoslovakia, his secretary, Jean Tudor-Pole, 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 20 October 1948. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 10 November 1948. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1017. Diary of Anna Sargant, 15 December 1948, courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.831. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.832. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1757–21.1759. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.886, 21.888.

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was pregnant. This was not an enviable position for a young unmarried lady in 1949. Marie was upset, as she had previously believed this young woman to be an unseemly distraction at work, and that the rather scandalous situation might give rise to all sorts of speculation. Her suspicions about Jaro and his secretary were most likely unfounded, but she nonetheless felt she had to set the boundaries of what she would tolerate. The circumstances that ended her first marriage were in her mind as she contemplated what a future with Jaro might hold. Jaro’s position and responsibilities as a new full member of the British Egyptological community meant tying up various loose ends in his own work, the Sinai rock inscriptions for example, and thinking strategically about identifying suitable candidates for the few available jobs and positions. The power and responsibility were unfamiliar, but he communicated with other British professors of Egyptology, such as Fairman or Glanville. They also discussed jobs in Egypt, for instance whether one at Cairo University should go to Cyril Spaull or Plumley, albeit they had probably underestimated how little appetite there was in Egypt for further British appointments. Jaro’s sense of duty included planned fieldwork and publications. One colleague, Blackman, needed prodding to finalize his fieldwork at Meir. Jaro was unequivocal: His heart may be of course in the Edfu texts but that is not the point. My heart is also elsewhere, still I have spent the last 12 months working on Sinai, a work for which I do not get a penny. Well, here we are ready to help him and his duty is to help us … Meir is in the urgent need of being saved.1960

Cairo University was still not in full gear after its wartime upheavals, but Jaro kept an eye on developments in Egypt. He was also concerned with how to obtain books from there. His correspondents in Egypt included Alexandre Piankoff,1961 Bernhard Grdseloff and Louis Keimer, who were friends from wartime. Keimer still had his Czechoslovak passport, but it had by then become a liability as Keimer had no intention—or so he related 1960 1961

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.877, J. Černý to S. Glanville. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1576–21.1586.

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to Jaro—of becoming a communist.1962 They shared their recollections of the gentlemanly time at the legation led by SzalatnayStachó. In March, Jaro began collating Abusir papyri in the British Museum, to get an idea of what to expect from the material.1963 He visited Oxford and met with Gunn and Gardiner for text reading sessions, and with Moss on matters relating to the Topographical Bibliography. They regularly exchanged letters, particularly as Jaro was up to date with unpublished material from Sinai.1964 A more festive occasion in March 1949 was Gardiner’s seventieth birthday, which was celebrated in style and with the gift of the Festschrift. Jaro now felt he was in a better position to help other scholars with opportunities for career development. His role had shifted from a service provider to a member of the academic establishment. Now it was (at least to a certain extent) also up to him to decide strategic priorities in the field or to influences chances of others. Žába was contemplating a trip to Britain, as was a student of Wilhelm Czermak named Hans Goedicke, who had tried to leave Austria to pursue studies of Egyptology elsewhere and planned to apply for a British Council scholarship.1965 A Swedish promoter of Egyptology named Torgny Säve-Söderbergh met Jaro in London in April.1966 Some contacts simply could not be pursued further—perhaps due to a lack of time— such as the ethnomusicologist Hans Hickmann who was then living in Cairo.1967 Bad news reached Jaro from Cairo in May that Grdseloff was seriously ill. The wartime circle of Egyptologists was breaking. Other members of the Cairene fellowship, such as Fairman, wrote to Gardiner with sadness:

1962

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1259. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.122, 29 March 1949, p. 21. 1964 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1417–21.1423. 1965 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.896. 1966 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1790, 7 April 1949. 1967 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1066, 28 May 1949; Hickmann (1908– 1968) was a German musicologist, conductor, and specialist in oriental and Coptic music: see Ethnomusicology 13 (2): 316–319. 1963

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Both Černý and I have received letters from Misha Grdseloff identical with yours. As I was in London last week Černý and I talked over the position so that we should not work at cross purposes. As Černý has a personal contact with a cancer research worker we agreed that he should make the first enquiries and that only if he failed should I see if I could do anything.1968

The name of the cancer specialist has not been identified, but Jaro could have met specialists from the Institute of Cancer Research, which was part of the University of London.1969 Also in May, Žába relayed preparations for an exhibition called Egypt Old and New, where photographs from Jaro’s visit to sites around Luxor with Tomáš Masaryk were to be exhibited.1970 The grip of the Communist regime was tightening, but Egyptologists in Prague still believed they had some space to manoeuvre.1971 Jaro mediated contact between Žába and Arie Abraham Kampmann, the editor of Bibliotheca Orientalis, when he visited Prague. Kampmann accepted Žába as a reviewer for BiOr and then repeatedly asked Jaro what Žába would like to review.1972 Jaro was still working at a furious pace. He asked for more information on objects from Deir el-Medina in the Manchester Museum, which Fairman provided.1973 He organized a book exchange with (and for) Adolf Klasens in Leiden, and paid for IFAO books to be sent there.1974 He confirmed with Kuentz at the IFAO that he was ready to go ahead with work on ostraca, with Bruyère as before.1975 He communicated animatedly with Posener to the same effect, and Posener responded with news 1968

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.94.47, 31 May 1949. The Institute of Cancer Research became a postgraduate school of the University of London in 1927. 1970 ACEGU, Correspondence Z. Žába to J. Černý, 25 May 1949. 1971 See Navratilova and Podhorný 2019. 1972 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1224. Jaro was himself a regular reviewer for Bibliotheca Orientalis; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1228–21.1231. 1973 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.550, Fairman updated Jaro on Manchester Museum 4588, a statue of Neferhotep (PM I2, 682), Manchester Museum 1759, one of Ramose (PM I2, 682), and stated that he was looking for further pieces from Deir el-Medina with the assistance from Elise Baumgartel, who was helping with the search for ostraca. 1974 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1285–21.1289. 1975 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1314–21.1315. 1969

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about a large find of ostraca from Deir el-Medina, which later became known as the Great Pit.1976 Still in May, in a draft to Warren R. Dawson, Jaro suggested including portraits and handwriting in the Who Was Who project: Would it be possible for you to give photographs or portraits of the Egyptologists, so as to attach a more definite shape in our minds to the names? Also could you attach specimens of a few lines of handwriting of as many as you can, this being important for identifying manuscript notes in books and so on?1977

It is also clear from subsequent correspondence with Dawson that Jaro was helpful on more than one occasion in compiling the data for Who Was Who. June 1949 was a difficult month for the Sargants, one that emphasizes the underlying domestic tension in their lives. Marie was upset because Jaro wanted to be supportive to Tudor-Pole, whose baby was born toward the end of that month. Marie felt this unnecessary, as the baby was not Jaro’s responsibility, and Jaro felt she was becoming unreasonably jealous. She went so far as to threaten a break-up. Jaro was still in touch with Gardiner about the Ramesside Administrative Documents, which he had helped to transcribe over the past year. He visited Gardiner in Oxford, and Gardiner in turn invited him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, on the occasion of one of his trips to London.1978 At the height of the family troubles prompted by Jaro’s support of Tudor-Pole,1979 Jaro and Marie played host to Abd el-Mohsen Bakir and his wife, who were visiting London. ‘The meal went off perfectly,’ noted Anna, adding that she did all the clearing up.1980 Jaro’s friends noted that things were not going so well. Faulkner observed in mid-June that Jaro was finally ‘looking so much better.’1981 but this was largely due to Jaro’s well-trained façade. Marie still bore a grudge, but they managed to patch things up, and in July she and Jaro went for a 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1658, 8 May 1949, from G. Posener. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.337, 17 May 1949. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.767, June 1949. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2344 and 21.2345. Diary of Anna Sargant, June 1949, courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.641.

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holiday in Wales together. When Anna met them at Paddington Station on 18 July they ‘seemed quite reconciled.’1982 Quite, but perhaps not completely. Jaro caught up with Mekhitarian in London,1983 and probably invited him home. He was now looking forward to several months in Egypt, which had been confirmed by the IFAO, and wrote enthusiastically to Grapow about ‘an unprecedented mass of hieratic ostraca of exceptional size and state of preservation’ and how he and Posener were to tackle them.1984 Žába was keeping him abreast with the situation in Prague. There was to be a ‘Congress of Orientalists’ there, and although it was never listed as an official international meeting it was quite a boost for Oriental Studies in the newly iron-curtained city. Žába reported meeting with Clère and Axel Volten,1985 and wrote as enthusiastically as ever about both the professional and the personal sides of his life—the wedding to his fiancée Marie Fürstová; the furnishing of his new flat in the Vinohrady neighbourhood where a bookcase had a central role; visits to Jaro’s mother.1986 Clère, however, viewed the situation in Prague rather differently. In June 1949 he wrote about leaving for Prague where he expected to be under ‘libertée surveillée’. On July 23 he reported seeing Lexa and Žába (the latter he described as ‘trés sympathique’), and of meeting a former acquaintance of Jaro’s, a lady who sent her regards under the name ‘Selma’ but did not dare to communicate directly because she was under police surveillance.1987 A sad moment came when Percy Newberry passed away on 7 August 1949. Jaro sent his condolences to his widow, Essie, but a friendly Egyptologist who was also in favour of international Egyptology, including the participation of Egyptian scholars, was lost.1988 1982

Diary of Anna Sargant July 1949, courtesy A. Allott. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1396–21.1397. 1984 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.919. 1985 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 14 July 1949. 1986 The bookcase was later bequeathed to Miroslav Verner, in whose possession it was at the time of writing. 1987 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.28–21.29; 21.297–21.306; J. Clère to J. Černý. 1988 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1513, 22 August 1949; from E. W. Newberry to J. Černý, with an enclosed obituary of P. E. Newberry. 1983

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During Jaro’s summer holiday his office was operated by Diana Kirkbride, who was also tasked with collecting books from the United States that had been stopped at the customs.1989 Jaro’s leave of absence was longer than Kirkbride expected as in August he fell ill. A skin complaint kept him in hospital for ten weeks, and was a cause of a great concern for Marie, who did not know what to make of an indistinct diagnosis of ‘eczema’, as Jaro referred to it while spending considerable time bandaged up like a mummy. He was most probably housed in the University College Hospital, in the Cruciform Building in Gower Street. Friends visited and wrote letters wishing him a speedy recovery, though swift convalescence was not expected.1990 The nature of Jaro’s condition is suggestive. Eczema is rarely so severe that it requires long-term hospitalization, and even if this was a euphemistic term for Marie’s benefit, without any further information one can only wonder about the causes. The condition may even have been psychosomatic. Jaro was again operating under conditions of great stress but covering this up with a façade of normality, a recurring pattern given his history of anxiety and his major mental break seven years earlier. He had an intense workload, duties of care, concerns about the wellbeing of friends and loved ones in Czechoslovakia, and unresolved relationship issues. Posener thought ‘le voyage en Égypte te fera oublier la maladie,’1991 and perhaps meant more than the physical symptoms. In September, Marie sought to make amends for her past suspicions and apologized to Jaro for being ‘difficult’. She went on to explain the problem, and thus to establish a line of communication where she and Jaro could clarify their worries. Anna helped, as a go-between between her mother and Jaro: Anna told me yesterday what your views were about me … I quite agree that I used to get ‘very worked up’ about Jean [Tudor-Pole]. I could not help it. I did not like her behaviour to you and the way you tried to excuse her every time. I was unfortunately far from realising that you found me ‘difficult’ … I am sorry about this.1992

1989 1990 1991 1992

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1264. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.642. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1665. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2345, 22 September 1949.

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Meanwhile, Žába wrote some letters from Prague, notably in October 1949 whilst Jaro was still a patient, imagining that Jaro could have stopped in Prague en route to or from Egypt; in this Žába was daydreaming, to say the least.1993 Jaro decided that there was one realistic use for Žába, and asked his somewhat clingy student to procure Russian and Soviet publications.1994 Gardiner, characteristically, sought to keep Jaro busy with queries regarding a new edition of his Egyptian grammar.1995 Post regularly arrived for Jaro in hospital. His young guest Godron, for example, wrote ‘l’égyptologie m’apparaît comme un musée d’énigmes.’1996 Scott, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was comfortable communicating with Jaro about her own (not untypical) issues with the museum: ‘doing odd jobs that have accumulated during my absence. The sort of things that are left for women in the Department to do when the men are lucky enough to have women to do them!’1997 It is unlikely she would have written thus to a man unless she felt sure of a sympathetic ear. Perhaps her views, in turn, opened perspectives for Jaro that were important for his approach to women in his professional and personal life. Jaro gave lectures at the beginning of term while still housed in the Cruciform Building, which was conveniently close to UCL. Anna was attending the School of Slavonic Studies, also almost next door in the monumental art deco tower of the Senate House, and frequently visited Jaro in the Victorian hospital, with or without her mother. She was on occasion still annoyed that men could be a nuisance and fuss-makers, but grew sympathetic to her mother’s and Jaro’s plight. She also observed the possible psychosomatic nature of Jaro’s problems with precision, noting that he ‘worries over little things and back comes his eczema.’1998 The trouble lasted well into October.1999 1993 1994

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 28 October 1949. Referred to by Žába in ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 18 October

1949. 1995 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.773, A. Gardiner to J. Černý, August 1949; see also Janssen, R. 1992: 61. 1996 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.889. 1997 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1815. 1998 Diary of Anna Sargant on 2 November 1949, courtesy A. Allott. 1999 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.642, 21.552.

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In October, around the time that Jaro was due to leave the hospital, Lexa wrote from Prague: It may be of interest to you that there is a new law in the making, which will take effect from January 1st 1950. It is known to me that a preliminary step to its implementation will consist of declaring all current Czechoslovak passports null and void by 31st December 1949. Czechoslovaks living abroad and not in regular contact with the Republic will lose their citizenship as a consequence of the above law.2000

Toward the end of November, Lexa urged Jaro to get in touch with the Czechoslovak embassy in London, so that they might make a report on him,2001 presumably as a ‘loyal’ citizen. Lexa must have hoped that this move would save Jaro’s citizenship, but it appears that Jaro had already made his decision to remain in the UK. He might not have realized how entrenched and permanent the new reality of the Czechoslovak state was going to be, and may have believed that if he was again to be an exile, perhaps it would not be for long. Lexa was apparently trying to intervene via the Ministry of Information, led by his former pupil—and a dangerous individual with strong political clout—Václav Kopecký.2002 But as his next letter on Christmas Eve stated,2003 the intervention was fruitless. He was nonetheless glad that Jaro was about to go to Egypt to work on ostraca. This was to be Jaro’s first post-war Egyptian season. Žába had decided to keep Jaro busy with his idea of a research trip to England. Lexa had been against the plan for some time,2004 but Žába was keen to pursue it.2005 He was now flattering Jaro more than ever, writing in saccharine tones about the— so far theoretical—possibility of Jaro succeeding Gunn at Oxford, which was allegedly hinted at by Volten in Prague.2006

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1344. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 1346, F. Lexa to J. Černý. Pávová 2008. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.134. See also Macková and Navrátilová 2016. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 1949 passim. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 14 December 1949.

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Correspondence in 1949 seems to have been particularly intense, with 236 dated letters hitting Jaro’s mailbox, more than one letter most workdays. One regular correspondent, Fairman, reported upon the arrival in Liverpool of Labib Habachi, whom both Fairman and Jaro valued.2007 Indeed, many professional matters were discussed closely with Fairman. The work of two colleagues, Elmar Edel and Maurice Alliott,2008 occupied many of their exchanges in autumn and winter 1949; the latter was viewed critically, not in regard to his earlier Deir el-Medina work, but for his studies in Egyptian religion, particularly the cult of Horus at Edfu. Fairman was interested in obtaining some of Jaro’s notes on Late Egyptian, and asked Tudor-Pole to lend him some from Jaro’s lectures. Another set of his notes on Late Egyptian thus entered circulation.2009 Jaro was still chasing Deir el-Medina material in museums across the world. In November he exchanged letters with Scott at the Metropolitan Museum, who commiserated with Jaro regarding his health and supplied the requested information.2010 With the skin ailment finally subsiding, and although the workload was picking up, Jaro also found time for a long walk on Hampstead Heath with Anna (Marie being ill with tonsillitis, a recurring complaint). They discussed Anna’s academic merits (he had valued her ability as a future researcher), and whether Oxford might offer her better prospects.2011 On the next occasion, Anna took on some domestic work and despatched her mother and Jaro for a long walk. Jaro was introducing Marie to wider and wider circles of friends and colleagues, and took her as his partner to a degree ceremony at UCL, where Marie met academic dignitaries from the School of Slavonic studies. At this time Jaro was starting to face a new kind of difficulty for a cosmopolitan researcher—on which passport was he supposed to travel? Wryly, he and Posener exchanged notes on the new problems of the travellers’ world. 2007

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.551. For Alliot see Bierbrier 2019: 12. 2009 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.553–21.555. 2010 GIA Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1815, November 1949, from N. Scott, following up on an exchange about Deir el-Medina material in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2011 Diary of Anna Sargant, 13 November 1949, courtesy A. Allott. 2008

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Posener, although he had his French passport without problems, commented ironically about his ‘origines typhoniennes’,2012 that might bar him from obtaining an Egyptian visa: his Jewish origin was now increasingly non gratum in Egypt after the 1948 ArabIsraeli war.2013 The war had ended in a decisive defeat for Egypt and other Arab states, and apart from making the situation of Jewish citizens in Egypt increasingly difficult, it had shaken the Egyptian monarchy deeply. Nonetheless, even though 1949 was yet ending on an uncertain note, Marie and Anna cooked Jaro an advance Christmas dinner on 23 December and packed him off to Egypt via Paris on Christmas Eve. This time he flew there, though he did so burdened with requests to organize book copying in London and book purchases in Cairo, both of which for Fairman’s nascent library in Liverpool.2014 But before Jaro left for Egypt he visited Oxford, where the reading sessions with Gunn and Gardiner now had a guest. Habachi remembered Jaro fondly from the late 1920s guided tour of sites in Upper Egypt. Jaro was increasingly having ideas about the Oxford chair. Gunn was expected to retire at some point, and Glanville went so far as to suggest that if Oxford became a ‘full chair’, then Jaro would (and ought to) accept it.2015 This was consistent with Glanville’s proposition about Jaro’s temporary posting in London.

1950–1951 the personal crisis As the IFAO in Cairo was making up its mind (and budget) during 1949, Jaro was in touch with his French and Swiss associates: Posener, Nagel, and, increasingly, Serge Sauneron. All four together were the once and future Deir el-Medina team, interested in both recording and editing finds from the site, and in making them into a history of people who had lived there.2016 2012

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1670. Compare Krämer 1989; Sanua 2005; Kasper-Holtkotte 2017. 2014 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.554. 2015 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.880, 19 November 1949, from S. Glanville. 2016 This did not always translate directly into their published work, but often transpired in notes and introductions to their respective text editions. See Posener 1938: iii–vii, and 2013

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Jaro began to think more in terms of a synthetic work dedicated to the village, its inhabitants, and the world in which they lived rather than restricting himself to preliminary studies and editions of papyri and ostraca. There was a chance to restart publishing projects of ostraca and papyri from Deir el-Medina so that they might become the backbone for his work—work that might ultimately inform a social history of the village. He had already revived his earlier ideas of a cultural and social history while teaching in Prague during 1945 and 1946, so the subject might be developed further. However, the preliminary work— the task of transcribing and publishing and indexing—still demanded much attention, now more than ever with the growing quantity of material found on-site. The largest corpus yet found at Deir el-Medina had started to emerge in the 1949 archaeological season, including texts and figural ostraca from the Great Pit and the temple area. Of course, the new material also meant developing his knowledge Late Egyptian grammar, the ostensible specialization he had established over the war and the immediate post-war years. While Jaro’s thoughts about Egyptological research might have been tending toward the synthetic and the problem-oriented, his work was still mainly source-oriented. Bruyére, the venerable doyen of the excavation team, eventually obtained the necessary financial backing to have Jaro return to the site. In the winter of 1949 to 1950, Jaro resumed his old routine of having a working year divided between fieldwork, research and teaching. He arrived in Cairo in December and enjoyed some brief reunions there (Piankoff had enticed him several months earlier with a promise of delicious cabbage soup),2017 and began work at Deir el-Medina on 5 January 1950.2018 The French expedition had been resettled at the site since 1946, and more elaborately Sauneron 1959: viii—‘Si nous perdons de vue l’interdépendance totale et permanente de tous les éléments constitutifs d’un ensemble humain, comme les facteurs géographiques et biologiques qui l’ont conditionné, nous ne pourrons jamais écrire une histoire d’Égypte qui sont autre chose qu’une belle histoire.’ 2017 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1577. 2018 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.554. Bruyère’s entry in Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952, Archives IFAO, Cairo. Unpaginated diary, entry 5 January 1950; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.60, p. 1.

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the excavation house with its small veranda was again in use. The days took on the familiar routine of work with regular breaks, and walks on nearby hill paths. The winter weather was crisp, but not as cold as in Cairo.2019 Bruyère was working in the Great Pit area and to the north of the village,2020 and any specialist interested in Egyptian written culture would regard this as a treasure trove. The number of ostraca grew steadily, and Jaro was back to his familiar task of copying and collating them, and of searching for graffiti. It was becoming increasingly clear, however, that both these areas of interest had developed into large-scale projects that demanded correspondingly large teams, not merely an individual effort. Jaro had already agreed to distribute the workload on ostraca between him and Posener in the 1930s, and this division had worked well: Posener had the opportunity to assess developing literary traditions, and to consider elements of education among the Egyptian literati; Jaro had a resource on his hands that gave him access to ancient Deir el-Medina households, and the immediacy of everyday ancient Egyptian lives. But the flood of ostraca rising from Great Pit necessitated a different research plan. As did the graffiti—even in the 1920s and 1930s Jaro had identified a number of texts that Wilhelm Spiegelberg had missed, but he also realized that the site needed more systematic investigation. His correspondence with Žába continued unabated from Egypt. Jaro’s pupil was flirting with various research tasks, from Ptahhotep to ostraca to Egyptian artefacts in Czechoslovak collections. Žába was, as ever, always willing to discuss himself, and produced epistles of several pages at intervals controllable only by Jaro’s slow replies.2021 Another Central European correspondent, Goedicke, was more restrained, though January 1950 was a bad month for him as it seemed the British Council would not consider financing him in an Egyptological fellowship.2022

2019 Octave Guéraud wrote to Jaro and company that the IFAO building was very cold; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.955. 2020 Bruyère 1953. 2021 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 1950. 2022 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.902.

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The IFAO season was intense. Although Jaro and Posener worked on ostraca most of the time, they still visited to Luxor to inspect the antiquities dealers’ stock. There were also excursion days and social events to honour both distinguished visitors (from Princess Faiza of Egypt to the architect Hassan Fathy, then finishing his New Qurna project) and the local community, including Coptic Christmas celebrations and dinners with local public figures.2023 Edwards, reporting on the arrival of the Abusir papyri at the British Museum, asked Jaro to obtain vinyls of Arab music, including some by Umm Kolthum.2024 Jaro was back. But even during this familiar excursion he was by no means oblivious to the world beyond. During his absence from London he was keen to be attentive to his new family, perhaps sensing that Marie, with whom he had lived openly almost since returning to Britain in 1946, was still undecided about their shared future. On 10 January he sent her a luxurious box of chocolates. He was also increasingly worried about the situation in Czechoslovakia. Anna’s diary captures the increasing uneasiness and anxiety of the time. In hindsight, with knowledge of the violence and intimidation that pervaded the early Communist world, this seems too forbearing, but information was not so readily available then. As Timothy Snyder points out, ‘At a great distance of time, we can choose to compare the Nazi and Soviet systems, or not. The hundreds of millions of Europeans who were touched by both regimes did not have this luxury.’2025 At the time it was more a matter of uncertainty and worry. It was known that there had been a spate of arrests in Prague since mid-1949, often of people connected with the wartime government-in-exile.2026 News was only drip-feed that Communist regimes were routinely torturing political prisoners and holding them in concentration camp-like conditions. Within months of the end of the Second 2023 Bruyère’s entry in Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952, Archives IFAO, Cairo. Unpaginated diary, varied entries for the winter and spring of 1950. 2024 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.494–21.495. The Abusir papyri group had been purchased from the collection of Edouard Naville by Ludwig Borchardt, who also connected them with the site of Abusir and then sold them to the Museum. Other fragments from these early finds ended up in The Louvre and the Egyptian Museum. The London collection was later published as Posener-Kriéger and de Cenival 1968. 2025 Snyder 2010: 391. 2026 See concisely Snyder 2010: 364–365; in detail Kaplan 1990.

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World War, people were again being driven to ‘the mind’s limits’,2027 by physical violence and utter degradation. Nothing was ruthless enough in the ‘bloodlands’, liberated from Hitler but left to Stalin, with local politicians often directly or indirectly complicit in the totalitarian takeover. The list of ignominies perpetrated by the new totalitarian regimes of Central and Eastern Europe makes for chilling reading,2028 but ‘the political trials constitute the truest picture of a Communist regime’s character.’2029 The same people who were either opponents or victims of the Nazis—Jews,2030 the intelligentsia, Resistance fighters—fell prey again to the Communists. In Czechoslovakia, service in the RAF during the war became a sure-fire ticket to a Communist prison. With a cruelty that makes any scholarly description sound dehumanized and technical, survivors of Nazi concentration camps and those who served in the Battle for Britain were tortured, imprisoned, and executed. Later, the witch-hunt fanned by Stalin’s conspiracy theories turned on Communists themselves.2031 The West was also in the grip of anti-Communist hysteria, which led Western governments to suspect even those émigrés who were simply trying to escape.2032 This was an era that brutalized the world. Show trials, torture, and confiscation were the new realities of socialist Czechoslovakia. Not that this was widely known to the citizens of the state—who were merely told that ‘enemies of the people’ and ‘traitors trying to subvert socialism’ were being justly punished2033—or was reported outside its borders.2034 2027

Jean Améry, in his memoir; Améry 1999. Crampton 1997: 261–266; Hodos 1988; McDermott 2010. 2029 Kaplan 1990: xiii. 2030 There was a decided anti-Semitic element to Stalinist purges: Crampton 1997: 65; see also Snyder 2010, the chapter ‘Stalinist Anti-Semitism’. 2031 Kaplan 1990. 2032 One example was Hubert Ripka, a former member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, when he sought refuge in the USA. Anti-communist witch-hunts were more pronounced in the USA, and more openly criticized in the UK. Compare TNA, FO 371/111413. 2033 It makes for chilling reading that thousands of Czechoslovak factory workers clamoured for the death sentence for ‘traitors’ to the people; that is, for the tortured victims of a show trial repeating the script of their alleged confession in front of a hysterical Communist inquisitor. See Kaplan 1990: 229–236. 2034 Reports of maltreatment and rampant nationalist fervour circulated soon after the war; TNA, Conditions in Czechoslovakia HO 294/151, concerning the second half of the 1940s. 2028

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However, the generalized inhumanity, even if hidden and only occasionally gleaned from hints in the news and personal correspondence, translated into very real personal anxieties after the indescribable Nazi horrors that had only recently been revealed, and which people had tried to forget. In individual terms, this amounted to some very distressing questions. Would Marie ever see her mother and sister again? Marie was technically a British citizen thanks to a discriminatory inter-war Czechoslovak law that automatically deprived women who married foreigners of their citizenship.2035 Suddenly, this had proved to be a boon, but with the tightening Stalinist grip on Czechoslovakia it seemed that anything, especially anything untoward, was possible. She might in principle have been free to travel, but would she survive visiting Czechoslovakia under such circumstances? Would her family survive having a foreign daughter in the ‘imperialist West’, especially one cohabiting with Jaro, a stateless man who had refused to return or to bow to the new regime after the Communist coup of 1948? Letters arrived from both Boskovice and Egypt, and her correspondents tried to be reassuring, but Marie was apprehensive about the future. She was now living off the alimony from Tom Sargant, while Jaro paid her rent for his rooms at St. Michael’s Terrace. Jaro was visited by a pre-war acquaintance, the German (now American) Egyptologist Bernard V. Bothmer, in late January,2036 but then came a blow. On 27 February 1950, Battiscombe George (‘Jack’) Gunn died unexpectedly in Oxford. His passing set in motion a process that could have potentially endangered Egyptology at Oxford University, as in the wake of his demise the Board of Electors had to consider whether to demote the professorship back to readership, to continue the professorship under Schedule B, or to upgrade it to a professorship of Schedule A with more requirements and higher remuneration. Gardiner had the deciding hand in compiling a memorandum expressing the concerns of the Committee of the Griffith Institute and defending the role of Egyptology at Oxford. This outlined the importance of the Institute, which at that time was just over a decade 2035 2036

See Feinberg 2007. Bothmer 2003: 42–43.

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old,2037 but was fast gaining a reputation in large part due to its Egyptological library, which was the ‘most complete … in existence, very valuable manuscript records and photographs, including all Howard Carter’s notes and drawings, and being the home to the Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egypt, a task of considerable magnitude and recognized importance and value the end of which is not yet in sight.’ Gardiner continued, marshalling his evidence: Outside the Griffith Institute there are other benefactions which make the University a natural centre for Egyptological study. At Worcester College there is the Laycock Studentship … At University College there is a Budge Fellowship … these two posts are occupied by younger men whose researches need some degree of counsel and direction on the part of the Professor, and for whose future the very existence of the posts imposes some degree of responsibility. At the Queen’s College there is roughly adequate Egyptological library founded in memory of Professor Peet, which proved of great practical utility to Professor Gunn. These various foundations, together with the past record of the University in Egyptological achievement, seem to merit grateful and uninterrupted recognition by the University. Whatever the value of Egyptology as a science—the relative values of different disciplines might give rise to endless dispute—there can be no doubt that the field it covers in the widest sense is of vast magnitude, embracing nearly five thousand years of history. The Islamic period is well looked after by the Laudian Professor of Arabic, and the study of the papyri of the Graeco-Roman period by the two university Readers in Greek Papyrology. But the domain still remaining is enormous and has hitherto been the business of a single University teacher. It comprises the language, literature and material antiquities of the Pharaonic and Coptic Egypt … it is submitted that the domain here briefly characterized is completely beyond the powers of a single University representative, particularly if he is to give any time beyond teaching to personal research.2038

2037

See Currie 1994: 133 and White 1994: 491–492. Oxford University Archive (OUA), UR 6/ER/2, Professorship of Egyptology, 1934–64, file 1. 1934–64. 2038

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The memorandum continued by characterizing Francis Llewellyn Griffith as a benefactor who employed an assistant, Aylward M. Blackman, essentially at his own expense. Gunn, lacking such means, had felt he needed to limit his publication output for the sake of teaching. Both Griffith and Gunn had therefore provided extra work to the University and Egyptology as a subject, had benefitted a University that was essentially relying on its employees’ goodwill and dedication, and which had thus far depended on their willingness to make financial contributions or to give of their time in ways that exceeded the requirements of the position. In short, opined Gardiner, for the University to remain at the forefront of Egyptological scholarship, let alone to develop it further, would require three Egyptologists. The ideal was to have at least a professor and a reader. Gardiner’s was a vision of Egyptology that encompassed both philology and material culture, and was not—at least in theory— meant to be limited exclusively to a paradigm that preferred the one over the other.2039 There was a dearth of Egyptologists considered suitable for the professorial position. Several younger scholars had died, such as Gardiner’s protégé Paul C. Smither, who passed away in 1943. Other Egyptologists were either too young, such as T. G. H. (‘Harry’) James, who was then consulting with Jaro over his translations of select Egyptian texts,2040 or were not unequivocally accepted by key players like Gardiner, such as John Barns. Hence, Jaro came to be one of candidates, even though he was settled at UCL. He was viewed chiefly as a philologist and was already in regular contact with those in Oxford, including those involved with the Topographical Bibliography. Gardiner had a high opinion of him. With hindsight, Oxford looked like the natural place for Jaro, but in spring 1950 matters were far from clear for Gardiner, the Board of Electors, and indeed Jaro himself. There was a tacit assumption that Jaro would vacate the UCL chair at some point (his retirement at the latest) to allow an archaeologist to resume the previous orientation of the

2039 2040

Pace A. Stevenson (Stevenson 2015: 19–33). GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1134–21.1135.

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department,2041 but technically he was settled at UCL for the duration and had discharged his duties satisfactorily. Jaro heard the news of Gunn’s death from Gardiner,2042 and it must have been unexpected coming in the wake of their regular contact and exchanges of opinions over Egyptian texts from 1946 to 1949. In early March, Jaro replied to Gardiner: You are right when you say that Jack’s death caused a great distress to me; it was also a terrible shock … he was a kind and noble soul, always ready to help and I was very proud of his friendship … What a pity that we have so little of his numerous small discoveries in print for ourselves and for future Egyptologists.2043

The loss of an excellent philologist, who had published relatively little,2044 might have incentivized Jaro to increase his output. Gardiner had long advocated strongly for publication, somewhat overlooking the fact that his own comfortable position, and lack of the need to accept a salaried position, made it easier for him to plan his studies without constraints such as teaching: after a brief stint as Reader in Egyptology at Manchester from 1912 to 1914, Gardiner had not accepted another job. Gardiner was a gentleman scholar, closer to the likes of Charles Darwin a century earlier than to most of his contemporaries, who had university positions. In his reply, Jaro felt obliged to assure Gardiner that he had every intention to increase his publication output, adding perhaps a little demurely that he should do so at least in quantity if not quality. His immediate task was still to tackle the enormous number of ostraca that were being hauled from the gaping hole at Deir el-Medina. The Great Pit was probably an attempt to build a cistern for the village, but the water table was not reached and the intended well turned into what appears to be a village dump, or at least a dump for discarded writings. There were thousands of ostraca within it, the number far outstripping the hundreds that had been collected until its discovery. 2041

Compare Janssen, R. 1992. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.783. 2043 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.11. 2044 Most of Gunn’s material appeared in posthumous publications (e.g., Gunn 2012) and forms a significant resource for new editions of texts (e.g., Navratilova 2015a). 2042

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Jaro recorded new texts and revised some of his older transliterations.2045 Most of the texts were a little stereotypical, but the evidence fed into his overall plan of collecting information on the community. Posener was working alongside him on literary ostraca, and some joint pieces appeared both in Jaro’s and in Posener’s share, prompting some detective work. It looked as if the literary category offered one of the juicier pieces: ‘larger pieces of at least three pots containing love songs. One of them seems to complete or form part of, the pot in the Cairo Museum.’2046 Jaro’s friend Grdseloff was enchanted, and despite his illness took a lively interest in the newly discovered literary texts, particularly the love poems.2047 Gardiner responded in his usual flippant tone: I am disappointed to learn that your own portion of the ostraca is less interesting than you had hoped. But what can you expect of these degenerate Necropolis workmen? I don’t know whether they are worse when they are copying unintelligibly some good old literary texts or when they are writing about their own affairs!2048

Gardiner’s view was probably coloured by his understanding of what workmen were: manual labourers, socially beneath a cultured gentleman. This wasn’t how the workmen had seen themselves. Judging by the popularity of texts praising the profession of an educated scribe, these ‘workmen’ saw themselves as a literate elite, or something very close to it.2049 Gardiner did not have the tendency to engage with social history, whereas Jaro had originally built his entire research plan around it. Jaro retained the designation ‘workmen’ throughout his writings on the community, and it was still used for his posthumous synthesis The Community of Workmen (published in 1973), and was subsequently inherited by generations of Egyptologists (including Dominique Valbelle’s poetic Ouvriers de la tombe in 1985). Only later was it replaced by the concept of the ‘Pharaoh’s 2045

GIA, Collection Černý, Notebooks, Mss. 17.60. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.12. 2047 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.932, 21.933. 2048 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.778, 9 February 1950. 2049 Parkinson 2009: 188–207, also Goelet 2013. On a tendency of ‘true’ scribes to set themselves apart from the artists see Laboury 2016. 2046

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artists’.2050 Yet Jaro had never doubted the exceptional status of the community that once inhabited the site that became Deir el-Medina. This first post-war season in Egypt meant reconnecting with fieldwork and the routine in Egypt that Jaro regarded as a vital part of his work. Egypt had, however, just recovered from being a theatre of war—albeit one less troubled than other parts of the world—and its archaeology was still in the complex position of being part-Egyptianized and partly directed by Egyptologists from a number of foreign missions, including the IFAO. The head of Antiquities Service was still Étienne Drioton, who was to some extent supportive of training Egyptian Egyptologists. Their academic opportunities were further strengthened by the 1942 opening of a university in Alexandria and by the need for better schooling in Egypt when the war cut Egyptians off from European fellowships.2051 Jaro, for his part, still mingled as easily with Egyptian colleagues as he did with those other nationalities, even those who had recently been enemies: Posener, Keimer, Abd el-Monem Abubakr, Habachi, Gardiner, and Junker were all colleagues to Jaro. On the last day of February 1950,2052 Jaro left Luxor for Cairo to collate some of his older transcriptions of IFAO ostraca that were still in its Cairo headquarters. A large group was collated on and around 20 March,2053 though Cairo also meant a busy social calendar as he was often in the company of Posener, Keimer, and Abubakr. His path had also intersected several times with Bothmer, and on one memorable trip to the tombs at Giza, after a party at Abubakr’s residence on 26 March, Bothmer wrote in his diary: ‘Posener, Černý and a ghafir entered one of Selim Hassan’s rock-cut tombs where I had been in the morning. After a few minutes they emerged in great haste, simply covered with fleas.’2054 2050

The paradigmatic change was outlined by Andreu 2006. See also Reid 2015: 343–344. 2052 Bruyère’s entry in Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952, Archives IFAO, Cairo. Unpaginated diary, entry 28 February. 2053 GIA, Collection Černý, Notebooks, Mss. 17.103, 17.104. 2054 Bothmer 2003: 149. 2051

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On 17 April, Jaro returned to London, reappearing at 2 St. Michael’s Terrace ‘with lots of luggage and presents’,2055 and was evidently glad to be back. Marie, however, had bad news, as her application for a visa to visit Czechoslovakia had not been granted. Jaro found time to occasionally take her to the cinema, but Marie was often in bad health (she had suffered a uterine prolapse).2056 and the load of housework was an ongoing issue, despite three years of inroads made to ‘house-train’ Jaro. After returning, Jaro taught the summer term at UCL, and discussed with Fairman the new IFAO publications that he had obtained and sent to his friend. The work by Alliot on the temple and cults at Edfu received some further critical evaluations.2057 He still observed from afar the developing career of Jelínková; Michel Malinine let him know in April that Jelínková had spent some time in hospital (her ailment was not specified) but was continuing her work in Paris.2058 She certainly had no particular interest in returning to Prague, where the new regime was entrenching itself.2059 It was enough of a challenge even for Žába, who was willing to adopt boilerplate Marxism-Leninism. The future of the chair of Egyptology in Oxford had still not been decided. Judging by a note written by Anna on 18 April, hints must have been dropped to Jaro, but without any specific promises.2060 Gardiner enquired in June about Jaro’s salary in London,2061 and was duly told it was £1800 annually,2062 less than the Oxford chair’s remuneration of just over £1500.2063 However, Oxford University administration felt that offering more would have smacked of bribing Jaro and thus luring him 2055

Diary of Anna Sargant, 1950, courtesy A. Allott. Personal communication, A. Allott, interview, June 2017. It is possible that corrective measures were taken after the NHS was founded, and healthcare made more widely available, on 5 July 1948. Uterine prolapses were a frequent complaint diagnosed by general practitioners of the time; see Kynaston 2007: 327. 2057 The book under scrutiny was Alliot 1949. Discussed in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.557, 23 April 1950. 2058 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1362. 2059 Petráň 2015: 168–178. 2060 Diary of Anna Sargant, 18 April 1950, courtesy A. Allott. 2061 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.786, 6 June 1950. 2062 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.787, 7 June 1950. 2063 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, report on 5 June 1950. 2056

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away from UCL in an ‘unneighbourly’ act.2064 Meanwhile, Jaro visited Cambridge in June as an external examiner, continuing the ongoing professional contact with Glanville that he maintained throughout his time in London. Also in June, Czechoslovak expatriates were confronted by further terrifying news, of show trials of the Czechoslovakian elite arraigned by the Communist secret police (Státní bezpečnost or StB). On 27 June, Milada Horáková (1901–1950), politician, activist, vigorous opponent and prisoner of the Nazis, and a brave woman for whose release Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt both pleaded, died on the gallows after weeks of a sham trial preceded by torture. She was executed using a primitive hanging method—strangling, not dislocating the vertebrae, thus guaranteeing prolonged suffering and indignity. A younger fellow student of Jaro’s, Záviš Kalandra (1902–1950), one of the few Czech historians of his generation with an actual working knowledge of Marxist theory and its applications to historiography,2065 was executed on the same day. Jaro left no evidence that he directly followed the news, or about his immediate impressions of it, but he was certainly worried that the totalitarian state might harm his family and friends.2066 This sentiment was echoed by Marie. While the show trials in Prague were raging, the debate about the chair at Oxford were paused so that the Board of Electors could deliberate further.2067 Then came news that Jaro’s wartime friend Grdseloff was in the final stages of cancer. Even Fairman, who had distanced himself from Grdseloff due to various suspicions relating to antiquities dealing during the war,2068 was 2064

OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, 29 July 1950. Kutnar and Marek 2009: 985. 2066 His later correspondence with Marie indicates as much: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2269–21.2379; particularly Černý Mss. 21.2303, a letter to Marie on 12 November 1950. 2067 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, 29 July 1950. The Hebdomadal Council informed the Provost of The Queen’s College on 29 July 1950 of the decision to suspend the issue until December 1950, to enable the matter to be given further consideration. This was also announced in the University Gazette, vol. LXXX, 28 September 1950, p. 8. 2068 See GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, H. W. Fairman to A. H. Gardiner, AHG 42.94.101 (4 January 1946), AHG 42.94.79 (25 February 1947). 2065

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deeply saddened.2069 Jaro tried to help by the means he had available, including sending rationed bread from the UK to Egypt, as the Hovis brand was apparently one of the few foodstuffs that Grdseloff was still able to digest.2070 Jaro’s correspondence from those days was a perfect storm of more-or-less direct demands for help, which he tried diligently to discharge. His German correspondents included people from both sides of the wartime divide, and since 1946 he had been as willing to send a portion of his own food rations to the humanist Rudolf Anthes,2071 as he was to ex-NSDAP members like Roeder and Junker.2072 In this respect Jaro was more generous than the wealthier (but more grudgeful) Gardiner. Britain, for all its austerity and rationing, must have seemed like an urbane sanctuary, free of the worst excesses of the postwar world and altogether more civilized. There, one could relish life, even if food was not always what Jaro might have desired. Invitations he issued to his colleagues (sometimes to the chagrin of his own household) were readily accepted. Claire Préaux, one of Jaro’s Belgian circle, visited in June.2073 These invitations were also reciprocated. Desroches-Noblecourt sent him a message via Moss in July that even though she and her husband had moved into a new home, Jaro’s room was always ready.2074 Jaro spent leisure time with Marie on Hampstead Heath or in the grounds of Kenwood House, and photographs from the period that capture the two strollers show that Marie wore her shining white hair in fashionable waves,2075 and wore such neat clothes as rationing allowed. Jaro almost always appeared in matching suits or separates, and with a tie. The photographs show a couple 2069 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, H. W. Fairman to A. H. Gardiner, mainly AHG 42.94.47. 2070 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.931–21.937, exchanges with B. Grdseloff. 2071 Gertzen 2017b. 2072 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21, correspondence with R. Anthes and G. Roeder. 2073 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1727. 2074 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1429. 2075 As attested by A. Allot (personal communication July 2017), Marie’s hair whitened when she was quite young. Wartime photographs already show her with white hair. Her natural colour was dark, as shown by family photographs of the younger Marie (Allot Family archive, collection of photographs in a scrapbook).

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who were conscious of the power of self-presentation, but also who were simply enjoying the day. After the academic year and the most labour-intensive period had ended,2076 Marie and Jaro spent a few weeks in Wales. The holiday was not quite a success, partly due to inedible food at their hotel, but Jaro felt he needed it badly: ‘I feel rather tired and require a full summer holiday’ he noted to Richard A. Parker who—together with Otto Neugebauer—offered him an invitation to Brown University in July 1950. Jaro declined for the moment, but kept the opportunity open. What he needed was time alone with Marie. Anna noted upon their return ‘my goodness they were looking so thin.’2077 Marie was trying to convince Jaro that he should talk to her of his past life. It was evidently important to her that her next decision about a partner would be an informed one. The sense of the loss of Thomas Sargant to another woman was still strong, and gnawed at her. Jaro, however, did not think it a matter he wanted to talk about at all, and wanted Marie to simply make the decision and marry him. Marie, a woman with a keen sense for the nuances of language (she had after all studied philology at university), started to worry that their communication, conducted mostly in English, might be miscommunication. Who, frankly, was Jaro? Some of her worries can be read in her daughter’s diary notes,2078 because both Marie and Jaro talked rather openly to Anna. The multilingual nature the household can sometimes be gleaned from Anna’s diary, which presents communications across different language registers. It would seem that Jaro used quite a high register for English, coming across as a well-mannered gentleman and a scholar even if his written academic English occasionally needed some refining. Marie was used to this, but when Czech intruded it seemed to Anna that Jaro was presenting himself as a rather ‘vulgar’—meaning vulgate or common—Czech. Anna was well-versed in Czech, but the use of 2076 He found that term quite exhausting; see GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1560, letter to R. Parker, 13 July 1950. 2077 Diary of Anna Sargant, 24 July 1950, courtesy A. Allott. 2078 Diary of Anna Sargant, courtesy A. Allott.

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different language registers between her mother and Jaro might have baffled her. In September, Marie was finally granted a visa for Czechoslovakia and left at rather short notice to visit her family in Boskovice; she may have feared that the visa would suddenly be retracted, or of something unpredictable occurring. This is a testament to her strong feelings toward her family, as the trip could so easily have gone wrong. Jaro was left behind in London, preparing for another term and, before that, for a visit to Turin where Scamuzzi was expecting him.2079 It was also at this time that he finally decided to share his workload on the non-literary ostraca with Sauneron.2080 Anna looked after the household, and was thus the hostess on both 11 and 17 September when Jaro invited Sauneron to dine with them. Sauneron was very much taken with the idea of working with Jaro and Posener, and was keen to learn more hieratic and to improve his Late Egyptian.2081 On the latter occasion Anna noted ‘I cooked a marvellous dinner for Jaro and Sauneron who was most appreciative. I don’t mind cooking as long as it is appreciated.’2082 Jaro may still not have been the best communicator in domestic matters, but he tried hard. On 22 September he took Anna to dinner and the theatre. During the Indian summer of September 1950, while he was still in London, Jaro discussed the prospect of an appointment in Oxford with the Provost at UCL, David Randall Pye. Jaro had received no official offer when they met on 19 September, but the Provost was under the impression that Jaro was relieved because it seemed unlikely that such an offer would come in the near future. Nonetheless, Jaro made it clear to Pye that: The only reason which he feared he might feel a compelling one was if he had been approached on the lines that they would welcome him in the Chair at Oxford but, if he declined the invitation, there was no one else and the chair would [be] allowed to lapse. This had been the possibility put to him by Sir Alan

2079

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1797. Scamuzzi recommended hotels in

Turin. 2080

Sauneron 1970. As noted in an exchange of letters between Jaro and Posener; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1683. 2082 Diary of Anna Sargant, 17 September 1950, courtesy A. Allott. 2081

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Gardiner and in that event, he might have felt it his duty, to the sake of Egyptology, to ensure the continuation of the Chair at Oxford by accepting the offer.2083

In late September, Jaro left for Turin with Edwards, motoring across Europe to the Piedmont. Europe still showed the visible scars of war. When they reached Turin, they found that a favourite coffee house that Jaro had visited together with Peet in the pre-war period had been destroyed—a seemingly trifling, but deeply upsetting reminder of how much of Jaro’s world had changed. He also needed to apply for a visa to re-enter Britain, and travelled with a reference letter from UCL to show that he was going to be ‘re-employed upon return’.2084 The return trip from Turin was, according to Anna diary, a very tiring one, and Jaro came back to London exhausted. Jaro arrived back in London on 9 October, only a day after Marie’s return from Czechoslovakia. Marie had had a good time with her family despite political difficulties, but was also in a grip of utter indecisiveness. Her daughter noted that Marie had met an old acquaintance while on the trip, and upon receiving a marriage proposal did not exactly rebuff him.2085 She must have been in a complicated state of mind when she arrived in London. Just days after their return, Jaro learned that his friend Grdseloff had died in early October.2086 He must have felt devastated, as Grdseloff was the second close friend to die that year. Any chance for the return of acceptable international relationships between Czechoslovakia and the West had also died, and his personal situation looked to be very much at an impasse, both professionally and domestically. It seemed as if Oxford would offer him a professorship, but how should Jaro reconcile this with his commitments in London? He felt responsible for his colleagues there, not least for Arkell.2087 2083 A discussion with J. Černý on 19 September 1950, UCL Records, AR 243 ARC/ 2008/59, Box 1/1, 68. I am grateful to Clare Lewis for this reference. 2084 UCL Records, Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, records from 1950. 2085 Diary of Anna Sargant, October 1950, courtesy A. Allott. 2086 Bierbrier 2019: 190 indicates that Grdseloff died on 8 October 1950; letters from Grdseloff’s family and friends in Cairo are more ambiguous. 2087 The relative weights of stressors and influences can be assessed only speculatively. On the situation regarding UCL and Oxford, see Janssen, R. 1992 and UCL Records, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, appointment, etc.

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Domestically, Jaro probably underestimated the depth of the pain that Marie felt about the disappointments of her first marriage, or how it was to be a woman who was once of consequence but now felt discarded. These were no longer in the flamboyant and reckless 1930s, nor the war years when moments of intimacy were a precious sign of still being alive, and when the future seemed irrelevant. At the beginning of the staid 1950s, Marie was facing the inevitability of meekly accepting a domestic role, the taken-for-granted partner in a marital pair, after briefly leading a professionally fulfilling life. She may in turn have underestimated the depths of Jaro’s exhaustion, the emotional drain that the year 1950 had left upon him, and his need to finally build a home after a lifetime of wandering. In a partnership he was looking for domestic stability, which Anna summed up as a wish to have a companion as he grew older. He and Marie may have had a wartime romance but now it was time to settle down. And it was not only that he was tired of looking after himself, but in the view of his generation, however impressive he might have been professionally, at fifty-two he was long overdue to start a household. After 1946, Jaro no longer felt he could be at home in Prague, even though it had been such an integral part of his life, was where his mother lived, and was a place where he could meet up with his brother and perhaps other friends from the pre-war days. If he needed a place where people knew more of him than his suave, professional façade, it was at home in Prague and at home with Marie. At home he need not focus on being assiduous and helpful to Gardiner, or being enthusiastic in debates with Gunn, or kind and nurturing to his students. He needed an intimate place to relax from the constant focus on others; a place where the demands of the world could be set in perspective. Now his first real home, Prague, was lost. And this was the impasse. Marie did not fully articulate what was essentially a feminist concern, and Jaro did not see it clearly, although he never underestimated the intellectual strength of women and their ability to be the academic equals of men. But here it was—the wretched question of unspoken domestic service. It was only in 1963 that Betty Friedan put in concise words the stifling role of homemaker; ‘the problem that has no name’:

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The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of … women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction … Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all’?2088

These stressors compounded in October 1950, and over the course of several days, between the eleventh and twenty-first of that month, Jaro collapsed. The first sign of trouble came within forty-eight hours of his arrival from Turin. On 11 October, Jaro began to besiege Marie with a confession to what he must have described as the hidden sins of his past, followed by urgent requests for intimacy. For those close to him—Marie and Anna— it must have been disconcerting and ultimately terrifying. Jaro was a dignified, even formal person. He was well-behaved and at ease in company. Marie also knew an intimate side to Jaro that must have been pleasing to her, at least. But now he appeared to brag incoherently about his past sexual conquests. Whatever was said, it shocked Anna, an intelligent and by no means prudish young woman. In public, Jaro managed to maintain appearances and carry on with his duties for a few days, including paying visits to Gardiner in Oxford and Edwards in London. In private he was giving clear signals of deep volatility. Then, while he was slowly losing control, Posener, unaware of the depths of Jaro’s distress, sent him a missive full of details about Grdseloff’s funeral service.2089 The effect was like the explosive release from a pressure valve. On 19 October 1950, Jaro was taken to Maudsley Hospital, the medical school that partnered the King’s College’s Institute of Psychiatry and was at that point amalgamated with the Bethlem Royal Hospital (from which derives the word ‘bedlam’). From Anna’s description it is clear that the family was deeply worried. This was a replay of his wartime breakdown in Egypt. The Maudsley is an established British psychiatric hospital, and was a reputable institution in Jaro’s day. It is located in Denmark Hill, south London, and was directed by Aubrey Julian

2088 2089

Friedan 1963: 15. GIA Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1685, 19 October 1950, from Posener.

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Lewis (1900–1975),2090 who is known in the history of psychiatry both his for considerable successes and for some controversial methods and principles (he was a member of the Eugenics Society, though he was Jewish and deeply against Nazi approaches to eugenics), and was knighted in 1959. Maudsley was founded to treat acute cases of psychiatric disorder, and Lewis is widely considered to have contributed significantly to the development of British psychiatry, even if some of his approaches have since been re-evaluated. He had been appointed Director of the Institute of Psychiatry in 1946, the same year Jaro took up his position at UCL, and both men were members of the same academic body, though no contact beyond Jaro’s stay in hospital is attested Lewis was the psychiatrist responsible for Jaro’s mental wellbeing, alongside two colleagues, Robert Bruce Sloane and Erwin Stengel.2091 It was Stengel, himself an émigré from Europe and then Reader in Psychiatry at Bethlam Royal in Beckenham,2092 who proved to be of greatest help to Jaro in the coming months. Stengel could understand an émigré’s psychology, and the complications of adjusting to a Britain that could exhibit much ambivalence to foreigners. The same historical processes and totalitarian regimes brought Jaro and Stengel to Britain. Both men had something to offer to British academia,2093 and both had to overcome some hurdles due to their ‘foreignness’.2094 If Jaro was believed most suitable for the UCL position due to a dearth of Egyptologists, then Stengel came from a cohort of German-speaking—and often Jewish—psychiatrists who were welcomed because ‘neuroscience was rather underdeveloped in Britain and not particularly desired among the existing medicine specializations; therefore it was easier to get a post as a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon.’2095 Jaro and Stengel had something

2090

Series 2004. See also Hilton 2007: 209–229. Jenner 2004. 2092 On Stengel, and his generation of psychiatrist and neurologist refugees, see Loewenau 2016. For an outline of Stengel’s major psychiatric work, see Diether 1974. On medical exiles in Britain and their complex social and professional standing, see Weindling 2009. 2093 Crawford, Ulmschneider, and Elsner 2017: 3: ‘The Nazi regime attacked civilization: Oxford’s duty was to save it.’ 2094 Compare, for medical professionals, Weindling 2009. 2095 Loewenau 2016: 360, following Hilton 2007. 2091

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else in common, as both had to find the personal and professional means of expressing themselves in languages other than their mother tongue. Stengel reflected on language issues with particular emphasis on adult learners,2096 while Jaro had taken on new languages since his schooldays, though he probably became truly proficient in English as an adult. Stengel was to become the foremost authority on suicide,2097 and his contribution to the history of psychiatry is recognized for his emphasis on understanding suicide attempts.2098 His speciality was relevant as Jaro was a suicide attempt survivor. Several years after treating Jaro he wrote: The survivor of a suicidal attempt is regarded by the public as having either bungled his suicide or not being sincere in his suicidal intention. He is looked upon with sympathy mixed with slight contempt, as unsuccessful in an heroic undertaking. It is taken for granted that the sole aim of the genuine attempt is selfdestruction, and therefore the dead are successful and the survivors unsuccessful. This attitude must have been responsible for the fact that until recently research into attempted suicide has been comparatively neglected. It may also explain why attempted suicide, where it has been studied, has been investigated along the same lines as suicide, and not as a behaviour pattern presenting different problems from suicide.2099

Given Jaro’s earlier suicide attempt, he was in the best possible hands. Initially, it also seemed that he could rely on the support his new family and old friends. Jaro had visitors less than two days after admission. Marie came to see him on 21 October, and then at least once every week thereafter. They also corresponded throughout his stay in hospital. UCL, meanwhile, was also concerned, but along rather different lines. The Provost, Pye, wrote to Lewis on 26 October: I have heard with much concern of the illness of Professor J. Černý, our Professor of Egyptology. I do not know whether he will have come under your care. I gather from our lecturer Mr Arkell, who 2096

Stengel 1941: 433. See Stengel 1961; Stengel 1964. 2098 Reception of his work was discussed by Millard 2015: 13–16, 18–19, 87–95. On Stengel’s contribution to the political climate that led to the decriminalization of suicide, see Stengel 1961. 2099 Stengel 1961: 19. 2097

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is his assistant, that Professor Černý’s diagnosis is being considered by further experts so that presumably no one would wish to express any views at the present time. This note, therefore, is only to let you know of my profound anxiety about the case … if the illness is going to be a prolonged one, I shall need to think immediately about providing some alternative teaching for the students who would come under his direct care this term.2100

Pye had responsibilities for his university and his concerns are perhaps understandable, but he also wrote to Jaro on the same day in friendly terms, assuring him that he should not worry about work arrangements, as these could always be sorted out. On 31 October, Jaro replied in his usual neat hand and polite phrasing, assuring Pye that he planned to be back at the university by early December. He was optimistic (and wanted to reassure his employer) despite an imminent move from Maudsley to Beckenham. On 1 November 1950, Jaro was moved to the Bethlem Royal Hospital at Beckenham in Kent, where chronic psychiatric cases were treated. It was an institution for patients viewed as curable and by this time had a good reputation. To a certain extent, it was regarded as akin to an hotel, and was preferred by patients of a certain social standing due to an agreeable environment consisting of several pavilions set in a large, landscaped garden.2101 Although its NHS affiliation had changed—and broadened—the ‘social class of admission’,2102 Lewis still ‘favoured organization along the lines of “social behavior, sex, age, and the requirements of research”.’2103 Marie continued to visit Jaro, though to do so now involved a protracted trip from North London on various Underground, rail, and bus services. He tried to convince her that his intentions concerning her and their shared life were entirely serious, including financial security, and that Marie would be his future travelling companion. She was to develop a role next to him, one that would allow her to have her own space and perspective. 2100 London, UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, p. 52. Letter dated 26 October 1950, from D. R. Pye to A. Lewis, carbon copy. 2101 Andrews et al. 1997: 649, 660. 2102 Andrews et al. 1997: 665. 2103 Andrews et al. 1997: 666.

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It was, Jaro thought, a mutually beneficial arrangement. She need not look for another career, but there would be compensations. At least, this was Jaro’s perception. Anna, at this stage concerned whether marriage was a good idea at all—but fully aware that it was her mother’s choice, not hers— was worried. She duly accompanied her mother to Beckenham on 4 November to talk with Sloane, and Jaro showered Marie with reassurances: ‘A new epoch is starting in our lives; as far as I am concerned, I am determined to make up for past errors and to avoid committing new ones.’2104 Marie continued visiting, and often brought fruit and cake. Some friends and colleagues were not fully aware of Jaro’s distress. Moss sent a series letters to Tudor-Pole, asking for the plates of the Sinai volume as she needed them to finish her current volume of the Topographical Bibliography and focus on the next. Tudor-Pole and Edwards probably filtered the onslaught.2105 In reply to Pye’s letter, Lewis tried to reassure him: I do not think there are grounds for serious anxiety about Professor Černý’s illness. He has had an emotional upset, similar in form to that which occurred in 1942 during the very pathetic circumstances of his departure from Czechoslovakia. His recent visit to Italy revived some of the memories connected with that; some private difficulties also flared up at this time. He has improved greatly, and when I saw him last Saturday, he was free from the more obvious symptoms which had led to his admission to hospital. I do not want to be too sanguine after such a short period of observation, but I would assume that he would certainly be back at University College by next term.2106

Lewis also noted that Jaro needed to make ‘decisions and adjustments’ in his private life, and had been again worried about Arkell’s salary. Lewis hastened to add, however, that Jaro was not divulging any confidential University matters spontaneously, but only as part of an examination. The correct form evidently mattered to all parties concerned. 2104

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2301, 7 November 1950. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1434–21.1439. 2106 London, UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, p. 55; letter from A. Lewis to D. R. Pye, 1 November 1950. 2105

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In writing this letter to Pye, Lewis was, like his colleague Stengel, acknowledging ‘the etiological importance of social and cultural factors’ that were an accepted part of explanations for suicide, although both specialists were known to be careful is assessing the relative weight and influence of such factors. Stengel opined several years later that ‘there is a general agreement that only a minority of those who commit suicide were suffering from a major mental disorder.’2107 In early November, Jaro was well enough to reply to some work correspondence.2108 At first, it appeared that treatment for the episode would be successful, and Jaro returned home on 15 November. But Lewis wrote to Pye the next day to caution him that ‘it is not proposed that he should resume his responsibilities at the College this term, unless this is almost unavoidable.’2109 The next week, on 24 November, Jaro went with Marie to an honours degree ceremony at UCL, held in the Senate House,2110 in a demonstration of unity that showed that they were clearly to be respected as a couple. This was an interesting moment as it implies a degree of social acceptance beyond that of ‘merely’ being a cohabiting pair. However, the period of calm was shortlived. Jaro was worried about some unspecified plans by Žába and his brother (perhaps to visit him?).2111 There is no record on how Jaro’s family in Prague—his mother and brother—reacted to the news of Jaro’s hospitalization, though they were kept informed at least to a certain extent. Later, Žába blamed Jaro’s health problems squarely on overwork and exile,2112 but this was a long-distance view by someone mainly interested in holding Jaro’s undivided attention. On 11 December, Jaro was again ill and again needed to be hospitalized. Jaro did not feel good about it: ‘I ought not to give 2107

Quotes from Stengel 1961: 13–14. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.884 and 21.885, exchanges with Glanville regarding a search for examiners for a thesis on Josef Čapek; the author was Marie Weatherall, who translated Čapek’s works into English with her husband, Robert Weatherall. Jaro could not, however, address in detail the problem of Grdseloff’s papers in Cairo, which was being resolved by Ibram Harari; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1029–21.1031. The Grdseloff papers were eventually deposited at the IFAO. 2109 London, UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, p. 57, letter from A. J. Lewis to D. R. Pye, 16 November 1950. 2110 Diary of Anna Sargant, 1950, courtesy A. Allott. 2111 Since early in November: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2303. 2112 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 1 March 1951. 2108

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in to Dr. Stengel to come here. I had a horrible feeling when I left you and was taken like a prisoner by a guard to Fitzmary house [in Beckenham].’2113 UCL noted that he was re-admitted to the hospital on 18 December,2114 and Tudor-Pole replied to Moss, who awaited Jaro for lunch in Oxford on 27 December, that he ‘was discharged too soon from hospital last time and that he started working again too soon.’ Moss noted that ‘I’m afraid it will be almost impossible to prevent him from overworking when he is out of hospital.’2115 None of his friendly but demanding colleagues appear to have realized that they were adding to the problem. Moss continued asking questions during the winter months, and Jaro was too eager to please, to ‘deserve’ his position in UK academia, but probably also anxious over an immediate future in which he was but a lonely exile. Deliberations in Oxford now resumed. Lewis was consulted by Glanville, and replied that Jaro had much improved and was ‘medically fit to perform the duties of Professorship in his subject.’2116 On 1 December, a meeting of the Board of Electors to the Professorship of Egyptology at Oxford finally agreed to ask the Council to approve Jaro’s election at a formal meeting to be held on 13 December. This was duly done, and the decision was formally communicated to Jaro by letter the following day, including a description of the duties that the post entailed: The Professor of Egyptology shall lecture and give instruction on the History, Antiquities, and Language of Ancient Egypt. The duties of every Professor shall include original work by the Professor himself and the general supervision of research and advanced work in his subject and department. … He shall lecture, or hold classes, in two of the three University Terms. His lectures, or classes, shall extend over a period not less in any Term than six weeks, and not less in the whole [year] than fourteen weeks, and he shall lecture, or hold classes, twice at least in each week…. The present stipend of the Professorship is £1550 per annum.2117

2113

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2306. London, UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý, p. 59. 2115 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1439. 2116 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, correspondence dated December 1950. 2117 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, enclosure to a letter from D. Veale, 14 December 1950, carbon copy. 2114

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The Minutes of the meeting, which was chaired by the ViceChancellor John Lowe, state ‘it was agreed that at a formal meeting to be held on Wednesday, 13 December 1950, at 12.30 pm, Professor Černý be elected to the Professorship with the effect from the earliest date on which he could come.’2118 The offer was actually sent twice because Jaro did not initially respond. Having just been newly re-institutionalized, he probably had no appropriate means of communication. He needed assurances from the Provost of UCL that he was free to leave, which Pye eventually delivered. Oxford did not receive a provisional reply until January, or a full reply until April 1951. TudorPole composed the provisional reply in accordance with the requirements of the medical authorities in charge of Jaro’s case, writing ‘on behalf of Professor J. Černý to express his deep regret that he has so far been unable to reply to your letter of 14 December … although he is now progressing well towards recovery he is still in hospital, and his medical advisers are unwilling to allow him to attend any official matters for the time being.’2119 But some colleagues took the matter to be resolved. Kirkbride opined that it was the fulfilment of Jaro’s own innermost wish, writing ‘Stephen [Glanville] tells me that you have been appointed to Oxford, as I know you wanted that I offer you my best congratulations but, selfishly, I am very sad.’2120 Kirkbride might have thought the matter to be clear and settled, but the uncertainty surrounding the Oxford posting—and by extension the UCL posting—caused quite a stir in Egyptological circles. It was not easy for Jaro, either, although the exact extent and nature of his vacillation may be only guessed at from his letters to friends and colleagues. He does not seem to have written to Marie about his concerns either, probably because they had their own personal issues to discuss. In mid-December, Jaro still hoped for Christmas at Highgate with Marie and Anna. By that time he was occasionally allowed to leave the hospital for short visits to town or to Highgate, and went shopping with Marie to buy presents for their families in 2118

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1360. OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, from J. TudorPole to the Registrar, 22 January 1951. 2120 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1266. 2119

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Czechoslovakia.2121 These trips fostered hope that his condition might steadily improve, but that was not what his doctors believed. Instead, he was for a time moved to a ward with much stricter conditions, in Witley House, and then to FitzMary House. This was a place of intensive care area and was considered ‘bleak and depressing’,2122 unlike the rest of the Beckenham hospital. When Marie went to see Jaro later that month he felt like an observed prisoner under guard. On Boxing Day he noted that the hospital Christmas parties gave him no joy, although Stengel delighted him with a gift of Lindt chocolates.2123 In theory, Jaro was a professor-elect of the University of Oxford, a much sought-after role in his profession, and was trusted by his colleagues and his doctor to make a full recovery. In essence, he was a very humble man in acute psychological pain, who wrote poignant letters to Marie expressing hopes for a Christmas at home that never happened. As 1950 rolled into 1951, Marie was still deliberating on whether marrying Jaro would give her the future she hoped for, while still dealing with the unresolved pain of her divorce years earlier. Jaro repeatedly tried to reassure her that she would be his travelling companion and participate in all aspects of his life, but it was an endless loop of insufficient correspondence. At a low point at the end of 1950, Marie considered ending their relationship to care for her daughters, though Anna was now twenty and Naomi in her late teens, and both were beginning their own independent adult lives. Marie was also—perhaps unreasonably—antagonistic to Jaro’s friends, being under the impression that he had been abandoned. Perhaps she felt that an unduly large part of the burden of supporting Jaro had been laid at her door, that she was yet again expected to be his carer and the problem-solver of emotional situations simply because she was a woman. Her daughter’s diary stops at the end of 1950, so family recollections are fewer, but Marie’s well-known unwillingness to accept stereotypical roles could well have continued.

2121 2122 2123

Diary of Anna Sargant, 1950, courtesy A. Allot. Andrews et al. 1997: 696. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2037.

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However, her suspicions were not wholly true. Gardiner wrote often and Edwards visited quite regularly. Both men were genuinely concerned, though Gardiner was probably not fully aware of the nature of Jaro’s problems. Gardiner was also preparing for a trip to Egypt, his first since the late 1920s, and repeatedly apologized for not finding sufficient time to visit Jaro in London.2124 Early 1951 also saw the end of Gardiner’s idea for a British institute in Egypt,2125 the very idea he promoted around the time of Jaro’s first crisis, in the early 1940s. Edwards, meanwhile, tried to distract Jaro with letters containing professional queries, such as one with a tracing of a Demotic papyrus in March.2126 He also found time and ways to convince Stengel and allow him personal access to Jaro. Marie and Edwards were by that time his chief visitors, but the flow of correspondence continued unabated. One of the steadier correspondents in spring 1951 was Dawson. Another was the inevitable Žába. Žába was preparing another exhibition in Prague, this time closely related to Jaro’s research on the workmen of Deir el-Medina. He requested consultations, discoursed about the possibility of finishing publication of the ostraca that Jaro had purchased for the Oriental Institute in the 1930s, and wrote about the difficulties in preserving those ostraca, emphasizing that some artefacts suffered in humid conditions. These included the few pieces that were still in Jaro’s nominal possession, stored with his family. Žába was unrelenting in his demands and clamour for attention.2127 News from Egypt, where Bruyère was still working in the Great Pit and uncovering more ostraca, probably did not reach to Jaro.2128 Time passed. Tudor-Pole had to reply to the University of Oxford, writing on behalf of Jaro that she had referred the matter to his doctors.2129 Marie maintained regular contact with Stengel, 2124

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.801, 1 February 1951. Lewis 2016. 2126 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.503. 2127 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 25 January 1951. 2128 Work at Deir el-Medina was ongoing, as is made clear in Bruyère’s diary (AIFAO, Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952) and in notes on ostraca that indicate finds were made in 1951 (e.g., GP 6.1.51 no. 3283; Gasse 1986: 35). 2129 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, letter from J. Tudor-Pole to D. Veale, 22 February 1951. 2125

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even when she was ill at home and unable to continue with her visits. Their lives moved upon a platform of letters. Jaro’s wishes were expressed very clearly in their correspondence: ‘I only wish I might have the privilege to spend the rest of my journey in this world in your company.’2130 Marie tried to explain her concerns, which Jaro took as harsh words and desperately pleaded that it was too late for him to consider parting.2131 Marie discussed this with Stengel and Sloane, and in February both Stengel and Marie were praising Jaro for his progress and trying to encourage him.2132 But he was still ‘incarcerated’, first in FitzMary House under strict supervision, and then in Denmark Hill, Southwark. There appears to have been another crisis in February, but without access to information contained in Jaro’s medical records it is largely a matter of conjecture as to what had happened. His colleague from UCL, Violette Lafleur, referred to a setback when she visited Jaro in Beckenham, but its nature was not conveyed.2133 Marie had the difficult news from Stengel, and rushed to offer her support: ‘You must believe me when I say that I would like to do all I can to help you. I have a feeling that from now on, we shall laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves very much.’2134 On 1 March, Žába reacted to a letter from Jaro in a manner that was presumably meant to be kind, but could have potentially added to his stress. He painted a picture of Jaro returning to Prague (where he would have been ostracized, at best) and enjoying a leisurely scholarly life without administrative duties or pressure.2135 Given that Žába had himself elucidated on the administrative pressures of Prague academic life only a year or so before, and given the impossibility of an exile returning to live unharmed in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, Žába’s letter seems difficult to explain other than as a cocktail of self-serving interest, genuine concern for Jaro, and utter stupidity, unless his words were intended for a Stalinist censor. 2130

See GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2309. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2312, January 1951. Here Jaro referred to some sort of altercation, but continued (in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2313) by noting that it was too late them to part ways. 2132 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2356. 2133 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1321. 2134 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2356, 21 February 1951. 2135 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 1 March 1951. 2131

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By coincidence, on the same 1 March, Tudor-Pole informed the Registrar of the University of Oxford, Douglas Veale, that Lewis ‘thinks that Professor Černý will be able to make a decision about the Oxford Chair of Egyptology in a week or a fortnight’s time.’2136 His UCL colleagues, wrote Lafleur, were doing well and added a personal encouraging note: ‘Everything is going well in the department and there is nothing to worry about … but we all miss you.’2137 On 6 March, Gardiner, who was in Egypt, wrote an upset letter that was a curious mix of concern for Jaro and outrage that his valued friend was capable of endangering their shared research mission. There was an element of call-of-duty to Gardiner’s appeals, just as there had been during the war, but he exhibited much less understanding of the situation than he had in wartime. Gardiner introduced an element of his own self-interest into the conversation, just as Žába did: ‘I engaged you to come to England to undertake a very important piece of work which you yourself loved and which you have now tried to leave incomplete.’2138 This accusation leaves the impression that Gardiner knew something that has not survived in the record, perhaps that Jaro had either made another suicide attempt, or had agreed to undergo a dangerous medical procedure, which would have been most likely a lobotomy. Either would have risked Jaro’s life and intellectual capacity. One of Marie’s daughters, Naomi, recalled that he might have undergone a ‘leucotomy’,2139 another term for lobotomy, though she had less close contact with Jaro than Anna. Anna witnessed Jaro’s and Marie’s struggles from close quarters and had no such recollection. The value of lobotomies was being debated in the early 1950s, even if they had not yet been broadly rejected by British medical establishments and were still an accepted method of addressing major psychiatric disorders.2140 It was gradually recognized that they were incredibly risky, and 2136 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, J. Tudor-Pole to D. Veale, 1 March 1951. 2137 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1322. 2138 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.803, 6 March 1951. 2139 GIA, Collection Černý, a copy of a letter from N. McIntosh to R. Janssen, 1992. 2140 Andrews et al. 1997: 694–696. See also the report by Tooth and Newton 1961, and an analysis by Crossley 1993.

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were replaced by electroconvulsive therapy and other approaches, such as the social psychiatry that was promoted by Lewis. At Beckenham and Maudsley, under Lewis, lobotomies were considered a method of last resort: ‘Leucotomies, however, were reserved for difficult cases, especially those who were abusive.’2141 Official recognition of the problematic nature of this procedure came slowly, but surely. Stengel, with his careful insights into limits of psychiatry, noted that ‘leucotomy often results in permanent personality changes which may have undesirable effect on the patient’s social behaviour and on his working capacity.’2142 Even more clearly, and in line with Lewis (with whom he did not always agree),2143 Stengel was explicit about the relative success of this treatment: In assessing results it is necessary to be clear whether one is setting out to judge the changes following the operation against mental health (‘absolute’ result), or against what could be expected in an individual case (relative result). The result of an operation which has turned a destructive chronic catatonic into a useful or more tolerable member of the chronic hospital population, although he may still be hallucinated and deluded, can be regarded as relatively very satisfactory. Judged against mental health it is, however, poor.2144

Within a decade, the verdict of the medical establishment was: It is beyond question that in some cases relief from suffering has been bought at the price of accepting a level of existence qualitatively different from and usually below that which the patient had enjoyed before the onset of illness. This kind of bargain has often to be struck in medical practice, for example the decision to amputate … is taken with the full understanding that it will impose on the patient a less agreeable and usually more restricted life; but the ability to adjust still rests with the patient. Leucotomy, on the other hand, while relieving distress, can impair those faculties that make it possible for the patient to adjust to life and benefit from his new freedom.2145 2141 2142 2143 2144 2145

Andrews et al. 1997: 695. Stengel 1951: 135. Jenner 1991. Stengel 1950: 636. Tooth and Newton 1961: 21.

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Jaro does not seem to have suffered any of the adverse effects that lobotomies often had in those who underwent them, at least not according to the surviving record. If he had been subjected to the procedure, then he would have been among the tiny minority of patients who improved after this highly invasive and dangerous intervention. For the most part, any improvement consisted of making an otherwise unmanageable patient open to resocialization, despite inflicting irreparable damage to their personality and reducing them ‘to a childlike state’, which ‘required intensive psychological and behavioural retraining.’2146 Jaro’s eventual full return to intensive intellectual work, travel, and an active social life make his being subject of a lobotomy improbable. It is more likely that the crisis, the shadow of which so visibly upset Gardiner, was another suicide attempt. The rise in suicides and suicide attempts was pronounced in London in the years after the war, 2147 although it had stalled somewhat since 1948 and 1949. Stengel and his colleagues thought the statistics to be unrepresentative: ‘Almost daily, psychiatrists working in hospitals and out-patient clinics, see patients who had made suicidal attempts, often of a serious nature, which had not come to the knowledge of the authorities.’2148 Case studies collected by Stengel and his colleagues around the time of Jaro’s hospitalization, and the presentation of such cases by Stengel and his team, tell how psychiatrists of the period conceptualized the motives and solutions for suicidal behaviour. A recurring motif of problematic relationships, stalled family communications, and similar issues permeate a large part of their case studies. A suicide attempt, being also—but not only—an unspoken ‘cry for help’, and being followed by medical intervention, was considered to have had the effect of a being catalyst, unblocking previously unsatisfactory behavioural patterns. Stengel and some of his contemporaries focused on making their patients’ lives and self-perspectives more satisfactory, which would be an argument against the prospect of lobotomy, though in the absence of access to medical records there is no definitive answer. 2146 2147 2148

Andrews et al. 1997: 695. Stengel 1961: 27–28. Stengel 1961: 30.

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Jaro’s experience would fit into Stengel’s explanatory outline, that ‘the suicidal attempt is a complex behaviour pattern based on a variety of motivations: the wish to die, the desire to attack others, the appeal for help, and the urge to challenge fate.’2149 A suicide attempt was understood by Stengel as a message to be decoded and, once ‘the individual significance of the appeal inherent in the suicidal attempt’ could be established,2150 to be followed by qualified help and social adjustment. He refused to accept a narrative that saw suicide as emotional blackmail, and rather as ‘social appeals’ to be adequately answered.2151 In Jaro’s case, the approach chosen consisted of mobilizing his mental resources, activating his close associates, and various therapeutic interventions. Ultimately, it worked. Stengel’s narratives in the case studies he examined treated suicide attempts not as a sign of a mental disorder that would label a patient for life, but as an episode to be processed and used for good. There are repeated notes in his case studies to the effect that ‘the suicidal attempt resulted in physical and psychological treatment which enabled [the patient] to adjust life situation successfully,’2152 or ‘the suicidal attempt … started a course of events resulting in long overdue treatment, [and] recovery.’2153 This perspective is not entirely unrelated to more recent debates about psychiatric illness being a ‘dangerous gift’, providing the potential for personal growth.2154 Jaro did not self-stigmatize, but at his worst moments perceived himself to be abandoned, constrained, though not innately worthless or limited.2155 With the positive reactions of those close associates who were capable of answering his call for help, his situation improved. Paradoxically perhaps, even Gardiner’s insensitive comment about a ‘very important piece of work’ which he had ‘now tried to leave incomplete’ urged Jaro to once again see his potential. 2149 2150 2151 2152 2153 2154 2155

Stengel 1961: 123. Stengel 1961: 130. Stengel 1961: 119–120. Stengel 1961: 81. Stengel 1961: 78. Yanos 2018: 158–164. Regarding the persective of self-stigma, see Yanos 2018: 103–111.

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It is also important to note that Jaro was relatively fortunate in his circle of friends and some of his professional colleagues. There was apparently trust that he could and would recover, which was expressed by his psychiatrists and by the people closest to him. This was decisive, as it gave him the chance to recover socially as well as mentally, and he was able use his social and cultural capital as an intellectual, a teacher, and a scholar, without being ostracized. His social group, an intellectual and perhaps neoteric community, contributed to the fact that he was not stigmatized, simplistically, as a failure. There was little notion of a ‘spoiled identity’—in the Erving Goffman’s terms—as a mental health patient, although the concept of ‘stigma’ and similar labels for psychiatric patients was already present in the 1950s.2156 Jaro’s network of professional and personal connections had enabled him to avoid most of the prejudice associated with being a ‘foreigner’, and would help him avoid any lasting impacts associated with mental health issues. His psychiatrists might have helped the process by emphasizing external pressures as decisive factors that had contributed to his breakdown, offering an explanation that was exogenous and thus not intrinsic to Jaro’s personality. And if not every friend was immediately understanding, the attitudes of many were supportive and the general outcome for Jaro was that his potential as a human being and a professional was not lost. With Gardiner in Egypt, his wife Hedwig (Heddie) stepped in as a more regular correspondent. Jaro felt that despite Gardiner’s clumsy entreaties, the Gardiners were his friends. Still unsure about Marie and her ongoing vacillations, he asked her again: ‘Lady Gardiner assures me that neither she nor Alan will withdraw their help and encouragement. Cannot you give me your assistance also?’2157 Heddie was privy to Jaro’s increasing concerns about his repeated marriage proposals to Marie, to which she never gave a clear answer. Gardiner, once back in Oxford, communicated in a significantly more engaging tone:

2156 On the 1950s use of the term, see Yanos 2018: 3, note a; Yanos also addresses Goffman’s terminology, originally in Goffman 1963. 2157 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2315.

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Dearest Jaro, try to profit, as I have always done, by the advice which my father, that wisest of men, always gave me: Don’t worry, be patient, things solve themselves! I know that you have come upon a very bad patch in your life—what you write about your marriage distresses me greatly—but try to count your blessings, not your difficulties—your friends, your position, your great reputation.2158

This notwithstanding, Jaro craved security and the degree of personal comfort that came with a partnership, which he felt could not be fully replaced by an excellent professional standing. His family in Prague remained but a distant voice from occasional correspondence, and he became increasingly attached to the idea of building a home with Marie. By mid-March he still was imploring her,2159 but Marie had already changed her mind by the end of February, perhaps after further discussing the matter with Jaro’s psychiatrists. She decided to let go of her indecisiveness, and to agree to Jaro’s proposal of marriage. Her letters from this period appear to reflect this change, and show how concerned she was about Jaro’s future: I am thinking about you all day long, it occurred to me that you might like to have it in writing. Yes, I think of you a great deal, so much, that you never need to feel lonely, because I am always with you in my thoughts. I pray for you to get better. So please try to get better. Do not worry about Gardiner, I beg of you. I’ll try to explain to him what had happened. And please don’t write any more letters to your friends about your mishap. They just would not understand. Very much love…2160

Marie was an independent-minded and capable woman, so her decision need not be viewed—from the strict perspective of recent interpretations of the 1950s gender power imbalance—as her sacrificing her own potential to take care of a husband, to becoming the ‘homemaker’ (especially in the context of Jaro’s

2158

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.804, 21 or 22 March 1951. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2315. 2160 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss., provisional; M. Sargant to J. Černý on 12 March 1951, from Archway to the Maudsley Hospital, Ward 4. 2159

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evident interest in home comforts), and of the influence of medical authority suggesting that her compliance was needed to ensure Jaro’s well-being. Stengel at least was convinced that a supportive family environment was crucial to theraupetic success. But that would be imposing upon her a lack of agency, belittling her decision to become Jaro’s companion by turning Marie into a mere victim of circumstance. She had proven to herself during the war that she could achieve independence and self-sufficiency on her own terms, and perhaps felt no need to prove herself further. Her decision to take care of Jaro was perhaps not that different from any number of other relationships in which one partner, irrespective of gender, chooses to arrange the practicalities of life. As she made it clear that this was not to be the limit of her role, her decision implies more complexity. She did not articulate in any surviving document whether she thought of this as a ‘sacrifice’ brought on by Jaro’s pleas or his psychiatrist’s suggestions. But nor did she suggest that she took Jaro’s word that their life would develop as an interesting partnership, and that this was worth the risk. It might well have been both, or neither, as Jaro’s instability over the few past months leaves the decision-making process open. In the world of Egyptology, the EES was deliberating a potential survey of Saqqara and Abusir to be led by Blackman and Michael Apted,2161 who worked on the publication of the tombs of Meir.2162 Matters were also growing more complex in Egypt. Bruyère noted that the Minister of Education, the writer Taha Hussein, was suggesting the mission would have to close down.2163 Another weekend at Highgate was planned for Jaro at the end of March, and Gardiner, busy with the EES and his own work, finally found the time to see Jaro in person.2164 Marie wrote to Jaro’s mother,2165 probably to inform her of their plans to marry. In April, Jaro was in a regime of ergotherapy that evidently helped. 2161

AEES, GCM 1942 to 1955, minutes of the meeting on 7 February 1951. The resulting publications being Blackman and Apted 1953a and Blackman and Apted 1953b. 2163 AIFAO, Cahier de comptes des pensionnaires et journal de la vie à Deir el-Medina (visiteurs) de 1946 à juin 1952, 1951–1952 notes. 2164 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2318. 2165 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2357. 2162

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He knitted a shawl for Marie—in an apparent reversal of conventional patterns of domestic activity—and made seagrass netting for a chair.2166 On 4 April, he felt well enough to officially reply to the University of Oxford. Another decision had been finally made: he accepted the chair.2167 John Gwynn Griffiths, a new student who sought his opinion on an upcoming dissertation project, was keen to emphasize that Jaro was eagerly awaited there.2168 The University of Oxford, his prospective employer, sought a medical opinion, and on the same day, 4 April, Lewis wrote to Veale about a delay in Jaro’s recovery brought about by anxiety concerning the new posting. The key observation for Oxford University officials was about: A setback, which was to some extent related to his concern about this decision, which he found a very difficult one as he felt he had an obligation towards University College [UCL]. The Provost has recently, however, reassured him on this point, thereby smoothing the way for Professor Černý to accept the Oxford offer with a good conscience.2169

Lewis helped his patient by highlighting a characteristic that an employer was likely to view as an asset—loyalty. It was a suitable conclusion to Jaro’s case in the official record. Lewis also came to the conclusion that Jaro would be fit to assume his new duties in October 1951, and Veale informed the appropriate academic bodies and the University Gazette, which announced a new postholder of the chair of Egyptology.2170 Ten days later, the University of Oxford formally conferred upon Jaro the degree of Master of Arts in lieu of matriculation, and a non-stipendiary professorial fellowship at the Queen’s College.2171 Jaro was still in psychiatric care well into May, but 2166

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2320, Jaro also worked on a seagrass stool. OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1; Jaro officially accepted the position on 4 April 1951, as offered, with a £1550 annual stipend (the approximate equivalent £49,000 in 2019). 2168 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.941. 2169 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, 4 April 1951, A. Lewis to the University of Oxford; see also UCL Records Department, File no. 6/1/3, Professor J. Černý. 2170 The Oxford University Gazette, Vol. LXXXI, 12 April 1951, p. 687. 2171 1951, April 24, Oxford; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1926. 2167

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was allowed regular visits to Highgate for weekends and similar occasions, and was starting to catch up with his correspondence. His health issues were apparently not known to all of his usual contacts in Egypt, as Hermann Ranke contacted him in March with greetings from Egyptian colleagues Harari and Abubakr, and asked about Grdseloff’s papers and whether any of these could be sent to Edel to help with his Old Kingdom (and Old Egyptian) studies.2172 Once she accepted the idea of a life with Jaro, Marie worked steadily on dispelling any further concerns. The political aspects of Jaro’s life slowly began to reappear; they never quite went away throughout his difficulty, although personal matters overshadowed political turmoil for a while. Nonetheless, in words of Margolius, whose husband was first member of the party establishment and later a victim of the sham trials, ‘by 1951, the atmosphere in Prague was almost as bad as it had been during the war. No one dared to speak out loud, and hardly a week passed without news of someone’s arrest.’2173 Some of this unease filtered through the Iron Curtain. Jaro heard news about various friends, including the Haises in Egypt, who had decided to emigrate to Canada. Marie’s was again a reassuring voice: ‘Please do not worry about Mrs Hais going to Canada—neither about Canada as a place of refuge. We shall be quite safe at Oxford, we belong to this [Marie’s emphasis] half of the globe.’2174 Any concerns Jaro might have has about a world that was becoming entrenched in the positions of the Cold War, and about the impact this not-so-brave new world might have had on him personally, weren’t unfounded. It was also known that Communist secret police organizations had long arms, which were capable of reaching into Western regions and seizing people for show trials, or just to make them disappear. He was probably not a prime target, though his Czechoslovak secret police file has been destroyed and it is impossible to assess his potential value as one, but some victims of high-profile cases may have been known to him. Most of these ‘liquid affairs’ were perpetrated by Soviet 2172 2173 2174

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1736. Kovály 2012: 101. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2364.

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security forces and a peak of their activity followed in the mid- to late 1950s. About a decade later, a CIA memorandum stated that: Foreign nationals are sometimes victims of Soviet executive action. The targets who fall into this category may be indigenous agents who have become suspect, or former citizens of satellite countries who have turned against the Soviet regime. In the latter case, actions against such individuals are usually carried out through the corresponding satellite intelligence service, aided and abetted by Soviet state security. The abductions of Dr. Walter Linse and Bohumil Lausman exemplify this type of operation. Linse had fled East Germany in 1947 and later became a leader of the ‘Society of Free Jurists’, an anti-Communist organization that the Soviets considered particularly dangerous. He was kidnapped from West Berlin in July 1952 by agents of the East German security service, with the full knowledge and approval of Soviet state security; he was later turned over to Soviet authorities in Karlshorst, East Berlin, and eventually sentenced to imprisonment in the USSR. Lausman, prominent Czech anti-Communist who fled to the West in 1949, disappeared from Vienna in 1953. It was later learned that he had been kidnapped by agents of Czech intelligence, with the official sanction of Moscow. The Soviet state security rezidentura in Vienna also had been directed to assist the operation by supplying a car for transportating [sic] Lausman to Prague and arranging for the vehicle to have free passage through the Soviet Zone of Austria.2175

In Jaro’s day there were more rumours than detailed knowledge, but the Eastern Bloc was perceived to have become very sinister. By assuring him that he belonged in the safe part of the world, and that his friends the Haises would be safe in Canada, Marie was fostering Jaro’s sense of security after an anxious period.2176 Her correspondence would seem to indicate that their relationship changed, and that she was taking on the role of a professorial wife, 2175 CIA Memorandum prepared in February 1964 for the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (The Warren Commission) and declassified in 1971. It should be pointed out that the memorandum sets forth KGB policy and techniques as of 1964. See https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/ kent-csi/vol19no3/html/v19i3a01p_0001.htm (accessed 2 March 2019). 2176 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2364, 21 May 1951, from Archway Post Office.

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but she was clear from the outset that this would be done on mutually agreeable terms. Jaro saw her as a partner, not an appendage, and Marie was in turn prepared to offer the him domestic haven for which he had so evidently yearned. She was no longer ‘Mummy’, but Manya (also spelled Maňa), an affectionate form of Marie; no longer the embodiment of a maternal domestic goddess, but a fellow traveller on life’s railway. Jaro was discharged from hospital on 31 May 1951. In a postcard to his mother in Prague he put on a stoic face: I was discharged yesterday. It was high time; I was nearly exasperated. The weather has been fair for the last two days and not a cloud in sight. I am sending this view of our village [sic, for ‘suburb’]. Our house is not visible here, being more to the left. To the right I am usually going to the trolleybus stop. Warm wishes to all of you, Jarka.2177

The signatures of ‘Maňa’ and Anna Sargant were added to his in a show of unity. But behind the façade of a conventional message to his family, Jaro had to come to terms with the idea that he would be permanently separated from his mother and brother. He left very little to indicate how he managed this transition. Personal letters, other than a few postcards, are mostly unaccounted for, and hence his personal take on a problem encountered by so many transnational families in the twentieth century, the assertion of nation states and restrictions on movement,2178 remain hidden, as with so many aspects of the intensely private Jaro. Perhaps having the Sargants, some of whom were at least potentially free to travel, co-sign a familial message to his mother provided Jaro with some measure of security. The wedding of Jaro and Marie was held at the St. Pancras Registry Office on 14 June 1951.2179 Jaro gave his university’s address in Gower Street as his residence: Despite being quite capable of flouting convention, the couple apparently decided 2177

ANpM, digital Černý Collection and private archive of the Černý family, 1 June

1951. 2178

For aspects of transnational families as an historical phenomenon, see Johnson

2011. 2179 Certificate issued by the St. Pancras Registry office, no 88, on 14 June 1951. A certified copy is held in the author’s archive.

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to (or were advised to) be socially conventional for the official record. The witnesses were Katharine Furse, a name that reveals the depths of Marie’s British contacts,2180 and Alan Henderson Gardiner. Marie’s father was listed as the retired teacher ‘Frank’ Hloušek, reflecting that later in life, after losing his job as a shoemaker, he had found an alternative career. The newlyweds no doubt enjoyed the opportunity to dress up and have some good time. The bride chose an unobtrusive but elegant skirt suit with a corsage, and a fetching hat adorned with the hint of a veil. The groom wore a double-breasted suit with a decorated buttonhole. Marie’s daughter Anna is seen smiling in the wedding photo, next to Eiddon and Elizabeth Edwards. Their families in Prague and Boskovice were informed, and Jaro’s sent his brother Milka a photograph of him signing the register.2181 After performing his duties as a witness, Gardiner returned to Oxford and while still fresh with impressions of the day wrote an optimistic note to Jaro, expressing his firm belief that the ‘sad days’ were now going to be forgotten.2182 Once Jaro’s duties at UCL were concluded, or nearly,2183 he began to negotiate the practicalities of life in Oxford. This time he decided to purchase a house, for which a mortgage was required. Gardiner was willing to act as his guarantor, but the building society he initially approached wanted the University to do so instead, which Veale assessed as being unfeasible. Thus, on 16 July 1951, Jaro signed a mortgage with the Friends Provident and Century Life Office, with further money borrowed from another source—presumably Gardiner. 2184 Gardiner was greatly looking forward to Jaro settling in Oxford.2185 Žába congratulated him on his wedding and reported 2180 Dame Katharine Furse (1875–1952) was the first director of the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the First World War, and went on to represent the World Association of Girl Guides and Boy Scouts at the League of Nations. See Mathews 2004. 2181 ANpM, digital Černý Collection and the private archive of the Černý family, unnumbered photograph dated 14 June 1951. 2182 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2380, 14 June 1951. 2183 They formally ended on 30 September 1951. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1534, letter from university administrator D. W. Logan to J. Černý. 2184 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, letter from D. Veale to J. Černý, 11 July 1951. 2185 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.809.

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on his own troubles, as the Communists planned to send intellectuals to undertake manual work, at least for certain periods, and this meant Žába would be down the coal mines. Žába recalled meeting with Jaro in Prague, walking past the National Theatre, and Jaro saying that in Egyptology one is driven by a ‘flamme sacrée’. Žába’s situation was becoming more difficult, and he perhaps needed succour in the form of believing that Egyptology was a vocation, a mission of self-fulfilment. He wrote: ‘Thank you for the Gazette with news about your nomination. And don’t forget to rest. You absolutely cannot allow yourself to get overworked this badly yet again!’2186 Others in Jaro’s circle who were aware of his health issues sent letters to congratulate him on his new position and on his recovery.2187 A change was indeed in the air: Jaro’s own move from London to Oxford coincided with a slow thaw in the austerity of the post-war era, as that summer witnessed the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition and fair with its centrepiece in London’s South Bank, but with celebrations taking place across the UK, including Oxford.2188 Before the academic year began in October, Jaro and Marie settled at 2 Linkside Avenue, in North Oxford, about twenty minutes bus ride from Oxford City Centre. This was a suburb close to historic village of Wolvercote (and adjacent to Wolvercote Cemetery and to the North Oxford Golf Club) and to the affluent Summertown, and near the road leading to the town of Woodstock. Their new home was a 1930s detached house with a garden.2189 It differed as much from the Victorian gothic architecture of North Oxford as the latter differed from the eighteenth-century facades of the city centre.2190 It was only relatively bourgeois, as true affluence was located closer to centre of town, but was still a garden suburb compared to much of East and South Oxford. Near Cowley, where the merger between Morris 2186

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 16 August 1951. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1024. 2188 Kynaston 2009: 5–12. 2189 Officially, Jaroslav Černý was registered as the householder between 1954 to 1966 (Kelly’s Directory of Oxford, 1954 to 1966), after which Marie Černý was listed as the main householder. 2190 Hinchcliffe 1992: 90–91. 2187

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Motors and the Austin Motor Company was being prepared to create ‘the largest motor company in the world outside the US,’2191 the housing was generally less salubrious. Both of Marie’s daughters were now broadly independent, so it was just the two of them, although family often visited. Rationing was easing too, making domestic comforts, especially food, somewhat more accessible,2192 though still far from the standards that Jaro was accustomed to before the war, or even in wartime Cairo. Britain was then coping with ‘the adverse economic effects of the Korean war’.2193 The new domestic setting created some tangible advantages. Jaro’s library was to be settled in a comfortable room on the ground floor that would have been an ideal sitting room—had a large library with bookcases not required a dedicated space. The room was to become Jaro’s very own sanctum, though far from an impenetrable shrine. Visitors, including family members, were always welcome if they could stand the intense atmosphere of the room (Jaro would not give up smoking). In that sense, Jaro was generationally, socially, and probably also by disposition different from those traditional male heads of household who enjoyed ‘discontinuities in which privacy, especially of the master of the house, was held as the ultimate virtue.’2194 The house also provided the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors as it had a garden, which Jaro and Marie relished.2195 A photograph, probably taken in his early days at Oxford, shows Jaro in the garden of at 2 Linkside Avenue against a backdrop of greenery, dressed in an MA gown without the hood but holding a mortar board. Jaro is captured twirling to show the academic gown to full advantage as he looks at the camera. As the dress code of his fieldwork in the 1930s signalled a specific social situation, so too did the Oxford gown point to a new phase in Jaro’s professional and personal life. Not only did the gown express a new position of authority and responsibility, but it showed that Jaro had just managed to overcome barriers 2191 2192 2193 2194 2195

Kynaston 2009: 51. Kynaston 2009: 28–29. Kynaston 2009: 30. Hinchcliffe 1992: 93. Fayza Haykal, personal communication, June 2019.

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that many of his British contemporaries never mastered. He was a member of Congregation, the sovereign body of the University, a position steeped in privilege. Even though the Education Act of 1944 and some post-war developments meant that access to education had widened, the ancient universities were still not within easy reach of most people. As one college scout in Cambridge put it, ‘once they were all gentlemen on this staircase. Now there are more of them up on their brains.’2196 Jaro got into Oxford on his brains, although he had long assumed the role of a socially acceptable gentleman. In some respects, he had an advantage when presenting himself as a don, as there was nothing outwardly disconcerting about him. His English was not influenced by any regional British accent, then (and still) perceived as a detrimental trait, and traces of a foreign accent were permissible (even exotic) in academia. He would have had no issues with the sartorial expectations of Oxford either, whether formal dress or everyday tweeds, and he wholeheartedly embraced the ‘Oxford bags’ and jacket with elbow patches as his daily attire. Although he did not cultivate any endearing eccentricities, he importantly retained his ability to keep good company with others. As in the inter-war period, when he sought to build upon his entry to the international network of Egyptologists, it mattered that he was not ‘untravelled’. There was no danger of the ‘societal illiteracy’ so deplored by Jiří Guth-Jarkovský thirty years before. What probably mattered most, however, was the backing of an incontestable academic elite represented by Gardiner or Glanville, who between them embodied the University and the Establishment. It is a testimony to that elite that they were able to engage the principles of meritocracy; to see beyond past expectations of who might be a suitable candidate for a professorial position at Oxford. They chose a stateless European refugee, even though British society’s problems with accepting Europeans, or even ‘the Queen’s overseas subjects’,2197 were only to grow, and have not yet been fully resolved.

2196 2197

Hennessy 2007: 77. Hennessy 2007: 69.

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Jaro’s case was not unique. Talented academics, especially refugees, were ‘let in’ for various reasons, diversity being one of them. Oxford had been regarded as an ‘ark of civilization’ during the Second World War,2198 and did not entirely lose that capacity during the Cold War. During the former conflict, another cosmopolitan former Czechoslovak, Ernest Gellner, got into Balliol. Gellner described his way in: I ended up in a marginal, at that time not-quite-a-grammar school, founded in the ’30s in St. Albans, from which I got a scholarship to Oxford—partly because it was that kind of school: at that time Lindsay was in charge of Balliol, and Lindsay practiced Portuguese colonial policy, that is, keep the natives peaceful by getting able ones from below into Balliol. Balliol he wanted to be one-third upper-class, one-third grammar-school, one-third Scotsman and foreigners. In his view the upper-class were to teach the others manners, and he used the grammarschool to introduce some brains into the upper-class. He put it as brutally as that. So there were the scholarship candidates from schools no one in Oxford had ever heard of. Lindsay would say also: the more they needed the scholarships the less they were going to get them, because the more the schools were anxious for them, the more they would drill them, and the candidates would come out with these hackneyed answers. So as a result of Lindsay’s Portuguese policy, at 17 I got a scholarship to Balliol.2199

Despite the structural elements of entrenched privilege, much depended on individual decisions at Oxford. And so it was that Jaro entered a new academic community, the fellowship of The Queen’s College. Queen’s occupies a prominent position, both spatially with its frontage on the High Street, and intellectually with the academic weight of its members. Queen’s is seven years older than Jaro’s alma mater in Prague, and the latter was to be deeply shaken by the beliefs of a certain John Wycliffe, who was

2198

Term borrowed from Crawford, Ulmschneider and Elsner 2017. John Davis, interview with Ernest Gellner, Davis 1991: 64; see also http://www. lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/gellner/InterGellner.html. Accessed 3 June 2022. The ‘Lindsay’ referred to is Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, 1st Baron Lindsay of Birker, known as Sandie Lindsay (1879–1952), who was a vocal opponent of the Munich treaty; see McCulloch 2004. 2199

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one of the Queen’s commensales in the fourteenth century.2200 At the time of Jaro’s arrival it was still an all-male college, with a tradition of support for sciences, humanities and music. Oriental Studies were cultivated there in the inter-war period by Archibald Henry Sayce and later by Griffith, Peet and Gunn. Sayce was not above talking about (Eastern) European scum,2201 but Jaro encountered no such prejudice, at least none that has survived on record. Even Sayce was most interested in research, in the ‘discovery of truth’,2202 and his professional interest sometimes—although by no means always—overcame his parochial prejudice. Sayce was known to be volatile and rash in his statements, but not for his deep-seated dislikes.2203 Another major part of Jaro’s life in Oxford was the Griffith Institute, a building behind the Ashmolean Museum and a home to Near Eastern Studies and Egyptology that the Francis Llewellyn Griffith bequest had enabled in 1937.2204 It was (and is) the home of the Topographical Bibliography project, led by Moss, and Egyptology was (and is) taught by the staff of this Institute. But due to the peculiar collegiate system at Oxford, institutes (or departments or faculties) are only partially the academic ‘homes’ of its academic staff. Colleges represent opportunities for professional sociability. The collegiate form of university life was new to Jaro, that its ‘traditional notion of a college was of an autonomous, residential community, to which all members owed their first allegiance.’ But the system was changing. After the war, the main development—and challenge—at Oxford was the rise in the number of fellows and students. Jaro’s tenure coincided with a large expansion in the number of—and facilities of—colleges: ‘the 1960s were a decade of college building on an almost unprecedented scale, with major projects.’ The family-like community of the college grew over time into a rather large clan. Many colleges that had been exclusively male, but which had formed links with women’s colleges, started to debate admitting women (Queen’s 2200 2201 2202 2203 2204

Hodgkin 1954: 133. Challis 2013: 144. Hodgkin 1949: 187. Hodgkin 1949: 200–202. White 1994: 491–492.

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did so much later, in 1979). Jaro quickly became like ‘the typical Oxford don … someone who engaged in both teaching and research; increasingly he tended to regard the former, however necessary and rewarding, as essentially an interruption of the latter—of his “own work”, as he would call it.’ Jaro came to present the post-war type of a don in more than one respect: he was ‘the married don, living in a house without servants away from the college.’2205 He took lunch in the college regularly, but mainly dined there only on Fridays.2206 This strategy allowed him to oblige both his collegiate and his domestic life. Marie, in turn, accepted the role she was initially reluctant to take—the housewife. The 1950s was a time when the trend was for sending women, particularly married women, back to the home, though this was never a universal practice as many women needed an income.2207 Marie did not look for paid work, but expected there to be other rewards, such as being a travelling companion, to break the monotony of housekeeping. She was also less tied to the household than others as the couple had no small children; contact with her daughters was now contact with adult women, soon to raise their own families. Marie and Jaro built a household, but more meaningfully they formed a partnership. Jaro had someone with whom he could be comfortable; someone who had seen his innermost turmoil and yet who decided to stay on anyway. Most partnerships have an agreed communication space in which not every thought is shared, and Marie’s presence was the reassuring presence of someone with whom Jaro could truly be himself. A settled home also meant that Jaro could begin to come to terms with his exile and rebuild his resilience. He chose to remain a cosmopolitan scholar, serving Egyptology. To achieve this—and probably to avoid any complicity with a regime he could not respect—he became an émigré from Czechoslovakia, something he had found hard to even contemplate a decade before. Characteristically, this did not mean cutting his links to Žába, who still maintained his voluminous correspondence. 2205 2206 2207

The preceding quotes in this paragraph are taken from Thomas 1994: 187–198. Personal communication, Peter M. Neumann, February 2018. Kynaston 2009: 572–591.

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Whether Jaro understood his silent crossing of boundaries to be an act of personal resistance, or a more overtly political act in opposing the Cold War, might be a moot point. Just as he and Gardiner and Fairman had insisted that the Second World War should be no impediment to the pursuit of scholarship, so was he not put off by newly-erected boundaries. He enjoyed the privilege of being on the safer side of the Iron Curtain, just as he had enjoyed the privilege of being a guest in Egypt during the previous conflict. And, just as he had done then, he maintained his Czechoslovak connections as much as possible, finishing a paper for the Festschrift known as Diatribae Lexa in November and December, for which he was duly thanked by Žába.2208 His colleagues in Prague, for their part, were still ready to defy the authorities by including him in the volume. Jaro’s first term at Oxford began in October, and on 11 October the University confirmed it would pay instalments of his salary into his account.2209 Some other formalities were attended to, as on 15 October 1951 Jaro informed the Federated Superannuation System for Universities (FSSU) that he was childless and interested in being enrolled into the scheme. He still made regular trips to London, for example to attend EES meetings, and these became a regular feature in Jaro’s diary. In November, the Abusir and Saqqara Survey was planned in some detail at an EES meeting by Apted, who wished to revise the record of the mastaba of Ptahshepses.2210 Jaro was interested to see the project evolve. Starting a new post and organizing his duties were probably Jaro’s main concerns at the end of 1951. The elections that year, which ended the era of socialist-leaning Labour government and returned Winston Churchill to power, probably bypassed him. As a stateless person, and at that time without citizenship, he had no vote.

2208 2209 2210

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 15 December 1951. OUA, Pension file UC 12/23/41, 11 October 1951. AEES, GMC 1942 to 1955, Minutes of the meeting, 20 November 1951.

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1952–1955 becoming an institution 1952 and 1953 were primarily teaching years for Jaro, with added work on monuments related to Western Thebes. In January 1952, for example, when writing to Mekhitarian to say that he had finally settled in Oxford, Jaro also asked about a stela called E3084 that was in Brussels.2211 Jaro could never refrain from building a research archive, collecting information from museum catalogues and, whenever possible, on unpublished artefacts. This aspect was never entirely interrupted, although it became gradually less prominent in later years, as he took on more epigraphic fieldwork. A stable physical location helped, having a ‘room of one’s own’ within a house of one’s own. Once he’d settled in Oxford, Jaro was able to properly organize his research archive as sets of slips and numbered notebooks—the core of his data base—and indexes allowing him to orient it; to return comfortably to select material after a break. This was a practical solution for a scholar with several major ongoing projects, in a pre-digital disciplinary culture that was only slowly developing infrastructures with which to share data. Large bodies of research material remained confined to private libraries and archives (including Jaro’s). Jaro’s projects typically required long-term planning. Ongoing participation in fieldwork was never guaranteed, and access to artefacts could be limited. The IFAO mission in Deir el-Medina was on hold during the years of the Egyptian Revolution. Jaro watched from afar as tumultuous events began to unfold in early 1952. There had been months, or rather years, of tension: ‘After several months of fruitless attempts at negotiations the Wafd government decided to abrogate the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in October 1951. Shortly afterward the Egyptian government launched a popular paramilitary campaign against British troops in the Canal Zone.’2212

2211 FERE, Correspondence, J. Černý to A. Mekhitarian, 4 January 1952; reply by A. Mekhitarian, 22 January 1952. 2212 Wucher King 1984: 20.

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British forces clashed with Egyptian fedayeen in the Suez Canal zone in early 1952, which resulted in several Egyptian police officers dying. On Saturday, 26 January, Cairo erupted in riots, as if symbolically venting seventy years of frustration, and symbols of ‘imperial’ presence in downtown Cairo went up in flames, from Barclay’s Bank to the Hotel Shepheard. These events have been evaluated many times in modern historiography, not least for their impact on Cairo’s hybrid urban spaces— the very spaces that Jaro inhabited with such ease and sense of belonging. The apparent paradoxes of the day have been made evident: As a political struggle to control space and consumer style, the Cairo Fire in fact entailed the destruction of local society as much as imperial presence … Egyptians seemed to struggle against the very style of clothing and the very commodities that they consumed: they rode in European cars to set fire to European car showrooms.2213

From an Egyptian perspective, this was a city committing suicide.2214 Many shops and enterprises of ‘Western’ character were not in fact British; some were entirely Egyptian. People lost lives, homes, jobs, and possessions. Historically speaking, this was ‘a brief glimpse of the rage and tensions that existed in Egypt below the increasingly artificial surface of national political life.’2215 In this way the Cairo Fire can be compared with other highly contentious historical events of the era. It doesn’t exactly parallel the expulsion of Germans— the perceived perpetrators of Nazi violence—from Czechoslovakia, but both were the result of growing rage against perceived injustice. Neither was excusable on the grounds of being ‘just’, but nor were they condemned in their time and place. Solutions to the crisis were sought. One solution was offered by the ‘Free Officers’,2216 a group of army officers centred around Gamal Nasser. In July, they organized a coup that led to the deposition of King Farouk, and ultimately to the end of the Egyptian 2213 2214

Reynolds 2012a: 2–3. In the words of Maguib Mahfouz’s novel The Autumn Quail; see Reynolds 2012a:

195. 2215 2216

Wucher King 1984: 20. An outline and list of committee members in Wucher King 1984: 294–297.

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monarchy. Nasser’s Egypt focused on modernization as a national asset, financed by the nationalization of foreign-owned companies and spearheaded by large-scale technocratic projects. But a change in regime didn’t necessarily offer or build toward longterm solutions for Egypt. The regime of the ‘pashas’ that had preceded the Revolution concentrated wealth in the hands of the few, but an adjustment in the power structure didn’t necessarily herald extensive economic change, or constitute a step toward either freedom or modernization. Even in Jaro’s lifetime the appraisals of the change were somewhat qualified: There is in the Egyptian revolution led by the Free Officers just as potent a myth in terms of a faith in the future that is resplendent with modernity and power as in all other revolutionary movements. Its ideology may not be couched in the articulate and uncompromising terms of a dogma. Yet, its leader and élite contend that they reflect a popular will oriented towards such a future. It is in the name of, and for the sake of, this future that revolutionary leadership can exercise immense power to suppress all adversaries in order to act for the fulfilment of its aims.2217

The Revolution itself was relatively bloodless and it ‘widened the participation of certain categories of Egyptians in the conduct of the affairs of the state.’2218 But it also set Egypt on an authoritarian trajectory and—as it rejected Western control— potentially opened the country to influence from the Communist Bloc. Stalin, at the time of the revolution, was not particularly interested in expanding into Africa, but after his death Nasser— who remained the driving force of both domestic and foreign policy—had to navigate a difficult course as the ‘developing world’ began to appear in Moscow’s crosshairs. Moreover, Nasser’s new regime was distrusted by some among the previous Egyptian elite, and an exodus began of cosmopolitan Cairenes and Alexandrines, while critics of the new regime observed that the situation of the poorest in Egyptian society had not really changed.

2217 2218

Holt 1968: 363 n. 2. Holt 1968: 386.

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Inevitably, a revolution coined as an anti-imperialist movement impacted Egyptology. Egyptology was international and cosmopolitan, but wasn’t necessarily—or even largely—subservient to imperial policies: the French head of the Antiquities Service, Drioton, was a protégé of King Farouk. Egyptologists formed a transnational community that did not answer exclusively to one authority, but to political and academic authorities both inside and outside Egypt. This did not suit Nasser’s vision of a modernizing revolutionary nation, nor did it promote the image of a modern Egypt that was not Western, and not Pharaonic,2219 but rather was under full indigenous authority. Egyptology, just like Cairo University,2220 had to be brought under government control and made to serve the new Egypt. Another change on a throne, albeit a more conventional one, also occurred in 1952. On 6 February, King George VI passed away and his daughter had to return from a trip to Africa to assume her royal duties as Elizabeth II. Her coronation in London in June 1953, the first to be televised, was widely acclaimed as opening the new Elizabethan age.2221 The ‘Byzantine ceremony’, in the words of Isaiah Berlin,2222 was opulent and was watched by large, fascinated crowds, either in the streets of London or in front of their newly-purchased screens. Jaro did not travel to London to attend the festivities, but his college honoured the new sovereign with a toast and with special treats for staff and students.2223 High hopes were placed symbolically on the new monarch.2224 One such challenge came in the form of the political reorganization of the British Empire, which was transformed—in a process covering the remainder of Jaro’s life—into the Commonwealth of Nations. Britain’s role in the Middle East would inevitably be part of the wider process of decolonization.2225 2219 For earlier developments, see Gershoni and Jankowski 1986; on Nasser using Arab history, see Reid 2015: 359–365; Wood 1998. 2220 Reid 1990. 2221 The public response has been extensively mapped by Kynaston 2009: 291–307. 2222 Smyth 2016: 6. 2223 As noted in the Queen’s College records on 29 April 1953. Parenthetically, the ‘queen’ in the Queen’s College refers to the Queen Consort (originally Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III), not the Queen Regnant. 2224 Smyth 2016: 4–6. 2225 An outline in context of its international history, see Jansen et al. 2017.

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Jaro observed the international and Egyptian developments from a distance, but some of his correspondents wrote about the black smoke that enveloped Cairo in January, or about the changes introduced by the Revolution on 23 July.2226 His close friend Desroches-Noblecourt, who was at that time an equally distant observer, noted in her autobiography that the Cairo Fire was an omen of events, and by October of 1952 it was out of question that foreigners who held key positions in the Egyptian administration might have their functions returned to them.2227 This included Drioton, who could not keep his position due to the changing political climate—in which it was perceived that an Egyptian in the top job as long overdue—and the loss of his royal patron.2228 Drioton left Egypt, continued his academic career in France, and was regarded by some as a symbol of the old order and court intrigue, which was not entirely fair. The EES abandoned its activities in Egypt for the duration of the political crisis, and the meeting on 6 February stated ‘it would be inadvisable to attempt any field work for the time being. It was agreed that plans for a short season at Abusir’ were to be shelved.2229 Experience had made Jaro adaptable, and he took matters in stride by focusing on his position in professional British Egyptology. In July, Fairman first related that the Liverpool collection was still in its wartime packaging,2230 but was very soon in position to provide Jaro with a list of the ostraca that interested him.2231 Early that summer, during Trinity Term at Oxford, Jaro and Fairman were the examiners of a doctoral thesis submitted to the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies by Ricardo Caminos. Caminos’ supervisor was Gardiner, and his topic was the Late Egyptian Miscellanies, very close to Jaro’s interest in the lives of New Kingdom Egyptians. The thesis was published in book form two years later,2232 and presented the 2226 Jean-Phillipe Lauer found Cairo wreathed in smoke to be unforgettable experience, as articulated in an exchange of letters with Jaro, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1324–21.1326; see also Le Tourneur D’Ison 1996: 193–194. 2227 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 124–125. 2228 Reid 2015: 361–364. 2229 AEES, GMC 1942–1955, Minutes of the meeting on 6 February 1952. 2230 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.561, 4 July 1952. 2231 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.562, 9 July 1952. 2232 Caminos 1954.

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first comprehensive translation, with commentaries, of a collection of unique sources for the world of the Egyptian literati, even though they had long been assessed as schoolboy exercises.2233 Caminos was grateful to Jaro for granting him access to his notebooks.2234 Jaro’s travels for research were not entirely abandoned, despite administrative limitations from the University and political circumstances. In September, he spent several weeks in Turin, collating some of his earlier transcriptions and also collaborating with Gardiner on their next project—the Royal Canon of Turin. Although the final publication is better known under Gardiner’s name only,2235 Jaro had an acknowledged role in reading and transcribing its sources.2236 On this occasion Jaro travelled alone, but corresponded with Marie and they had a rendezvous in Paris during Jaro’s return from Turin. Marie stayed with the elusive Mademoiselle Legrand and had a good time.2237 Their trips abroad had the bonus effect of escaping the British rationing system, and thus of enjoying some decent food. Many foodstuffs were still rationed in Britain, seven years after the end of war.2238 Once again, Jaro had to arrange for a letter to the effect that he was an employee of the University on research leave,2239 which provided a reason for an Italian visa and for smooth reentry into the UK. Upon his return, just before the start of the new Oxford term, he was informed by an immigration officer at Northolt Airport (now RAF Northolt) that he ought to regularize his position because his work permit had been originally issued for a London posting, and he was now in Oxford. This unnamed officer presented a textbook example of how, in the twentieth century, personal documents ‘have principally been used as an instrument to regulate the entrance of aliens into national labor markets.’2240 The incident sparked an exchange of 2233

On the Miscellanies see Ragazzoli 2019a, with further references. Caminos 1954: viii. 2235 Gardiner 1959. 2236 Gardiner 1962: 51. 2237 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2367–21.2368. 2238 Kynaston 2009: 254. 2239 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1; D. Veale, carbon copy of the letter dated 29 August 1952. 2240 Lucassen 2001: 255. 2234

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letters between Oxford, UCL and the Home Office,2241 but following Veale’s investigation didn’t impinge on Jaro’s travels. Veale informed him on 3 December 1952 that the matter was resolved, and the Home Office issued a statement that Jaro was no longer required to demonstrate permission to work in the UK. The Home Office letter that was forwarded to Jaro was, however, to be kept with his identification documents, presumably to show to any inquisitive immigration officer in the future.2242 His position as an Oxford professor did not give him an automatic immunity to being questioned, but the University’s backing was ultimately decisive. The airport merits a small digression. Jaro was among a large number of civilian passengers who used Northolt in its temporary role as a commercial airport, standing in for Heathrow until 1954 while construction was underway some six miles (around ten kilometres) to the south.2243 Northolt has a distinguished history, including a major role in the Battle of Britain. Jaro’s countryman Josef František,2244 one of the most efficient fighter pilots in the Polish (N. 303) Squadron, was based at Northolt and was buried at an RAF cemetery there. Whether Jaro was ever aware of this is unknown. This in turn highlights one area of relative silence in Jaro’s life, namely his contact (or lack thereof) with the Czechoslovak expatriate community in Britain. He patiently maintained contact with Žába in Prague, and this was to be crucial for the later impetus in Czechoslovak Egyptology, but as far as Czechoslovak expatriates in Britain are concerned the information is rather limited. Both he and Marie had broad and diverse friendships that once included people involved in the government-in-exile, but the post-war years show no particular interest in maintaining links with Czechoslovaks who either remained in the UK after the war or returned there after the Communist coup saw the country become a totalitarian regime. Perhaps Jaro did not 2241 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1. This exchange shows Veale approaching UCL and the Home Office from September to December 1952. 2242 OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, D. Veale to J. Černý, carbon copy, 3 December 1952. 2243 Laidlow-Petersen and Bristow 2005, and Sherwood 1999. 2244 Brown 2005.

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want to be connected to any political activity. Perhaps he simply lacked the time. Britain avoided the excesses of McCarthyism in the 1950s, and indeed ‘according to national myth (the term is Orwell’s) the English political style or “genius” successfully navigates ideological extremes.’2245 Still, to be seen as being in too-close communication with citizens of a Communist state or its exiles might have been regarded as suspicious. It is therefore possible that he and Marie kept this side of their correspondence firmly under control, making sure it was not archived. This would not be surprising given the situation in contemporary Czechoslovakia. Totalitarian regimes breed many types of historical silence: the silence of the regime itself; the silence of concealment, of masks worn by ordinary people;2246 the silence of those who want to keep safe their friends and families. This silence often extends well beyond the borders of the totalitarian state. In the autumn of 1952, Communist purges began to devour the Party itself, eliminating its assumed ‘heretics’ with the mass trial of Rudolf Slánský and thirteen others. This marked a significant nadir for Czechoslovak Stalinism, and reconfirmed the position of Czechoslovakia as essentially a province of Stalin’s empire.2247 The effects of overt control trickled down into all facets of society, including (or perhaps especially) academia. Žába wrote to Jaro about his work, about the Diatribae Lexa and about Lexa himself, and used Jaro’s notes extensively in his classes on Late Egyptian, but he was also under pressure to conform to the expectations of political activism—mostly boilerplate—such as attending numerous Party and union meetings. Lexa was making his life more difficult, Žába opined, by not supporting his aspirations either for a higher salary or for a better understanding of Egyptian grammar. Žába even stated that Lexa called Gardiner’s Grammar ‘balderdash’.2248 In the days when Stalinism required of its practitioners unquestioning, almost religious devotion, and when Žába was outraged by Lexa’s lack of Egyptological devotion to Gardiner, 2245 2246 2247 2248

Smyth 2016: 12. Fitzpatrick 2000: 132–136. Dejmek et al. 2018: 471–476, 525–526. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 12 June 1952.

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Jaro was coincidentally putting the finishing touches on his latest project, Ancient Egyptian Religion. This was the third major synthetic work on Egyptian religion in four years, preceded by that of Frankfort in 1948 and Samuel A. B. Mercer in 1949. In Jaro’s own words: I consented to write this sketch of the ancient Egyptian religion only after it had become clear that this task would not be undertaken by any of the persons possessing more competent knowledge of the subject than I did then or do now … Egyptologists who might choose to read it will certainly not be satisfied. It is not for them, however, that the book has been planned and written, but rather for the inquiring layman.2249

Although Jaro could be very self-effacing and deferential in correspondence, he was often realistic in his publications, and his reluctance in tackling the topic of Egyptian religion is evident. The book was later variously assessed, rather positively as ‘the best English work on Egyptian religion’,2250 and with some reserve as a compendium of useful sources.2251 Jaro worked with concepts such as personal piety, personhood, and moral consciousness without using that vocabulary. He also allowed space for considerations from prehistory and comparative research into African cultures. Yet again, Jaro provided indications that he was aware of the value that comparative studies and broader historical considerations held, but did not follow through such ideas in his own work. The book is effective as an overview of major events and phenomena of religious significance, but its format and lack of referencing apparatus corroborate Jaro’s introductory words that he was not a true authority. Its evolutionary narratives, for example of divine figures evolving from animal to human, could be contested, as Frankfort had already contested the impact of ‘evolutionary or rationalistic’ viewpoints.2252 Books cited as ‘a starting point to readers who might 2249

Černý 1952a: vii. Seele 1954: 147. 2251 J. Janssen and R. Janssen 2014. 2252 Frankfort 1948: viii. See also Wengrow 1999 on Frankfort’s interest in ethnography and critiques of some Western Eurocentric approaches; Frankfort also read Johan Huizinga. 2250

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desire more detailed information on the subject’ included selected works published between 1912 and 1952, and included those by three female Egyptologists: Maj Sandman, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, and Margaret Murray.2253 The language of the book was descriptive but tries to reflect on emic terminology and etic insights and their developments. For instance, Jaro considered it necessary to debate the longrespected view of Classical authors that the Egyptians ‘worshipped’ animals. He, like Frankfort, was critical of this view. Some formulations or reasoning might be debated by twentyfirst century Egyptologists (references to ‘poetic phantasy’, or ‘oriental people’, for example could be seen as stereotyping),2254 but a synthetic overview of Egyptian religion proved to be of interest, especially as Jaro’s narrative derived from his analysis of primary sources, and he admitted to doubts and left open some options. Frankfort and Mercer both published more extensive treatises on religion (and were among the recommended reading in Jaro’s list) but took different approaches.2255 Jaro tried an historical approach, beginning with predynastic and early dynastic material. Frankfort took a thematic approach and outlined categories he believed to be meaningful when discussing Egyptian religion, such as gods, the state, or the Egyptian way of life. These themes were treated as a cross-section of historical sources. Mercer merged both views, offering ‘prehistoric reconstructions’ of the cults of selected deities. Jaro’s student Griffiths was deferential: ‘Professor Černý has written, within a rather restricted space at his disposal, a survey which is carefully and lucidly conducted. As a work of popular exposition, its readability commends it; as an authoritative study by an eminent philologist, its accuracy is above reproach.’2256 In retrospect, Edwards was probably closest to a balanced assessment when he considered this work to be a meticulous collection of first-hand sources that helped to foster the research on the subject.2257 2253 2254 2255 2256 2257

Sandman 1946; Desroches-Noblecourt 1948: 205–331; and Murray 1949. Černý 1952a: 41. Mercer 1949; Frankfort 1948. Griffiths 1955: 145. Edwards 1972: 367–377.

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1953 began as 1952 ended, with teaching and faculty duties. Jaro was increasingly asked by his new colleagues for help, and dealt with a wider non-Egyptological academic audience both inside and outside Oxford. He filled his Christmas vacation time by looking into graffiti and rock inscriptions for David Meredith, and followed up on the topic into the New Year.2258 Meredith, then a Leverhulme Research Fellow,2259 had enquired about inscribed material along the Wadi Hammamat and what they might reveal about ancient materials, his main area of interest.2260 In his free time Jaro chased further references to the Deir el-Medina community and other late New Kingdom persons of interest, such as information on a lady (or ladies) called Hennuttawy from objects in the Met by corresponding with Scott,2261 and contacted other North American institutions such as the Wilbour Library and the Brooklyn Museum.2262 Although Jaro probably tried to control the onslaught of letters that had drowned him during the late 1940s, they were the only feasible medium by which he maintained his international network, professional and personal, in a way that allowed for timely communication. Jaro’s other frequently-deployed tool of communication was the exchange of books. Books crossed boundaries created by political blocs that were otherwise firmly entrenched. And these exchanges allowed him to keep up with those now trapped behind such boundaries, for example in December hearing some good news from Prague, because his mother Anna, now nearly a nonagenarian, had enjoyed a lunch of roast goose with Žába’s family.2263

2258

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1401–21.1403. David Meredith (1896–1959) was a Welsh scholar who took his degrees in Strasbourg and London, and who taught at Egyptian schools. He studied epigraphic material along desert roads and provided valuable expertise on a range of texts from desert settings, including Nabataean texts. See Littmann and Meredith 1953; Paprocki 2019: 163; Leclant 1964: 346, note 2. 2260 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1401–21.1403. 2261 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1817. 2262 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.159–21.160; correspondence between J. Černý and H. Glasser concerning a glazed steatite jar, Brooklyn Museum 33.680. 2263 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 22 December 1952. 2259

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Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Shortly after his ceremonious funeral he was joined in death by Klement Gottwald, the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and president of the country. In his last years Gottwald, once a ferocious, outspoken young Communist in Masaryk’s republic and then leader of Czechoslovakia’s communists in wartime exile, was more of a frightened handmaid to Stalin than a vigorous henchman. One of their victims, Margolius, commented drily that ‘obedient as ever, Comrade Klement Gottwald followed Iosif Vissarionovich into eternity.’2264 Nonetheless, ‘the Czechs acquired a reputation for a perverse, inhuman kind of stability,’2265 as Stalinism trundled on steadily in Prague, even after its embodiment was laid to rest. The victims of political trials were not rehabilitated; the persecution of their families persisted;2266 Žába’s situation as an Egyptologist behind the Iron Curtain did not change. During 1953, Jaro received further recognition from the British Egyptological establishment. Gardiner, Glanville, and Godfrey Driver proposed that he be elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. The official Academy proclamation read: His outstanding services to Egyptology, particularly in connexion with the workmen engaged on the construction of the Royal tomb of the Ramesside period at Thebes. His exceptional skill as a decipherer of the hieratic script and his many articles on Late Egyptian Grammar, Coptic etymology, and other philological topics. Recently, an able popular account of the Egyptian religion.2267

The Academy’s reasoning,2268 which reflected both Jaro’s and his academic supporters’ hierarchy of interests, contained clear reference to the preponderance of philological research as the most valued aspect of Egyptology. The philological paradigm established at the turn of the century was going strong. 2264

Kovály 2012: 157. Zeman 1969: 13. 2266 Dejmek et al. 2018: 528–529. 2267 The British Academy report ‘Deaths and elections of fellows’, Proceedings of the British Academy, annual reports 1950–1959. British Academy, Annual report 1953, Section IV. 2268 The text was probably written by Gardiner. According to observation by R. Gareth Roberts, Gardiner tended to write ‘connection’ as ‘connexion’. He was peculiar about his spelling, even refusing to write ‘sycamore’, as others did, insisting on ‘sycomore’. 2265

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Not every scholar could enjoy that kind of acceptance from the international Egyptological community. In August, one of Jaro’s German correspondents, Edel, was rather disappointed not to have been invited to the next Congress of Orientalists. The Second World War still cast a long shadow, and reservations against some German scholars persisted. Jaro, who did not share the reluctance of many of his peers, was a safe contact with whom to vent one’s frustration.2269 September was a time for study and holidays. Before departing to enjoy a period of rest, Jaro discussed the monuments of Washptah with Robert Douglas Lockhart of the University of Aberdeen’s Anthropological Museum (now the Marischal Museum).2270 He and Marie holidayed together in Italy before Jaro departed to pursue his studies in museums. Marie stayed on in Liguria,2271 re-joining Jaro in Oxford toward late September. A letter sent just before she departed noted that she had had a good time, enjoying the sea, walks in gardens, and Chianti. Jaro must by now have been comfortable in sharing their domestic responsibilities, as Marie asked him to ‘please get some lettuce and tomatoes for Sunday.’2272 It is impossible to say how harmonious the domestic arrangements were, but they were at least viable for both and provided the stability they both expected. Marie at least had time to herself and was free to organize her schedule as an independent person, though she also felt the loss of her daughters, both of whom were developing independent lives.2273 A few days after his return Jaro met with Walter Till, who was visiting from Manchester, and indulged in a Coptological chat. Till reminded him of the many papyri in Vienna that were still waiting to be published,2274 but Jaro didn’t have the time to take on any further academic and editorial responsibilities. He was

2269

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.453, 8 August 1953. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2, 4–5. 2271 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2370, 22 September 1953 from Bordighera (Liguria). 2272 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.370. 2273 Personal communication, A. Allott, June 2020. 2274 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.189. 2270

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then beginning to plan a trip to Brown University, and considered helping Goedicke to obtain a US scholarship.2275 In October, the start of a new academic year, another coercive letter arrived from Žába: ‘I was pleased to hear the news about so many new and valuable publications, but, if you permit me, we are still awaiting your Late Egyptian Grammar.’2276 This grammar, which had started with Jaro’s teaching notes and card index of Late Egyptian, had now been in development since at least the mid-1920s, nearly thirty years ago. In early 1954, Jaro began to actively negotiate for his visit to Brown University. He noted in his letter to the Oxford Visitatorial Board that he had taught continuously from 1951, when he was appointed, and that his lectures could mainly be covered by Barns, with Gardiner assisting for part of the required period.2277 The leave was granted without any particular delay in February, for Hilary Term, the spring term of 1955.2278 This leave was evidently adjusted as Jaro spent both Michaelmas of 1954 and Hilary of 1955 on his American tour. In the meantime, Jaro continued his normal routine. Most of 1954 was dedicated to teaching and to publication plans. One of his students, a Miss Morton, was studying Egyptian and Coptic.2279 Another student, John R. Harris, would come to Jaro’s classes on Egyptian and Coptic in 1954 and 1955.2280 Cooperation with Gardiner was ongoing and now aimed at the speedy publication of their forthcoming ostraca volume. Another matter nearing its conclusion was the revised publication of the Sinai inscriptions, which Jaro had had the opportunity to revise some twenty years before when with the Harvard expedition,2281 and 2275 As referred to in exchanges with G. Posener: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1693. 2276 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 14 October 1953. 2277 OUA, FA 9/2/170 Personal file J. Černý, 1954–1964, the Visitatorial Board, letter dated 27 January 1954. 2278 OUA, FA 9/2/170 Personal file J. Černý, 1954–1964, the Visitatorial Board, 9 February 1954. 2279 Oxford University Calendar 1952, p. 177. Class list: only Miss Morton began Egyptian and Coptic in 1951, and she appears in calendars up to 1954. 2280 Oxford University Calendar 1956, p. 256, J. R. Harris, Egyptian and Coptic, examined in Trinity 1955. 2281 Černý 1955d.

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which had resurfaced in the late 1940s. Jaro continued to produce smaller studies centred around issues of economic or social history,2282 his style retaining its clear focus on written resources. He did not usually pursue wider theoretical frameworks for Egyptian material, though interest in such was growing in the fields of anthropology and archaeology. The 1950s, the twilight years of the British Empire, were also the formative years of social anthropology as a discipline, though its roots went back to the inter-war period.2283 Some of the outlooks and methods of anthropology were adapted for Egyptological use in the postwar era,2284 but theoretical outlooks were not widely accepted in British historiography. Some historians, much like Jaro, ‘committed their reflections to paper, but not to print.’2285 Jaro’s approach was only occasionally articulated, if briefly, in his publications. He noted concisely that more work was needed in Egyptology for research outcomes to be improved: ‘Nothing can be gained by relying on unwarranted assertions in the books of our predecessors; only patient collecting may in future replace mere guesses by more exact knowledge.’2286 His lifelong view was that resources needed to be identified and queried critically before further knowledge could be gained. In the absence of a direct comment, one can only wonder whether broader concepts of methodology would have been added his to ‘unwarranted assertions’, or whether they might have been used as tools to promote self-reflection. The telling words in this passage are ‘patient collecting’. It had been his practice for decades, but it also amounted to a recurring issue in Egyptology: the prevalence of ‘cataloguing’,2287 or ‘editing’.2288 Jaro felt it necessary emphasize the ‘collecting’ of material before historical syntheses could be considered viable. The broader target may have been to understand the ancient texts in their entirety and material con2282

Černý 1954a; Černý 1954b; Černý 1955b. See Foreman 2013. 2284 Adams 1997. 2285 Smyth 2016: 113. 2286 Černý 1954a: 29. 2287 Redford 1979, outlining the challenges of writing Egyptian history and of Egyptologists’ views on historians. 2288 Assmann 1995: 4. 2283

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text, before writing a history and communicating it to others, yet the practical measures to make this possible meant Jaro was stuck in ‘cataloguing’. His method in dealing with historical issues can be observed in a variety of places. His paper on consanguineous marriages, published toward the end of 1954, is one. Jaro’s approach was free from generalizing or other theoretical statements, but rather focused on fact-finding—reading and dating the primary sources as accurately as possible. In this case, Jaro intended to define whether it was possible to more accurately identify the familial relations of people nominally designated as brother and sister, and found it was possible to demonstrate that non-related people, who had different parents (as names of the parents were given in a number of documents), still called one another brother and sister. This indicated a different relationship that would be akin to, but not identical with, being biological siblings, and longterm partnerships were a feasible alternative.2289 In essence, he identified the same degree of flexibility later identified for Egyptian kinship terms using the theoretical apparatus of anthropology.2290 Jaro’s work found favour among anthropologists. David Schneider, then working on kinship relations, found his paper instructive and looked forward to more of his work.2291 Another typical note appeared in his work on ‘blood brotherhood’, where Jaro used the letter of Menna (O. Chicago 12074) to point out that Menna’s relative was partaking in blood rituals: I must leave to others to assess the importance of this Egyptian evidence for our knowledge of ancient Semitic customs. To me it seemed not negligible considering its relatively early date, for though on purely paleographical grounds the ostracon cannot be dated more closely than the Nineteenth to Twentieth dynasties, both Menna and Peroy are known to us from other documents which enable us to narrow down this rather vague date.2292

2289 2290 2291 2292

Černý 1954a. Olabarria 2018. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1802–21.1803. Černý 1955b: 162.

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The focus here is on the historical context of the ostracon and verifiable data characterizing the resource, not on interpretive aspects. These aspects weren’t wholly omitted from Jaro’s perspective, but were left to others to pursue more closely. A wordfrequency analysis run on papers written in English, and mostly published in the JEA,2293 return ‘name’, ‘king’, ‘tomb’, ‘date’ and ‘papyrus’ within the top ten most frequent words, illustrating Jaro’s strong emphasis on describing and dating available historical resources, but providing only hints at how he thought about his own discipline. Jaro’s statements suggest that he ultimately preferred the very philological paradigm that had brought him his status, and that he could safely follow in the footsteps of Peet, who specified: The moment we pass beyond such purely archaeological subjects as the mere classification and description of what may be called pots and pans, the work is philological and the philologist alone is equipped for it. It is the teacher’s solemn duty to impress that on all who would enter the subject.2294

This implies that Peet regarded Egyptology as an art of philology.2295 Jaro was not directly opposed to the primacy of philology, but he rather subtly subverted it by stating, ‘the task is to find objects for names and names for objects.’2296 As his pupils in the late 1940s recalled, Jaro thought interpretation was paramount because ‘anyone can dig.’2297 Yet he was both acutely aware of the privileged position of philology, and of the need to promote more sustained digging and, most importantly, the systematic and comprehensive presentation of its results. There is a tug-of-war between philology, archaeology, and history present in Jaro’s work. 2293 The papers included in this analysis were published in JEA between 1920s and 1960s, with one added paper from JNES: Černý and Peet 1927; Černý 1929a; Černý 1929d; Černý 1937c; Černý 1937d; Černý 1937e; Černý 1941c; Černý 1945; Černý 1946b; Černý 1947; Černý 1948a; Černý 1948b; Černý 1948c; Černý 1949; Černý 1954a; Černý 1955a; Černý 1955b; Černý 1958a; Černý 1958d; Černý 1961c; Černý 1964c. The query ‘word frequency’ was run in NVivo 12. 2294 Peet 1934: 11. 2295 See also Lewis 2016: 8 of 15. 2296 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 19.63, p. 1. 2297 Jaro’s emphasis on ‘interpretation’ in an interview by R. M. Janssen with Jean Lady Carroll, EES Archives London, audio files.

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Most of his comments on the discipline were scattered in lectures, talks, and unpublished notes. Jaro came close to writing a paradigmatic work on the Egyptological method when, on 1 April 1954—but with a seriousness belying April Fool’s Day— the Clarendon Press approached him with a proposal to consider a ‘fairly comprehensive introduction to Egyptian Studies.2298 Jaro eventually chose not pursue this proposal, even though Žába pressured him in words not dissimilar to Jaro’s own exhortation to Gardiner, over a decade earlier. Žába wrote: ‘I was enraptured by your news about an “Introduction”. You should condense your immense wealth of knowledge in such a comprehensive work.’2299 What seems clear is that Jaro thought about Egyptology as a continuum, with each historical time and place having its own specific qualities. Yet Egypt was not immutable, and pieces of evidence from one period may help to elucidate details from another. This position led him to delve into a great many topics. In May, for example, Jaro noted the discovery of Khufu’s boat in Giza, and must have begun thinking about its implications immediately, even if he only commented on the artefact a year later. That summer, almost in preparation to the American trip where he was to meet with Parker, Jaro worked on a co-authored paper with him titled ‘The Old Coptic Horoscope’ (Papyrus London 98) using infrared photographs supplied by Paul E. Kahle, Jr.2300 This was a second attempt at the horoscope, following that by Griffith in 1900.2301 Although the resulting 1957 paper stated that Jaro worked on the publication whilst he was at Brown in 1954, a line in notebook 17.27A suggests that he had already perused the infrared photographs in advance of his visit to Providence. The main transcriber of P. Lond. 98 was Kahle, and untypically for something that Jaro had a hand in the publication does not contain a physical description of the papyrus. This was deemed to have been provided by Griffith in 1900. Jaro and Parker also utilized Neugebauer and Henry B. Van Hoesen’s translation of the accompanying Greek text of P. Lond. 98.2302 2298

GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.1870, 1 April 1954. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 3 June 1954. 2300 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.27A. The resulting publication was Černý, Kahle, and Parker 1957. 2301 Griffith 1900. 2302 Neugebauer 1959. 2299

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Jaro also used the summer of 1954 to transcribe wooden tablets from Edinburgh that were on loan to Oxford.2303 In July and August he exchanged letters with Otto Firchow in Berlin. Firchow invited Jaro to contribute to the Festschrift for Grapow to be titled Ägyptologische Studien,2304 to which Jaro agreed,2305 confirming if this were needed that he was willing to communicate across divides. For the lexicographer Grapow, Jaro chose a topic from his notes on Coptic etymologies. Polotsky also stopped over in London that summer, and was keen to consult with Jaro as his own grammatical studies developed.2306 There was still much interest in his unpublished, but unofficially circulated, grammatical work. One draft of the manuscript of Jaro’s Late Egyptian grammar in English was copied by Caminos for Alan Gardiner, and other copies were made for Edwards and Barns.2307 Although his lines communication were as widespread as ever, Jaro’s early years in Oxford years were spent in the comparatively ‘enclosed’ world of libraries and colleges, with only occasional trips to Paris and Turin. An American tour could have come as a very welcome distraction for the disrupted traveller, especially as he was receiving invitations to visit different places along the East Coast.2308 Jaro was fortunate to have obtained the American visa, as in the 1950s people were denied access to the USA for all sorts of reasons. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, headed by Rudolf Bing, another man with a transnational career (he was Austrian with a British passport) had encountered issues when compiling a list of artists only a few years earlier. In 1950, ‘over the veto of President Truman the Congress had passed the McCarran Act, which prohibited the issuance of visas to anyone who had ever been associated with any totalitarian party … The McCarthyite witch hunt had begun, directed initially at foreigners.’2309 Even artists who had a record of opposing the Nazi regime had difficulties. A stateless 2303

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.37, p. 5. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.695, 27 July 1954. 2305 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.696, 4 August 1954. 2306 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1616. 2307 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.4, 20.5 and 20.22. 2308 S. A. B. Mercer invited him to Worcester; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1398–21.1400. J. Černý was to travel with Marie Černý and Richard Parker. 2309 Bing 1972: 126. 2304

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Egyptologist from a country most definitely on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain was unlikely to have found favour, though in the end there were no decisive barriers. It may be that Jaro’s work for the government-in-exile had been mentioned; Moravec, Beneš’s former chief of intelligence, was then employed in Washington, DC. Marie and Jaro packed their bags for the long-awaited transatlantic trip in autumn 1954. Travel of this sort was not exceptional for university people, but was generally unavailable to ordinary middle- and working-class citizens. British families did not normally travel abroad in the years after the war, but lived in routine, bounded circumstances; bounded by economic necessity and social mores, where rooms full of books were as exceptional as international travel, rather than the political bounds imposed by Soviet puppet governments.2310 If there was a habit that could be said to be shared by the worker and the intellectual (Jaro included), it was smoking.2311 Once Jaro and Marie had travelled2312 to the other side of the Atlantic, their main point of contact for work-related matters at Oxford was Barbara Sewell, secretary at the Griffith Institute, who reported regularly to Providence and passed on greetings, such as from Caminos, who had taken it upon himself to deliver post for Jaro that had been addressed to the Queen’s College.2313 Jaro was also distantly supervising (or observing) Caminos, who was working on the texts of Moscow papyri.2314 Jaro had hurriedly managed to submit his paper on consanguineous marriages before leaving, and Faulkner and Gardiner were sorting the necessary adjustments for him.2315 He had also tried to help Giuseppe Botti by translating one of his papers from Italian to English, and true to form wrote:

2310

Kynaston 2009: 165–168. Kynaston 2009: 174–175. 2312 On this occasion they used Queen Mary, the famous ocean liner, although later they were mostly flying. A small number of photographs was taken on board ship; GIA, Collection Černý, photographs. 2313 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1882; B. Sewell to J. Černý, who was then in Providence. 2314 Published as Caminos 1956. 2315 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.646, 12 October 1954. 2311

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I admit I was rather in a hurry when translating it, since I wanted to give it to Faulkner before leaving for America, and I am notorious for bad English. Besides, I only then realised how difficult an Italian text becomes when it has to be translated into English and how differently Italians express themselves.2316

Jaro’s façade as a meek, modest scholar knowing no leisure was activated in his correspondence with Gardiner. Gardiner was working on the Ramesseum papyri,2317 and Jaro praised him for speed and accuracy (‘how far behind you we younger ones stumble’) before adding: ‘It would not be quite just to me to think that I am on holidays. I am slipping the Deir el-Médineh ostraca assiduously and the two hours a week lecturing on L.[ate] E.[gyptian] also require some work.’2318 By ‘slipping’ Deir el-Medina ostraca, Jaro meant that he was adding data to his various indexes on slips—the vocabulary was adapted from the slips Moss used for data in the Topographical Bibliography. The visit to Brown University brought Jaro into direct contact with an American Egyptological scene that was developing dynamically. Only a few years earlier the Charles Edwin Wilbour chair was established at Brown University thanks to a bequest by Wilbour’s daughter, and ‘the first Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor, and the Chairperson of the new Department of Egyptology at Brown’ was Parker.2319 Jaro visited Boston to admire its Egyptian collections, writing that those in its Museum of Fine Arts visit enabled him finally to appreciate ‘fully the beauty of their O.[ld] K.[ingdom] sculpture’.2320 In December, Jaro and Marie were invited by Paul Schubert to visit Yale University in New Haven,2321 including an an overnight stay and dinner. Since the invitation was to the Yale Divinity School, Jaro asked if Marie (as a woman) would be equally welcome and was reassured.2322 The Divinity School had accepted female students since the early twentieth century and had awarded degrees to 2316 2317 2318 2319 2320 2321 2322

GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.7, 17 November 1954. The resulting publication was Gardiner 1955. GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.7, 17 November 1954. Thompson 2015–2018, III: 247; for Parker see Bierbrier 2019: 353–354. GIA, Collection Gardiner, AHG 42.56.7, 17 November 1954. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1807–21.1811. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1807.

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women since 1932.2323 The trip to Yale also offered him the opportunity to check artefacts on behalf of Moss,2324 which he did in several collections during his American tour.2325 Correspondence arrived regularly from Sewell, on matters both related and unrelated to work. Jaro’s student Harris sent both letters and his essays,2326 but Sewell kept an eye on him.2327 The Griffith Institute was facing some financial problems but Sewell reassured Jaro that the Topographical Bibliography was safe.2328 There were severe winter gales in Oxfordshire that December and the garden at Linkside Avenue had suffered some damage, particularly to its pergola.2329 January 1955 found Jaro and Marie back in Providence, where they received word from Sewell that she had taken charge of the repairing of the pergola.2330 Some colleagues wrote directly. Fairman reported from Liverpool about a promising student, Kenneth A. Kitchen, a ‘brilliant … nice lad’,2331 whose examination had to be postponed because of the candidate’s ill health. Faulkner, then a resident of Boars Hill, a village near Oxford, wrote to discuss sport and fitness. Faulkner was something of a sportsman who recently had to give up on his equestrian pastimes, and was pleased to hear that Jaro was keeping fit despite long hours of work.2332 Jaro had taken the opportunity to amble with Marie around the campuses he had visited. Naturally, Jaro used every opportunity to advance his collection of ostraca texts. He generally compartmentalized his working 2323 https://divinity.yale.edu/news/co-education-forgotten-women-yds, quoting archive materials, including ‘Yale Divinity School’s Women’s History Project,’ n.d., Yale University Divinity School memorabilia collection RG 53, Series VI, Box II; http://divinity-adhoc. library.yale.edu/Exhibits/Eight%20Decades%20of%20Women%20at%20YDS.pdf, both websites accessed 3 June 2022. ‘Eight Decades of Women at Yale Divinity School’. Yale Divinity School, n.d. There were fourteen female students at YDS in 1954. 2324 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.7, 17 November 1954. 2325 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1448, 16 September 1954, J. Černý to R. Moss. 2326 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1033. 2327 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1830. 2328 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1826. 2329 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1825. 2330 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1827; a long letter from B. Sewell. 2331 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.568, 2 January 1955. 2332 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.648, 19 February 1955.

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hours (or days, for fieldwork in Egypt), but always seemed to find time for his underlying occupation with Ramesside ostraca, and especially with objects related to Deir el-Medina. An invitation by John A. Wilson and Carl H. Kraeling to Chicago,2333 toward the end of January, afforded him the opportunity to pursue his fixation in the Oriental Institute’s collections.2334 Jaro gave talk on oracles at the OI and offered a conversation on Late Egyptian grammar.2335 The Černýs stayed with the Wilsons.2336 Wilson was an altogether interesting personality and was almost Jaro’s exact coeval (born in 1899, died in 1976), but unlike Jaro left a personal memoir that, alongside DesrochesNoblecourt’s La Grande Nubiade, is now regarded a major piece of Egyptological autobiographical life-writing for that generation. Jaro and Wilson were to meet again in Egypt in the coming years. In February, Jaro and Marie visited New York, where Jaro sought out Deir el-Medina artefacts in the Metropolitan Museum.2337 It was a very cold and snowy February, but this does not seem to have put the travellers off. Jaro subsequently arranged with Hayes for photographs to be taken of individual ostraca.2338 In early spring, Sewell wrote that she was expecting Jaro to return ‘jet-propelled’ in due course.2339 Sewell’s remark evokes a new means of travel that was yet to come: a new era of jet aviation that was fast, elegant (albeit jet-lag inducing), and a far cry from the deafening ride in a thundering Handley Page Halifax that Jaro had endured on his return to Prague a decade earlier. A BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) poster advertized the de Havilland Comet as the ‘Finest Service Plus Fastest Airliner’,2340 luring prospective customers with discounted family 2333 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1970, J. A. Wilson inviting J. Černý to Chicago; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1292–21.1295, communication with C. H. Kraeling. 2334 While Jaro was in Chicago he planned on copying ostraca: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.65, 29 January 1955. 2335 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1293. 2336 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1970, 3 January 1955, from J. A. Wilson. 2337 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1063. 2338 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1064. 2339 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1831, 21 March 1955, from B. Sewell. 2340 Bridgeman Education Collection, BAD2157713, 1950s BOAC poster.

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rates and lobster salad. But this was still in the future: in 1955, it was the propeller of a ship that took Jaro and Marie back across the Atlantic. Before joining the propeller set, Jaro returned to Providence in February and March in order to teach two courses called ‘Introduction to Late Egyptian: Reading of Texts in both Hieratic and Transcription’, and ‘Reading and Research: Reading of late Egyptian texts’.2341 The classes provided Jaro with the impetus to consider something other than Late Egyptian: an examination of the purpose behind the Khufu boat that came ‘in result of considerations suggested to the present writer by a study of information then available, and submitted to a small circle of students at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, on March 14, 1955.’2342 In the resulting publication, Jaro discussed Old Kingdom boats and concluded that defining Khufu’s boat as a solar barque (as opposed to, for instance, a boat to be used by or having been used by the king) might be premature. He did not promote himself as an expert on boats, but he enjoyed a thorough discussion with the students at Brown on a subject with which he would not have normally have engaged. Jaro and Marie returned from their US trip in April 1955 to some bad news. Kahle, the co-author of the ‘Old Coptic horoscope’ paper, had died. He was only in his early thirties, and it was a blow to his friends and family, as well as to Coptology. Walter Till, Jaro’s regular Coptological correspondent in Manchester, was devastated, and shared his worries about the future of Coptology in the UK.2343 Jaro’s views mattered to his colleagues. He was evidently considered the ideal person with whom to discuss elements of academic development in the discipline, even on topics in which he did not claim expertise. The respect of Coptologists such as Till was in part linked to Jaro’s comprehensive work on all aspects of the Egyptian language, including Coptic, but also to his personality. He was an enabler, always willing to support younger 2341 Codes * 291, 292 in the list of courses. Information courtesy of the Assistant University Archivist, P. Jordan, Brown University Library and Archives, 10 June 2019. 2342 Černý 1955a: 75. 2343 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1900, 14 May 1955, from W. C. Till.

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colleagues, and considered Kahle to have been a promising researcher,2344 one now lost to the cause of scholarship. In this context, and in the context of ongoing conversations about the future of the discipline, it is curious that Jaro did not appear to promote Jelínková (now going by Eva Reymond) more actively with Till, but the contents of their conversations are lost, and Reymond did eventually obtain a post in Manchester.2345 Following the discussions in March, Jaro began to draft a paper on the Giza boat, and by June it was sufficiently developed to be sent to Fairman for consideration.2346 The following summer vacation was dedicated to text collecting and a trip to Paris. Marie visited her mother in Boskovice and found her very ill.2347 There were new developments in Egypt in 1955. The situation in the country had changed massively between 1952 and 1954, and by 1955 it had a relatively stable government, mainly due to Nasser eliminating his opponents in 1954.2348 Jaro would work in Nasser’s Egypt for the rest of his life, and its government and political decisions influenced Egyptology—whether British, French, Czechoslovak, or Egyptian—rather profoundly. Joan Wucher King summed up the era as the ‘rule’ of a strongman president: Nasser ruled Egypt from November 1954 until his death in 1970, overseeing major changes in Egypt’s foreign and domestic policies. Internationally and regionally Nasser’s activist role—denouncing the Baghdad Pact, nationalizing the Suez Canal, intervening in the Yemen civil war, and supporting the liberation movements in Africa and the Arab world—was shaped by his determination to gain the leadership of the region and to mute the impact of the superpowers’ conflict on the regimes in the area.2349 2344 Kahle’s papers are to be found partly in the Griffith Institute Archive and partly in the archive of the Università degli Studi di Torino, as part of the archive of his father Paul Kahle, Sr.; identifier RE.PA. 2345 Her uncatalogued papers are held by the John Rylands Library at Manchester University. 2346 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.569, 26 June 1955. 2347 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2371. 2348 Nasser’s approach to domestic and international politics is difficult to subsume into a few lines; for a full treatment see Jankowski 2002, with an outline of previous scholarship. 2349 Wucher King 1984: 1–22, 466–474.

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Nasser preferred the idea of a non-aligned, neutral Egypt, over an Egypt that was influenced by either side of the Cold War, yet it was the Cold War and his perceived tendency to be a Communist puppet that determined much of what happened in the late 1950s.2350 Middle Eastern nationalists were generally indifferent to the nuances of the Cold War struggle—but they were not uninformed: ‘They instead sought to achieve or maintain national independence, to attract support from outside powers while avoiding domination by them, to develop their own resources, and to gain advantage in local conflicts.’2351 Nasser’s idea of governing Egypt involved technological development, buttressed by infrastructure (which first needed to be developed) and technical education at the expense of theoretical knowledge (though he was not unaware of the potential of forging a national identity around the country’s history).2352 And a strong army. Putting these ideas into practice was not, however, an easy proposition. Nasser had no intention of being dominated by the Soviets, but manoeuvred to not fully reject them either, as shown in the 1950s negotiations for an arms deal.2353 Several successive Egyptian governments sought arms from the UK and then the US, but simultaneously from the Soviet Union or then-members of the Soviet Bloc. These included Czechoslovakia, which was earlier a successful supplier of armaments to another key player in the region—Israel—and was approached by Egypt as early as 1951. Negotiations did not come to a successful conclusion until 1955, because political opinions changed repeatedly on both sides.2354 The difficulty was partly related to Nikita Khruschev’s desire to conduct a more global Cold War, in which the Middle East would become one of its fronts,2355 supported by the allegedly fraternal non-colonialist interest of the Soviets and their satellites exporting Socialism. Hence, Soviet and Czechoslovak arms were procured for Egypt by Czechoslovak

2350 2351 2352 2353 2354 2355

See Louis and Owen 1989: 3. Yaqub 2013: 246. Reid 1990: 189–192, 204–206. Laron 2007. Zídek and Sieber 2009: 53–59. Yaqub 2013; Hilger 2009.

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middlemen as part of a plan to arm Egypt,2356 which Egypt considered necessary following the Israeli raid on Gaza in February 1955.2357 The deal with Czechoslovakia would also build up moral ammunition against the imperialist West. International relations and geopolitical concerns were playing out among the Egyptian intelligentsia generally and in Egyptology specifically. The Antiquities Service was Egyptianized in 1952, and institutional positions and archaeological concessions were granted to Egyptians ahead of most foreigners. Ancient Egyptian history was kept close, as an aspect of the Egyptian national identity, and promoted by the new regime alongside the role of Egypt in the Arab world.2358 Ancient Egypt, more so than after the First World War, became part of the struggle to forge an Egyptian identity from a multiplicity of aspects, and of finding a place for Egypt on the international scene. The Soviet/Czechoslovak-Egyptian arms deal nonetheless provided a diplomatic opening, which would be used by Jaro’s former student Žába to promote the inclusion of Egyptology in the ‘cultural treaty’ that was to follow in 1956. Cynically, this could be viewed as being among the games of soft-power diplomacy played between Western, Eastern, and Egyptian opponents. Pragmatically, it could be viewed as part of the struggle to achieve a viable solution for Egyptology as a global intellectual project amid Egypt’s Cold War balancing act. This was a fraught struggle. Nasser’s state was no more democratic than its royal predecessor, although it brought in some significant social changes. It had populist roots, used socialist rhetoric without wishing to become Socialist, and kept some democratic forms without building a democratic form of government. Even before Nasser removed his one-time ally Muhammad Naguib, his policy was to control and eliminate any intellectual opposition to his regime. The university purge of 1954 ‘dwarfed anything Fuad or Faruq had ever dreamed of.’2359 The manoeuvring space for Egyptology was more limited than before the Revolution, but those limitations still had to be taken into account. 2356 2357 2358 2359

See Dawisha 1979: 10–12; Dejmek et al. 2018: 477–478, 492. Laron 2007: 26–27. On the position of Nasser, see Kyle 1991: 78. Gershoni and Jankowski 1986. Reid 1990: 170.

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In 1954 and 1955, plans were developed for a new institution, the Centre de Documentation d’Ancienne Égypte (CEDAE). Among the driving forces were the Egyptian Egyptologists Ahmed Badawi and Mustafa Amer, along with Jaro’s friend Desroches-Noblecourt.2360 It had been constituted, among other motives, on the impetus to protect monuments that would be endangered by plans for a major hydrological project on the Nile, the Aswan Dam. There was already a pre-existing complex of dams in southern Egypt that regulated Nile floods, provided a consistent water supply, and had the potential to guarantee the electric power needed for an Egyptian industrial programme. The Aswan Low Dam, as it subsequently became known, was begun in 1898 and finished in 1902, and then raised in 1912 and again 1933. The dams were considered to be a considerable feat of engineering and the earlier phases have been described in glowing terms. One of the promoters of Nile regulation, Harold Edwin Hurst, wrote an enthusiastic account of the dam’s development in his volume The Nile, a General Account of the River and the Utilization of its Waters.2361 The engineer Adrian Daninos, however, proposed a high dam that would tower over existing structures and create a substantially larger reservoir, an artificial lake that would affect the regions known as Lower and Upper Nubia. This plan was complicated in 1956 when these regions ceased to be part of the single administrative continuum of Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and became two independent states, Egypt and Sudan. The dam was still a priority of the new Egyptian government but Daninos’ plans needed to be reconsidered. Yet in 1955 it was becoming increasingly clear that Egypt was serious about the dam project, causing tensions about which country controlled the Nile, and which eventually led to a 1959 agreement apportioning use of Nile waters, resolving the Egypt-Sudan dispute for the time being.2362 This economically attractive plan would 2360

Andreu-Lanoë 2011: 2. Hurst 1957. 2362 Full text of the agreement is accessible at https://www.fao.org/3/W7414B/ w7414b13.htm. Accessed 3 June 2022. For an early evaluation of the agreement, see Abdalla 1971. The politics of water management in the Nile Basin are ongoing and have been the subject of a number of more recent studies, see, e.g., Tvedt 2010. 2361

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mean the destruction of many square kilometres of settlements, the displacement of local communities,2363 strategic concerns for communities living downriver from the dam, and immediate dangers to archaeological monuments (notwithstanding the substantial ecological damage that arose over the long term). Arguments abound regarding whether archaeological practice centred around Egyptian monuments was ‘often purposefully forgetful of contemporary Nubia’.2364 And the difficulties faced by displaced communities were larger than they appear from any planner’s desk.2365 Yet the Egyptian plan to build a high dam at Aswan provided the impetus for UNESCO to contribute substantially to the establishment and running of a new institution—CEDAE—and its missions. The founding document was signed in April 1955.2366 It would work to coordinate surveys, including epigraphic surveys, of endangered monuments. Jaro’s name was soon put forward as a specialist who would be ideal for the project. He was closely connected to British and French Egyptology. His personal situation as a stateless person originating from a country then aligned with the Socialist Bloc made him more acceptable to the politically neutral Egyptian government, which was still seeking rapprochement with the East while renegotiating its historical relationship with the West—a paradoxical positive to Jaro’s ‘unaligned’ status. His French ally, Desroches-Noblecourt, emphasized this about his statelessness in her later memoir.2367 Together with Edel and Sergio Donadoni, Jaro was a foreign expert acceptable to the Egyptians, with the credentials of a scholar who viewed Egyptology as a global intellectual project: in 1955 he was consulting with an unidentified Argentinian Egyptologist, hoping that the subject might find an academic footing in Argentina.2368

2363

For which see Belal et al. 2009; Hopkins and Mehanna 2011. As suggested by Carruthers 2020: abstract (full paper not seen). 2365 See Reynolds 2012b, building on the approach of Mitchell 2002. 2366 13 April 1955, in a recollection by Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 142. 2367 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 170. She hints, in the year after the Suez conflict, that Jaro, Donadoni, and Edel were considered acceptable to the Egyptians because they did not have British citizenship. 2368 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1587–21.1593. 2364

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While talks were ongoing, Jaro spent the summer of 1955 travelling. He went to Paris without Marie, who was visiting Czechoslovakia. The situation in Czechoslovakia was far from stable. It became less dangerous after Stalin’s death in 1953, though Czechoslovak Stalinism had proven tough to eradicate. Marie managed to travel regardless, and wrote from Boskovice to Paris in mid-August,2369 when Jaro was collating Papyrus Mallet, mostly using photographs.2370 In Paris, he probably met with Desroches-Noblecourt, who was actively seeking to establish the CEDAE team for large scale epigraphy projects in Egypt. As a specialist on Late Egyptian and—increasingly—on the diachronic development of the Egyptian language, Jaro also became a distant consultant for Peter Kaplony, a Hungarian working on Late Egyptian and New Kingdom texts in Middle Egyptian but with Late Egyptian influences.2371 He was glad to see a positive outcome for Iversen’s publication on Egyptian colour and paints,2372 which interested Jaro as a lexicographical exercise and as another step toward connecting words with objects. Jaro’s work-life balance was helped by Marie, but also by Anna, who regularly brought her new family over for visits. In September 1955, the Černýs enjoyed a warm day in the garden with Anna and her new-born son Nicolas.2373 Jaro was then preparing for the upcoming term, expanding—as usual—his collection of texts, collating earlier notes on Papyrus Anastasi VIII, one of the Ramesside letters in the British Museum,2374 and working on texts from other objects. He visited London repeatedly.2375 He was involved in academic politics, on this occasion a discussion with his Oxford colleague Driver regarding British Academy membership for de Buck.2376 He remained a supportive 2369

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2371. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.114. 2371 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1235–21.1248. 2372 Iversen 1955. For the correspondence see GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1089, 10 September 1955, J. Černý to E. Iversen. 2373 Courtesy Anna Allott, private archive, A. Allot’s photo album. A photograph from September 1955. Nicolas was born in early July 1955. 2374 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.114, p. 12 recto. 2375 Including in November 1955: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.70A, p. 1. 2376 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2082f. 2370

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mentor to Harris, who appreciated Jaro’s input on teaching about art and craftsmanship—material culture—in Egypt.2377 Harris was initially not successful in obtaining a fellowship, or a job in academia generally, and worked as a builder,2378 but Jaro continued his collegial mentoring, lending Harris his notes and consulting on his work. In autumn and winter 1955, he was asked for an assessment of Harry S. Smith, who was applying for the Lady Wallis Budge Fellowship in Cambridge.2379 With Michaelmas Term concluded, Jaro began preparing for his next overseas trip, to Geneva to give a series of lectures in January, and then to Egypt. This time it was at the invitation of the CEDAE. It was to be his first trip to Egypt since the winter season of 1949 to 1950, and the first on which he was to be accompanied by Marie. Yet up until the very last moment it was still undecided. On Boxing Day, Jaro still thought that ‘at the end of January, we shall either return to Oxford where I shall immediately resume my Late Egyptian Grammar, or proceed to Abu Simbel—although this latter alternative seems more and more unlikely.’2380 The focus on his evolving Late Egyptian grammar had no doubt been revived by his experience at Brown University. Another project that Jaro had been tackling since the late 1940s (and the preparatory fieldwork for which dated back to 1935) was finally resolved. The updated Sinai inscriptions volume was being indexed by Harry James, even during James’s visit to Egypt where he accompanied Caminos.2381 Jaro encouraged Iversen after the publication of his colours and paints paper on Iversen’s next project, on canon and proportions, and enjoyed his ideas about the djed hieroglyph: ‘I like this kind of rationalistic explanations [sic]. I hope you will write an elegant and convincingly worded article and am sure that Faulkner will be delighted to have it for the next volume of JEA.’2382 2377

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1034. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1036. 2379 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1852–21.1853, 5 December 1955. 2380 Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence J. Černý and E. Iversen, 26 December 1955. 2381 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 1137–1139. 2382 Royal Danish Library, Collection Iversen, Correspondence J. Černý and E. Iversen, 26 December 1955. 2378

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‘Elegant and convincingly worded’ embodies the demands that Jaro placed on himself—and on others—to use an internationally accepted form of language, in order to minimize the possibility of disciplinary miscommunication. It also reflects his identification with English-speaking Egyptology, but as someone in the English-speaking world, not of it.

The archaeology of survey and rescue operations: cedae and unesco and research infrastructures: topographical bibliography and aeb Tying loose ends A time of post-war austerity was not one of academic austerity, at least not for Jaro. He produced a good deal of scholarship, including finalizing some projects that dated from before the war. He was finally professionally stable, although he still needed to balance tight workloads and the competing demands for his time and attention. The ‘overdue’ works included collaborative efforts with Peet and Gardiner on the Sinai inscriptions: a revised edition of the introduction and plates was published in 1952, with Jaro’s translations following in 1955.2383 The third part of John Pendlebury’s City of Akhenaten was released posthumously in 1951, containing Jaro’s translations of the hieratic texts from Amarna.2384 There was also a book with a particularly long gestation, the Répertoire onomastique,2385 essentially a compendium of hieroglyphic material pertaining to the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina. Jaro began collecting onomastica as early as 1926, preceding from tomb texts described by Kurt Sethe and Norman and Nina de Garis Davies, and the catalogue of tombs published by Gardiner and Arthur Weigall.2386 He collated, revised and expanded these

2383

Gardiner et al. 1952; Černý 1955d. Pendlebury et al. 1951. See Grundon 2007 for the history of these excavations. The EES and Glanville were closely involved, as the EES co-financed the campaigns. 2385 Černý et al. 1949. 2386 Gardiner and Weigall 1913. 2384

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texts until the late 1930s, and in the end the book was autographed by Clère with Jaro doing almost interminable collations.2387 He described individual tombs around Deir el-Medina, supplied onomastic information—names, titles, affiliations—and provided plans that indicated the locations of inscriptions on the walls, the model resembling that used by Moss for the Topographical Bibliography. The result is a summation of select textual information on people per tomb with the texts not entirely divorced from their physical contexts,2388 and a practical basis for further studies into the genealogies and prosopographies of the community. If the Répertoire represented something of a culmination in his collecting of hieroglyphic texts, then his studies of hieratic material were ongoing: Jaro and Posener extended some effort in explaining to Charles Kuentz that the importance of the ostraca publications was undiminished.2389 By late 1955, Jaro was working on the final form of another book relating to Western Thebes, this one on its graffiti.2390 This volume was a result of another effort that had begun with walks in the Theban hills many years earlier, in 1926, when he decided to expand the study of graffiti trailblazed by Carter and Spiegelberg, and the latter’s local guides. Jaro stated in the publication that he was grateful to the IFAO team who had been so supportive of his chasses aux graffiti. He was also keen to emphasize that although some readers might think graffiti uninteresting, they actually showed a wealth of information on the community of workmen and were a fragile category of evidence, at risk being damaged or covered by the graffiti of more recent visitors.2391 He argued for research into graffiti, pointing out that as many might have escaped him as had escaped previous researchers, and that they therefore needed further attention. Considerations of the value of fragile evidence was a theme in Jaro’s work, as evidenced by the importance he placed on ostraca. Jaro registered the texts, 2387

Černý et al. 1949: viii. The repertoire has continued to be a viable starting point for work on the prosopographies and family histories of Deir el-Medina: Davies 1999; Sweeney 2019. 2389 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1622–21.1725. 2390 Černý 1956c. 2391 Černý 1956c: vi. 2388

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figures (texts had precedence),2392 and—with much care—their relative positions to other texts and heights above ground. Jaro’s shorter communications—the variety of papers and notes he published in the immediate post-war period—may be approximately divided into the historical,2393 and the philological,2394 though the division is perhaps more practical for a biographer than a reflection of Jaro’s thinking. The papers typically echoed his usual method—the meticulous search for ancient textual reflections of an historical practice, the outline of which might not yet be known in full.2395 The material practice of writing, which had attracted his attention at least since the editions of ostraca and papyri he produced in the inter-war period, flowered in ‘Books and Paper’, his inaugural lecture at UCL.2396 The work that came closest to his early intention of writing economic and social history was his contribution on prices and wages in Ramesside Egypt for the Journal of World History.2397 Jaro’s interest in Late Egyptian and the development of the Egyptian language from Late Egyptian to Coptic burgeoned during the war, and some of the papers he published in the decade that followed reflected this development, as did his exchanges with Gunn and his regular attendance at Gunn’s reading classes and seminars.2398 These discussions alerted Jaro to a fascinating aspect of the Egyptian imagination concerned with language, as he identified passages in several texts that pointed to the role of Thoth as a creator of the world’s languages, and ‘another proof that by that time [the New Kingdom] Egyptian gods had ceased to be purely national and were believed to show some concern about other nations as well.’2399 Jaro, who moved between several of Thoth’s ostensible creations with ease, and perhaps gratification, might have been pleased to see transnational imagery in those ancient sources. 2392 2393 2394 2395 2396 2397 2398 2399

Compare Dorn 2018. Černý and Barnett 1947; Černý 1955a; Černý 1955e; Černý 1956a; Černý 1956b. Černý 1950; Černý 1951b; Černý 1952b; Černý 1955c. Černý 1954a; Černý 1955b. Černý 1952a. Černý 1954b. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.983–21.1022. Černý 1948c: 122.

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The archaeology of survey and rescue operations: CEDAE and UNESCO Becoming institutionalized in academic Britain may have come at a price—he was subject to the schedule of the academic year— but Jaro believed that participation in fieldwork was an important part of an Egyptologist’s work. That he was able to partake was largely possible thanks to arrangements with his academic employers at UCL and Oxford, who accepted from the outset that his involvement in excavations would continue. The original focus of his fieldwork—Deir el-Medina—had been beyond reach since 1951, but it was replaced by other activities as the organization and priorities of archaeological activity in Egypt changed to become more Egyptianized. The UNESCO-coordinated campaign in Egypt and Sudan ahead of the construction of the Aswan High Dam has now been subjected to detailed research as a historical phenomenon in its own right, situated as it was in the Cold War and during the process of decolonization.2400 It ‘became the preoccupation of Egyptian and foreign archaeologists alike. Such intensive foreign involvement in Egyptian field archaeology had not been seen since the 1930s. The level of international cooperation was unprecedented, and set the stage for the decades that followed.’ The author of this quote, Donald Reid, hastened to add that ‘the old tensions and conflicts of interest left over from the semicolonial period were never far beneath the surface.’2401 UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, arose from a war-ravaged world with the purpose of rebuilding and fostering an appreciation of world heritage, by circulating experts and forming links of cooperation.2402 Its activities were—and remain—embedded in world politics, as well as in expert discourse that emphasizes the shared heritage of humanity.2403 Its goals are sincere, though it is often beset by the inevitable pragmatism of insalubrious international politics, and it has produced tangible results similar to other 2400 2401 2402 2403

With forthcoming publications by William Carruthers. Reid 2015: 365. Duedahl 2016. Harrison 2013: Chapters 3, 4 and 9.

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United Nations-related organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) which achieved the eradication of smallpox in timeframe similar to that of archaeological work during the construction of the Aswan dam. The last case of this deadly disease was documented in 1977, after over a decade of intense campaigning and inoculation. Tensions surrounding the work ran high, especially regarding the participation of international experts, as Egypt had its own approach to modernity. One visual element that encapsulates some of these difficulties is attire, as archaeologists in photographs from the Aswan campaign are often dressed in a way that no archaeologist in the 2020s would, for fear of offending local sensibilities, especially in the rural areas of Egypt and Sudan. In the 1960s, with metropolitan Egyptians in Westernized dress,2404 and Nasser’s Egypt looking to balance its history (beyond simply pharaonic Egypt) with its envisaged future as a modern etatist society, it was easy to assume that tensions in the ‘developing’ world would be smoothed as economies improved and industrial production increased: It is not difficult to imagine the scene in Tahrir Province (the definitive land reclamation project inaugurated under Gamal Abdel Nasser) upon the arrival of a high-profile visitor—such as the Yugoslavian ambassador, who visited in January 1957—or the representatives of the newly formed National Assembly, in September 1957. Former peasants appeared now as citizens, the men dressed in gingham shirts and overalls, the women in white shirts, black skirts, and printed headscarves, looking quite picturesque for the cameras. Early-morning visitors would no doubt witness the call to attention, the daily salutes and nationalist songs sung in unison.2405

Next to them, international teams of archaeologists in shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and summer suits and dresses for festive occasions were not out of place. It was soothing to believe that modern Egypt, whether it embraced socialist etatism or strove to find its own model as nonaligned, would be an open country, and that the old tensions 2404 2405

Stillman 2000: 157. El Shakry 2007: 197.

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within Egyptology would eventually vanish in a shared drive toward the protection of its monuments. But Nasser was interested in more than a campaign that would work to the advantage of Egyptian interests amid international cooperation. He sought the development of Egyptian nationalism without addressing critical issues about how Egypt could develop as a state and a society—and he viewed the army as the driving force that would lead and reorganize both.2406 His regime rejected many positive aspects of King Farouk’s monarchy: ‘Monarchical Egypt, in sum, had constructed a reasonably impressive state that had in turn built up the country’s stock of physical and human capital. The military rulers who inherited that legacy squandered it,’2407 though this only became apparent later. The Egyptianization of archaeology had been underway since at least the Second World War, and Nasser’s policy was to take this process to re-focus it on using Egyptian cultural heritage as a political tool. Archaeological cooperation happened just as much in spite of the new regime as thanks to it. In this atmosphere of conflicting nationalist and transnationalist interests, Jaro took the position that mapping and surveys were necessary in support of rescue operations, and as an opportunity for strengthening cooperation between Egyptological colleagues. Thus, he accepted the invitation that DesrochesNoblecourt had mediated. It seems possible that, unlike Gardiner a decade earlier, he took the changes to Egypt in his stride and hoped for the best, by doing what he knew best—working hard within a team to deliver research on Egyptian monuments that were widely believed to be in imminent danger. Recording what he regarded as being in jeopardy—whether individual graffiti or monumental buildings—was his ingrained response. His was not a position to assess Egyptian domestic and foreign policy, but he had always tried to make openings for his Egyptian colleagues. In so doing he generally moved within his social class, and didn’t try to promote social change in Egypt: it might have appeared to him that Egyptians were quite capable of doing that on their own. Besides, his social class was a broad church, and 2406 2407

Jankowski 2002: 14–15. Springborg 2018: 33.

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although from the 1950s this meant mostly professional academics, his own background was underprivileged and he never looked askance at colleagues with non-standard careers. It has been suggested that Egyptologists from abroad should look for ways to further the academic careers of Egyptians beyond the circle of their academic peers.2408 It could be argued being open to academic peers with diverse career trajectories is not a bad first step. Jaro’s epigraphic work in Egypt and Nubia also brought him into ever closer contact with Egyptian Egyptologists. Research infrastructures Jaro’s cross-border approach is reflected in his views about the circulation of Egyptological information in published works. This approach was given material form in two main ways. The first was the personal library he built via unabated book exchanges that crossed borders and political divides.2409 The second was of a broader disciplinary character, by what would in the twenty-first century be characterized as an interest in, and support for, research infrastructures: ‘Research infrastructure’ means facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct toplevel research in their respective fields and covers major scientific equipment or sets of instruments; knowledge-based resources such as collections, archives or structures for scientific information; enabling Information and Communications Technologybased infrastructures such as Grid, computing, software and communication, or any other entity of a unique nature essential to achieve excellence in research. Such infrastructures may be ‘singlesited’ or ‘distributed’ (an organised network of resources).2410

2408

Quirke 2007, 2013. Illustrated in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1066A–21.1068; communication with F. Hintze. 2410 This is the definition promoted by RISCAPE (European Research Infrastructures in the International Landscape); https://blogs.helsinki.fi/riscape-project/what-is-a-researchinfrastructure. Accessed 3 June 2022. 2409

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In 2013, Sheila Anderson outlined the importance of research infrastructures as follows: We need to view infrastructure as a material and experiential presence that is embedded in the practices and experience of research, which builds on and enhances that which already exists, that unites scholars with archivists, librarians, and museum curators, and that also finds a place for the amateur.2411

Two notable Egyptological research infrastructures were developing in Jaro’s day. An early bibliography was introduced by the Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth as the so-called ‘fiches bibliographiques’, available via subscription in the 1930s. Jaro was an eager subscriber to these. Its successor became known as the Annual Egyptological Bibliography (after 1947). Its first editor was Jozef M. A. Janssen, and in his own words it came to existence ‘at the meeting for the formation of the International Association of Egyptologists’ in Copenhagen.2412 It was soon welcomed by Egyptologists as an ‘indispensable instrument’,2413 and was encouraged: ‘A better guide to building up the current phases of an Egyptologist’s library could not be imagined.’2414 Janssen also saw its limitations and drawbacks, chiefly the time needed for the compilation of a functional annotated bibliography and the challenges of providing suitably informative summaries. Jaro ensured that he was available to the editor of the AEB at need, although his involvement was less extensive than with a second research infrastructure project, which was also closer to his new professional home. The Topographical Bibliography had already been in existence for two decades when Jaro arrived in Oxford. Moss had developed the idea of a such a bibliography in the first decades of the twentieth century, and the first volume, on the Theban area, appeared in 1927 after three decades of meticulously collected bibliographical data organized according to a spatial key. It has since been followed by eight others (with revised editions), moving from geographically-situated archaeological locations to include unprovenanced finds, an expansion 2411 2412 2413 2414

Anderson 2013: 4. Janssen et al. 1947: 9. Gardiner 1952: 138. Seele 1951: 213.

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of the ‘deep map’ that Moss originally conceived. As an extensive map and gazetteer of Egypt it established reference points for Egyptology. Sites, monuments, and finds held in museums which had been unevenly distributed across Egyptian geography, publications, unpublished archives, and half-forgotten collections were now anchored in the structure of a known landscape, onto which the existing body of Egyptological knowledge was projected. The Topographical Bibliography defined sites and objects, and codified what was spoken about in Egyptology, but its principal element was that it was never meant to be suspended in time and fossilized; it was a living research database, constantly monitored, modified, and expanded. The description of monuments gradually gained more granularity. The 1960 revised edition of the first Theban volume ‘differs in many respects from its predecessor, and the scope has been enlarged to provide a brief description of all scenes in accessible tombs, many still unpublished, together with tombplans, and maps showing their position in the necropolis.’2415 More detailed descriptions of individual scenes were offered. The scope of documentation and records pertaining to individual monuments also needed to be developed,2416 so both published and unpublished documentation archives were increasingly included in the Topographical Bibliography dataset, to ensure the dissemination of data from fieldwork that might otherwise have gone unknown. It was an adventurous undertaking, integrating the field and the archive, and Jaro had sought to always be available to Moss, since his arrival in Britain, for her many and varied consultations on the reading of inscriptions, or to compare their experiences and observations of individual monuments. The validity of this research infrastructure project has long been proven, and if anything can be raised as an objection it would be that it should ideally have its own field team, comprising both Egyptian and international researchers. Jaro’s interest in infrastructures projects can be explained by how he conceived Egyptology, though he was apparently not keen to leave too many traces of this conceptualization in the published 2415 2416

PM I2.1, vii. PM I2.1, vii.

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record. His was an integrated approach to knowledge, involving both the archaeological and philological, as can be seen in how he always approached Deir el-Medina: there was always something that ‘needed doing,’ as he explained to Glanville.2417 Ever since the 1930s, he had become aware that the amount of Egyptological information being produced was growing exponentially, beyond the capacities of individual researchers. Modernity had an answer to that—specialization. The Classicists of the 1950s debated the forces that drove humanities to be part of a modern industrial complex, of specialized thought without responsibility and context. Seventy years ago it was felt as acutely as it is in the present: The importance of some limited trait, impulse or interest has been over-emphasised at the expense of an inner harmony and the integrating power of the will. If we take this characteristic of modern life into account, and if we come to see that the ethics of fragmentation are threatening to replace the ethics of Humanism, the educational trends of our time will become easier to understand. The traditional Arts curriculum still—in spite of the defects foisted upon it by the current love of specialization— inculcates a view of life which respects individual responsibility and the individual integration of human experience.2418

One means of overcoming the mass of information that was appearing, and which was increasingly requiring specialization, was to organize that information in such a way that even a dedicated specialist could access what their colleagues were producing, and think in context. Jaro was integrative, and although he founded his career on a specialization as a hieraticist, the specialization was a simply a skill and therefore a means to an end, whether that end was a better understanding of texts or more generally of Egyptian history. His personal trajectory as a scholar might be characterized by tension between integrative concepts and highly specialized projects, but he preferred to regard Egyptology as an integrated discipline with informed practitioners. Hence his support for research infrastructures. 2417 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.877; J. Černý to S. Glanville in a letter concerning A. M. Blackman and the rock tombs at Meir. 2418 Bolgar 1954: 392.

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These projects had their roots in the social and cultural developments of the late nineteenth century,2419 and did not immediately succeed, but their concepts were poised to suggest both a quantitative and qualitative change in research—and improved circulation of information within scholarship.

2419

On these, see Wright 2014.

BOOK V Non-aligned in a divided world? The Middle Eastern political environment of the 1950s—the recession of imperial control over regional politics after World War II; the Cold War and the leverage it offered to smaller states; the emergence of Israel and the persisting Palestinian problem—afforded Egypt greater freedom of operation in the international arena at the same time that it presented Egyptian leaders with new problems that demanded more assertive policies. James Jankowski2420 I do not know what spell or curse afflicts Anglo-Egyptian relations, but one there must be. It is extraordinary how often when productive steps have been taken to improve relations, or they have actually been improved for a spell, that something crops up or somebody—on one side or the other, does something stupid and back one goes to square one. Colin Crowe2421 Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. Albert Einstein (speech to the New History Society, 14 December 1930)

1956–1958 the new egypt By the start of 1956, Gamal Nasser’s Egypt was approaching both domestic and international politics with new-found confidence. When Jaro was last there, it was a kingdom that held the vestiges of British influence amid mounting tensions. But now it had a new façade, one of a country that presented itself as a bridge between the Arab and African worlds, a non-aligned country on a trajectory of self-aware neutrality between the blocs of the Cold 2420

Jankowski 2002: 181. Crowe was a senior British diplomat in Cairo in the 1950s and 1960s, quote in McNamara 2003: 7. 2421

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War. Nasser’s Egypt saw itself championing independence in Africa, and Nasser presented himself as having steered the fates of two independent countries, Egypt and Sudan.2422 The narrative was of a unified Egyptian nation, forged from the unique characteristics of its people and its reinterpreted history,2423 a modern Egypt of social equality under benign state influence that rejected even the sartorial practices inherited from the interwar period—Albert Hourani referred to the ‘vanishing veil’ as symptomatic of the mid-twentieth century.2424 This was not a nation that admitted its cosmopolitan history, but one wary of foreign involvement, under a leader adept at promoting his own particular brand of Arab socialism—and etatism.2425 This was a salient characteristic of Nasser’s regime: the need to exercise etatist control. Observers noted that ‘the expanded power of the state over society is immense,’2426 just fifteen years after the revolution. Ancient history needed to be assigned its place in Nasser’s order, and so state control extended to the antiquities sector. Yet its new legislative decisions prompted doubts as to whether understanding the past was truly the goal. They certainly made an impression on Bernard Bothmer: The new government formed after the Revolution of 1952 may have been influenced by the example set in the USSR, in China, and other countries of the East Block, where art objects and antiquities indeed belong to the state and never to an individual. Art is a product of the past, and to the Communist-Socialist world the past is essentially bad, exploitatious [sic], corrupt. Therefore its relics are best kept out of circulation, locked away in storage, and only a small portion may be shown in museums which can be used for political propaganda when needed.2427

The use of the past—and its artefacts—for the purposes of propaganda was certainly not limited to the Communist-Socialist world, and Nasser was not exactly a Communist himself, but he readily used access to antiquities as a political strategy.2428 2422 2423 2424 2425 2426 2427 2428

Holt 1968: 384–387, written soon after the events. Gershoni and Jankowski 1986. Stillman 2000: 157. For a detailed study, see El Shakry 2007: 197–218. Holt 1968: 369. Bothmer 1981: 119–120. Carruthers 2016: 37–48.

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Following a few raw, foggy, early January days in Oxford, Jaro and Marie set off for Egypt via Geneva, where Jaro gave several lectures on the workmen of Deir el-Medina and visited Georges Nagel. They escaped the raw winter of 1956,2429 despite Jaro’s apprehensions that something might intervene. This was a year of many changes for North Africa, in which several former French colonies, such as Tunisia, gained their independence. Yet despite the uncertainties, the prospect of an intensive campaign of work ahead of the Aswan dam project suggested that the past and the present could be reconciled. Travel between Europe and Egypt had changed irrevocably since the days of Jaro’s youth. Instead of a slow passage by train and ship (although this method was still practicable), most of the journey was by air, to Cairo airport in Heliopolis. Jaro was an inadvertent chronicler of the history of twentieth-century travel. In some respects, he was also a fortunate passenger, as the aircraft that typically flew between London and Cairo was the de Havilland Comet: ‘The Comet I was seen as the new hope of the British aircraft industry, but a number of crashes tarnished the image of this graceful airliner.’2430 In April 1954, one such crash happened on the Cairo route, and the Comet Mk. I was withdrawn from service. Later versions were safer, but the Comet’s reputation, and the reputation of the British aircraft industry, was damaged.2431 It had been six years since Jaro’s last visit to Cairo, and he immediately set about renewing his revisions and collations of the ostraca in the IFAO collection, including some originally intended to be part of the Gardiner collection that now had to remain in Egypt.2432 He also made inroads in the trove of ostraca from his last field season, in 1949 and 1950.2433 The city around the Institute was changing rapidly. The Cairene population had been growing steadily since the 1940s, 2429

Kynaston 2009: 605. Withey 1997: 147. 2431 Withey 1997; Bray 2015. 2432 On 2 February 1956, Jaro was copying IFAO ostraca in Cairo; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.116, p. 1f. On 6 February 1956, he revised transcriptions of the Gardiner ostraca deposited at the IFAO; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.112, p. 53, 56, and passim. 2433 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.116. 2430

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due both to overall population increase and to migration from rural areas,2434 leading to housing shortages. An exodus of its more cosmopolitan residents had started, and the city was losing part of its identity. Moreover, like many societies that embark on a process of nationalization and socialization, attempts to create housing and urban infrastructure did little to alleviate poverty. The first plan to modernize the Cairo conurbation bears the date 1956,2435 but the building industry has largely been unregulated, with rampant property speculation.2436 Jaro saw a crowded city. Many of the landmarks he would have recognized were gone, some of them destroyed. He was now an employee of UNESCO and the CEDAE, and thus not directly attached to the IFAO, but was still lodging at the Institute and his affiliation with it continued to a certain extent. He was also using a UNESCO passport, which gave the stateless traveller a degree of protection From Cairo, Jaro and Marie took the train to Luxor to board a CEDAE boat going further south. Once in Abu Simbel, in late January, he reported to Alan Gardiner that ‘the journey to Egypt did not pass without delays caused by fogs, but since our arrival to Egypt everything went smoothly.’2437 Barbara Sewell resumed her role as messenger, replying to letters and forwarding necessary details on to Egypt.2438 Jaro and Marie stayed at Abu Simbel in the company of Sergio Donadoni, Louis-André Christophe, Lutfi Tambouli, Hassan Ashiry, and Mounir Megally. Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt visited for a brief period to agree a work plan with the team.2439 Jaro initially focused on documenting a large stela on the temple terrace at Abu Simbel. This was the so-called Marriage Stela, the text of which describes the marriage of Ramesses II and a Hittite princess, essentially a diplomatic bond strengthening the 2434

Raymond 2001: 341–344, 348. Raymond 2001: 350. 2436 Volait 2005: 18–19. 2437 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.6. 2438 Incoming correspondence was winnowed by Sewell whenever Jaro was in Egypt. See, e.g., GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2074 (correspondence from Bernard Couroyer); GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1864 and 21.1865 (chasing up ostraca in Geneva). 2439 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 159–160. 2435

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peaceful links between two rival powers, and is an example of Ramesses’ propaganda machine at work.2440 He sought to read all of the ‘obscure passages’ and to use every resource at his disposal to achieve a clear copy: The formidable piece … is badly worn in many places, especially in its centre part. I have, however, the advantage of having plenty of time at my disposal, and the possibility of working at it by night, strong electric lamps illuminating the surface from either side or from below. I have thus obtained a number of new readings.2441

To help with the reconstruction, Jaro asked Herbert Fairman to send him the Amara West version of the stela. Fairman was one of the few regular correspondents allowed to contact him directly in Egypt, and wrote that ‘we all envy you being at Abu Simbel.’2442 As before, Fairman was keen to add weight to Jaro’s luggage by asking for recent IFAO publications, but also sent some sad news, reporting the death of Aylward M. Blackman. According to Desroches-Noblecourt’s recollections, Jaro worked days and evenings on the Marriage Stela, using sunlight during the day and spotlights in the evenings, altogether spending twohundred hours in front of the stela to finish a detailed record.2443 Donadoni, meanwhile, was working on an earlier aspect of Egypto-Hittite relations, the Kadesh battle reliefs, but left in February. Jaro wrote to Gardiner, with subtle reproach, to note that ‘after Donadoni’s departure last week our whole company are Egyptians with whom we get along quite nicely.’2444 One of these, the young architect Ashiry, would continue documenting Egyptian temple architecture in the decades to come.2445 Jaro and Marie returned to Luxor in late March, while other CEDAE teams continued the season. They stopped over at the Chicago House, and Jaro revisited the West Bank, including a short trip to the Valley of the Queens.2446 He was still on the lookout 2440 For an outline with a summary of previous scholarship, see Cannuyer 2010; see also Roth 2003 and the edition of the texts in KRI II: 233–257, 282–284. 2441 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.6, 28 February 1956. 2442 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.570, 12 March 1956. 2443 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 159. 2444 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.6, 28 February 1956. 2445 For an outline of Ashiry’s career, see Sadek 1993; Bierbrier 2019: 4. 2446 On 31 March 1956; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.25, p. 5.

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for graffiti, even though his first book on the subject was finally in the process of publication,2447 the culmination of thirty years of attention to this rich—and often underrated—epigraphic resource. It was becoming clear that graffiti would need still more work, but in 1956 it seemed possible to continue his studies of ostraca and graffiti in addition to the new, massive undertaking of epigraphy in Nubia. In April, Jaro and Marie were in Cairo for an inevitable stopover to work on ostraca.2448 Jaro was helping Serge Sauneron to finish revising the volume on non-literary pieces, the result of Sauneron’s earlier invitation to work alongside Jaro and Posener on the deluge from the Great Pit at Deir el-Medina.2449 He missed an opportunity to reconnect with two former colleagues by a matter of weeks, as František Lexa and Zbyněk Žába visited Egypt as members of the Czechoslovak ‘cultural delegation’,2450 which was to a certain extent a soft-power follow-up to the armaments contract from the year before, and a characteristic feature of Soviet Bloc relationships with the Global South.2451 It was also a corollary of the gradual opening of Czechoslovak scholarship to international networks, which was more pronounced in the sciences than in humanities.2452 Czechoslovak Stalinists were slow to accept Nikita Khrushchev, who renounced Stalin in the spring of 1956. Zdeněk Mlynář—in some ways the epitome of his generation—began his career in the Party as a naïve communist in 1946 and returned from Moscow to a turbulent Czechoslovakia: ‘An atmosphere of fear reigned, even among the young Communists. The expression of civic, political loyalty had become a formalised ritual … Given this atmosphere, Khrushchev’s speech on Stalin genuinely hit the CPC [Communist Party of Czechoslovakia] like a bombshell.’2453 Communists such as Mlynář, who likened Stalinist devotees (including himself) to believers of a faith, found it hard to swallow 2447

Černý 1956c. Revising ostraca readings, e.g., on 6 April 1956, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.116, p. 1f. 2449 Sauneron 1959: xviii. 2450 Macková 2011. 2451 See Muehlenbeck and Telepneva 2018. 2452 Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1749–1766. 2453 Mlynář 1980: 28–29. 2448

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the idea that Stalin, their ‘pontiff’, had only ever served himself. Still, some political prisoners were being released in that year.2454 None of this was reflected in the ongoing contact between Jaro with Žába, which was generally concerned with book exchanges for the former and Žába’s plans for the latter. Žába wrote that he was looking forward to meeting up with Jaro in Egypt, but this did not come to pass.2455 The adventures of the cultural delegation (fêted, but also thoroughly exhausted by a official programme)2456 were reported to Jaro not only by Žába, but by Rudolf Anthes, then working in Mitrahina as head of the University of Pennsylvania expedition.2457 Anthes and his team were navigating the new Egyptian political terrain as well as the complex archaeological terrain at Mitrahina, which was very different from the desert locations of most cemetery sites.2458 Various duties and letters awaited Jaro on his return from Egypt. He attended to his university responsibilities at Oxford, which included supervising John R. Harris,2459 whose thesis was titled ‘Lexicographical studies in ancient Egyptian minerals’.2460 One of the letters was from Bernard Couroyer in Jerusalem, who was intrigued by Jaro’s research into the idea of blood brotherhood.2461 Another was regarding the external examination of Fairman’s students at Liverpool, one European and one Egyptian. Fairman believed that Kenneth Kitchen was progressing well (he had obtained a fellowship),2462 but was somewhat less happy with Mohammed Abu el-Hassan M. Asfour’s progress and felt that the Egyptian’s thesis was not yet up to the expected standard.2463 Yet a few days later Fairman acknowledged Asfour’s different training, and the necessary adaptations that he’d had to 2454

Kovály 2012: 164–165. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 21 May 1956. 2456 Jůnová Macková 2018b. 2457 Lexa’s visit was referenced in a letter from Anthes; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2037. 2458 Carruthers 2015a. 2459 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1037; ‘An Invitation from the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies to Act as Supervisor to J. R. Harris’, 13 June 1956. 2460 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1037. 2461 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2073. 2462 As related by Kitchen. He and Jaro were at this time exchanging notes on loanwords in Egyptian; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1284A. 2463 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.572, 10 July 1956. 2455

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make which his European colleagues had not, after Jaro provided a kind and encouraging assessment.2464 In a private letter to Fairman, Jaro noted that the thesis was not very original, and that the substantial and painstaking collection of facts—a strong point of many Egyptian students—was not accompanied by an equally detailed interpretation,2465 but both were inclined to be supportive to Asfour’s project. Negotiations regarding the finances for the Aswan dam were ongoing amid the wider issues relating to the Cold War, as many exchanges among British diplomats centred on the expected (or supposed) growth of Soviet influence in Egypt. It was recognized that the Aswan dam was important to the Egyptian economy, and that an agreement was needed between Egypt and Sudan regarding the use of the Nile’s waters, but the Foreign Office was concerned with what appeared to be the exchange of British influence for Soviet.2466 Egypt may have intended to portray a neutral stance, but the Soviets were actively promoting their presence, and Soviet visits to Egypt in 1956 included members of the Czechoslovak military.2467 On July 26, Nasser announced that the Aswan dam would be paid for by Egypt, and the necessary resources would be obtained by nationalizing the Universal Suez Maritime Canal Company. This caused a diplomatic uproar,2468 and concerns about the impact on international trade flowing through the canal. Jean Sainte Fare Garnot, on holiday in France, wrote to Jaro reporting an excited Cairo, which was calm only on the surface.2469 Jaro spent most of the summer in Oxford. The weather was not particularly inviting, but he and Marie took a week in a coastal village in Somerset: ‘We had but one escape, a week at Porlock (Somerset), where we had a chance to come across some good

2464 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.574. Two typewritten pages, one twosided, with enclosed handwritten notes by Jaro and a carbon copy of an examiner’s assessment for a thesis by M. A. M. Asfour, dated 19 July 1956. 2465 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.574. 2466 TNA, PREM 11/1282, particularly reports from Sir Roger Makins, British ambassador in Washington. 2467 Vyhlídal 2011. 2468 TNA, FO 371/119078, JE 14211, report from Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, Cairo. 2469 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.833, 21 August 1956.

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weather for most part.’2470 Jaro was at this time collating texts in the Ashmolean Museum,2471 and Jack Plumley prodded him to finish the Late Egyptian grammar as he needed a substantial resource of philological comparanda for his work on Coptic.2472 Jaro corresponded with Henri Wild just before the beginning of the Michaelmas term, noting that he and Marie would meet with Wild in Cairo as soon ‘as the political situation has calmed somewhat.’2473 Jaro showed little acumen for international politics: he was as optimistic here as he was pessimistic the year before. Each year had a plethora of small tasks, often discharged via letters. He mediated a book exchange with colleagues in Berlin via Martin Krause, to whom he played host in the summer of 1956. Krause also added to the peer pressure by ostentatiously looking forward to the release of the long-awaited Late Egyptian grammar.2474 Jaro in turn asked for photographs of ostraca from Berlin collections, a request to which Krause obliged.2475 Jaro was regularly approached by prospective students and was always ready to explain that Egyptology required a strong command of languages, both because a knowledge of ancient Egyptian was essential and because Egyptology was published in several modern ones. He was intrigued, for example, by a letter from E. Z. Khanum, a female teacher from Karachi, who was interested in Egyptology in general and in the Hyksos period in particular. Jaro replied with details of the prerequisites for studying Egyptology at Oxford,2476 and while he might have optimistically overestimated the opportunities offered to Khanum, he yet again demonstrated his trust in the capacity of colleagues to be unaffected by factors 2470 Archives IFAO, Archives H. Wild, correspondence, ArchWild 0229, letter dated 4 October 1956. The French original shows that Jaro was still as comfortable in French as he was in English and Italian: ‘Nous n’avons fait qu’une escapade d’une semaine à Porlock (Somerset) où nous avions la chance de tomber sur un temps parfait pour la plupart.’ 2471 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.43. 2472 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1605. 2473 Archives IFAO, Archives H. Wild, correspondence, ArchWild 0229, letter dated 4 October 1956. Wild was consulting with Jaro, asking about copies of texts from tomb TT 6. 2474 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1300. 2475 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1301. 2476 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1262–21.1263.

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such as gender or nationality. At around this time he wrote a letter of recommendation for Diana Kirkbride regarding a post in Jerusalem,2477 but political turmoil overtook all other developments. In October, the chain of events known as the Suez Crisis erupted with immediate consequences for French and British Egyptology, and particularly for the IFAO. Although it is included here mostly from the Egyptological perspective, the Suez Crisis was a major turning point in global history, especially in the context of other conflicts and changes that occurred in the Middle East throughout the 1950s.2478 Disruptions to Egyptologists might seem minor in a global perspective, but Nasser’s approach to ‘nationalizing’ Egyptian history during the 1950s was symptomatic of his wider aspirations.2479 The origins of the crisis were closely—but not exclusively— related to plans for the Aswan dam. The dam needed to be financed by international loans, but Western loans were understood by Egypt as slow in coming, or not forthcoming at all.2480 Nasser therefore put into effect his plan to nationalize the Suez Canal Company, infuriating its stakeholders. To some, this demonstrated his Socialist tendencies; in Britain, Anthony Eden’s administration was willing to view Nasser as an ‘out-and-out Soviet instrument’,2481 seeing the behaviour of the Egyptian president as entirely lacking nuance. In a historical retrospective, David Cannadine has suggested that Eden himself lacked vision and had a limited understanding of complex world politics, and that he was ‘a mediocre figure who had got too far,’2482 though Eden was not alone in being prone to misunderstanding. During his late return to premiership in the early 1950s, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain to have a special relationship with the USA, which was not accepted by the American administration. Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in 1953:

2477

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1268. For which see, e.g., Smith 2008; McNamara 2003. 2479 See also Belli 2013. 2480 Kyle 1991: 80–83. 2481 Louis and Owen 1989: 3. British views of Nasser changed greatly throughout his career as a politician: McNamara 2003. 2482 Cannadine 1989: 325. 2478

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Mr Churchill is as charming and interesting as ever, but he is quite definitely showing the effects of the passing years. He has fixed in his mind a certain international relationship he is trying to establish—possibly it would be better to say an atmosphere he is trying to create. This is that Britain and the British Commonwealth are not to be treated just as other nations would be treated by the United States in our complicated foreign problems … In the present international complexities, any hope of establishing such a relationship is completely fatuous.2483

Eden’s actions and attitudes suggest that he inherited some of Churchill’s ideas about the exceptional status of the Commonwealth, as well as the many challenges facing it. In 1956, these included the notion that the Communist Bloc—and any regime that appeared sympathetic to it—was to be deeply distrusted. Britain was not alone in this. Concerns were voiced in France that the nationalization of this international waterway might also be a move to block oil supplies to Western Europe, endangering democratic countries.2484 This was not an entirely accurate view, but Soviet meddling was perceived as a significant threat by many countries, including the UK and the USA, and its actions were sometimes blown out of proportion.2485 The US political establishment had little sympathy for British imperialism, but plenty of ‘reasons of solidarity against the consequences of the infinitely nastier Russian one.’2486 Nearer to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon regarded the nationalization of the Canal positively, as an action fully within Egypt’s rights provided compensation was paid, and this attitude was communicated to Western diplomats.2487 In Iraq, ‘despite publicly endorsing the nationalization of the Canal in Arab League meetings, Iraqi leaders privately denounced the action and urged their British ally to use the occasion to overthrow Nasser.’2488 2483

Quoted Carlton 1988: 5–6. Summary of French press in July 1956; Sir G. Jebb, TNA, FO 371/119078, 27 July 1956, JE 14211/12. 2485 See, e.g., Little 2010; Eilts 1989. 2486 Hennessy 2007: 299. 2487 TNA, FO 371/119078, JE 14211/30, and 31: for the reaction of Syria and Lebanon, see also JE 14211/34. 2488 Jankowski 2002: 84. 2484

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Both sides began a spiral of politicized accusations, with military action being considered in the UK from at least late July or early August 1956.2489 Britain and France declared Nasser’s steps unlawful, endangering international maritime trade. Egyptian officials countered with accusations of meddling in Egyptian affairs, and of veiled imperialist ambitions behind Western comments about international commerce.2490 Distrust on all sides was fuelled by nationalist ideologies. The Suez Crisis may have ‘provided the decisive boost to Egypt’s position of Arab leadership,’2491 but it also provided an opening for Soviet interests, which were effectively another set of imperial interests in Egypt.2492 It is notable that it was only in the early 1960s, after the Soviets had entered the dam project, that Nasser began to articulate overt socialist tendencies and to promote the cause of Arab Socialism. Yet the pull of nationalism was stronger,2493 as evidenced by the unsuccessful attempt to build a United Arab Republic that would have joined Egypt with Syria.2494 There were rounds of diplomatic negotiations trying to ensure the free use of the Canal, and that ‘the operation of the Canal should be insulated from the politics of any country.’2495 These negotiations produced the six principles for the use of the Canal, including its apolitical aspects and the sovereignty of Egypt.2496 Eden insisted in early October that ‘the Americans must be made to feel issues in Africa and the Middle East in terms of straight “cold war” confrontations.’2497 In this he was not successful, as by mid-October Eisenhower believed that a crisis could be, or already was, averted. He does not seemed to have realized the degree of ‘schizophrenia’ that could be found in international, and specifically British, politics.2498 2489

Carlton 1988: 35–55. TNA, FO 371/119078, JE 14211/33, Sir Humphrey Trevelyan to Foreign Office, reporting press reactions, 29 July 1956. 2491 Jankowski 2002: 83. 2492 Louis and Owen 1989: 407. 2493 See also Reid 1990: 197–198, 200–203. 2494 Jankowski 2002: 27f., 65–99, concerning Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism. 2495 The term was used, perhaps inappropriately, by Carlton 1988: 52. 2496 Outlined in Kyle 1991: 281–288. 2497 Kyle 1991: 272. 2498 Carlton 1988: 53. 2490

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The Suez Crisis is well documented.2499 Following the buildup of tensions, French and Israeli diplomats sought to persuade Eden to settle accounts with Nasser, in an atmosphere in which Israel and Britain were themselves nearly at war because of a confrontation between Israel and Jordan. French negotiators suggested that if Israel attacked Egypt, France and Britain would then enter the conflict to protect the Suez Canal and ‘find themselves in control of the whole operation of the Canal; they would thus be able to install international management and break the blockade of Israel.’2500 David Ben-Gurion was suspicious of British interests and diplomacy, and yet the three powers accepted the plan, resulting in an Israeli attack on Egypt on 29 October 1956. Britain and France entered the conflict after issuing an ultimatum to Egypt and Israel to protect the Canal zone, which was followed by the bombing Egyptian airfields on 31 October and 1 November, and the landing of a taskforce to secure the Canal. This it proceeded to do, as many Egyptian troops were withdrawn by the Egyptian government to protect Cairo. The Suez invasion followed almost simultaneously by the Soviets invading Hungary in November 1956, which Sainte Fare Garnot noted with sadness in an early December exchange with Jaro,2501 aware of Jaro’s sensitivities regarding developments in Central Europe. Given that the Soviet Union had just invaded a sovereign country to further its political agenda, the Soviet outcry that followed the Suez operation seems like hypocrisy, but they were not alone in its condemnation: the general international reaction to the Suez Crisis was decidedly against Israel, Britain, and France. The United States pressed Britain for a ceasefire, which was announced on 6 November, to be followed by a withdrawal and ultimately reopening of the Suez Canal on 24 April 1957, where a ‘triumphant Nasser graciously granted to the British and the French the right to use in on the basis of the “six principles” on offer to them in the previous October.’2502 2499 Kyle 1991; see also Hennessy 2007: 405–457, regarding rivalries of Egypt and other Arab states. 2500 Kyle 1991: 297. 2501 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.835. 2502 Carlton 1988: 95.

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The showdown at the Canal, and the subsequent withdrawal of the invading troops, had immediate ramifications for Western Egyptology. The campaign may initially have been militarily successful, but in the field of cultural diplomacy it was a disaster. Jaro was an outside observer on this occasion, but his friend Desroches-Noblecourt was in Egypt, pursuing CEDAE projects with a group of UNESCO-sponsored experts. Her verdict was scathing: ‘The intervention annihilated within hours every positive aspect of over 150 years of French presence in Egypt.’2503 Fifty years later, the Oxford-based historian Michael Howard noted that it marked the end of the perception of Britain as a ‘good power’, and he compared the episode to the Munich Agreement.2504 Jaro’s views went undocumented: as always, he was very careful about what he committed to writing when it came to politics. Desroches-Noblecourt still believed herself to be on good terms of several prominent Egyptian personalities, including Sami Gabra and Taha Husayn (sometimes rendered Hussein),2505 though Husayn had brusquely ordered Bernard Bruyère out of Deir el-Medina in 1951. Husayn was an intellectual and an educationalist, and was capable of looking beyond nationalism:2506 ‘Culture is neither exclusively national nor exclusively universal, but it is national universal at the same time, and most often individual as well.’2507 But he was also well aware that culture was—inevitably—political, and like many intellectuals (in Egypt and elsewhere) would sometimes place national revival before cultural universalism. This was the situation faced by the generation that included Jaro’s teachers in Bohemia, and indeed of some his intellectual contemporaries, not long before.2508 Both times were challenging: ‘when cultural relations to Europe were being described more antagonistically by Egyptian intelligentsia, 2503

Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 162. As quoted in Hennessy 2007: 457. 2505 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 163. 2506 See Ronfard 1995; Gershoni and Jankowski 1986: 98, 150, 158; and Cachia in Meisami and Starkey 1998: 297. 2507 Mustaqbal al-thaqāfa fi misr, The Future of Culture in Egypt, 394, translated in Hawas 2018: 66. 2508 See Macura 1983. 2504

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and when the “international” scene in Egypt, like elsewhere, was being reorganized in the context of Cold War stalemates.’2509 Nonetheless, Husayn was convinced that ‘world literature is a single global site of cultural exchange and production,’2510 and that world scholarship could well be defined in similar terms. Husayn’s thinking exemplifies the intellectual dilemmas faced by many of his generation, and of the intellectuals among the efendiya, including Egyptian Egyptologists. In Cairo, Desroches-Noblecourt suggested protecting the premises of the IFAO by flying a UN flag over the building. Jaro soon joined an international scholarly campaign to protect the Institute’s magnificent library and legacy, after it was sequestered in December 1956.2511 At least on this occasion he was spared the dramatic evacuation aboard an American military vessel, the USS Fort Snelling, experienced by his French colleagues. Soon thereafter, it was made clear that British and French experts were not welcome, although an exception was made for Desroches-Noblecourt, or so she indicated in her memoirs, and for other specialists with particularly strong links to Egypt.2512 Jaro now had a material advantage, being stateless, and DesrochesNoblecourt and the new administrator of the CEDAE, Ahmed Badawi, were well aware of that. Desroches-Noblecourt referred to Jaro as remaining ‘Czech in his spirit’,2513 but that might have primarily been a useful label to mitigate his allegiance to a British institution. Meanwhile, Jaro, always interested in small cooperative steps to achieve larger goals, made a trip to Copenhagen in October, which he originally wanted to extend as far as Uppsala, in Sweden.2514 He was still—indeed permanently—on the lookout for book purchases, and now had his sights set on Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing’s library, and on any other books he could obtain, 2509

Hawas 2018: 67, interpreting Hussein 1955. Hawas 2018: 71. 2511 Several reports on the sequestration are included in the administrative archive of the IFAO, AIFAO, confidential files. 2512 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 170–171. 2513 Desroches-Noblecourt 1992: 176. 2514 Archives IFAO, Archives H. Wild, correspondence, ArchWild 0229, letter dated 4 October 1956. 2510

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including from East Berlin via Krause.2515 He also accepted an invitation from Benjamin Mazarto to contribute articles on Libyans and Punt for the Hebrew Biblical Encyclopaedia. This commission was discharged within a few months.2516 December brought the sequestration of the IFAO by the Egyptian authorities;2517 only the printing house was allowed to remain operational. Although the sequestration protected the building, to a certain extent, the situation was deeply concerning. Jaro had seen enough difficult political situations in his lifetime and was particularly anxious where libraries and archives were concerned. This was in part because of a personal perspective, Jaro having had his share of trouble maintaining access to a private research archive. But Jaro always promoted the circulation of research information, synchronically and diachronically, and the destruction of a major resource such as the IFAO library would have been an anathema to him, and to his belief in the development of international Egyptology. He argued for the protection of the IFAO, while remaining hopeful that tensions might pass and cooperative research channels might reopen. The fallout from the Suez Crisis had both short-term and longterm consequences for Jaro’s work at Deir el-Medina. During the sequestration there was no access to the ostraca held in the Institute, and therefore no related teamwork let alone a return to the field in Western Thebes. But the character of Egyptology in Egypt was changing, and Egyptology was increasingly being used in political gamesmanship,2518 a casualty of tense international relations. It might have seemed like a distant memory when Anthes wrote to him, reminiscing about an enjoyable meeting with Jaro and Marie in Mitrahina earlier in 1956, and adding that he had met Lexa in May.2519 Paradoxically, Czechoslovak Egyptology seemed to benefit from the crisis. Žába was slowly making inroads into a plan for cooperation with and in Egypt. Support for Oriental Studies, and research in general, was manifested in the establishment of 2515 2516 2517 2518 2519

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1302–21.1304. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.110, 21.1384–21.1385. Vercoutter 1981: 23. Discussed in Carruthers 2016 and Carruthers 2017. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2037.

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the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague, the intent of which was to establish state control of research via the financial control of its researchers. It was here, not in the ‘imperialist’ West, that academics were supposed to become Gramscian supporters of the state hegemony, tied to their institutions, with the Party offering material and financial sustenance that was supposedly more stable than in the inter-war period.2520 The efficiency with which Stalinist states worked at buying their scholars suggests that Antonio Gramsci was prescient when assessing the tactical ability of political systems to build cultural hegemony. But many researchers were not so easily bought, and boilerplate loyalty became a characteristic of scholars in totalitarian states. Jaro appears to have played upon this characteristic in his contact with researchers beyond the Iron Curtain. There was no shortage of requests for Jaro’s assistance. In January 1956, he posted some notes and books to Soviet Egyptologist Boris Borisovitch Piotrovsky,2521 whom he had known since 1947, as the Iron Curtain was no impediment for Jaro when he had longstanding links with fellow scholars. He may have remained silent about his political convictions, but his correspondence suggests he had no illusions about the realities of the communist world, and sought to subtly circumvent them by maintaining open communications. Jaro knew from his experiences in the Second World War that ordinary people might find themselves in political circumstances beyond their control, and that his correspondents behind the Iron Curtain might still believe in studying ancient Egypt while free from the influences of Cold War divides. Maintaining communications may have been awkward, but it was necessary. Few people, even those at the highest level, saw the escalation of tensions as sensible, and yet like Jaro were under no illusions about the fragility of the ‘sinews of peace’ that Churchill had advocated a decade earlier. All parties in the Cold War were locked in a dance of intimidation and competition. George Keenan noted: Are we to flee like haunted creatures from one defensive device to another, each more costly and humiliating than the one before, cowering underground one day, breaking up our cities the next, 2520 2521

Compare Macková 2015: 419–435. Loktionov 2019; Bierbrier 2019: 369.

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attempting to surround ourselves with elaborate electronic shields on the third, concerned only to prolong the length of our lives while sacrificing all the values for which it might be worth while to live at all?2522

Keenan’s lecture of 1957 was picked up by the British peace movement, but the author himself did not remotely advocate for disarmament.2523 In the 1950s it was all too easy for scholar to be similarly guarded about contacts, but there was no need for isolation or to refuse assistance if it could be given. He might have been under observation for his communications with people in Eastern Bloc countries, but Jaro was sufficiently convinced of the civilized character of ‘his’ side of the Cold War side to not be bothered. This was not naïveté, because Jaro knew the other side rather well. He made sure to leave no impression that he was a believer in socialism, even after intellectual flirtations with this model in Britain when the state’s role expanded under both Labour and Conservative governments.2524 He would have been keenly aware of his position as a stateless person, and the danger of prejudicing it by expressing strong political opinions. As it was, Jaro carried on with a quiet, if somewhat busy, life. Neville Chittick consulted his work on a stela from Gebel Barkal,2525 and Plumley finally planned a visit to Oxford to meet Jaro.2526 Christmas time was spent in Oxford with Marie in relative quiet. On New Year’s Day 1957, Jaro and Marie enjoyed a visit from Bernard Ashmole,2527 which suggests that Jaro’s social circle at Oxford was still growing. Ashmole was the Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford, and was of Jaro’s generation, having experienced both world wars, though unlike Jaro he saw active service during the Second World War. He had officially retired from the RAF only three years earlier, retaining 2522

George Kennan, Reith lectures, 1957, published in Kennan 1958: 54. Hennessy 2007: 526. 2524 For the complexity of these, see Ackers and Alastair 2016. 2525 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2069. Chittick later published the stela in Arkell and Chittick 1957. 2526 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1606. The visit was repeated in 1957: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1610. 2527 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2040. 2523

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the rank of Wing Commander.2528 Ashmole enjoyed his visit, and it is easy to imagine that they had much to talk about. Shortly after Christmas and New Year social obligations subsided, Jaro opened a letter from a Dutch scholar, Jacobus A. (‘Jac.’) Janssen,2529 who was planning to work on aspects of economic history. Janssen was a historian trained by Johan Huizinga, a cultural historian with an interest in anthropology and in portraying historical people as fully human beings.2530 This appealed to Janssen, and the perspective Janssen brought to Egyptology resonated with Jaro’s own early interests. Janssen planned to visit Oxford and to further develop their professional relationship. In the meantime, Desroches-Noblecourt was continuing her negotiations to help re-establish international Egyptological relations between Egypt and the West, and to get Jaro back to Egypt in the process. Žába was fighting no less desperately to find an opening for Czechoslovak Egyptologists in Egypt. Jaro had reconciled himself to missing a season in Egypt, and finally found the time to work on his Late Egyptian grammar.2531 This had long been put off, even though Fairman had exhorted Jaro: ‘for heaven’s sake let us see your grammar soon,’ as far back as 1949.2532 Grammatical work led to etymological work, and Sainte Fare Garnot thanked Jaro in March for another set of Coptic etymologies for the BIFAO.2533 Another party interested in Coptic etymologies was a Hungarian named Lászlo Kákosy, who updated Jaro about some ostraca in Budapest collections, and was glad for Jaro’s expertise when consulting on magical papyri.2534 Coptic was prominent in Jaro’s research, as he, Otto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker were then finishing work on the ‘Old Coptic horoscope’, sorting out the photographs and negatives needed for publication. Neugebauer once referred meekly that after sending a particularly bad photo he felt as ‘vopitza na 2528

See Boardman 2004; Ashmole 1994 (not seen). GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1167. 2530 Otterspeer 2010: 16–17. 2531 Sainte Fare Garnot referred to Jaro’s ongoing work on his Late Egyptian grammar in March 1957; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.839. 2532 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.554. 2533 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.840, 14 March 1957. 2534 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1218–21.1221. 2529

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prussu’,2535 hinting at their shared central European language strata. It ought to have been ‘vopice na brusu’ (‘monkey on a grindstone’, meaning incredibly awkwardly), one of the many inventive metaphors in Czech. In February, Jaro was home alone as Marie had to rush to Boskovice, to attend her mother’s funeral.2536 She posted a note from the Brno main post office when returning to Britain. In March, Jaro was again trying to help friends in Czechoslovakia, possibly having been alerted by Marie, by sending an antihypertension drug called Rivadescin via Krause in East Berlin.2537 Krause felt that Jaro was making a heavy workload for himself, due to his tendency to be available to everybody.2538 In April, Fairman reported again on Reymond-Jelinkova. In retrospect, the exchange seems ambiguous, as Fairman indicated she had a ‘reputation’ (without elaborating) but neither of the correspondents had anything against her gaining a university position.2539 The impression is almost one of relatively benevolent observers, of a slightly awkward person they both knew and whose work they appreciated, if not her disposition. Her own correspondence continued to show something of a highly-strung personality.2540 Every time Jelínková appears in Jaro’s life there is a noticeable and slightly awkward element of ‘appreciated, but…’. Žába believed that Jelínková had ‘designs’ on Jaro (Žába being an inveterate gossip-monger), but Jaro had a sensitive if jovial and self-controlled character, and might have found it difficult to deal with another sensitive, but far more edgy, character. This was never a reason to dismiss Jelínková professionally.

2535

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1496. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2375. 2537 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1304. Rivadescin had as its active ingredients the alkaloids from Rauwolfia serpentina. 2538 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1305. 2539 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.575. 2540 Excerpts from her correspondence are courtesy of Hana Havlůjová. The papers are kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, and their full evaluation is in progress (personal communication Robert Temple, Joanna Popielska-Grzybowska). Jelinkova’s communication could—as Jaro knew—come across as prickly, though this impression will undoubtedly be redressed when a detailed biographical study is concluded. 2536

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Jaro patiently produced references for Harris’ job applications from April to June.2541 In April he sent off the manuscript of the ‘Old Coptic horoscope’ and managed to squeeze in an Easter holiday in Somerset with Marie.2542 Easter that year was favoured by decent weather, and to the north, in the Lake District, locals complained of record numbers of visitors and their unruly behaviour, mainly littering.2543 The main reason for the break was probably to spend some time with Marie outside of the domestic setting, a motive better attested by some of his contemporaries at Oxford, including J. R. R. Tolkien.2544 Hotel stays freed academic wives from the need to look after a household, at least for a couple of days, and holidays were slowly becoming somewhat regular in Jaro’s schedule, although he maintained a somewhat reserved approach to leisure time, regarding it as something of a luxury. Jaro had further travel plans after his spring holiday in Somerset, to visit Paris and Turin. This shows that he was not kept particularly busy during Trinity term, and was able to take several weeks away. On this occasion he travelled without Marie. He spent a busy week in Paris, including meeting Desroches-Noblecourt who was keen to emphasize that having Jaro and Marie in Egypt was also desired by Egyptian colleagues.2545 He related to Marie that Desroches-Noblecourt met him at the airport, and then a social whirlwind ensued: Monday: lunch with Posener in Café Opera, afternoon: Louvre. Evening: party at Noblecourts, Lauer & his wife, Sauneron with wife, Yoyotte with wife, Father de Bourget, Barguet and his wife … Tuesday: lunch with Saunerons, tea at Yoyotte’s, dinner with Vandiers … Wednesday: lunch with Ste Fare Garnots, present Guéraud et Mme Guéraud and Noblecourts. Dinner … and afterwards … theatre ‘De dix heures’, where they sang political chansons, very funny.2546 2541

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1043–21.1048. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.651. 2543 The Guardian, 24 April 1957: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/24/ easter-litter-in-the-lake-district-archive-1957. Accessed 3 June 2022. 2544 Carpenter 1976. 2545 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2322. 2546 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2322, 18 May 1957. 2542

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The theatre on Boulevard Clichy has a tradition going back to the 1890s. In the late 1950s and 1960s it was famous for a chanson stage, but also had a tradition of plays by authors such as Oscar Wilde or Eugène Ionesco. Jaro worked on Louvre papyri with Clère for a few days while mentoring Caroline Peck, before taking leave of DesrochesNoblecourt and travelling by train to Turin. There his ‘reception was cordial, though not enthusiastic,’2547 the hotel was not very good, and some dental troubles crept in to complicate the stay. He nonetheless managed to work on material in the museum with Peck, who had accompanied him from Paris,2548 and to check some translations that Sainte Fare Garnot had sent in the post.2549 The state of preservation among the ostraca in Turin worried Jaro considerably. He believed that their legibility had suffered enormously, from the perspective of thirty-four years of work. Nonetheless, he managed to revise some of his earlier readings.2550 Jaro’s stay in Italy was quite long, lasting well into June,2551 and he noted to Fairman that the trip was altogether enjoyable despite the small irritations.2552 His colleagues were in turn enjoying Jaro’s and Gardiner’s new book on ostraca.2553 For some colleagues it was more than a professional tool, as upon receiving it Jacques Vandier felt nostalgic about their time, now long past, in Deir el-Medina and at the IFAO.2554 Faulkner was much taken with the book, and in turn noted that his own work was proceeding on a Middle Egyptian dictionary.2555 Jaro was consulted on Faulkner’s application for a position at UCL.2556 2547

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2322. Bierbrier 2019: 357. 2549 April to May, as shown in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.843–21.844. 2550 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.18, 17.20. 2551 Dates derived from two letters: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2377, 25 May 1957 (M. Černý to J. Černý, from Oxford to Turin); GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2056 (letter to H. Brunner thanking him for Brunner 1957, sent from Florence in June 1957). 2552 Reflected by Fairman on 2 June 1957; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.576. 2553 Faulkner congratulated Jaro on the book on 27 May 1957; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.653. 2554 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1918. 2555 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.652–21.655. 2556 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.654; J. D. McCormack, concerning R. O. Faulkner’s application to the University of London, June 17, 1957. 2548

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That summer, Jaro hosted his former student and mentee Eric Iversen, who was very much taken with Jaro’s hospitality in Oxford,2557 and they discussed his work on the canon of Egyptian art and on European reception of the hieroglyphic script. June also saw Jaro visiting Liverpool, with Kitchen writing of ‘our good Oxfordian friend Prof. Jaroslav Černý, for Eric Young’s oral examination’.2558 Jaro was also approached by Paul E. Kahle, Sr., that June about what to do with his late son’s Coptological manuscripts. Jaro recommended contacting Plumley, who was his own frequent contact on the subject.2559 He also supported a visa that would enable Siegfried Morenz to visit Britain, which the Leipzig Egyptologist had planned since March that year.2560 Jaro noted that he was but a stateless alien, and not in position of power, but his social standing as an Oxford professor could not be underestimated. Morenz arrived in late June and made a number of visits, including to Gardiner. He later proved an indispensable contact for Jaro by helping him access the Leipzig collections.2561 In July, Fairman and Jaro exchanged further notes on Young,2562 whom Jaro knew personally. Besides being his examiner,2563 he considered Young to be a promising scholar and recommended him to a post at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Young accepted. Young later remembered that Jaro was, among his many tasks, considering a new edition of the tombs in Beni Hasan.2564 Jaro’s notebooks certainly betray an interest in publishing the Beni Hasan hieratic graffiti.2565 Jaro not only provided recommendations for books as well as for people, including a long-awaited publication by Paule PosenerKriéger and Jean Louis de Cenival of the Abusir papyri in the British Museum.2566 Another French Egyptologist, Jean Leclant, 2557

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1100, 21 July 1957, from E. Iversen. Kitchen 2016: 102. 2559 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1216–21.1217. 2560 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1407–21.1412. 2561 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1413–21.1415. 2562 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.579 (7 July 1957) and 21.578. 2563 A meeting in 1957 referred to by E. Young in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1977, April 1962. 2564 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1977. 2565 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.78. 2566 July 1957, GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2063, 21.2066. 2558

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was keen to meet Jaro and later supplied information on the Strasbourg collection.2567 Jaro decided not to attend the Congress of Orientalists at Munich in the summer of 1957, but communicated with Parker, asking him to continue protesting the Egyptian move against the IFAO following the Suez Crisis.2568 Jaro had a brief intermezzo in August when he spent time with his stamp collection, and exchanged stamps with Krause in East Berlin.2569 In September, he asked William S. Smith about ostraca in Boston,2570 and was in turn pursued by his editors for proofs of the ‘Old Coptic horoscope’.2571 The publishers first discussed difficulties with printing the required illustrations,2572 and Faulkner was positively hurrying him up by mid-September.2573 Jaro lent a helping hand to Jean Yoyotte and translated his paper on Prince Ramesses from French to English, and succeeded with help from Faulkner.2574 Evidently, despite years of experience and a history of taking on too much work, Jaro was still willing to compromise his own work to offer help. Sad news came from Cairo, as Louis Keimer died on 10 August.2575 Another of Jaro’s links to the connected world of inter-war Europe, and to the war years, was gone. Term-time increased his workload, but proofreading did not ease up. Faulkner was still chasing the horoscope proofs,2576 and Sainte Fare Garnot began reminding Jaro that he needed to finish with his Coptic etymologies for the BIFAO.2577 Garnot was mostly in France while awaiting developments in Egypt, and had argued with French customs officials who had tried to stop him bringing in the hieratic ostraca volume gifted to him by Jaro.2578 2567

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1327–21.1328. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1566, 7 August 1957, J. Černý to R. A. Parker. 2569 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1308. 2570 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1861, 2 September 1957. 2571 To appear as Černý, Kahle, and Parker 1957. 2572 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.658, 6 September 1957. 2573 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.659, 16 September 1957. 2574 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.661, archived as as 21.662. The paper was Yoyotte 1958. 2575 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1902, 8 October 1957. Letter from W. C. Till. 2576 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.660, 21.663, 21.664. 2577 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.845, 9 October 1957. 2578 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.847. 2568

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News from Egypt was not optimistic, as the Egyptian government had formally nationalized the sequestered French possessions in Egypt, including the IFAO. This could potentially have been catastrophic for its library and other assets, especially if the buildings were turned over to the Egyptian military, which would have used the internal spaces rather differently.2579 This move prompted further protests, including by Jaro, who incited colleagues such as Carl Kraeling to add their voices.2580 Jaro’s stance was not held against him in Egypt, at least not in practice. In December, it was clear that Jaro would be included in the next winter season of the CEDAE mission to map the temples of Nubia. Given his workload, he had to make a decision. For some time Jaro had been collecting material on New Kingdom viziers, key men of state who had close relationships with the workmen of Deir el-Medina, and thus a topic related to Jaro’s interests. He had been considering a paper on viziers for some time, but cancelled his plan after he became aware of Wolfgang Helck’s plans to publish on the administration of the Egyptian state.2581 Helck later observed that he was sorry Jaro had made this decision.2582 His list of pending publications was growing rather long regardless, and Faulkner added another proof, of a paper on Queen Ese, to his list of reminders in December.2583 This queen was of interest to Jaro, because her tomb was defined as ḫr, a term that Jaro was analyzing in relation to the organization of the Deir el-Medina community.2584 2579 AIFAO, report by Sainte Fare Garnot 1958. The sequence of events was perceived differently by other observers, notably Desroches-Noblecourt, who summed up her views in a 1980 letter to Vercoutter. This letter is included in the Crise and Sequestre dossier, AIFAO, confidential files. 2580 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1297, J. Černý to C. Kraeling, 7 August 1957. Kraeling in turn approached the Egyptian embassy in Washington, D.C.: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1298, 16 August 1957, letter from C. Kraeling. 2581 Jaro wrote to John D. Cooney that he had planned to work on viziers (GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2072) but had abandoned the project. Helck went on to publish Zur Verwaltung des Mittleren und Neuen Reichs (Helck 1958, reviewed in Černý 1962). See GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.667. Compare GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2151. Jaro’s unfinished paper is now held in the GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.7–8, ‘The Ramesside Viziers’. 2582 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2150–2151. 2583 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.666, 1 December 1957. 2584 As later seen in Černý and Sauneron 1973: 9.

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November 1957 brought a change at Prague Castle. The deceptively folksy but two-faced Antonín Zápotocký, Klement Gottwald’s comrade, died in office and was replaced—at Khrushchev’s bidding —with a dry Stalinist named Antonín Novotný: ‘an apparatchik, an organization man’,2585 and a dyed-in-the-wool comrade from the Communist Party. Novotný set about consolidating his hold on power to ensure that his brand of communism would persist. He did not discourage international representation, which was slowly gaining momentum in the spheres of diplomatic and trade relations, so Žába’s moment was not lost. Žába’s next move involved getting himself to Egypt, which he eventually managed in the capacity of a teacher of the Czech language.2586 In Oxford, Jaro was clearing his desk ahead of his imminent departure for Egypt with Marie on New Year’s Eve.2587 Before they left, and just before the Christmas holidays, Jaro was visited by Theodore Burton-Brown from the Manchester Museum, who brought with him, in his car,2588 a stela from Lahun. Following a brief consultation, Jaro and Marie left for Egypt via Paris, as was becoming customary. Fairman wrote to Jaro on 3 January 1958 with news, including that his son was to apply for admission at Oxford (Jaro was in Egypt when the young man travelled for his interview) and that Reymond-Jelinkova was working very hard and making no ‘difficulties’ at all. Jaro continued his previous approach by maintaining interest but keeping his distance,2589 but Faulkner’s news would have to wait, as Jaro was already en route. Jaro chronicled his trip for Gardiner once again: That we left Paris for Egypt you probably know from Barbara [Sewell], but you probably wonder whether we arrived safely and what our movements in Egypt were. The journey from Paris over Zürich, Geneva and Athens was uneventful though rather long and we reached Heliopolis at an unearthly hour of 3 A.M. on Sunday the 5th i.e. exactly a fortnight ago. The whole expedition was waiting and assembling there and we did not wait long and 2585 2586 2587 2588 2589

Zeman 1969: 33. Ondráš 2017: 24–26. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2072, 21.667. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2061–2. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.582.

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left again for Aswân on Tuesday evening by train. From Aswân we went by taxi to a spot near the barrage where our boat ‘Sheikh el-Beled’ was waiting for us, i.e. beside Máňa and myself, Mme. Noblecourt, Dr. Anwâr Shukry, who is technical director of the Centre and Donadoni, and several Egyptians belonging to the technical staff. We reached Abu Simbel at 5 A.M. on Saturday and are again moored in front of the temple.2590

It is difficult to imagine a more scenic setting than expedition houseboats reflected in glittering waters, with the sun drenching the façade of Ramesside temples. Winter in Nubia had the advantage of plenty of sun, which Marie and Jaro enjoyed, with Jaro continuing: ‘We are in an excellent state of health, Máňa bakes herself in the sunshine, for considering that this is January, both nights and days are pleasantly warm.’ There is no reference to political news from Egypt, which had just established the short-lived United Arab Republic with Syria.2591 January to April meant epigraphic work for the CEDAE. Once in Nubia, Jaro focused on applying his epigraphic skills to the rock chapel at Abahuda: Our work, however, concentrates on the small rock chapel of Haremhab at Abahûd at a short distance south where we go practically every day morning to stay there over lunch and to return about at 5 pm to Abu Simbel. I have already finished copying inscriptions there, that is as much as can be seen before cleaning the walls from early Christian plaster. But it is a question how much more it will be possible to see after the cleaning, because the Christian stucco contains some (it seems important) paintings and Old Nubian graffiti, so that most of it will probably have to be left on the walls. Mme Noblecourt and the Director left us last Tuesday; next Tuesday we expect to be joined by the Swiss architect Jacquet and by Goedicke, to be followed soon after by Labîb Habachi and by Edel after the 1st. I have been asked to do as much as I can of the final clean writing out of texts on codatrace here, in order to be able to stay at Abu Simbel until Febr. 18 or 19, when the Director of the UNESCO may come on a short visit.2592

2590 2591 2592

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG.42.56.3, 19 January 1958. The experiment was to last until 1961; see Jankowski 2002: 101–114, 166–178. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG.42.56.3, 19 January 1958.

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Jaro clearly recognized the value of capturing the epigraphic layers that held the history of a monument. The CEDAE programme focused on texts, and the resulting publications supply only limited information on figural elements or overall visual aspects. This might be ascribed to the perceived primacy of texts in Egyptological research, but it was probably more the result of a tiered working system: epigraphers simply registered the texts, while photographers and specialists in photogrammetry were tasked separately with capturing the overall visual record. The CEDAE was working hard, but it was becoming clear that the Egyptian government was willing to pursue the Aswan dam project regardless, and the efforts of CEDAE would be insufficient to map all of the endangered monuments on its present resources. Even though Jaro was given further work at the temple of Amada,2593 and Elmar Edel and Donadoni were joined by Hans Goedicke and Labib Habachi, they could not possibly have mapped all the temples of Nubia. There was also an archaeological element that the CEDAE could not even begin to address, and Desroches-Noblecourt was keen to promote further action in Nubia. Jaro and Marie returned from Abu Simbel to Luxor in midMarch and stayed a few days in the Chicago House. George Hughes handed Jaro an ostracon on 16 March, which he soon transcribed.2594 They then stopped-over in Cairo, where copies of the Nubian temple texts had to be finalized on Kodatrace (a tracing paper made from frosted acetate) and readied for publication. The CEDAE operation was designed to produce publications speedily. Sewell had again acted as a postal custodian for Jaro,2595 so when he returned in April there was correspondence to answer,2596 and a task to finish—a volume on stelae from the Bankes collection, for which Jaro required additional information from the 2593

Indicated in GIA, Černý Mss. 21.2057 and in correspondence from Habachi. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.77, p. 13 vso. 2595 As mentioned in a note from Fairman, GIA, Collection Černý; Černý Mss. 21.583, 2 April 1958. 2596 Including from M. Sinclair F. Hood of the British School of Archaeology in Athens, who was interested in the Hyksos. Jaro provided some recommended reading, for example Säve-Söderbergh 1951. 2594

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family of William John Bankes. Anthes was also picking his brains concerning mꜢꜢ ḫrw—was the conventional translation of ‘justified’ better than more literal ‘true of voice’?2597 While answering queries and checking proofs, Jaro set himself an ambitious goal: ‘I have made up my mind and am settling down definitely to write the book on the workmen which I expect will take about 3 years to do.’2598 He was even willing to postpone the grammar: ‘Unfortunately I cannot do anything about Late Egyptian Grammar now. After considering all the pros and cons I decided to write a book on workmen first.’2599 Nonetheless, Parker still noted that Jaro was very keen to work on Coptic etymologies regardless of his focus on workmen. Perhaps Coptic was simply recreation.2600 His search for ostraca relating to the workmen was always ongoing, and Jaro realized that he needed to ask for some materials again, as some of his notes were lost. He contacted Isidor Mendelevich Lurje and then his widow Militza Edvinovna Matthieu in Leningrad regarding photographs of ostraca. He had corresponded with Lurje since the 1930s, but some of his letters stayed behind in Prague and were no longer accessible.2601 Jaro and Lurje shared an interested in ancient legal systems and social history, even if Lurje had to couch his research in suitably Leninist terms.2602 Toward the end of April, Jaro hosted Sainte Fare Garnot, the exiled director of the IFAO, in Oxford. Garnot had invited Jaro shortly before to participate in the Mélanges Mariette project,2603 and Jaro planned the visit meticulously. He was to meet Garnot at the station on arrival (10:58 am), take him to lunch and coffee, followed by tea with Gardiner (at 4:00 pm), then off to Queen’s College where his guest was staying. The next day Garnot was to leave by train, and Jaro even specified that the train had a 2597

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2036. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2139, 24 June 1959, J. Černý to W. C. Hayes. 2599 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2191.1–2, 18 April 1958, J. Černý to R. A. Parker. 2600 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2192.1–2, 23 April 1958, from R. A. Parker. 2601 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1375–21.1382. 2602 See also Loktionov 2019: 157–172. 2603 GIA, Collection Černý, Mss. 21.2103, 11 May 1958. The resulting publication was Černý 1961b. 2598

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restaurant carriage.2604 The plan was then realized on 25 to 26 April, with some amendments. Jaro evidently relished planning the trip and playing host. He was accustomed to being a guest in many houses, he was keen to offer something in return, but this time he was in a better position to proffer hospitality without overburdening his own household, as college facilities were at his disposal. Jaro was not averse entering certain areas of academic politics if he could support friends and colleagues. Never in the available material is he seen thwarting someone’s career, but he is frequently seen promoting other people’s interests. He had a long-standing and ongoing interest in promoting British Academy membership for Adriaan de Buck, with whom he thought it possible to cooperate on philological topics, and whose protégé James Mellaart,2605 a colleague of students such as Kirkbride, Iversen and others, he had taught at UCL. The process took time. Jaro communicated his idea to Godfrey Driver, his own supporter at the British Academy, but they hit an unexpected snag: Gardiner also felt the need to get involved. Jaro and Driver found his interference to be problematic as Gardiner ‘verschlimbessert’ de Buck’s position.2606 Jaro also continued his workmen project, which impressed Goedicke, who noted that it was progressing well.2607 Many other tasks intervened. It was typical of his workload, and the communication model is known to many Egyptologists, that Jaro was asked to consult other scholars’ readings of Egyptian texts or to provide readings for specialists outside Egyptology who were working on Egyptian material for non-Egyptological projects. Egyptology is often regarded as isolationist among wider academic fields, but discussions about its position and relevance have been ongoing since at least the 1940s,2608 and sufficient reflections have now been published for a comprehensive analysis to someday be undertaken.

2604

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2099, 21.2100, 21.2101. See also Balter 2016: chapter 1. 2606 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2083–21.2084. ‘Verschlimbessert’ is a nearly untranslatable German term for making a situation worse whilst trying to improve it. 2607 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2112, 25 April 1958, from H. Goedicke. 2608 From Glanville 2014 (1947) to Hood 2022. 2605

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In the early summer of 1958, interdisciplinary communication included the prominent Classicist John Penrose Barron.2609 On the Egyptological front, around the end of the academic year at Oxford Jaro was visited by Charles F. Nims, an old friend from the Oriental Institute in Chicago, and he and his wife joined Jaro and Marie for lunch on 27 June.2610 The Nimses were regular contacts, and Nims had been discussing his work with Jaro for at least a decade.2611 The summer was devoted mostly to ostraca and the workmen, and Wolfhart Westerndorf promised more photographs of Berlin ostraca in July.2612 Jaro also pursued artefacts in the Brooklyn museum, but the photographs only arrived in December.2613 Copies of the Bankes collection publication were placed at Jaro’s disposal in June, and he promptly sent them off to friends and colleagues. The Bankeses were the first to receive the published volume.2614 Cyril Aldred was impressed by the publication, and promptly obliged Jaro by searching for a related stela, UC 52, in Edinburgh.2615 Habachi was glad to hear the news, and wrote to report on the Soviet collections he had visited, and to note he was pleased that Jaro was working hard on a publication about the Deir el-Medina community.2616 Habachi wanted to see the volume on workmen as soon as possible, though as time went on this increasingly seemed like wishful thinking. In August 1958, Aly Ibrahim Harari, an acquaintance from wartime who had occasionally consulted Jaro for his studies on the Egyptian legal system,2617 and who in turn procured books for Jaro from Egypt, reported on news from Cairo, including the reassignment of the Antiquities Service to the auspices of the Ministry of National Guidance.2618 This move demonstrated 2609

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2044–21.2045. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2187. 2611 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1514–21.1524; 21.2186–21.2188. Oracles and onomastica were major points of interest. 2612 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2663. 2613 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2054. 2614 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2041–21.2043. 2615 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2034; 21.2035 2616 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2166. 2617 Harari published extensively on legal history; see Leclant 1990: 139. 2618 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2118–21.2119. 2610

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that Egyptian history was to be firmly embedded in national identity, a resource of cultural and political capital for modern Egypt.2619 An unexpected reminder of life in Prague during the 1930s came in letters from Bothmer, who was trying to contact the Náprstek Museum to belatedly follow up on visits he’d made there in 1933 and 1936.2620 Jaro suggested contacting Milan Stuchlík.2621 He clearly did not consider recommending Žába. Žába, however, made sure that laudatory references to Jaro were included in a Czech translation of B. N. S. Petrovsky and A. Belov’s book on ancient Egyptian civilization and its study, which was published in Prague in 1958.2622 Fairman wrote about some of his new students, including a ‘pleasant lad’ named John Ruffle, who ‘will have to pull his socks up.’2623 Jaro was to become his examiner.2624 In July, Fairman had visited Jaro in Oxford,2625 where they discussed the CEDAE campaigns in Nubia, particularly material from Abu Simbel, graffiti of the viceroy Ramessesnakht, and the site of Amara.2626 Harris was examined on 23 July, in the Examination Schools at Oxford, where his examiners were Eiddon Edwards and Fairman. Both were hosted by Jaro at the Queen’s College across the High Street. Another guest to visit Oxford was the German Demoticist Ursula Heckel, who was on a study trip. Sewell booked her into a YWCA hostel on the Banbury Road in North Oxford, and Jaro offered help with the accommodation and, perhaps even more importantly, access to Demotic ostraca in the Ashmolean Museum.2627 Heckel was a fellow ostraca hunter (albeit in Demotic) and like Jaro was a systematic scholar, so he was keen to help.2628 2619

Jankowski 2002: 27, 179–180. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2053. 2621 Then a young anthropologist (fl. 1932–1980), who went on to have a distinguished international career, including in the United Kingdom: see Holy 1981. 2622 Petrovskij 1958: 292. 2623 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.588. 2624 Personal recollection John Ruffle. 2625 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.589, 18 July 1958. 2626 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.591, 17 August 1958, from H. W. Fairman. 2627 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2148, 11 June 1958, from J. Černý to U. Heckel. 2628 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2142–21.2150. 2620

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August 1958 was a time that Jaro perhaps ought to have pursued his own research, but queries and replies to them seemed incessant. Around this time Avni Dajani and Kirkbride wished to discuss with him Late Bronze seals found in Amman, where Kirkbride was working. In September, when he was planning some holidays,2629 Jaro heard from William Foxwell Albright, who was impressed with his publication of a stela from Beisan.2630 It was probably his Paper & Books that led the Italian papyrologist Enrica Fiandra to send a Jaro query about seals on papyrus.2631 Jaro replied, in detail and with a list of recommended reading, in October and November with information on the materiality of such sealings. This exchange stands out because it includes Jaro’s explicit acknowledgement that Egyptologists often just copied texts from artefacts and ignored the material object, and contains an accurate reference to the work of Miss Reisner at Giza.2632 Consistent with his practice of using language contextually to his place of work and residence, Jaro now used English almost exclusively, as his French colleagues began to note. Sainte Fare Garnot observed that Jaro’s French was still fine, but that his scholarly language was now English.2633 Also in September, Jaro summed his observations on the changes in Egypt from his personal perspective when writing to Joseph Leibovitch: We again spent three months in Nubia and Egypt last winter, but apart from epigraphic work for the Centre de Documentation I of course could not do much for myself … Of the old friends none is left, and the country and Cairo have changed enormously.2634

2629 2630

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.671. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2032. The stela was published in Černý

1958f. 2631

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2096, 24 October 1958. Reisner 1955. Mary B. Reisner was George A. Reisner’s daughter, who learned archaeology by accompanying her father on digs, and assisted him in the publication of his work. On Reisner see now a new biography by P. der Manuelian, Walking among Pharaohs, appearing 2022/2023. 2633 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2107, 19 September 1958, from J. Sainte Fare Garnot. 2634 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2174A, 5 September 1958, J. Černý to J. Leibovitch. 2632

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This was an observation based on their shared wartime experience, not an evaluation. Losing Bernhard Grdseloff and Keimer in the last few years might well have turned Jaro more melancholy, and the comment does not automatically reflect his views on the new Egypt. The separation of his own work from what ‘needed doing’ in Egypt was clear. Jaro hoped to finish his book on the community of workmen in the next three years, but the task in Egypt took precedence. He still sent queries about material and even borrowed relevant artefacts, such as ostraca from the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, but was slower in drawing and making facsimiles. A problem with his eyesight had appeared, probably cataracts,2635 which was to affect his vision in the coming years and complicate his work. He resorted to holding texts, proofs, and other material very close to his eyes, and had concentrate on every character in front of him. His colleagues recalled this as typical,2636 alongside his frequent use of a magnifying glass. Around this time, Jaro was forwarded the name of a potential student from India by Herman Bell, one of his own students, and by William Edgerton, a colleague from the USA. Jaro was provided with references that convinced him the prospective student would have been capable, but he was concerned about them giving up a promising diplomatic career for an uncertain Egyptological one. The name of this potential student has not survived, though they must have been well known to the correspondents, and it is curious that Jaro was more optimistic about the application by Ms. Khanum, from Pakistan, than he was about an Indian diplomat.2637 His recommendation of Young for a position at the Metropolitan Museum seemed to have worked out well, except that Jaro was displeased at Young’s own limited correspondence.2638 Hayes stepped in to defend Young: ‘Your young friend, Eric, is doing 2635 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 2207–2212, correspondence with A. S. Robertson. Cataracts are the most likely cause of Jaro’s eye problems, aggravated by smoking and exposure to the Egyptian sun. He is not usually shown wearing sunglasses in photographs from Egypt, and perhaps he seldom—if ever—wore them. 2636 Personal communication, Peter M. Neumann, February 2018. 2637 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2093–21.2094, particularly 21.2094, 14 October 1958, J. Černý to W. Edgerton. 2638 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2139.

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very well indeed and is exceedingly popular with all and sundry. Again, I must tell you how grateful we are to you for having him found for us.’2639 Jaro replied, still somewhat peeved by Young’s silence: ‘I was glad to hear that Young is doing well and that you are satisfied with him. I would have hoped to have a line from him after he had settled and had a look around, but these young people are all alike—they never bother about old folks.’2640 Jaro like many of his generation, felt that the ‘youth’ was setting itself apart, were much less respectful and more self-conscious.2641 Young was the polar opposite of Žába, who literally pursued Jaro with his interminable letters and his hectoring to ‘write a lot, Professor.’ Bruno H. Stricker visited around the beginning of the Michaelmas term,2642 during which Jaro enjoyed exchanging observations with the classicist John Boardman regarding the Greek concept of cult ships on wheels. They planned to meet up and discuss this at a party, the preferred setting for informal academic meetings,2643 but Jaro’s diary was full. In the days before Christmas Jaro was expecting an imminent call to the 1959 season with UNESCO,2644 but then another friend from Paris came to visit. Kriéger, a long-time ally in the push to publish the Abusir papyri, the importance of which—and the archaeological potential of the site—Jaro had long acknowledged, was charmed by her time in Oxford,2645 no doubt due to the efforts of her host. Kriéger would make a breakthrough at Abusir in 1976 with the publication of further fragments, which would in turn change Egyptological perceptions of Abusir and its pyramid fields.2646 A year like 1958 was typical for Jaro, a whirlwind of project work, teaching, and consultations, with his own projects on the workmen of Deir el-Medina and the Late Egyptian grammar taking a back seat. He prioritized what could be defined as the 2639

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2136. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2137. 2641 Hobsbawm 1994: 324–327. 2642 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2232, 27 October 1958, by B. H. Stricker. 2643 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2052, 17 November 1958, from J. Boardman. 2644 GIA, Collection Černý, Oxford, Černý Mss. 21.594. Letter to H. W. Fairman, 19 December 1958. 2645 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2167–2168. 2646 Posener-Kriéger et al. 2006: 17–19. 2640

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semi-public role of a scholar making for himself a node in a growing epistemic community of experts, within the ‘networks— often transnational—of knowledge-based experts with an authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within their domain of expertise.’2647 Yet he was not himself a public intellectual. Surviving material shows an image of Jaro sheltered within an ivory tower. There is no record of whether he ever discussed with Gardiner what had happened to the ‘Edwardian elegance’ of Notting Hill, where in a bygone era they had enjoyed tea with Mrs Fořtová-Šámalová but which was now ‘plagued by racketeer landlords,’ and had become synonymous with racist riots.2648 Immigration, which was welcomed after the war, was now toooften perceived to be a strain on British society, and the matter would soon to come to a head with the 1961 Immigration Bill.2649 Perhaps Jaro merely accepted that the lights of his era had faded, and carried on in much the same way as had during the Second World War: doing his job; helping where he could.

1959 the unesco campaign begins January 1959 saw what was quickly becoming a routine—getting ready and then departing for Egypt. Before setting out, Jaro needed to dedicate some hours to fulfilling administrative duties concerning the Gardiner fund, as he and Faulker were its trustees.2650 The UNESCO contract again covered the months corresponding to Oxford’s Hilary term.2651 Jaro and Marie eventually left Oxford on 2 February, and again went via Paris where they had many meetings and Jaro caught what he called a ‘flu’, but was more likely to have been a nuisance cold. On 6 February they left for Egypt and their plane touched down in Cairo the next day. In Jaro’s own words to Gardiner: 2647

Haas 2008: 793. Hennessy 2007: 406–501, quotes from p. 498. 2649 Kynaston 2015: 718–721. 2650 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.672, 31 January 1959, J. Černý to R. Faulkner, commenting on the use of the Gardiner fund, and referring to his impending departure for Egypt. 2651 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 19.101, a UNESCO contract. 2648

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In Paris we saw many friends despite the shortness of our stay there; we gave them all your greetings which they reciprocate: Vandiers, Posener, Madame Noblecourt etc. In Cairo we met of course Labib Habachi who is now in the office in the Ant.[iquities] Dep.[artment]; he misses Luxor but is of good mood. We understand that he will be in charge of the excavations at Tuna el-Gebel, if so, he might be prevented from paying a fortnight’s visit upon which we have agreed. We only passed through Luxor but Chicago House people came to the train in full numbers (I was glad to get at last rid of the responsibility for the two heavy Caminos’ parcels). We hope to spend three nights at Luxor on our way back. Soon after our arrival here we left again in our boat for Amada.2652

Once at Amada, Jaro began reading and recording Merenptah’s inscription on his Libyan wars, and clarified a particularly painful method of punishment—impaling (literally ‘putting on a wood’ in the original Egyptian)—due to the clear reading of a classifier showing a human transfixed by a stake. Only a few days were dedicated to Amada, as Jaro had to return to Abu Simbel and was, as he described in his letter to Gardiner, kept ‘busy with copying the dull inscriptions on coda-trace [sic, for Kodatrace] for photostating.’ His work on these inscriptions opened the fifth CEDAE volume on Amada,2653 helped by access to previous work by James Henry Breasted sent to him by John A. Wilson.2654 By early March, Jaro and Marie were the only Europeans in the group, but found the company congenial. As if again testing Gardiner’s ‘colonial’ attitudes, Jaro nudged him once more: ‘Our Swiss architect Jacquet leaves to-day, and Máňa and I will be the only Europeans with about 15 Egyptians; they are all very nice and we enjoy their company very much.’2655 Jaro had for decades been known as one able to mingle freely with people not of his own social or cultural standing (this is not to say ‘class’; Jaro was aware of class distinctions, but considered himself ultimately classless), irrespective of nationality, gender, or wealth. Nonetheless, he could not have missed the privileges of class

2652 2653 2654 2655

GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.2, 2 March 1959. Achiery et al. 1968; Černý 1967b. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1973–21.1974. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.2, 2 March 1959.

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accorded to him as a high-profile academic, or that from the perspective of an ordinary post-war Briton he would have been a member of the social elite. The Egyptian colleagues he referred to presumably included service staff and epigraphic co-workers. Jaro had recognized the vital importance of Egyptian colleagues since his first years at Deir el-Medina, though there was greater distance between European and Egyptian staff in the 1920s than in Nasser’s Egypt of the 1950s. Egyptian colleagues now contributed more actively to the actual workflow around the archaeological record. This would continue to change, if slowly, so that the ‘separating of manual labour from reporting,’2656 which had been the norm, came to more often include Egyptian manpower in professional roles. Jaro and Marie began their return journey to the UK in late March, their boat stopping in Wadi es-Seboua and at Gerf Hussein. They again spent a few days in the Chicago House, meeting Wilson en route,2657 before reaching the Egyptian capital on 29 March and rounding off their time in Egypt with Jaro producing Kodatrace plates for publication in the offices of the CEDAE. There, Jaro ‘enjoyed full cooperation and help of the staff of the Centre de Documentation,’2658 the address of the CEDAE at ‘boulevard Ramsis’, and they began their journey back to Oxford in midApril, as planned. They were thus no longer in Cairo at the end of April when the sequestration of the IFAO was formally revoked, and the Institute was returned to the French government.2659 Upon return, in late April or early May, Jaro was greeted with the usual backlog of correspondence, including thanks from colleagues who had received copies of the recently-published Royal Canon of Turin.2660 The book was celebrated by a party at the Griffith Institute, which Posener was sorry to miss, as it ‘a été fort brillante et que le champagne a couli à flot.’2661 Jaro donned an 2656

Quirke 2013: 396. Wilson referred to the meeting in a letter to Jaro; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1973. 2658 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 19.78F.2. 2659 A copy of the protocol on the conclusion of the conferment procedure, AIFAO, the administrative archive of the IFAO, confidential files. 2660 Such as Faulkner: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.673. 2661 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2202, 30 May 1959, from G. Posener. 2657

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elegant double-breasted suit, which was his favourite for formal occasions throughout the 1950s. His sartorial repertoire evidently moved effortlessly He did not receive (or chose to ignore) the usual bombardment of correspondence from Žába. Žába was rather proud of himself, as on 20 May 1959 the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology was officially opened in Cairo. Lexa, who attended the opening despite frail health, became its first director, but this was an honour accorded to a distinguished academic near the end of his life (he died the following year) rather than a pragmatic choice. Žába ended his teaching duties at Ain Shams University in the latter part of 1959, expecting to soon succeed Lexa. It was also in May that Jaro was first alerted to developments at UNESCO concerning an extended recording and (possibly) salvage operation in the region destined to be flooded by the Aswan High Dam. The official line, as presented at the UNESCO Executive Committee, was that the government of the United Arab Republic, in the province of Egypt, approached UNESCO to request support for the documentation of endangered monuments. This was not entirely new, as UNESCO had already provided support for CEDAE and its mission to Nubia in 1956. But the new Egyptian query was concerned with three main areas: finalizing the documentation of monuments endangered by the proposed High Dam, ensuring the implementation of intensive archaeological campaigns in the area to be submerged; and considerations on how to conserve major endangered monuments. The Egyptian authorities made it clear that they were ready to contribute to this vast project, within their means, but required international help and offered a portion of finds from the archaeological work as an incentive. It was stated that this offer, which circumvented existing Egyptian legislation to a certain extent, was intended to be a special incentive and compensation for the institutions and nations involved in the collaborative project,2662 but not, as latter discussions revealed, something these institutions had a right to demand. Sarwat Okasha outlined his ideal plan in a letter to UNESCO dated 6 April 1959. The request was 2662 Copy in the AIFAO: UNESCO NUBIE 01: Conseil executif 54ème session, 28 Mai 1959, 54 EX/24.

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presented as resulting from the inevitable danger to monuments by necessary development works, while appealing to a sense of humanity’s shared heritage.2663 The latter was to become a leitmotif for most of the early negotiations, and ultimately a motto of the entire campaign. It is easily to dismiss these ideas, and their subsequent repetition within the reams of UNESCO documents concerned with the campaign, as a mere rhetorical exercise. Egypt needed international help if the monuments were to be saved, but Nasser also wanted positive publicity for Egypt. By appealing to the world, and by pretending to ignore geopolitical blocs, he sought to enhance the status of Egypt as a non-aligned meeting point for the African, Arab and Islamic worlds—which had been his position on Egypt’s historical mission since 1954. This could, perhaps, be advanced by presenting Egypt as the civilization that gave rise to a heritage that had enriched the entirety of humanity. Yet to consider the rhetoric as merely a Machiavellian exercise is to set limits on the interpretation of UNESCO’s complex history, and on the motivations of those who participated in the campaign. As William Carruthers has noted: Many of the archaeologists involved in the campaign had trained in previous decades and worked across colonized countries and so it is interesting … what that history means in terms of connections between the knowledge that they produce and the way in which UNESCO went on to promote world heritage. At the same time these practitioners often seemed really quite invested in the idea that they were salvaging something by working in Nubia, adhering to the rhetoric that UNESCO set forward … it has become rather easy to dismiss or criticize this language of salvage. And we need to move beyond that critique because it clearly meant something to the people who were carrying this work out.2664

2663 Copy in the AIFAO: UNESCO NUBIE 01: Conseil executif 54ème session, 28 Mai 1959, 54 EX/24, Annex to Conseil executif 54ème session, 28 Mai 1959, 54 EX/24. 2664 ‘I am interested in the contentious aspects of history, too.’ Interview with W. Carruthers, in: TRAFO—Blog for Transregional Research, 5 December 2017 (https://trafo.hypotheses.org/5566, accessed 3 June 2022). A publication by Carruthers is forthcoming: Flooded Pasts.

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The language of salvage—and of cooperation—clearly meant something to Jaro, and he was determined to utilize his ability to cross the boundaries of political pragmatism. The fieldwork itself also meant something rather significant, not only in terms of his own interests and activities, but about the very concept of what Egyptologists should do; what the profession ought to be. In the summer 1959, after the usual Oxford term and examining duties were nearly over, the Hebdomadal Council approached Jaro with a specific query,2665 regarding abolishing the Schedule B grade that had thus far applied to the professorship of Egyptology, and raising the chair to Schedule A.2666 The administrative definition of a university position translated into the day-to-day impact of its workload and expectations, and had ramifications for the professorial chair that Jaro then held. Schedule A professors were required to teach in each of the three university terms and this clashed with Jaro’s routine, particularly with his monthslong sojourns in Egypt. Thus, and despite the material advantage offered in the form of a higher stipend (the stipend for Schedule B was £2300 and that for Schedule A was £2500),2667 Jaro objected. His objections were incorporated in the Hebdomadal Council notes: I welcome in principle the proposed change in status of the Chair of Egyptology from Schedule B to Schedule A. I should like, however, to point out that it is of importance for the Professor of Egyptology to be able to engage in field-work in Egypt at fairly frequent intervals during the winter season. I therefore hope that it will prove possible to frame the regulations governing the Chair in such a way as to enable the Professor to carry out this side of his activity. As far as I personally am concerned, I have promised to help in recording monuments in Nubia which will be flooded when the High Dam is built and consider this undertaking as an important scientific duty. The project is sponsored by UNESCO and I have 2665 This was the chief executive body for the University of Oxford from its establishment by the Oxford University Act 1854 until its replacement, in the Michaelmas term of 2000, by the new University Council. 2666 Oxford University Archive, J. Černý personal file, FA 9/2/170. Letters from 27 July 1959 and 21 September 1959. 2667 The salary rose with inflation; £2300 would be the equivalent of around £41,000, and £2500 a little over £44,500, at the time of writing.

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already spent three seasons in this work: it would therefore be impossible for me to withdraw now from this commitment, especially in view of the great shortage of senior Egyptologists qualified for this task.2668

Jaro disputed the increased workload from the context of his fieldwork obligations, which were—in his opinion—an indispensable part of being a professional Egyptologist of a certain rank. CEDAE and UNESCO had indeed used the term ‘expert’ to designate the participants in the campaign and to indicate the level of experience that was intended and expected. This was not to say that students and specialists with less expertise could not, or should not, be included, and Jaro had long encouraged training by fieldwork. His views on the disciplinary expectations and professional demands conflicted with the University’s requirement that teaching be a priority. The increasing primacy of teaching was itself related to developments in British higher education in the 1950s, which demanded wider access to university degrees, and which later led to an eruption in the number of British universities,2669 though traditional institutions such as Oxford did not necessarily answer this call with enthusiasm. The University Visitatorial Board was willing to consider the conditions that Jaro outlined, but did not want to entirely abandon its plan to enhance the position of the Professor of Egyptology (and to tie that position to more teaching duties). Correspondence ensued, with Jaro focusing on safeguarding necessary leaves of absence in order to participate in Egyptian projects. As such breaks had to be negotiated in connection with what would become a Schedule A professorship, a formal procedure for requesting leaves of absence without the loss of stipend had to be implemented. This particular negotiation was eventually successful, at least where Jaro was concerned.

2668 Oxford University Archive, J. Černý personal file, FA 9/2/170. See letters from 27 July 1959, 21 September 1959, and a Hebdomadal Council memorandum excerpt from vol. 234, October 1959. 2669 Perkin 1972: 111–120. On the topic of writing university histories, see Anderson 2017: 17–40.

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The summer of 1959 was even less palatable in another respect, as Jaro was beset by a major dental problem in July, to the point that he was hors combat for some days and a letter had to be typewritten by a colleague at the Griffith Institute, probably Sewell, in reply to Faulkner.2670 This informed the addressee that Jaro had had a bad toothache, but was nonetheless working on hieratic inscriptions from the tomb of Tutankhamun. These had originally been recorded by Gardiner but had remained unpublished until Jaro accepted the task.2671 Jaro wrote to Hayes that he was ‘sweating’ over them.2672 He also spent a considerable amount of time (and correspondence) supporting Iversen’s search for a suitable publisher, as Clarendon Press had turned down The Myth of Egypt and its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition.2673 Danish publisher G. E. C. Gad eventually published the book after using Iversen to translate Edwards’ book on the pyramids; a review by Erwin Panofsky probably also helped Iversen’s reputation.2674 Jaro was still in close contact with Gardiner and made regular visits to Iffley, where Gardiner—or rather his staff—were taking care of Heddie, who had suffered a stroke. In the same summer, Marie and Jaro enjoyed spending time with their grandchildren. Anna had married Anthony Allott,2675 a lawyer by training who was intrigued by aspects of Egyptian religion, justice and symbolism.2676 Their son Nicolas played in the Černýs’ garden, and came to enjoy it even more in the coming years when hunting for strawberries that Jaro and Marie had planted.2677 The British side of Jaro’s family was still in touch with the Czechoslovak side, as Anna had sent her wedding photograph to Jaro’s mother and brother.2678

2670

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.675, 7 July 1959. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.675, to R. Faulkner. 2672 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2139. 2673 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1117–21.1123. 2674 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1126. 2675 Anthony Nicholas Allott (1924–2002) went on to become Professor of African Law at SOAS, University of London. 2676 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.213. 2677 Personal recollection, N. Allott, July 2018. 2678 ANpM, digital Černý Collection & private archive Černý family, unnumbered photograph marked Kensington Press Agency. 2671

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Jaro was fond of his grandchildren; he was said to have observed somewhat mischievously to Kirkbride that ‘I am a grandfather—and I haven’t lifted a finger.’2679 The house and garden at Linkside Avenue left an impression on many friends and family. Apart from the taste of strawberries—and Jaro’s kindness—the grandchildren also remember their grandfather’s special working room, a front room with a bay window that was filled with bookcases and the heavy aroma of tobacco. Jaro chain-smoked throughout his later years and wrapped himself in the imagery of writers, intellectuals, and politicians: the ‘imagery of heavy cigarette consumption while at work.’2680 For his friends and family this was a habit to either be indulged or tolerated, depending on personal preference, as the idea that smoking as a health risk was contested.2681 For a young child in the house, going to Grandad’s room was a sensory assault. In August, Jaro secured Fairman access to photographs from Philae, as these were housed in the Griffith Institute Archive and had originally belonging to Gardiner,2682 and when Fairman visited in late September he spent time with Gardiner and Jaro.2683 The Griffith Institute began to develop its research infrastructure, mediating access to formerly private bequests so that they entered the public research space. Jac. Janssen also accessed the Gardiner and Peet papers in the Griffith, and upon recommendation from Jaro began to edit papyrus Leiden I 350 (a logbook).2684 Janssen came to consider himself a ‘bit of’ a pupil of Jaro.2685 Jaro was also contacted by the sociologist Russell Middleton and provided information on consanguineous marriages. He also recommended that Middleton contact the papyrologist Claire Préaux because texts on papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt were of interest for social history,2686 as Michail Rostovtzeff had shown several decades earlier. 2679

AEES, audio files, R, Janssen interviewing D. Kirkbride, 22 January 1992. Shechter 2006: 147. 2681 The Royal College of Physicians was to publish their landmark report in 1962, but discourse on the impact of smoking and the epidemiology of lung cancer was amply present in the 1950s. See Berridge 2007: 24–51 in particular. 2682 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.597–21.598. 2683 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.600. 2684 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1170–21.1171. 2685 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1171. 2686 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2181–21.2185. 2680

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There seems to be no documented contact between Jaro and Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, a scholar who could have been a professional ally, who recognized Rostovtzeff’s input, and who referred to relevant connections between anthropology, history and sociology on several occasions in the 1950s and 1960s. As Evans-Pritchard suggested in 1961: I hope, though not very optimistically, to see the day when a course of social anthropology, including some field research, regarded not so much as an end in itself as a means, will be regarded as a valuable part of an historian’s training … An anthropological training, including fieldwork, would be especially valuable in the investigation of earlier periods of history … For such periods the historian struggles to determine a people’s mentality from a few texts, and anthropologists cannot help wondering whether the conclusions he draws from them truly represent their thought.2687

Jaro struggled with very much the same challenges but—true to form—opted to make finding more texts, and to improve his understanding of those texts, his core activity that decade. In that respect he was on much the same wavelength as contemporary historians, who ‘strove not to eliminate subjectivity, but to limit its distorting effects by careful source criticism.’2688 EvansPritchard was offering way to achieve the same goal while Jaro was metaphorically chipping at the coalface of Egyptian sources, without pausing to consider the broader issues. In October 1959, Harold Macmillan won the UK general election for the Conservative Party with the slogan ‘You’ve never had it so good.’2689 Despite the complex character of these ‘golden years’, as they would later be labelled,2690 the world was relatively strong economically and could, among other things, afford the UNESCO campaign in Egypt. An outline for the next CEDAE season was being planned, and Jaro presented his apologies to Driver regarding Faculty meetings in the upcoming Hilary term, asking to be excused from all meetings from January until midApril, when he expected to return from the Nubian season.2691 2687 2688 2689 2690 2691

Evans-Pritchard 1962: 58. Smyth 2016: 117. See further Hennessy 2007: 1–5. Hobsbawm 1994: 257–286. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2086–21.2089.

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Along with his termly duties, Jaro was still working with ostraca and in October asked Fairman for material from Liverpool, which was duly supplied.2692 That October, Francois Daumas succeeded Sainte Fare Garnot as the director of the IFAO.2693 The rescue operation ahead of the Aswan dam was now progressing, spurred on by the efforts of Desroches-Noblecourt, Sarwat Okasha, and others. It was evident that existing CEDAE arrangements would be insufficient for the large-scale operation that was increasingly seen as necessary to prevent the loss of archaeological material. In early October 1959, a group of experts met in Egypt, including Žába (who participated in the opening session), which included a trip to Nubia.2694 The outcome of this meeting helped determine the course of the UNESCO appeal. Many of Jaro’s friends and acquaintances participated, with Desroches-Noblecourt and Walter Emery being particularly active, next to their Egyptian hosts. The extent to which Emery might have capitalized on his good standing with Egyptians during and after the war is unknown, and perhaps moot. The official record noted that one of the hosts, Anwar Shukri, was particularly keen to emphasize that the operation was an international duty, for although Egypt was by no mean abrogating its responsibility, it was evident that it did not have the resources to undertake the complete operation. Debate ensued regarding the promise by the Egyptian government to offer artefacts to foreign missions, particularly museums, and Shukri again made it clear that this was not a commercial operation with an element of barter. He was, however, willing to listen to arguments from institutions abroad that could offer their visitors and donors some value in return. The Petrie model—of paying for research with the proceeds of artefact sales—was long gone, but its principle—motivating donors by access to those artefacts—was not wholly eliminated. Shukri nonetheless returned repeatedly to the point that the international community had a duty to help Egypt, and that this should be the main motivating factor for the 2692

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.601. Vercoutter 1981: 24. 2694 Copy of meeting outline in AIFAO, UNESCO Nubie 01, 12 November 1959, call no. UNESCO/SN/R.EXP/SR. A report by C. Desroches-Noblecourt (UNESCO/SN/R. EXP/Rapport, Le Caire, le 11 Octobre 1959), and a summary of the opening session (on 1 October) and of the meeting’s following sessions. 2693

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campaign.2695 He channelled UNESCO’s founding principles in support of his arguments. Shukri was less diplomatic and more assertive when articulating most of his expectations. He was a third generation Egyptian Egyptologist, among the first who received a doctorate from the then Fu’ad I University in 1942.2696 He was understandably keen to promote an Egyptian Egyptology, and wary of moves that could be interpreted as a return to the most glaring of ‘colonial’ practices. Jaro was generally unwilling to take sides when his European colleagues complained about Shukri, and hence his thoughts on the changes within Egyptology remain beyond reach. His reactions, however, indicate that he prioritized getting the work done in an atmosphere of cooperation. Perhaps he recognized that people do not necessarily have to like each other, or even to fully accept each other, to achieve a degree of productivity. He was known to acknowledge the diversity of experience within people. He preferred to be silent on systemic and political changes, but to act with practicality to overcome the barriers that politics insisted on building. His book exchanges soared in the 1960s, including works from Soviet Egyptologists that were exchanged via Militza Matthieu.2697 These were slowly being published, though Soviet influence in Egypt did not yet translate into comparable Soviet presence in Egyptological fieldwork.2698 Toward the end of 1959, Jaro was delighted to be elected to the Société française d’Égyptologie, and Sainte Fare Garnot and Desroches-Noblecourt were very happy for him.2699 He had always maintained a close relationship with French Egyptology, and with individual French Egyptologists. After all, it was a French connection that allowed him to become the ‘scribe of Deir el-Medina’, and a French connection that invited him to the UNESCO campaigns. He was also becoming a useful point of contact for the international network of Coptologists, and Driver mediated contact with the Swiss Coptologist Rodolphe Kasser in December 1959.2700 2695 AIFAO, summary of the opening session on 1 October 1959; UNESCO/SN/R. EXP/SR, pp. 44–46. 2696 Reid 1997: 147. 2697 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1380–21.1382. 2698 Loktionov 2019: 157–172. 2699 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.848, 18 December 1959. 2700 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2089.

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1960–1964 final years of professorship and the nubian campaign In January 1960, Jaro again wrote to ensure that he was excused from Faculty meetings from January to mid-April.2701 An undated UNESCO document, probably from around 1960, shows that Oxford University’s input was already recognized by this time, and that Jaro was the preferred Oxford expert (with Harris) at CEDAE’s disposal.2702 Just over three years after the Suez Crisis, relations had normalized somewhat, and indeed UNESCO’s call was helping the reconciliation: ‘The rancorous Egyptological feuds of the interwar years faded as expeditions from around the globe joined the international campaign.’2703 Fade they did, though not completely as the history of scholarship was too often set against national interests in a century with a tendency toward ‘scientific nationalism, in which countries view scientific knowledge as a national asset.’2704 The 1960 season was again dedicated to Abu Simbel and Amada. Jaro spent seven weeks recording, revising, and collating, living with Marie aboard the CEDAE vessel. In his own words: During this stay I was able to accomplish the following tasks: • revision of copies of inscriptions in the chapel of Re-Harakhte made previously by an Egyptian epigraphist; • transfer of this copy to codatrace sheets; • codatrace copy of the inscription on the door E of the great temple; • drawing and inking in of the difficult inscription of the Marriage stela of Ramesses II; • pencil drawing of the Meneptah inscription of Amada; This was not possible to ink in in the front of the original, since because of an accident to (?) The Centre’s boat ‘Horus’ became incapable of the 5 hours journey from Abu Simbel to Amada;

2701

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2087. AIFAO, Archive administrative—Projet de sauvegarde et de conservation; Projet de sauvegarde des sites et monuments de Nubie, p. 19: ‘Oxford experts prétés au CEDAE, Le Caire, pour les relevés, des temples ou des graffiti – M. Černý, M. Harris.’ The attached opening statement by Minister of Culture Okasha bears the date 1 October 1959. 2703 Reid 1997: 149. 2704 Wagner 2008: 2, 105. 2702

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• supervision of Egyptian draughtsmen drawing the rock stelae in the neighbourhood of the Abu Simbel temples. The following inscriptions (numbered as in Porter-Moss’ Bibliography) were pencilled on photographs: 5B, 6, 7, 8, 11, 17, 18, 18A, 20A, 22, 24 (double stela), 26, 27, 27A, No. 9 has been drawn directly in ink. With exception of the last, all drawing will have to be checked again with originals after having been inked in and bleached. • Drawing in pencil of graffiti nos. 4D, 7A, 10A; ink: 2, 3A, 3B, 3C, 4, 5A. The following remain now to be drawn: [niche of Pesiur under water], 3D, 3E, 3F, 4C, 10, 11A, 12–16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 23A, 25. For these either there were no photographs yet made or the photographs and enlargements were for one reason or other unsuitable for drawing. Though I originally anticipated a departure from Abu Simbel on 29th Febr., I stayed until March 10th partly to supervise the draughtsmen, partly to be present during Mr. R. Keating’s (of UNESCO) visit. The necessary extension of my mission by two weeks was obtained for me by Mme Noblecourt and Mr Keating.2705

In late March Jaro and Marie began the return journey via Luxor: Here we are at last after more than seven strenuous work [sic] of Abu Simbel at the charming Chicago House. I have only to supervise the Egyptian draughtsman who is drawing for the Centre the Karnak version of the Marriage stela of Ramesses II; otherwise we just have strolls in Luxor and Karnak and on the Western bank, partly to verify various smaller points, partly to make pilgrimages to places and to take final leaves, chiefly however to recover after the Nubian campaign.2706

The ‘smaller points’ included various texts on the West Bank, including graffiti, which Jaro never stopped collecting and analyzing. On this occasion he visited the Valley of the Kings, and on 21 March revised graffiti left by scribes in the tomb of Ramesses III.2707 Fellow guests in the Chicago House included Rosalind Moss and Ethel W. Burney from the Topographical Bibliography, which was a major topic of discussion over coffee 2705 Jaro provided a report for the 1959–1960 season GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.78F. 2706 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.4, 22 March 1960. 2707 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.77, p. 11.

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and tea. Jaro found out that the next volume would have the rather outrageous price of ten pounds.2708 In his view, the work ought to be more widely accessible, and decided to alert Gardiner: Miss Moss who is staying here with us tells me that according to a letter from Hamilton the Committee of the Gr.[iffith] Inst.[itute] has fixed recently the price of the forthcoming volume of the Bibliography to £10. I find this price excessive, and you will no doubt agree with me; it must have been fixed at a meeting which you did not attend. I am lodging a protest with Hamilton and shall ask the first meeting I shall be able to attend to review the problem of the price.2709

He nonetheless continued his West Theban strolls, and wrapped up his season in Egypt with a visit to Cairo in the first two weeks of April. The next stage of the UNESCO campaign was begun on 8 March 1960, and its secretary-general, Vittorino Veronese, appealed to the shared sense of humanity and its heritage by pointing out that Egypt and Sudan were facing a difficult decision: to protect their monuments or to provide for their growing populations. The claims of the living were not easily reconciled with the claims of memory, and the very question itself was painful. However, the challenge also provided a unique opportunity, and Veronese hailed this as a new era of Egyptology, of international collaboration, and of the diffusion of cultural riches. Paradoxically, his diplomatic appeal to transnational cooperation has lately been regarded, perhaps disingenuously, as ‘a Eurocentric and teleological narrative that dismissed modern Egypt as culturally insignificant and challenged its national sovereignty.’2710 Finally, Veronese, paraphrasing Herodotus, who likely paraphrased Hecataeus of Miletus (who might have paraphrased an unknown Egyptian),2711 referred to Egypt being the gift of the Nile, which now had to be protected from becoming a ‘watery grave’ for the heritage of humanity.2712 2708

Approximately £212 at the time of writing. GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.4, 22 March 1960. 2710 Reynolds 2012b: 193. 2711 Herodorus II,5, see Griffiths 1966. 2712 See the brochure ‘Campagne Internationale pour la sauvegarde des Monuments de la Nubie, Ouverture Solennelle le 8 Mars 1960. UNESCO Paris 1960,’ unpaginated. Veronese’s speech is on pp. 1–3. 2709

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This international campaign ran alongside Nasser’s tendency to go left—to the Soviets who were engineering the dam project both literally and, to a certain extent, metaphorically.2713 Yet, Nasser’s attitudes always had a context (including religious beliefs) that precluded him from being ‘a good communist’, as he himself later said when asked about his intellectual and political views. Nasser’s Soviet leanings were most likely always realpolitik, not ideological sympathies.2714 Jaro was unperturbed by all of this (insofar as he deigned to notice), and focused instead on the practicalities of an Egyptological life and a career that held both fieldwork and academic duties. Upon his return after Easter, Jaro confirmed to Driver that he had only one doctoral student (Bell).2715 Several months later, in September, he complained to Fairman that students were not allowed on EES excavations. Fairman attributed this to Emery’s approach, which he considered antiquated,2716 but what Fairman (and Jaro) was probably not privy to were the considerations of the various committees in the early days of the campaign. The committee that met in October 1959 in Cairo, and then aboard ship in Nubia, had a decisive influence on the formulation of the appeal to save Nubia, and had debated at some length whether appropriately trained students were admissible as part of the expert workforce.2717 It was Emery who suggested that he could supply some, but DesrochesNoblecourt observed that even trained students could not replace experts in the field, although they could possibly be used in later phases of the work, for instance at the CEDAE. A student workforce was eventually used in both the offices of the CEDAE and in the field. Jaro was aware that students were involved in Czechoslovak operations, and possibly expected similar solutions to be adopted elsewhere. He was at least keen to promote Harris’s participation. Among the younger scholars

2713

Dawisha 1979: 29–32. Ginat 2004, especially 237–246. 2715 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2091. 2716 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.602, 21 September 1960. 2717 UNESCO/SN/R.EXP/SR, Minutes of the series of meetings. Archives IFAO UNESCO, Nubie, 01, dated 12 November 1959. The debate concerning a student workforce is on pp. 14–15. 2714

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he met at the CEDAE was a promising student named Fayza Haikal, who later followed Jaro to Oxford.2718 Jac. Janssen, the ‘bit of’ a pupil who was then publishing more Ramesside letters,2719 benefitted from Jaro organizing a study visit for him to Turin. He found very satisfying comparanda to his Leiden logbook there.2720 Janssen’s interests began to diversify in the 1960s, as he was intrigued by economic and social relationships at Deir el-Medina, by the donkey trade and its legal aspects, and increasingly by the community’s functioning as an economic and legal unit.2721 This was very much in accordance with Jaro’s early interests, although Jaro himself had been prised away from life in Deir el-Medina by epigraphy fieldwork. Jaro’s interests also expanded as the college environment brought him into contact with specialists from other disciplines. One such contact was the mathematician Peter M. Neumann, who met Jaro at Queen’s College in the early 1960s. Their first meeting occurred during a college lunch, and Jaro later approached Neumann with an Egyptological, and mathematical, problem. He was at that time interested in the so-called Palermo Stone, a historical document preserved in several fragments, of which the largest is kept in the Palermo archaeological museum. Its Cairene fragments had occupied Jaro and Fairman during the war years.2722 The records on the stone have a characteristic arrangement of ‘cells’ in rows, each ‘cell’ containing texts recording events in the regnal years of early Egyptian kings. The ‘cells’ are not identical, and Jaro queried whether it might be possible to calculate the width and length of the original stela by assuming that the rows of diversely sized cells had to eventually meet at an edge. Despite their age difference and their different disciplines, the two scholars stayed in regular contact that was not limited to college life. Neumann visited the Černýs with his family, including two young children whom Jaro encouraged to enjoy the wild strawberries in

2718 F. Haikal, personal communication, 2019: she believes she first met Jaro officially in the CEDAE offices in Cairo. 2719 Janssen, J. 1960. 2720 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1173–21.1175. 2721 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1176. 2722 See 1943.

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his garden, in much the same manner as he encouraged his own step-grandchildren.2723 Jaro’s sociability meant that is contacts expanded to include interdisciplinary and intergenerational networks, although his Egyptological links remained in the forefront. In June 1960, Jaro rallied support for the British Academy to offer membership to Edwards, writing for instance to Cyril Gadd.2724 He secured the support of Sir Max Mallowan, who showed his Austrian family roots by using a typical Austrian spelling of Jaro’s surname—Czerny.2725 In July, he opted to miss the Congress of Orientalists in Moscow, where his pupil Žába used the opportunity to boost his credentials with the Czechoslovak regime.2726 Jaro still maintained contact with Soviet Egyptologists, including Mikhail Korostovtsev, who had entered Jaro’s book exchange network in 1960, no doubt enabled by the slight opening in Soviet relations.2727 1960 was, however, also the year of Khrushchev’s shoe-banging performance at the United Nations. The position of Soviet Egyptology was a complex one, and its intricacy offers a parallel to Czechoslovak Egyptology: It should also be emphasised that it would be simplistic to attribute the isolation of Soviet Egyptology, and the lack of fieldwork in Egypt, entirely to a conscious political choice on behalf of the government within the context of the Cold War. On the contrary, for significant periods of time considerable efforts were made to set up a sustainable Soviet mission in Egypt, and the reasons for its failure appear to have at times had as much to do with individual errors of judgment as with governmental intrigue.2728

2723

Personal communication, Peter M. Neumann, February 2018. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.703, 24 June 1960. Gadd later explained that votes went against Edwards (Černý Mss. 21.704) and that there was little good will for Oriental Studies in the Academy (GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.705). 2725 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2181. 2726 Žába was adept at using Marxist rhetoric in some of his works; his approach to Marxist-Leninist ideology was analyzed by Daniel Šichan in an unpublished manuscript, Reflection of Marxist-Leninist Ideology in the Scientific Work of the Czech Egyptologist Zbyněk Žába, for which see https://www.academia.edu/38538529/Reflection_of_MarxistLeninist_ideology_in_the_scientific_work_of_the_Czech_Egyptologist_Zbyn%C4%9Bk_% C5%BD%C3%A1ba (accessed 4 March 2020). 2727 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2162–2163. 2728 Loktionov 2019: 162–163. 2724

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Žába was in a similar position, and was extremely keen to avoid ‘individual errors of judgement’ as he had little control over governmental intrigue. It is to his credit that he sought the approval of his teacher, Jaro, who represented a link to the more pluralist world of international Egyptology. Though Jaro had intended to work more seriously on the community of workmen, he was still prone to distraction.2729 He enjoyed some ‘long chats’ with Gardiner, which he had looked forward to when last in Egypt.2730 In August he exchanged letters with Georg Gerster, a pioneer of civilian aerial documentary photography, though he did not consult with Gerster about this but rather on Protosinaitic texts.2731 In October Sainte Fare Garnot picked Jaro’s brains about hieratic,2732 then Jaro hosted Fairman on 24 October when he visited Oxford to deliver a lecture on dams and archaeology.2733 The Michaelmas term was full with the inevitable classes and tutorials. Projects ahead of the Aswan dam were constantly on Jaro’s mind, but not necessarily questions regarding his work in Nubian temples. The question of training a new generation of experts reappeared when he complained to Fairman how difficult it was to get students to participate in the rescue missions. Jaro saw their participation as increasingly crucial to their professional development, and restricting international students and young Egyptological professionals from access to the field was deemed unacceptable.2734 He pursued the matter for at least two years, and in September 1961 Fairman again tried to secure a place for Kitchen in an Egyptian mission, or at least to find the finances for a trip to Egypt. Jaro approved of this.2735 In December 1961, Jaro scored another success by assuring support from Queen’s College for Harris to travel to Nubia.2736 2729 According to the personal recollections of Jaromir Malek, Jaro tended to help others when he might have more usefully spent time working on his own material. 2730 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.4, 22 March 1960. 2731 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.861, 11 August 1960. 2732 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.851. 2733 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.603. 2734 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.602. 2735 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.605. 2736 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1969, 28 December 1961, by a college administrator Williams to J. R. Harris, copy for J. Černý.

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Yale University contacted Jaro about a reference for William Kelly Simpson, which he provided speedily and positively.2737 Meanwhile, Emery and Mortimer Wheeler had been working on securing finances for full British participation in the UNESCO campaign,2738 which they succeeded in doing in the autumn and winter of 1960. Jaro was not directly involved in the EES campaign—his engagement in Nubia was via UNESCO and CEDAE—but he proposed suitable candidates for its expeditions in line with his views on the need to provide professional opportunities to younger scholars. Interdisciplinary outreach continued, as Jaro advised the hydrologist and Nile specialist, and consultant to Egyptian government, Harold Edwin Hurst on the topic of Egyptian king-lists.2739 In December 1960, Jaro received another letter from Žába, this one consisting of four pages of densely-packed handwriting providing a synopsis of news, from the foundation of the Cairo branch of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in May 1959 to the first season at the mastaba of Ptahshepses in Abusir in 1960.2740 The Ptahshepses mastaba, which had been eyed with interest by the EES ten years before, became a centrepiece of the Czechoslovak concession. Žába’s writing style was becoming increasingly imperious. He outlined to Jaro how he, as if singlehanded, had excavated and identified hundreds of fragments, read more texts on reliefs than Ludwig Borchardt, and made some altogether epochal discoveries. Although his style was irksome—apparently ignoring of the input of his colleagues, including the Egyptian workmen without whom he would have made little progress—Žába was clearly keen to provide the impression that the Institute had made a good start. In the concluding paragraphs he praised his new colleagues in Prague, including an anthropologist ‘who is also archaeologist and physician’ named 2737

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.913–915. TNA, T 218/509, British Academy Grant-in-Aid to the Egypt Exploration Society. Special Grant 1960 for Preservation of Nubian Antiquities Threatened by Aswan Dam Project; British Academy supporting the EES in 1961 and 1962. 2739 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2158, 23 December 1960, from H. E. Hurst; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2159, 29 December 1960, J. Černý to H. E. Hurst; Černý Mss. 21.2160, 30 December 1960, from H. E. Hurst. 2740 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 18 December 1960. 2738

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Eugen Strouhal. Žába intended for them to meet up in Egypt, but UNESCO did not immediately envisage another season for Jaro at Abu Simbel. He hinted at this in his reply to Žába,2741 but Žába still hoped for a meeting sooner or later. He was keen to have Jaro’s views on his Institute’s upcoming projects. The Schedule A professorship was introduced at Oxford. Jaro did not go to Egypt in the Hilary term of 1961, but this was not entirely because of new arrangements at the University. He was having increasing trouble with his eyesight, though on New Year’s Day he ‘scribbled’ a paper on a dating formula that was probably used to mark a heliacal rising of Sirius.2742 He travelled at the end of Hilary term and returned on 31 March.2743 In April, while discussing British Academy nominations with Gadd, Jaro mentioned what he felt was a certain amount of ill will against Oriental Studies.2744 In May, Jaro had an operations on both eyes, which slowed down his workload.2745 Jac. Janssen was slightly worried: ‘It was a pity to read you underwent an urgent eye operation of both eyes but I am glad the specialists were successful.’2746 Around this time Jaro asked Faulkner to act as an external examiner in Oxford, but Faulkner could not oblige as he was an almost full-time carer for his wife, Phyllis, who had suffered a stroke.2747 Jaro, then with his own share of health troubles, understood. Other academic problems cropped up. A former contact in Leipzig, Dieter Müller, who had left the East for West Germany, did not plan to publish any Leipzig ostraca as this would put his former colleagues in an impossible position.2748

2741 Reflected in Žába’s following letter, from 14 January 1961 (ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý). The original is not accounted for as of the time of writing. 2742 GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG 42.56.5, 3 January 1961. 2743 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1405. 2744 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.704, 10 April 1961; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.705, 23 April 1961. 2745 Fairman referred to this on 11 May 1961, see GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.683; Fairman observed that Jaro was out of hospital in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.604. 2746 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1197. 2747 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.682, 7 May 1961; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.683, 11 May 1961. 2748 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1456, following correspondence about the publication of ostraca in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1454–21.1455.

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As Jaro had recovered from the eye operation, an invitation came from Donadoni to take part in a book project that became known as Le fonti indirette della storia egiziana,2749 although a more accurate description would perhaps be non-monumental records of Egyptian history. In July, Jaro flew to Paris before continuing to Turin. In Paris he was tended by Desroches-Noblecourt, and enjoyed a pleasant evening in the company of Bruyère.2750 He also met Anwar Shukri, and there was talk of a trip to Egypt the following year ‘to coordinate the work done at Abu Simbel.’2751 Marie had again been allowed to visit Czechoslovakia to see her family, and went with them on a trip to Slovakia. Jaro was in Paris and Turin whilst she was in Dolný Smokovec.2752 Jaro returned to Oxford in early August,2753 meeting Marie at the new Heathrow aerodrome.2754 He felt well recovered from his eye operation.2755 Sainte Fare Garnot consulted with Jaro regarding the concept of marriage in ancient Egypt—whilst expecting the arrival of his fifth child.2756 While Jaro and Sainte Fare Garnot thought about the walls of Deir el-Medina in August 1961,2757 a very different wall—the Berlin Wall—was under construction. It became a powerful symbol of a divided world. A slow thaw in relations following Stalin’s death may have been underway, and Stalin’s remains had been removed from the Red Square mausoleum, but Khruschev did not seek an end to the Cold War. 1961 also marks the testing of the largest ever nuclear weapon—the Tsar Bomba. Still, there were some tentative hopes that Communist power, or its Czechoslovak version, could become more humane. Some of the victims of political show trials were gradually being pardoned, mostly in 1962 and 1963, though their sentences were 2749

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.390, from S. Donadoni. A social evening with Bruyère is referred to in a letter to Marie on 3 July 1961; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2324. 2751 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2324. 2752 On 7 July 1961, Jaro was copying texts in the Turin Museum; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.15, p. 82 rto. 2753 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 1157; T. G. H. (Harry) James heard about Jaro’s return from Edwards, 3 August 1961. 2754 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2324. 2755 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.181, 25 August 1961, from C. Aldred. 2756 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.854. 2757 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.855–21.856. 2750

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not necessarily overturned.2758 There were some hints that worst excesses of the Stalinist period were no longer condoned, even if the process was far from clear. The monstrous memorial to Stalin, aptly dubbed ‘the Meat Queue’, which had loomed over the historical city centre of Prague, was finally removed in autumn 1961. Jaro sought to move forward with his book on the workmen, but there were far too many ongoing projects. In late 1961, Jaro again looked up material from Edinburgh, and from the tomb of Tutankhamun. He even discussed Tutankhamun’s chariots with Aldred.2759 Žába, meanwhile, reported another successful season that lasted several long months throughout 1961, the main task in that season being to identify the location and architectural relationships of the temples at Tafa. Žába outlined the details of his research plan in his report on the first Czechoslovak season in Nubia,2760 stating that drawings and maps from early travellers represented important sources (and had precedent in the Topographical Bibliography) supplemented by two ‘photographs’ (actually calotypes) made by Maxime Du Camp and Félix Teynard. These showed both temples at Tafa in their original locations, with damage and some architectonic details visible on most depictions. The calotypes depicted the surrounding landscape context quite precisely, with the Teynard picture in particular capturing the skyline that the expedition saw before them in detail. Painters, from Hector Horeau to David Roberts, tended to opt for a dramatic Alpine horizon, which did not help in efforts to determine the location of the southern temple: A more precisely delimited position was impossible to tell owing to only too apparent discrepancies due to a manifestly inaccurate rendering of the horizon by painters who of course cared much more about a pleasant effect of a romantic setting than about a rendering strictly conform [sic] to the reality of all the contours and proportions of the hinterground.2761

2758 2759 2760 2761

Dejmek et al. 2018: 546–547. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.178, 21.177. Žába 1963: 45–51. Žába 1963: 47, retaining the peculiarities of Žába’s English.

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This was the reason why Egyptologist Žába, and his colleague Miroslav Korecký, who specialized on history of architecture, chose historical photographic records as a starting point for their further study. The Czechoslovak expedition performed two sets of surveys, and both measurements intersected in an area where they lowered some archaeological test pits. The workers excavated to a depth of around four metres through the mud, silt, and cultural layers that covered the remnants of the temples, to the point where it seemed improbable that they would be ever discovered. The researchers nonetheless insisted on the verification of pictures that were now over a century old. Another participant on the expedition, Strouhal, described difficulties resulting of rapidly excavating several archaeological trenches in the heat of Nubia in July: We assigned the workers to four pits five to each. Four research workers and specialists supervised excavations in each of the pits … the workers started slowly to disappear in deeper and deeper layers … On the fourth day of the excavation, the workers reached the depth more than three metres in the pit number 1 without a slightest trace of a cultural layer. Professor and Associate Professor [Žába and Korecký] are competing in producing a more precise methodology; they have changed the position of ‘the centre of the temple’, however basically they barely leave the site. Nervousness reaches its peak, because we have been digging already for four days, a relatively long period in a term of one month, and we have not found anything yet. Nonetheless, I am determined to continue to dig in the pit number 1 even deeper.2762

The procedure was eventually successful, and following the discovery of traces of architecture on 18 July 1961 they were able to locate the southern temple at Tafa, to survey it, and to excavate its foundations. This success, as well as ‘thousands of finds’ in the mastaba of Ptahshepses identified in autumn 1961, were the gist of Žába’s report to Jaro.2763 Žába’s decision to test the use of legacy records in archaeology reveals their limitations, but also largely vindicates Moss’s decision to include such references 2762 2763

Strouhal 1989: 79–80. Translation courtesy of Markéta Kabůrková. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 25 December 1961.

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in the Topographical Bibliography. Its revised Theban volume, from 1960, stated clearly, that the new volume differed: … in many respects from its predecessor, and the scope has been enlarged … Besides the references to new publications, it has been thought worthwhile to include certain important series of photographs, notably those taken by Harry Burton for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, by the Chicago Oriental Institute, and by Professor Siegfried Schott.2764

Jaro was not directly involved in the 1962 campaigns in Egypt, but kept in touch with Desroches-Noblecourt and with Rex Keating.2765 Keating was the head of UNESCO’s English language radio division in Paris at that time, and was covering the Nubian campaign, but his experience with Egyptian history dates back to the 1930s when he recorded the sound of Tutankhamun’s trumpets. Jaro was teaching and researching throughout the term, but was starting to worry that he might not be able to finish his work on the Deir el-Medina community. The eyesight scares of past year were probably still fresh. Consequently, he encouraged Jac. Janssen to work on commodity prices at the settlement, offering him full access to his notes on the topic.2766 Their cooperation developed into a regular exchange of notes on late New Kingdom chronology, the dating of ostraca, and on papyri and artefacts related to the community. Janssen sought to encourage Jaro in turn, relating that a magnum opus on workmen was within his grasp, but it was now well past the three years that Jaro had hoped to dedicate to the project in 1958. Despite personal concerns, he remained a point of contact for colleagues and prospective students alike. In May 1962 he was approached by one such student, Geoffrey Thorndike Martin, who was considering a dissertation at Oxford. Jaro invited Martin to meet him in person, and explained Oxford’s expectations. Martin decided to pursue his studies at UCL.2767 In the summer

2764

PM I2.1, vii. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2483, 21.2430, 21.2431. 2766 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1177. 2767 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1366, 28 May 1962, from J. Černý to G. T. Martin; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1367, 29 May 1962, from G. T. Martin. 2765

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of 1962 Jaro suffered a fall,2768 but this did not put him off socializing or playing the gracious host. A Belgian friend, Aristide Theodoridès, visited Oxford with his wife and were happy guests of Jaro and Marie.2769 Theodoridès was a regular correspondent in the 1960s, and like many others kept communications open via book exchanges and regular consultations. His visitors found Jaro stimulating—as did a scholar, performer, actress, and researcher named Samira Kirollos; she found her meeting with Jaro to be an inspirational moment.2770 Her performances are concerned with bringing Egyptian literature and the people of ancient Egyptian history to life, so meeting a man who was closely involved in a study of the daily lives and deeds of Egyptians left an impression. Duties during the Michaelmas term of 1962 were light, and allowed for some travel to Italy,2771 but another duty interposed. Gardiner was quite ill towards the end of the year, and it fell to Jaro, in communication with Gardiner’s son John Gardiner, to address the queries of Eckart Kissling, who was translating Gardiner’s Egypt of the Pharaohs into German.2772 Other calls on Jaro’s time continued to intervene. He and James discussed the work of Elisabeth Thomas in the Valley of the Kings around this time,2773 and there were sundry other consultations added to writing and teaching.2774 The prolonged Cambridge Ancient History project, first embarked upon in the 1940s, was coming to an end, and its late New Kingdom chapter reflected Jaro’s long-term preoccupations with the Deir el-Medina workmen, and utilized the same resources. Alix Wilkinson wrote to thank Jaro for a nice meeting in Oxford, despite Jaro being busy working on the CAH and ‘the workmen’.2775 Jaro’s work on ‘an exhaustive 2768 Faulkner was sorry to hear about Jaro’s fall, as he wrote on 3 July 1962: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.687A. 2769 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1885, 15 July 1962, from A. Théodoridès. 2770 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2161. 2771 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.858, 23 October 1962, J. Sainte Fare Garnot to J. Černý. 2772 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1276–21.1279. 2773 For an outline of her work, see Thompson 2015–2018, III: 408–410. 2774 Classicist Peter Marshall Fraser thanked Jaro for notes on Diodorus: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.699, 13 December 1962. 2775 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2264.1–2, 4 December 1962, from A. Wilkinson.

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treatment of life’ of the workmen had continually been interrupted and resumed since the 1930s, yet there seemed to be more and more demands on his time. The next year looked to bring another Egyptian season, despite tensions in the region occasioned by Egypt’s involvement in the civil war in Yemen.2776 Some of British Egyptologists from the next generation were starting to experience Egypt. Kitchen set out or Egypt, not for an epigraphic mission but on a general study tour, and went ‘into action’ on 9 November, which ‘saw my parents and me sweep into central London, and an overnight stay to get out fresh and early to Heathrow for my morning flight east. So it was, that the 10th saw me off by BEA plane to Athens, for the connecting Olympic Airways “Comet” to Cairo.’2777 Jaro once again had to negotiate a leave of absence in Trinity term 1963. But before he and Marie packed their suitcases, he was busy reading another take on the workmen in Deir el-Medina, this time a contribution by Erika Endesfelder.2778 She had used written sources, as had Jaro, and some of the archaeological sources published by the IFAO mission in her dissertation, which included a long list of Jaro’s published work. She was evidently not aware of his 1922 dissertation, but made ample use of his other writings. It was probably her relative isolation in East Germany that prevented her from reaching out to Jaro and realizing that she was, to a certain extent, duplicating his efforts, and with access to much less material. In her dissertation she opted to discuss the spatial aspects of the community, and how they were anchored in West Theban topography, last, whereas Jaro prioritized them. Jaro was reading her work at the same time as Jac. Janssen, and both found it too theoretical.2779 This is perhaps unsurprising as Endesfelder lived in East Germany, in an ideological framework where heavy theorizing, even if at odds with the evidence, was encouraged.2780 Her entire career was marked by her striving to 2776

See Orkaby 2017.  Kitchen 2016: 134. 2778 Endesfelder 1961. Her dissertation was later published as Endesfelder 2018. 2779 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1180. 2780 Compare, for example, ‘Eine Bemerkung zur Ägyptologie in der DDR und eine Bemerkung zur Formationstheorie, Vorwort des Herausgebers Martin Fitzenreiter’, in Andrássy 2008. 2777

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reconcile her resources, which for her took precedence over ideology,2781 in the stultifying presence of a political system that held to the deceit of a ‘people’s democracy’ that was neither a democracy nor good for the people. Those who lived on its ideological rack had to find ways to survive.2782 Jaro was not, it seems, fully informed of Žába’s ability to play this game, or the extent to which he prided himself on his ability to work with sharpened political agendas. Žába visited the USSR in 1963 and showcased his work at Abusir to Vasiliy V. Struve, allegedly inspiring the Soviet academician to some fulsome words of praise: ‘It is necessary,’ Academician Struve said: ‘to take this opportunity to show that the quality of the work of socialist countries and their relationship to the cultural heritage of antiquity far surpasses the activity of Western Egyptologists who still believe they have the primate in Egyptology; it is, therefore, so significant that the opportunity to do so has now the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology.’2783

This was the tune played by Cold War academics, though it contains the echo of a another, earlier statement about cultural variance: Masaryk praising Jaro for taking a different view compared to his ‘Western’ colleagues. But whilst Masaryk was speaking of a contribution, of a complement to what had already been made, Struve—at least in Žába’s interpretation—was speaking of more pronounced ideological competition. This is consistent with the ongoing rhetoric of the time, about an ‘ideological battle’ in which research alliances were to be sought only within one’s own ideological bloc. Rhetoric and practice were rather different, however, and had been for several years, as both sciences and humanities had become more cooperative.2784

2781

Blumenthal 2017. See also Steinborn 2017. 2783 Zpráva prof. Dr. Zbyňka Žáby o pobytu v SSSR ve dnech 29. října až 17. listopadu 1963. ACEGU, folder Protokoly EU, section XIII. 1966–70, č. j. XIII/531/1964. Quote after D. Šichan, https://www.academia.edu/38538529/Reflection_of_Marxist-Leninist_ ideology_in_the_scientific_work_of_the_Czech_Egyptologist_Zbyn%C4%9Bk_%C5% BD%C3%A1ba (accessed 4 March 2020). 2784 Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1755 and passim. 2782

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The Černýs left for Egypt, settling into work aboard the CEDAE vessel in February.2785 They returned after the customary few months, but Jaro did not stay long in Oxford, as in May 1963 he was again travelling, this time to the Museo Egizio in Turin to collate hieroglyphic texts on objects from Deir el-Medina.2786 On 30 May 1963, Jaro was in Turin with Giuseppe Botti and Anna Maria Roveri, who was travelling to Nubia with Donadoni (her colleague and future husband). He and Botti sent a postcard to Botti’s aunt, Giuseppina Bozzo: a warm family wish in Italian on the occasion of a new grandchild.2787 His duties in Oxford must have still been rather light, as Jaro returned only in June, just in time to again enjoy hosting Theodoridès.2788 At around this time Jaro was approached by a Classicist named Dorothea Gray, based at St Hugh’s College,2789 who was interested in the travels of Wenamun. Jaro outlined details of this well-known Egyptian text for her, particularly where naval terminology was concerned. The protagonist, Wenamun, was no sailor, but rather appeared to be involved in trade negotiations and political manoeuvring at the end of the New Kingdom, when Egypt’s prestige in the Levant was in decline. Jaro had an intimate knowledge of the text, which he had excerpted in some detail for his Late Egyptian grammar.2790 Still in June, his contact in Göttingen, Hermann Kees, provided a necessary reference for Shafik Allam, who had obtained the opportunity to go to Oxford thanks to the Deutsche ForschungsGesellschaft and was to become one of Jaro’s students in his last teaching years.2791 Jaro’s openness across borders benefitted others, as Haikal was another of Jaro’s students in his later years. As soon as the term was over, Jaro was once again en route to Turin and its texts.2792 2785 A letter from H. J. Polotsky reached his office while Jaro was in Egypt; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1621. 2786 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.80, p. 17; on 24 May 1963, Jaro was in Turin, working on hieroglyphic texts on various objects. 2787 Botti 2011: see fig. 81 on p. 270. 2788 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1886, 30 June 1963, from A. Théodoridès. 2789 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.923–924. 2790 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.17. 2791 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1258. 2792 Turin collations dated 1963, see GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.18.

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Allam arrived in the Michaelmas term.2793 In October, Jaro wrote to Fairman about Walter Till’s library and whether Liverpool might be interested.2794 Meanwhile, the University began the process of filling the vacancy that would become available upon Jaro’s planned retirement, which was expected to happen in 1965, his sixty-seventh year.2795 The prospect of retirement came with an outlook of less financial security but more freedom to engage in research. Jaro’s years in Oxford were a relatively stable routine of teaching, fieldwork in Egypt, and visits to museums. The last time Jaro had experienced such a routine was for a brief period between 1934 and 1939, in Gardiner’s employ, but that hadn’t included a stable academic post, nor responsibilities as part of the CEDAE’s research machinery. His stability had coincided with a rise in state funding for Egyptological research in Britain,2796 but this came with a cost: The responsibilities and expectations of state funding, with its emphasis on teaching and administration, had begun to impede upon researchers’ ability to produce original work. Yet Jaro understood the cost of research; the certainty that those who provide funding always required something in return. As a young man he had acted as an impromptu cultural ambassador for Masaryk. As a freelance researcher he had considered himself Gardiner’s employee. As a professor he felt beholden to the universities that had taken him in. For the CEDAE and UNESCO he was one of the few experts who could do the necessary work. At least he didn’t have to bow to the apparatchiks beyond the Iron Curtain, who asserted state ownership of all research (and those who produced it). In November 1963, Margaret Murray, the doyenne of British Egyptology, passed away. She had witnessed very different times, and still held more to Flinders Petrie’s model of research, in which artefact sales funded further exploration, than to statefunded research models.2797 Nor was she fond of Jaro’s nomination as the Edwards Professor, though this was probably more 2793 2794 2795 2796 2797

Haikal 2011. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.611, 7 October 1963. OUA, Professorship of Egyptology, Shelf mark WR 6/ER/2 file 1, October 1963. Compare Dodson 2019. Dodson 2019: 147–156.

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out of devotion to Petrie’s archaeological legacy than to personal feelings. Jaro at least respected her contribution to the study of Egyptian religion, as he had shown by including her works as recommended reading in his 1952 volume on the subject. And then Alan Gardiner died, on 19 December 1963. He had been unwell for some time, but had remained a faithful friend and correspondent to Jaro. Throughout Jaro’s life, Gardiner had been a reassuring, demanding, maddening, and supportive presence, often concurrently, and his death undeniably left a void. Jaro found himself in the role of trustee for the Gardiner Fund, and was obliged to produce a stream of obituaries. Jaro was also contacted that December by the Nobel Prize Committee, who approached him regarding a nomination for the prize in literature. Jaro nominated Jean-Paul Sartre,2798 who was later awarded the Prize and was the first to refuse it. Jaro may have been capable of performing the role of a prim bourgeois scholar, but was not limited by it, and his life had included much experience of injustice and inhumanity. There is no record of him ever having read any of Sartre’s works, though it is likely he had if he recommended the existentialist author for the Nobel Prize. Which of his works most appealed to Jaro remains hidden. Still, the proposal suggests that Jaro could see beyond the anarchic loudness of the public intellectual to Sartre’s humanist message (not universally accepted as such),2799 as it is hard to imagine that he would have condoned Sartre’s professed sympathies to communist parties, and later even to Maoism. Everything known about Jaro’s political beliefs stands in stark opposition to Sartre’s professed sympathies to authoritarian and revolutionary solutions. Sartre’s statement that ‘To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remains a dead man and a free man,’2800 which some have assumed to encapsulate Sartre’s naïve condoning of violence, seems the very opposite of how Jaro approached partnerships; his unstated but ongoing belief that crossing boundaries was a more important, if rather 2798 2799 2800

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1525–21.1526. For example, debates noted by Perrin 2010: 297–319. See Fanon 2001: 19; Fleming 2011: 28.

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less exuberant, political act. Jaro might well have been impressed to hear that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited Prague in 1963, and that the visit contributed to the opening of international scholarly networks with Czechoslovakia.2801 Jaro’s last full year of professional academic duties came in 1964. He saw some of his previous projects developing. In midJanuary, Edward Wente asked Jaro’s opinion concerning his translations of Late Ramesside letters, which interested Jaro even though his eyesight was troubling him again.2802 Wente expanded upon Jaro’s and Abd el-Mohsen Bakir’s interest in these letters by using material from across Egyptian history, notably editions of the possible textbook-and-model letter known as Kemit, and James’s edition of the Hekanakhte papers.2803 Jaro was also troubled about the plan for how and where to publish a Coptic etymological dictionary. He had contacted the Clarendon Press, but they dragged their feet by suggesting that the inclusion of the Nag Hammadi lexicon might be desirable. This was not in Jaro’s plan, as he was interested in the historical, etymological perspective, so he began to consider other publishers.2804 Jaro and Marie returned to Egypt in 1964 and Jaro dedicated most of his epigraphic time to the temple of Amada.2805 Žába wrote to them later stating that ‘when you shall float past es-Sebua, you may spot our flag somewhere en route.’2806 Fairman, while reporting on Kitchen’s academic success, was consulting for his chapter of the Cambridge Ancient History.2807 Both he and Jaro were nearing the completion of their respective chapters, and Fairman was among the few correspondents to whom Jaro would reply when in Egypt. In February 1964, Jaro was contacted by a lycée teacher living in France named Renée Swanson, who was writing a thesis on magic and the Elizabethans but who felt strongly attracted to 2801

Petráň 2015: 282. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1950, 14 January 1964, from E. F. Wente. 2803 Wente 1990: 1–12. 2804 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.295–21.296. 2805 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1950, 14 January 1964, from E. F. Wente; see also Černý 1967b; Achiery et al. 1968. 2806 ACEGU, Correspondence, 17 March 1964, Z. Žába to J. Černý. 2807 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.611B, 5 February 1964. 2802

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Egyptology. Her letters were more reports on her life than on Egyptology, but Jaro was generous with his time, replying: Take it, please, as an appreciation of your happy idea of enlivening your work by a noble hobby. It takes me back to the time when I had to earn my living outside Egyptology and when I derived much pleasure from my Egyptological studies.2808

It seems that this was an amusing diversion with a pen-pal that continued for much of 1964, although in the coming years Jaro apparently had less time to pursue it.2809 They met in France at least once, but Marie’s reaction, if any, to female friendship remains unknown. In March, Jaro exchanged letters with Helen Kantor, regarding the presence of hieratic dockets on Amarna tablets.2810 The Oxford professorship of Egyptology was advertised at around the same time, on 17 March 1964 in The Times. Jaro did not seem particularly concerned with his upcoming retirement as he evidently had enough work to pursue. As his eyesight problems mounted he came to be increasingly interested in teaching as a way of remaining ‘useful’ to Egyptology,2811 and that option was not ended by retirement as guest professorships were soon to be offered in Philadelphia and Tübingen. The relationship to Tübingen was helped by Allam, but also by the fact that Jaro had maintained so many unbroken lines of communication with German Egyptologists, including Hellmut and Emma Brunner who worked at the university there. Open lines of communication still kept Jaro busy. Ricardo Caminos was always keen to consult on some of his readings.2812 In June, the Italian scholar Edda Bresciani came to consult on her interest in Demotic, though her main concern appears to have been whether would she have a professional future as a Demoticist.2813 During the summer there was less university business, but 2808

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2236. The last preserved letter is from 24 August 1965: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2261.1–2, from R. Swanson. 2810 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.94–95. 2811 J. Malek, personal communication. 2812 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.26, 26 May 1964. 2813 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.260–21.262. 2809

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correspondents remained steadily attentive, Swanson in particular. Klaus Baer in distant Colorado was reading about the ‘harem conspiracy’ papyri, and as Jaro had seen them in Turin he was a sought-after correspondent.2814 The CEDAE project was producing books steadily, one after another.2815 The speed of production was remarkable, almost a production line in which specialists, including Jaro, mostly finalized the plates in Egypt by making clean copies on Kodatrace. The publications contained very little apart from the epigraphic record, with some basic information on placement and location within a monument, but they were a team effort. This helped the CEDAE to produce the series regularly and swiftly. The international campaign ahead of the Aswan dam was ongoing, but the political winds were shifting. There was a change in Soviet-Egyptian relationships because ‘the downfall of Khrushchev in October 1964 coincided with a deepening economic crisis in Egypt, the principal characteristics of which were worsening shortages of consumer goods and a drastic shortfall of foreign currency.’2816 The UN was committed to the Aswan project but was irritated by Egypt’s ‘adventure’ in Yemen, and this left Egypt exposed without continued Soviet aid. Egypt was caught between a need for Soviet arms and a need for Western food and capital: Khrushchev, after all, was the one who had authorized the arms deal in 1955, thereby providing the material basis for the transformation of Egypt from a post-colonial backwater to an aspiring regional hegemon. Khrushchev had vigorously defended Egypt when it came under armed attack by British, French, and Israeli forces in the Suez campaign the following year. He had come through with funding and technical aid for the giant Aswan Dam project. And Khrushchev was the one who had personally authorized the bold dispatch of military aid to Cairo in 1962, enabling the United Arab Republic (or UAR, as Egypt continued to be called even after the breakup of the merger with Syria in 1961), to stage a campaign on the Arabian Peninsula on behalf of the fledgling Yemen Arab Republic. But then, in a flash, he was gone. With some 2814 2815 2816

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.236, 18 August 1964. Abdel-Hamid Youssef 1981; see also the output registered in Christophe 1977. Ferris 2011: 5.

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justification, Egyptian journalist Muhammad Haykal writes that ‘[i]n few countries can the news of the Russian leader’s fall have been received with greater shock than in Egypt’.2817

In Prague, the apparatchik Novotný, who had made Czechoslovakia a ‘drab and unexciting place to visit’,2818 was worried by Khrushchev’s downfall. He would become even more worried in the coming years, as fifteen years of communist mismanagement had left the Czechoslovak economy in a poor state.2819 Žába was nonetheless still allowed to continue his Nubian missions in 1964, and even in 1965. Jaro’s relationship with Prague remained distant, if open. He continued to treat political boundaries as permeable, though he had not returned to Czechoslovakia. This did not please some of his correspondents. After learning of a trip Jaro had made to Warsaw in 1964, Žába moaned, in his usual tone, ‘you have been so close, yet so far.’ Žába immediately went on to list his plans for the Czechoslovak Institute’s final trip, to include a stopover: ‘we have still two barrels of fresh latex, I consider asking a permission to copy in Wadi Hammamat, you said a publication of it would be welcome as a contribution to palaeography.’ Žába also assumed that he could extract from Jaro’s a promise to bequeath his library to Prague, demanding ‘did you discuss [the bequest] with a lawyer?’2820 In the autumn of 1964, Jaro felt that the Coptic etymological dictionary project needed to be finalized despite practical problems. Coptic etymologies began to interest Jaro closely in the 1940s, and his collection of etymological material now extended to over twenty years of diligent pursuit. Accordingly, in November, Jac. Janssen offered to write up the dictionary for printing, if Jaro felt it necessary. This was a way of offering thanks, because Janssen saw Jaro as his Egyptological lifeline.2821 Even as retirement approached, Jaro was still a hieratic consultant-at-

2817

Ferris 2011: 6. Zeman 1969: 37. 2819 Žídek 2019: chapter 5. 2820 The quoted passages in this paragraph are from ACEGU, Correspondence, 9 November 1964, Z. Žába to J. Černý. 2821 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1182, 15 November 1964, from Jac. Janssen. 2818

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large: Steffen Wenig visited in November to consult on his opinions.2822 And he was still sought-after on other matters. John Gwynn Griffiths, who had been Jaro’s student and who had long enjoyed Jaro’s support (that support extended to his own student Alan Lloyd), obtained a Leverhulme fellowship after Jaro’s recommendation.2823 Jaro also took the time to write recommendations for Kasser, whom he had known since 1959 and now praised highly as an excellent Coptic scholar.2824 Toward the end of the year he was also invited by Morenz to contribute to a Festschrift for Rudolf Anthes.2825 The last years of Jaro’s professorship were largely dedicated to a series of smaller tasks—to replies to correspondence and to consultations. His fieldwork and book production was ultimately dominated by the UNESCO campaign.

Epigraphy, the research process, and coptic The years 1956 to 1964 count as among Jaro’s most productive, in terms of his publication output. This is partially due to Jaro co-authoring a number of books from the CEDAE mission,2826 and from the joint-authorship of research papers, but it is still remarkable given that these were teaching years. The University of Oxford fortunately showed its willingness to accommodate Jaro’s various extra-university duties. But it is also probable that a settled life, with his library, notebooks and indexes—his complete working archive—in one place, meant that he could draw on research infrastructure of his own making. This allowed him the steady production of shorter notes on various topics,2827 several 2822

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.156–21.157. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.941–21.953. 2824 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1249–21.1250; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2089, 4 December 1959. 2825 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1416. 2826 Černý and Edel 1958; Černý, Donadoni, and Edel 1960; Černý and Edel 1962a; Černý and Edel 1962b; Černý and Edel 1962c; Černý and Donadoni 1962; DesrochesNoblecourt et al. 1962. 2827 Černý 1958c; Černý 1958d; Černý 1958f; Černý 1959b; Černý 1961b; Černý 1961c; Černý 1961d; Černý 1963a; Černý 1963b; Černý 1963d; Černý 1964a; Černý 1964b; Černý 1964c. 2823

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of which were concerned with Bohairic, a Coptic dialect, and were offshoots from his earlier work in Coptology. Jaro had been interested in Coptic since at least the Second World War, and this is reflected in his long-term relationships with Kahle, Plumley,2828 and Parker. Most of his publications were concerned with text editions and etymologies,2829 which was typical for scholars of his generation and was enabled by the Coptic etymological slips burgeoning in his personal research archive. He certainly enjoyed the challenge of publishing the Coptic horoscope, as can be seen in the back-and-forth correspondence with Neugebauer and Parker.2830 Yet this output raises questions about what would have happened if Jaro had been able to set aside his distractions and focus—as he regularly promised himself and others—on the Late Egyptian grammar and on the Deir el-Medina community of workmen. But he was easily distracted, and aware that he was a universal Egyptologist, a go-to person, an important node in an international Egyptological network whose position was reflected in the rush of consultations directed at him through the mail. He was sought-after for the translations of texts that would appear in larger archaeological reports or object publications.2831 He wrote obituaries for colleagues, including for Étienne Drioton, de Buck, and Gardiner. Drioton represented a passing era of Egyptology through which Jaro had lived,2832 but in his brief obituary he praised mostly Drioton’s universalist approach to Egyptology, as one who was as conversant with art history as he was with Coptic.

2828

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1595–21.1611. Černý, Kahle, and Parker 1957; Černý 1958e. 2830 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1490–21.1497. 2831 For example, Fraser and Černý 1959: Jaro translated a number of hieroglyphic texts for Fraser, notably a statue in Chicago (Inv. no. 10518); Davies et al. 1963: Jaro translated several inscriptions, such as from TT 38 (Djeserkareseneb, steward of Tuthmosis IV: pls i-vii, p. 1–8); TT 66 (Hapu, vizier of Tuthmosis IV: pls viii–xiv, p. 9–13); TT 162 (Qenamon, mayor of Thebes in the eighteenth dynasty: pls xv–xx, p. 14–18); and TT 81 (partially, Ineni, overseer of the granary for Amenophis I and Tuthmosis III: pls xxi–xxiii, p. 19–20). 2832 Černý 1959a; Černý 1961a. 2829

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Toward the end of the 1950s, Jaro had finished publication of the Bankes stelae.2833 This was rather typical as a by-product of his work on Deir el-Medina material. The stelae were all related to Western Thebes and the village of workmen, and Jaro considered it opportune to publish the group in order to make Deir el-Medina material in private collections more accessible. Cooperation with Gardiner that began in the mid-1930s had a tangible result in the Hieratic Ostraca volume,2834 which including pieces from both of their collections and some that were dispersed between Cairo, Prague, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In 1963, Jaro revisited the topic of unofficial and private documents, this time methodologically. His first foray into the area was his study of ostraca in 1931, which was very source-oriented and focused only somewhat on the materiality of ostraca. Now, for a chapter in the collected volume Le fonti indirette,2835 he also addressed the material side of other resources, particularly their paucity or vulnerability. These were etic categories, but he tried to divide the documents in a way that offered some emic grounding. The hieratic script seemed a suitable means to gauge the ‘private’ nature of a document, though it was ultimately imperfect as the Abusir papyri, for example, an archive from a royal temple, do not comfortably suit labels such as ‘private’ or ‘unofficial’. Jaro himself began to doubt the validity of labels for documents such as the Great Harris Papyrus.2836 Nonetheless, his approach of using the non-monumental textual record to write ‘Egyptian history, political or cultural’,2837 was cutting-edge for his time. His contribution focused mainly on political history, and some aspects of social history were covered by Helck in the same volume,2838 though Helck’s contribution is perhaps even less about ‘fonti indirette’ as the non-royal monumental texts he referred to relate directly to Egyptian history.

2833 2834 2835 2836 2837 2838

Černý 1958b. Černý and Gardiner 1957. Černý 1963c. Černý 1963c: 47. Černý 1963c: 33. Helck 1963.

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Jaro followed Helck’s studies closely, and wrote a review of Helck’s major work on the administration of the Middle and New Kingdoms.2839 He greatly appreciated Helck’s approach to painstakingly collecting material and organizing it to provide a coherent picture. He also took some issue with Helck’s method— evidently comparing Helck to his own approach to the workmen of Western Thebes—noting that Helck profited from unpublished Berlin Wörterbuch references (as he himself did), and that ‘he ought to have made a point of studying European and American collections which all contain much unpublished material on stelae, statues and small objects so important for the study of titles and officials.’2840 Jaro scrapped his intended paper on Ramesside viziers after Helck’s book appeared, but used the review to publish a large body of evidence he had originally intended to include within it. He also made several practical recommendations in his review, for example suggesting a method of providing good bibliographic practice: ‘The bibliography should be given in full when the document is not included in the Topographical Bibliography; when it is, the reviewer suggests that PM with volume and page number would dispense with further indication, except, of course, any additions to PM.’ Here, Jaro rather casually proposed a systematic adjustment to the way that Egyptological information and workflow was organized, and one that was later realized with the advent of digital publication and hyperlinks. His idea was perhaps based on his own experience with Moss, whose expertise (along with that of Yoyotte) he sought to produce detailed lists of amendments. This period of his life again saw Jaro actively engaged in epigraphic fieldwork. He was involved, in some small measure,2841 2839

Černý 1962. Černý 1962: 141. 2841 Bernand et al. 1960. ‘The sun was a witness at Pharaoh’s marriage’ by Jaroslav Černý, pp. 31–33. This special issue of the UNESCO Courier, published to support the international campaign to save the monuments of Nubia, appeared in English, French and Spanish; the list of other contributions provides an idea about the people involved and themes included: ‘A message from the Director-General of UNESCO’ by Vittorino Veronese (p. 3); an abridgement of this letter and of the following article can also be found in Egypt Travel Magazine 67 (Le Caire, Mars 1960), p. 6–12, 7 ills; ‘The drama of Nubia’ by Georges Fradier (p. 5–7); ‘The legacy of Nubia’ by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (p. 8–15); ‘Abu Simbel: marriage of the colossal and the beautiful’ (anonymous, p. 16–19); ‘The saga of a temple freed from a grave of sand’ by Louis A. Christophe (p. 20–22); 2840

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in supporting the propagation of the UNESCO world appeal, and in a large measure in ‘saving the treasures of Nubia,’ as the slogan went. Epigraphic missions to Egypt were of diverse character,2842 but were often motivated by an element of rescue: ‘The Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was established by James Henry Breasted in 1924 exclusively to document the endangered and rapidly disintegrating ancient Egyptian monuments of the Luxor area.’2843 The debate stridently pursued by Fairman during the Second World War, twenty years after Breasted founded the Epigraphic Survey and closely related to British efforts in Egypt, included the urgent need to map and protect extant documents. The CEDAE was founded with the documentation of endangered monuments as one of its main declared objectives,2844 de facto fulfilling Fairman’s battle-cry in a new political setting and on different institutional and epistemological grounds. The CEDAE and UNESCO operations in the 1950s and the 1960s were emblematic for contemporary debates about the protection of world heritage: The accelerated rhythm of the constitution, or even the production of heritage, throughout the world, is easily observable. A series of international charters has endorsed, co-ordinated and shaped this movement, though much distance still exists between the principles and respect for them …  In this consciousness-raising, saving the temples of Abu-Simbel in 1959, during the construction of the huge Aswan dam, certainly played a key role. This was an experiment that was given wide media coverage, mobilizing public opinion on a large scale. Amazingly enough, the distant past and modern techniques became allies: the future did not take over the ruins of the past. On the contrary, it gave them the chance to remain visible in the future, as a kind of repeated semaphore. The speech made by André Malraux during this campaign bears ample witness: ‘Your appeal does not belong to the history of the mind ‘Philae: the sacred isle’ by Étienne Drioton (p. 34–38); ‘In the steps of Greece and Rome’ by André Bernand and Abdullatif Ahmed Aly (p. 39 and 50); ‘Under the sign of Maat: goddess of precision’ (anonymous, p. 40–43); ‘The modern pyramid of Aswan: Sadd el Aali’ by Albert Raccah (p. 44–45); ‘Sudanese Nubia: terra incognita of archaeologists’ by J. Vercoutter (p. 46–49); ‘Question marks in the desert’ by Anwar Shoukry and François Daumas (p. 50). 2842 Dorman 2008. 2843 Bell 1987: 43. 2844 Abdel-Hamid Youssef 1981.

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because you must save the temples of Nubia, but because with it the first world civilization publicly claims world art as its indivisible heritage.’2845

This was a significant change of tone from the nineteenth- to early twentieth centuries, from the collectors’ age of ‘treasuries of memory’,2846 to a shared heritage for the world. Jaro had engaged in emergency epigraphy at least since his days at Saqqara during the war, and had developed a sense of duty toward prioritized monuments that was reflected in exhortations such as: ‘Meir is in the urgent need of being saved,’2847 which he aimed at a vacillating colleague. Taking part in largescale rescue operations at the expense of any other tasks he might have decided to pursue was the culmination of his resolution to be available, to do what needed to be done for epigraphy and archaeology. His participation in CEDAE and UNESCO operations, and the way this was perceived by colleagues, was characteristic of his transnational beliefs. He was acceptable, a scholar with international ties but with a suitably non-aligned UNESCO passport. Desroches-Noblecourt was accurate when she proposed him as the ideal of a neutral scholar. Jaro represented a link between Egyptian, French, and British academia, even if a decade after his death the director of the CEDAE, Ahmed Abdel-Hamid Youssef, called the contribution made by the wandering Bohemian a contribution for ‘England’.2848 Jaro in the 1960s synthesized his dedication to Egyptology as an individual or team effort with the development of the discipline as an international endeavour. He never chose the high-profile self-presentation of DesrochesNoblecourt, but thought in terms of workmanlike detail, of training and recording, and of disciplinary strategies that kept open lines of communication between different—and often politically opposed—scholars. It might be more fitting to describe Jaro as a man of multiple allegiances, rather than as a non-aligned scholar. 2845 2846 2847 2848

Hartog 2005: 13. Osterhammel 2015: 7. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.877, J. Černý to S. Glanville. Abdel-Hamid Youssef 1981: 35. Along with that made by John R. Harris.

BOOK VI Returns Being an Egyptologist was, for Černý, the most important thing in his life. The practice of his chosen study was a devotional activity for him, and nothing would ever have persuaded him to question the validity of his calling. His duty ever lay first towards Egyptology, and his willingness to help and to turn his hand to tasks beyond the scope of his normal activities resulted in constant calls for assistance. T. G. H. James2849 There exists an international citizenry that has its rights, that has its duties, and that is committed to rise up against every abuse of power, no matter who the author, no matter who the victims. After all, we are all ruled… Michel Foucault, 1981 (published in Liberation, 30 June 1984). Wozu wird zurückkehren, ist anders geworden, und ebenso ist anders geworden, wer zurückkehrt. Hans-Georg Gadamer2850

1965–1966 professor emeritus and return to graffiti January 1965 brought Jaro’s last Hilary term as Oxford’s Professor of Egyptology, along with the administrative necessities of his upcoming retirement.2851 This was planned according 2849

James 1971: 188. Gadamer 1993: 367. 2851 OUA, FSSU file of J. Černý—UC 12/23/41. In January 1965, Jaro began to estimate his expected income after retirement. The University calculated his length of service, and it was at least partially acknowledged that he had previously served at Charles University from 1929 to 1946, half of which included contributions toward his pensionable income in the UK; exchange of letters, J. Černý to the University Chest, including one in which Jaro informed the university that he had been a privatdozent at Charles University from 1929 to 1946, 26 January 1965. 2850

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to the University’s regulations, and the expectations of his age group were to retire so that positions would be available for the upcoming generation. The generation born in the immediate post-war years, now known colloquially as ‘baby boomers’, began the trend of seeing retirement as disagreeable.2852 Toward the end of February the University Chest calculated his pension, informing Jaro that: Under the revised scheme for the supplementation of pensions you are guaranteed a pension based on the formula of one seventyfifth of your average salary over the last three years of university service as defined in the scheme … on the basis of twenty eight years of service and an average superannuable salary of £3666 per annum over the three years to the 30th September 1965 your entitlement is a pension of £1368 per annum.2853

That would be around £24,400 annually in 2022. His policy granted the option of either a cash sum or an annuity of about £831 per annum (almost £14,800 in 2022). They also recommended that he not take out the sum but rather to take the annuity as offered. Jaro decided to opt for a cash sum and therefore received a smaller pension of £592 (nearly £10,500). These were not entirely negligible sums, as the average weekly earnings in Great Britain during the first quarter of 1965 were £12 (£624 annually),2854 but it meant a sharp drop in income. One partial answer to this was to accept other assignments, either fieldwork or guest professorships, such as the one that had been secured in Philadelphia for autumn 1965. Jaro had several reasons for accepting guest professorships, or curatorships. Additional income by invitation, from UNESCO or from colleagues abroad, was very welcome, and unlike a typical ‘bridge job’ sought by retirees in the following decades, Jaro’s post-retirement positions were suited to his professional standing in the final stage of his career. These were assured by the high ‘level of transference of

2852

Macunovich 2012. OUA, FSSU file of J. Černý—UC 12/23/41, memo dated 24 February 1965. 2854 Office of National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmar ket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/averageweeklyearningsbysector earn02. Accessed 3 June 2022. 2853

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skills and human capital’ he had accrued,2855 consistent with the prestige and social capital of an Oxford professorship. Transference of skills via consultations and collaborations had long been part of Jaro’s disciplinary strategy, and at that point he also coveted the opportunity to teach. In May, Jaro and Raymond Faulkner discussed the use of monies from the Gardiner fund. Jaro suggested that supporting the publication of Abusir papyri in the Louvre, the study of which had been undertaken by Paule Kriéger, would be a suitable use for the funds. Faulkner at this time was busy finishing his chapter of the Cambridge Ancient History. Jaro had completed his one, which was fortunate because he was now beset by continuous problems with his eyesight.2856 Then, in the summer, Jaro officially retired, to become a Professor Emeritus and an emeritus fellow of the Queen’s College. He remained a regular visitor at both the Griffith Institute and at Queen’s whenever he was in Oxford. The Griffith Institute was just then undergoing renovation, and Jaro often braved a noisy working environment, giving in from time to time and retiring, with apologies, to his home office.2857 With scheduled teaching duties concluded, he and Marie were free to pursue a more itinerant lifestyle. This was not the Europehopping that had characterized his inter-war years, but Jaro travelled regularly to Egypt as a new CEDAE opportunity had developed that was closely related to his past work on graffiti in the West Theban landscape. Between this and guest professorships, the couple were often away from Oxford for months at a time. In September, Jaro recommended the work of Hans Wolfgang Müller to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,2858 and then he and Marie left for Philadelphia, with Jaro as a visiting curator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (UPMAA) until the end of term, just before Christmas. Jaro reviewed the work of a young scholar named Jürgen von Beckerath in November, albeit with reservations—Jaro considered 2855 2856 2857 2858

Macunovich 2012: 4. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.694, 20 May 1965, R. Faulkner to J. Černý. As remembered by Alison Hobby, personal communication, March 2020. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1461.

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himself not qualified to properly assess his work.2859 This was not false modesty: Jaro evidently didn’t see himself as qualified; had he not had enough time to offer assistance he would have said so. In Philadelphia, Jaro and Marie were hosted by Froelich Rainey, Director of the UPMAA, and David O’Connor,2860 the professor of ancient Egyptian history and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator-in-Charge of the UPMAA’s important Egyptian collection from 1964. O’Connor knew British Egyptology from his studies at UCL, and knew Jaro personally from having also taken part in the Nubian campaign, though Jaro and Marie were closer to Rainey. Another query came from the Nobel Prize Committee toward the end of the year, but this time Jaro excused himself by pointing out that he was kept busy with preparations for fieldwork in Egypt.2861 In January 1966, Jaro received another mail consultation regarding Deir el-Medina ostraca, this time from a Dutch specialist named Robert Demarée who was working on developing his skills as a hieraticist and was particularly interested in administrative documents.2862 Then it was time to fly out to Egypt again, and to travel south from Cairo to Luxor. Jaro had last worked systematically in Western Thebes in the spring of 1950, and while he had since visited, this would be a welcome return to the world of the royal workmen. This was the first season of the Graffiti de la montagne Thébaine (GMT) campaign, and it began with developing a working routine,2863 and with Jaro and Marie developing a working relationship with their Egyptian team. They stayed on a ship named Awwama,2864 which was moored at Luxor and provided a base camp for their trips into the gebel on the West Bank. The team would leave for the gebel in the early morning, where they would spend the first half of the day before heading back to the ship for a late lunch, then came an afternoon rest followed by a shorter

2859 2860 2861 2862 2863 2864

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1025–21.1026. He was later to write Černý’s obituary: O’Connor 1970: 2–5. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1527–21.1528. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2381. The first graffiti season was outlined in Černý et al. 1969: iv–v. According to Z. Žába’s recollections.

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evening session that began at 5:00 pm. In the poetic words of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt: Chaque fin de matinée voyait l’équipe quitter les grandioses rochers dont l’aridité, pour elle, devenait poésie; abandonner les grandes échelles qui permettaient de monter jusqu’à sept mètres contre la paroi; regrouper tous ses membres éparpillés dans des creux de rocher, l’un revenant avec son rouleau de kodatrace, l’autre encombré de ses cartes et de son cahier de relevés, le troisième de sa tablette à pieds, de topographe. Chaque jour l’équipe repassait près des colosses de Memnon à la heure où les dieux Nil sont les mieux éclairés sur la face sud des sièges, pour traverser le fleuve et regagner le bateau-laboratoire du CEDAE … ancré devant le futur musée de Louxor. Vers 17 heures le travail reprenant à bord; … le prof. Černý dispensait sans réserve son savoir aux jeunes équipes égyptiennes stimulées par tant de simplicité et de science.2865

Jaro was not only working on the readings but actively mentoring his Egyptian colleagues, who, in turn, increasingly became his ‘eyes’. Forty years after Jaro began mapping the graffiti in the footsteps of Wilhelm Spiegelberg and his Qurnawi guides, the chasse aux graffiti was no longer a solitary effort. Not every colleague fully understood why Jaro was so drawn to these texts and figures, not realizing that he saw himself following the ancient footsteps of real people. His long-term friend and colleague Labib Habachi was known to note that one should not waste time on graffiti, and ‘could never understand’ why Jaro ‘had been so fascinated with them.’2866 But now, thanks to the interest of UNESCO and the CEDAE,2867 and championed by Desroches-Noblecourt, Jaro was to head a team of Egyptian Egyptologists and international experts from the Institut Geographique Nationale. Marcel Kurz, an acquaintance from the Nubian campaign who later became the team’s

2865

Černý et al. 1969: vi. Di Cerbo and Jasnow 2011: 49. 2867 Further information on the minutiae of the project is expected to be found in Egyptian archives, particularly among the materials of the CEDAE, but these were not accessible as of the time of writing as the manuscript was finalized during the 2020/2021 Covid-19 pandemic. 2866

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topographer,2868 remembered the ‘graffiti hunt’ as a gift from Desroches-Noblecourt to Jaro, to fulfil his dream and to repay his willingness to undertake work in Abu Simbel and other Nubian temples.2869 The area to be covered was vast, as it included the wadis and the paths that connected the places of interest—of work, life, and leisure—of the community of royal artists. But the campaign would include one essential feature that was particularly welcome to Jaro,2870 the systematic mapping of the Theban Mountain. Its graffiti were to be seen and recorded within their landscape; topographers were to draw and map; aerial photographs were to be taken. The Theban graffiti were to be accorded the same level of interest and the same investment of contemporary technology and manpower as major epigraphy projects in the Nubian salvage operation. It was one of those infrequent occasions when informal epigraphy was granted the concentration of expertise, technology, and manpower usually provided for recording major works of art. The first season in Thebes lasted until April, and it was in April that Jaro had a visitor on board the CEDAE boat. Zbyněk Žába stopped by, passing through on his way from Nubia, and immediately saddled Jaro with consulting on his and his team’s work on the rock inscriptions in Lower Nubia. In Žába’s words, ‘the best possible conditions for discussion with prof. Černý were available in 1966 on the UAR documentation Centre’s boat.’2871 Žába acknowledged that his work benefitted rather substantially from Jaro’s mentoring. Texts from Abusir were also included in the consultation, and Žába later wrote plaintively that ‘it reminded me of our unforgettable days in Košíře.’2872 Jaro had long supported the study of Abusir, having realized its potential when he visited in the 1940s, and having followed the EES deliberations of Aylward Blackman’s and Michael Apted’s project in the early 1950s. He was interested in both the archaeological value of the site and the knowledge that Kriéger was extracting from the Abusir papyri. 2868 2869 2870 2871 2872

Kurz 2011: 75–82, and Kurz 1995. Kurz 1995: 191. This was echoed by Desroches-Noblecourt 1973: 181–183. In recollections of Desroches-Noblecourt; see also Černý et al. 1969: i–iii. Žába et al. 1979: 23. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 8 and 12 May 1966.

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Žába and his activities were consistent with Czechoslovak diplomacy of the time. Its president, Antonín Novotný, had visited Egypt a year before and continued his engagement with international diplomacy in 1966 through an official visit to India. Gamal Abdel Nasser believed Czechoslovakia to be a potential partner for Egypt not because of its communist dictatorship— he held to his official Cold War neutrality despite his doctrine of ‘Arab socialism’—but because of the potential to develop economic relations.2873 In this atmosphere, Žába believed that the promotion of Egyptology would be a suitable way to develop Czechoslovak ‘soft power’. Jaro and Marie returned to Oxford in May, to an unsettled spring that held some warm days but also much rain. The return to Thebes prompted Jaro to continue working on his Deir el-Medina workmen project, though his publication output declined of the second half of the 1960s as preparations for his magnum opus coincided with worsening eyesight. He was still, of course, willing to be of use, always at the disposal of Rosalind Moss, and consulting in September with Georges Posener when he updated Jaro on his plans to publish one of the Egyptian wisdom texts, the Loyalist Instruction.2874 Autumn 1966 brought a second visit to Philadelphia, which again lasted until Christmas. Jaro was truly enjoying the opportunity to teach. 1967 a guest in prague The second season on Theban graffiti followed in January, with UNESCO funds supporting the work of the CEDAE team. Jaro and Marie again travelled to Luxor via Cairo, where this time they were housed on the expedition ship Hathor. The new season also saw Marie taking a more distinctive and active part in the epigraphic work,2875 which she continued to do thereafter. She had not entered her marriage to Jaro with a view to becoming an archaeologist, as had Hilda Pendlebury,2876 or to run her 2873 2874 2875 2876

Dejmek et al. 2018: 493. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.118–21.119, 20 September 1966. Černý et al. 1969: vii. Grundon 2007: 68–69.

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husband’s camp, as had Hilda Petrie and many other archaeological wives,2877 who often alternated as draughtspeople or medics. But she was a philologist by training, and took an interest in the material Jaro was working on, and now found herself with a perhaps unexpected opportunity in her sixties. She formed a workgroup with Hassan Ashiry and sought out Spiegelberg’s graffiti, so that they could be added to the new maps and plans.2878 Her colleagues soon discovered that Marie was good at spotting inscriptions that had escaped their attention. Jaro was also hunting graffiti, including in Theban tombs. This was in part due to his long-standing interest in the material, as the tombs were not themselves targets of the GMT campaign.2879 Correspondence upon Jaro’s return to Oxford contained news from a Polish scholar named Marek Marciniak, who was interested in graffiti in Deir el-Bahri.2880 Marciniak’s dissertation project found Jaro’s approval,2881 as it was presented as the first time that a complete corpus of hieratic texts from a defined period had been presented.2882 This was true to a certain extent, although the corpus in Saqqara relating to Djoser by Cecil Firth and James E. Quibell (which was known to Marciniak) might have claimed that distinction. A selection of it had been translated by Jaro, based on earlier records by Gunn.2883 Marciniak’s thesis confirmed Jaro’s links to Polish Egyptology, which had been established by his ongoing friendship with Kazimierz Michałowski over thirty years earlier. Another Polish scholar who considered herself inspired by Jaro was Irena Pomorska.2884 2877

Drower 2004. Černý et al. 1969: vi. 2879 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.3, where Jaro notes that he copied a hieratic graffito from a Theban tomb; see also GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 17.77, p. 4 verso. 2880 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.107–21.108. 2881 The dissertation was titled Pélérins et touristes dans l’Égypte ancienne: les textes hiératiques de Deir el-Bahari et le culte populaire d’Hathor, and was promoted by Kazimierz Michałowski. The original dissertation (Marciniak 1970) contained transcriptions and translations of the texts as well as hieratic plates, but its contents were abridged for publication (Marciniak 1974). 2882 Marciniak 1970: 3. 2883 In Firth and Quibell 1935: vol. I. 2884 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.117. On Pomorska, see Bubík and Hoffmann 2015: 117. 2878

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In his assessment of the thesis, Jaro regarded the copying of graffiti from Deir el-Bahri as meritorious, because ‘experiences on other sites showed that ink inscriptions of this type once exposed to air, blowing sand and changes of temperature are inevitably doomed.’2885 Jaro repeatedly thematized the physical survival of ostraca or graffiti, or rather dangers to them, based on his years in the field and in museums. His observations had the advantage of systematic work on corpora of material where long-term observations were possible. He took the deterioration process as an inevitable fact to be countered by recording, while acknowledging that no reading and no record is definitive, and that returning to collations could prove indispensable. The spring of 1967 harboured the return of Jaro’s exasperating, vexing, egotistical (but nonetheless mostly loyal) student: Žába arranged for Jaro and Marie to visit Prague, occasioned by changes in Czechoslovakia. There had been a drive toward the stabilization of international research contacts across the Iron Curtain since the mid-1950s,2886 alongside the more general thawing of international relations: ‘Scientific cooperation with the West formed one of the most important embodiments and yet one of the greatest paradoxes of the Czechoslovak liberalization process in the 1960s.’2887 There were several notable exchanges. Otto Wichterle’s contact lens patent, for example, was sold to the USA in 1965. And the chemist František Šorm collaborated with colleagues in the USA from the late 1950s: Šorm’s Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Ústav organické chemie a biochemie) became internationally recognized and its work highly esteemed. One of Šorm’s best-known partners was Carl Djerassi, known for the invention of the contraceptive pill.2888

Šorm was an extremely pragmatic man: ‘For him, communism did not mean the blind adoption of Soviet theories. He adapted to the changing requirements of the times and was able to distinguish them from ideology. Nevertheless, he did cultivate 2885 2886 2887 2888

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.107. Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1754–1756. Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1749. Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1753.

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contacts with the leadership and wanted to reach the higher echelons of power.’2889 He had undoubted research success in his field, and his results were tolerated, even given his clear unwillingness to ‘Sovietize’, because he was a dedicated communist: when he invited Djerassi to give a lecture in Prague in 1956, he ‘was still using the party line to justify the Soviet invasion of Hungary.’2890 Alongside the rhetoric, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences maintained a number or more-or-less stable and, on occasion, rather serendipitous links across the Iron Curtain.2891 What was true of sciences could be argued for the humanities: A significant change in the discourse on science policy and planning took place in 1967. It was now characterised by the concept of integration, which had been attached to the scientifictechnical revolution. These concepts were replacing the initial Cold War rhetoric. The aim of Czechoslovakia was now to participate in the integration process of world science. Significantly, the West had become the yardstick for the comparison of research standards at the international level.2892

It was in this context that Žába, as a representative of the humanities, felt that ‘his’ Institute could easily become isolated if he did not pursue as many contacts as possible. Thus he went to Moscow in 1963 and met with Vasiliy V. Struve, and thus he had met with Jaro in Egypt several times in the 1960s, using the neutral ground of a technically non-aligned country. And so, when opportunity beckoned, he immediately grasped at the possibility of a trip to Britain that had been planned since 1948. There was even official willingness to allow this, probably because the mid-1960s saw a Czechoslovak-British ‘special relationship’ built across the Iron Curtain, and as trade grew and so too did international visits: ‘Czechoslovakia …  began to reappear cautiously on the European map.’2893

2889 2890 2891 2892 2893

Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1750. Wright 2007: 364. Wright 2007: 360–369. Nisonen-Trnka 2008: 1758. Dejmek et al. 2018: 501.

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In early spring, just after Marie and Jaro returned from Egypt, Žába arrived in Britain. He was entertained by the entire Černý family, including Marie’s daughters, Anna and Naomi. The trip was not entirely dedicated to Egyptology, as Harry James took Žába, a keen musician, to see the organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Jaro lent him some money to go shopping in London.2894 Žába’s annus mirabilis was to blossom even further, as thanks to the political thaw, growing academic openness, and Žába’s persistence, Marie and Jaro were soon on their way to Prague. Žába even managed to secure an invitation for Jaro that ensured the stateless former Czechoslovak citizen would be left unmolested. This must have been quite a task, because the Czechoslovak state security force, the StB, was still incredibly powerful,2895 and Western exiles or intellectuals were considered particularly juicy prey, especially if they had been fuelled by a perceived need to promote détente between the Cold War blocs.2896 May, which was chosen for the Černý’s trip to Prague, usually shows the historic city at its best, with chestnut trees with their pyramids of orchid-like flowers, and fragrant lilacs on the Petřín Hill. Jaro was invited to the new university premises, freshly rebuilt on the land of the historical Karolinum. He was returning after twenty years, but if he had any impressions of the city he had once called home he kept them to himself, or shared them 2894

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 14 March 1967. The StB actively used Geoffrey Goodman, a British journalist, in the years preceding the Prague Spring to spy on the activities of the Labour Party; see https:// www.thetimes.co.uk/article/agent-gustav-the-fleet-street-titan-who-spied-on-haroldwilson-vfrw99pzp. Accessed 3 June 2022. 2896 In 2015, information was published on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Category:Christian_Peace_Conference_members, accessed 3 June 2022) stating that Jaro was among those with membership of the Christian Peace Conference. The CPC was an organization of intellectuals led by Josef Lukl Hromádka (1889–1969), a theologian, formerly at Princeton University and later based in Prague, who was an ecumenist and a promoter of dialogue across Cold War blocs. The organization listed a number of eminent theologians as its members, including Jürgen Moltmann, who was appointed a professor of systematic theology at Tübingen in 1967. It was under close observation by the StB, and its full evaluation in the context of peace movements and Cold War political schemes, including communist penetration of Western intellectual circles, is still awaited. It has not been possible to access the entire CPC file held by Czechoslovak state security (ABS, H–697–1 to 34), but although it does appear that they were keeping Moltmann under observation they did not register Jaro as a member. No further evidence linking Jaro to the CPC has been found to date. 2895

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only with Marie. Another historian who was to see Prague the next spring, after a twenty years’ absence, was underwhelmed; the city was drab and damaged. For Zbyněk A. B. Zeman, ‘it took several days to dispel the unfavourable impression of the first few hours of my stay in Prague. It has in fact changed much less than London in the past twenty years. Apart from a few tall blocks of flats in the suburbs, the sky-line of Prague is still the same.’2897 There had indeed been significant changes to British skylines, with the addition of high-rise buildings and blocks of flats,2898 but these were not yet fully adopted in communist Central Europe even though the typical Czechoslovak ‘panelák’—a drab, grey, uniform, mass-produced housing structure—was already in use, and large housing estates had begun to develop around Prague during the 1960s.2899 Marie had seen Prague in the intervening years while en route to visit her family in southern Moravia, and so was perhaps less surprised than Zeman. Jaro seems to have focused on academic meetings, ‘where he was given a reception which did much to repair the sense of remoteness brought about by an absence of nearly twenty years.’2900 And yet this was an exile’s visit, not a homecoming. They visited the premises of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in one of the Baroque townhouses in Celetná Street, now joined to provide a home for several departments of the Faculty of Arts in a warren of rooms with floors of uneven height. They were surprised by the new facelift that had been given to the historical campus, which had been remodelled from 1945 to 1959 by the architect Jaroslav Fragner. Fragner uncovered some of the Gothic elements of the original college building and prioritized these—and his own vision—instead of the Baroque façade that characterized the Karolinum from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.2901

2897

Zeman 1969: 17. This style of architecture has been around since the mid-1950s; see Kynaston 2009: 278–286. 2899 Zarecor 2011: 224–294. 2900 Edwards 1972: 377. 2901 On the history of this university building, see Petráň et al. 2010. 2898

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Jaro was extensively photographed, especially by Milan Zemina, the Institute’s official documentarian, as if the photographic record of his visit was to be fundamental to the Institute’s history; an indelible link between Prague and Jaro. He met Žába’s students, and considered offering at least one of them an opportunity to go to Oxford.2902 Žába impressed Jaro with his plan to establish the Institute in new premises, in one of Prague’s historic palaces, with a library, study rooms, artefact collection, and lecture rooms all in one; indeed, should Jaro wish to return to Prague then an apartment in the palatial complex was envisaged for him. This was a distant reflection of the grand site of the Oriental Institute between the wars, and possibly also a reflection of Žába’s impressions of Oxford. It was probably also a rather naïve plan to assume that a single department specializing in Egyptology could succeed in obtaining such a prestigious establishment. Žába was probably trying to give his dream of Jaro’s return some sort of material focus. The faculty at least provided a material expression to its appreciation for Jaro, as he was given an honorary membership of the Institute and in recognition of this was awarded 2000 crowns by the Faculty of Arts.2903 Marie seized the opportunity to persuade Jaro to spoil himself a little. Jaro was wearing a rather tired overcoat, and with the sum in hand Marie convinced him that it was high time to lay that piece of attire to rest. Miroslav Verner accompanied them as a sartorial consultant to a department store known simply as ‘Dům módy’ (the Fashion House), which can still be found in the upper reaches of the Wenceslas Square, and a new coat was procured.2904 Even with his commitments at the Institute, and occasional shopping, the trip to Prague allowed Jaro the opportunity to meet up with Jan Rypka, his post-war dean, and to spend time with his family. His mother was no longer alive,2905 but he met his brother, who had remarried, and his niece. As a final treat, Žába arranged a festive dinner at a restaurant called Koliba on the premises of the Prague Zoo, which had much expanded 2902 2903 2904 2905

Personal communication, Miroslav Verner and Jaromir Malek, 2017 and 2019. The value of this sum would be over 20,000 crowns, almost £700, in 2022. Personal recollection, Miroslav Verner, interviewed in February 2020. The date of her death is unknown.

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since Jaro had taken Giuseppe Botti for a visit there in 1933, and spared no effort by ordering flambéed slivovice, a characteristic plum brandy.2906 The Černýs left on 5 May, and the departure of ‘the foremost world Egyptologist’ was announced in the press.2907 Jaro had been treated as an exotic guest in a city he once called home. From Prague, and still full of impressions, Marie and Jaro continued to Tübingen as guests of the university, and of Hellmuth and Emma Brunner, where Jaro taught hieratic and Late Egyptian grammar.2908 Middle East tensions, which had been simmering since 1956, rose again in June with the outbreak of the Six Day War. Historiographies of the conflict and the Soviet role in it vary, with views ranging from Egypt as a Soviet proxy in a conflict with Israel to an attempt by Egypt to garner Soviet support by claiming that Israel was colluding with the ‘imperialist’ West.2909 Novotný’s Czechoslovakia duly broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. The customary phrases about imperialism, with anti-Semitic undertones, were too reminiscent of the grim years of the early 1950s, when the trials against Slánský and others were being prepared … Listening to the official propaganda in the summer of 1967, it may have occurred to many Czechs and Slovaks that nothing much had changed in the past fifteen years.2910

Novotný was already critically viewed inside the Party—he did not endear himself to the Central Committee by centralizing power in his own hands—and now faced growing bitterness when confronted with mounting economic difficulties. The economy struggled throughout the 1960s, with agricultural production still below 1936 levels, a housing crisis, and a lack of consumer goods.2911 People began to voice their concerns. In June 1967, 2906 Jaro and Marie were given photographs commemorating every aspect of their trip. The photographs were kept by Marie after Jaro’s death, and donated after her own death by her daughters Anna and Naomi to the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in Prague. ACEGU, Collection Černý, Photographs. 2907 Lidová demokracie, vol. 23, issue 124, 6 May 1967, p. 5. 2908 Archive Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tübingen, Namens- und Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommer-Semester 1967, p. 185. 2909 Compare Podeh 2002. 2910 Zeman 1969: 40–41. 2911 McDermott 2015: 107.

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Czechoslovak writers held a congress in Prague and ‘Pavel Kohout attacked the government’s policy in the Middle East.’2912 Others turned Marxism’s own critiques on Czechoslovakia’s Marxist-Leninist state apparatus. Ludvík Vaculík added that ‘none of us was born for the sake of being governed easily,’ and called for a revision of the Czechoslovak constitution.2913 The intellectual debate was accompanied by proposals for a socialist market economy, which would be flexible and do away with centralized planning, and yet still maintain control. Egyptology in Prague was faced with both an opportunity and a paradox. Its entry into Egypt came at a time of socialist globalism and opportunism, but its international position and development depended on Czechoslovak society being more open toward both the West and to socialist-leaning Egypt. There was also an undoubted fascination with the development of the decolonizing world among university intellectuals,2914 and a pragmatic interest among promoters of Czechoslovak exports, but intellectual fascination with the ‘Third World’ and internationalism also reflected the limitations imposed on the Eastern bloc: Internationalism and Third Worldism was particularly powerful as a source of identity for political activists in the socialist East precisely because they were for the most part heavily restricted in their cross-border travel, and such imagined connections substituted for real global connections.2915

The global intellectual project that was Egyptology had grown amid a complex network of East-West interests and limitations, and transnational intellectual curiosity, but had great expectations. Jaro’s trip to Prague might have felt like it heralded a change. Jaro was again travelling, but this time he was not on the run, with freedom tumbling behind his heels. Rather, his appearance seemed to herald better times, or so Egyptologists based in Prague and working at Abusir wished to hope.

2912 2913 2914 2915

Zeman 1969: 59–60. Zeman 1969: 64. Petráň 2015: 366–367. Bracke and Mark 2015: 409.

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In July, just after returning from Germany, Jaro underwent another eye operation,2916 which was partly successful. He and Moss also set about inviting a young Czechoslovak Egyptologist, Jaromir Malek, to come to Oxford from Prague. As Žába confirmed on 5 July, ‘I have received the request of Dr Moss and confirmed in writing my Oxford proposition of Dr Malek’s participation.’ Miroslav Verner was ruled out because of his ongoing health problems; or at least that was Žába’s declared perspective.2917 Autumn brought a third visit to Philadelphia, where Jaro was remembered by O’Connor as a philologist and historian: … and those two interests complemented each other in a most fruitful and consistent way; his philological researches were devoted not only to the elucidation of the ancient Egyptian language itself but also the study of those ‘unofficial sources’ which illuminate, however imperfectly, the social and economic background of Egyptian history. He pointed out that without knowledge of this background ‘real history can neither be understood nor written’.2918

This shows Jaro being fully articulate about his lifelong interests, albeit not in his own words. Although the university and museum in Philadelphia would have liked to Jaro and Marie stay longer,2919 they returned for Christmas in Oxford and to prepare for the rush of a trip to Egypt. 1968–1969 new barriers, new openings Jaro and Marie left for another season of graffiti work at the start of 1968, and Jaro conferred with François Daumas about to how to open a discussion with the Egyptian authorities about renewed access to finds held by the IFAO.2920 The Institute had reopened, but access to the ostraca collection was still unresolved. 2916 2917 2918 2919

Marie Černý to Froelich Rainey, Archive UPMAA, 29 July 1967. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý. O’Connor 1970. F. Rainey to Marie and Jaro (spelled Yaro) Černý, Archive UPMAA, 14 September

1967. 2920

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.319–21.322.

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The graffiti mission in Luxor ran from January to March with a new Egyptian member, Ibrahim Chimy, who was learning how to read and record graffiti, and a well-known specialist who was new to topographical mapping in Thebes, Marcel Kurz.2921 Life and work was organized very much as in previous seasons, with the team travelling to and from the riverbank, and their base on the Hathor, to Western Thebes. The weeks were enlivened by meetings with colleagues, some of whom resided in Luxor, and some, such as Torgny Säve-Söderbergh,2922 who were en route to other places. Desroches-Noblecourt tried to find the time to visit the graffiti mission each season. Jaro was still struggling with his eyesight, which was steadily worsening despite repeated surgical procedures.2923 Marie was now firmly established as a member of the team, and Kurz recalled seeing her and Hassan Ashiry criss-crossing the rocky terrain, every temporary observation station marked with Marie’s yellow parasol. They also became accustomed to calling her Manya.2924 Abdel Aziz Fahmy (‘Azzouz’) Sadek, who had studied in Prague in 1962 and 1963, accompanied Jaro, preparing black coffee in a small cafetiere,2925 (which Kurz believed to have been a souvenir from Prague), and ‘the cliffs resounded with laughter of the team.’ The return to the ship each day was celebrated with more coffee-making, this time a sugary Nescafé version of a cappuccino that Sadek apparently guarded as a trade secret. Lunch was often concluded with pastries made by Ashiry’s mother. After two seasons, the daily routine was firmly established. More work was done in the afternoons, such as plotting the locations of graffiti on a map and working through records obtained earlier in the day. The day concluded with a tea and visitors—the social life of the graffiti team was no less interesting, or less strenuous, than it was in the days of Deir el-Medina. Jaro was often asked to visit other expeditions in or near Luxor, 2921

Černý et al. 1969: vii. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1791. 2923 Referred to by A. Schlott: GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1801, 6 February 1968, from A. Schlott-Schwab. 2924 Kurz 1995: 193. 2925 Personal recollection, Cynthia Sheikholeslami, who related that the coffee-maker was still in her husband’s possession in Cairo. 2922

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and was consulted on their ongoing activities and research problems. Michałowski, Desroches-Noblecourt’s other ‘brotherly’ friend, was rumoured to always have some vodka and ham available.2926 The development of Polish Egyptology bore some similarities to the development of Czechoslovak Egyptology: Michałowski and Jaro shared a French connection via the IFAO; and the Czechoslovaks and Poles profited from the Egyptian gambit of playing both sides of the Cold War.2927 Jaro’s main concern (apart from occasional delays by Sadek, or the colds that plagued Marie) appeared to be when a team member was called out to other jobs, for example by the otherwise muchadmired Centre Franco-Égyptien on the East Bank in Luxor and Karnak. Kurz recalled that, at least once, ‘Professor scowled, did not look up from his plate at the table, and removed himself to work in his cabin.’2928 After three decades of waiting, anything that interfered with his mission to record graffiti met with disapproval. While Jaro was working in Egypt in 1968, the political scene in Czechoslovakia shifted. Alexander Dubček, then First Secretary of the Slovak branch of the Communist Party, made a rather different speech than usual at the 25 February coup celebrations, calling for a ‘socialism with a human face’.2929 In March, the conservative Novotný was replaced by the Second World War hero Ludvík Svoboda. Like his fellow veteran Karel Klapálek, who had commanded Czechoslovak forces at Tobruk, Svoboda had been persecuted in the 1950s, but the economy was faltering under the heavy-handed socialist system and something desperately needed to be done. This was a time of intense public feeling about the promise of openness in civic life and culture. State censorship was officially abolished on 4 March 1968. This seemed the fulfilment of the hope that Jaro witnessed when he visited Czechoslovakia a year earlier, when it seemed as if it would become more open to the West. The idea of a return to Prague looked increasingly possible. The Spectator wrote on 29 March 1968, with optimism, that the Soviets would have to learn to live 2926 2927 2928 2929

Anecdotes taken from Kurz 1995: 192–194. See further in Bednarski et al. 2020. Kurz 1995: 194. For the philosophical and political context of this expression, see Falina et al. 2018.

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with another democracy along their borders, as they had with Finland: ‘It is particularly fitting that this should occur in Czechoslovakia, for of all the former satellites Czechoslovakia is the one which made the greatest success of parliamentary democracy between the wars.’ The positive image projected by Masaryk still lingered, despite intervening years of war and totalitarianism. The Spectator nonetheless added ‘The final outcome of the experiment on which Czechoslovakia has embarked cannot yet be predicted.’2930 Another observer, the historian Zeman, asked: Was there a revolution taking place in Prague? … By the end of March, the changes in Czechoslovakia appeared more far-reaching than anything that had happened in the communist countries of eastern Europe since the end of the war. The Czechs were being highly articulate about the events in their country, they seemed to know what they wanted, and there had been no violence.2931

Heda Margolius Kovály, another witness of turbulent Czechoslovak history, observed ‘The spring of 1968 had all the intensity, anxiety and unreality of a dream come true.’2932 But while Czechoslovak citizens were seeking to subvert the last vestiges of Stalinism, Marxism-Leninism was marching out to conquer the world. In March, while still clinging to office, Novotný allegedly told one of his diplomats, Otto Klička (Klein), who was en route to Egypt: ‘We will supply Egypt with substantial armaments, including tanks. We already have there two hundred of our best officer instructors. Take note of that. The war with Israel is over, and we are interested in socialist influence in the Arab world. Nasser is open to this.’2933 Klička even planned a tour of Egypt, where he intended to use Žába’s expertise.2934 But Klička’s Jewish origin worked against him in Egypt—alongside the assumed Jewish origin of other Czechoslovak diplomats. The impact of the Six Day War was noticeable for years to come.

2930

‘The Czechs Behave as Czechs,’ The Spectator 220, no. 7292 (1968): 394. Zeman 1969: 14. 2932 Kovály 2012: 180. 2933 PWSV, Vol. 2 ,No. 4 duben 2003, Svědectví, Dr. Otto Klička, http://www.prague coldwar.cz/klickapjaro.htm, accessed 3 June 2022. 2934 ACEGU, Administrative archive, folder 20, 1966–1970, sekce VI, 26 July 1970, carbon copy, Z. Žába to J. Malek. 2931

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There were protests all across the world in the spring of 1968, the culmination of a rise in civic opposition to the status quo that had been fermenting for over a year, but the protests meant different things on different sides of the Iron Curtain, and in the freshly decolonized Middle East and North Africa. In the West, the protesters of 1968 were frequently students who used Marxist thinking as their ideological base, even those whose protests ended up being nationalist. This was much to the chagrin of occasionally leftist, but anti-communist, intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, who for the time being was unwilling to see in Marxism an ideology that was exquisitely suitable for supporting totalitarian systems.2935 Writing about Tunisia after the Six Day War, Foucault observed in the wake of anti-Semitic attacks: Nationalism plus racism adds up to something ghastly. And when one also adds the fact that the students, because they are leftist, lend a hand (and more) to all that, well it makes one deeply sad. And one wonders through what strange trick (or stupidity) of history Marxism could provide the occasion (and vocabulary) for that.2936

Margolius could have given him the answer, but not every Western intellectual was willing to relate to the struggle that went on the other side of the Iron Curtain: Although many activists looked to the ‘Global South’, and some eastern European activists looked West, interest did not travel in other directions. Very few western activists looked to the ‘other’ Europe in the 1960s, seeing struggles in eastern Europe as less advanced or relevant to the questions of modern civilisation.2937

The thinkers of the Prague Spring were sometimes confirmed Marxists who wanted to reform the system, not abandon it. There were Party officials who wanted a top-down reform, and those who wanted the bottom-up initiatives of an intellectual revival.2938 Contact with the West had opened broader perspectives for both. 2935 Eribon 1992: 52–53, pp. 136–137 on Foucault’s later anti-communism; on Foucault being perceived as anti-Marxist ‘representative of Gaullist technocracy’ by some of his students in Tunis, see also pp. 189, 193–195. 2936 Eribon 1992: 193. 2937 Bracke and Mark 2015: 415. 2938 Bracke 2008: 1738, footnote 7.

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The communist ‘archive’ of thinking that drove the Stalinist structure needed to be challenged, not reconfirmed by political orthodoxy; the Party rejected Stalinism, not socialism. The intellectual atmosphere had changed; it advocated freedom and opening up to the West, which was no longer uniformly called imperialist.2939 Miscellaneous hopes were pinned on ‘socialism with a human face’. Among the Czechoslovak public, reminiscences of the inter-war Masarykian ideals were mixed with Marxist ideals but without Soviet directness. Some historians noted that there was a shared ‘rediscovery’ of liberty among Marxists across the East-West divide: ‘1968’ confronted the various traditions of the Marxist left in Europe with an issue it had long forgotten: liberty. A key and shared issue for all Prague Spring protagonists was how to marry social justice with liberty. The notion of liberty here included national liberty and national sovereignty, both with regard to the Soviet Union and in terms of relations between the Czech and Slovak nations; intellectual and creative liberty, including also the protection of individual liberties vis-à-vis the state; political liberty, involving the central questions of overcoming the Stalinist past and establishing a form of political pluralism; and socioeconomic liberty, including managerial autonomy, self-management for workers and the organization of factory councils.2940

In the context of this intense political debate, and with the sense of borders, along with economic and academic opportunities, opening, Žába and his students were becoming hopeful. Egyptology had a chance to navigate the political rapids in Prague. Socialist globalism and its interest in the ‘Third World’ opened practical possibilities, and to continue its mission the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology and its team needed both practical support and the possibility of reaching out beyond the Eastern Bloc. A toehold in Egypt was essential for the latter. The Nubian campaign was over, but work at Abusir continued. Žába was absolutely focused on the future of Czechoslovak Egyptology as his personal project, and his dogged pursuit opened possibilities for the next generation of Egyptologists. It ultimately 2939 2940

Dejmek et al. 2018: 540–541, 550–551. Bracke 2008: 1736.

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resulted in cooperation with Egyptian Egyptologists, though this was initially conceived as offering ‘help’ to Egypt as a ‘developing country’, whose students were invited to Prague.2941 Žába did not develop an approach to teamwork with Egyptian colleagues akin to the approach taken by Jaro’s team, though financial and organizational limits might have had a role in this. Jaro went about his usual business while the Prague Spring was in full swing. After the Theban season ended in March, he and Marie returned to Oxford, only to travel to Paris in April after an invitation by Posener to deliver a series of talks.2942 He lectured on Late Egyptian grammar.2943 He was also asked about a prospective job for a former pupil, Sarah Groll,2944 and Jaro was happy to oblige. Groll had made a positive impression on him and on Marie, and was fascinated with the details of sentence patterns in Late Egyptian to a depth that Jaro could appreciate. Upcoming changes at the IFAO would open access to its ostraca, and Jaro was glad to be included in the upcoming 1969 IFAO mission to Deir el-Medina.2945 His collegial relationship with French Egyptology hadn’t changed, and indeed Charles Kuentz allowed Jaro access to a stela he was himself publishing, commenting ‘Le fair-play est rarissime entre Egyptologues.’2946 August 1968 promised one important event, Jaro’s seventieth birthday party. Had Jaro so wished, he could have said his life was one of some achievement. It mattered to him that there was thaw in Czechoslovakia’s political isolation, and the possibility of ending the years of separation. He was enjoying a sense of purpose in Egypt, of recording but also of mentoring, and still deeply involved in his work at Oxford where he spent regular hours with Moss.2947 He still maintained communication with Prague. Then one August night changed it all. 2941 This was part of a wider phenomenon of inviting students from the Global South (‘Third World’) to the Socialist Bloc, where intercultural communication was just as complex as in any other setting; see Holečková 2013. 2942 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1721, 2 April 1968, from Posener. 2943 His lectures were comprehensively typed in French; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.19. 2944 R. J. Zwi Werblowsky asked for references for S. I. Groll; GIA Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1951, 8 May 1968. 2945 AIFAO, Personal file Černý, IFAO memorandum, July 1968. 2946 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1317, 22 June 1968, from C. Kuentz. 2947 Personal communication, Jaromir Malek, December 2019.

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People who were availing themselves of the opportunity to travel more easily to and from Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and who happened to cross the borders between Czechoslovakia and other socialist states, were somewhat surprised to see that roads were being curiously pockmarked with more and more tank tracks. Even after the well-publicized manoeuvres of Warsaw Pact armies that summer had finally ended. Invaders came ‘like thieves at night’,2948 although hardly without long-term preparation.2949 The armies of several members of the Warsaw Pact, under Soviet leadership, entered Czechoslovakia during the night of 20 to 21 August 1968, and in the following days the country was turned into an absurd warzone. Prague became a city… … whose inhabitants were absolutely united in unarmed, passive resistance against alien interlopers … Wherever anyone had fallen a victim to Soviet bullets, there were improvised memorials with masses of flowers and state flags. Street signs had either been pulled down or altered (most often being renamed ‘Dubček Street’) … Direction indicators at major intersections had been destroyed or turned in the wrong direction, and they were frequently painted over with various signs, like ‘Moscow—2000 km’.2950

Some of the shrapnel and bullet pockmarks were only removed as late as 2018.2951 Even if popular opposition expressed itself creatively, a material resistance was absent. The leaders of the state were arrested and swiftly transported under Soviet control. In a matter of days, an agreement was concluded that put Communist Party hard-liners back in power.2952 The Soviet troops were a firm reminder that any Czechoslovak politics in the future would be Soviet-led.

2948

Zeman 1969: 164. Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet politburo had come to the conclusion that they could not trust Dubček to be their pliable ally during the summer of 1968, if not before; see Williams 1997. They also had conspirators among Czechoslovak politicians (Williams 1997: 124–126). 2950 Mlynář 1980: 199. 2951 A personal observation by the author is that only after a renovation project of the National Museum’s main building in Wenceslas Square, finished in 2018, were the bullet holes decorating its Neo-Renaissance façade finally covered up. 2952 Dejmek et al. 2018: 616–623. 2949

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The political impact of the Soviet military presence was enormous: the 75,000 troops represented an alternative means of violence beyond the control of the party-state, able to intervene in a crisis or be used for a conservative takeover; the permanent presence of Soviet military intelligence meant yet another channel of information back to Moscow.2953

Besides, even according to Communist Party records ‘Soviet soldiers committed eighty-seven recorded thefts and ten muggings; seventeen citizens were killed and at least eight women raped, often at gunpoint.’2954 Brezhnev was unequivocal: in his interpretation, his soldiers ‘fought their way to the Elbe, and [this] is where [the Soviet’s] real Western borders’ were at that point.2955 Brezhnev invoked Yalta, but some among his audience in the Kremlin, during the hours when the Czechoslovak government was being held, had come to a more nuanced conclusion: The fact that I was now sitting in Moscow, half hostage, half governmental guest, was the logical outcome of my entire life, of my entire political activity. I had set this situation up myself. The crucial date was not August 20, 1968, but February 25, 1948 … For it was then that I had made the unconditional decision, on the basis of my own personal convictions, to join those who had also chosen to submit themselves unconditionally to Moscow and its aims.2956

Jaro had made a different decision in 1948, and was never to see Prague again. The Foreign Office in London predicted a further twenty years of bondage for Soviet satellites before the ailing system could finally be expected to collapse.2957 Britain, like other Western powers, had decided that the Cold War could not be won by open confrontation.2958

2953

Williams 1997: 172. Williams 1997: 168. 2955 The gist of comments as heard and interpreted by Mlynář 1980: 241. 2956 Mlynář 1980: 232. 2957 TNA, Cabinet Defence and Overseas Policy, CAB 148/87, ‘Long Term Prospects for East West Relations after the Czechoslovak Crisis’; note by FCO, 11 December 1968. 2958 See Bischof et al. 2009. 2954

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Jaro’s friends mingled their condolences for the change in Prague with personal congratulations on his birthday: Botti,2959 Brunner,2960 Mounir Megally,2961 and Hans Polotsky. Polotsky was well aware of the unhappy coincidence with the Soviet occupation in Prague, writing that ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am that these days must be causing you a good deal of anguish.’2962 Another friend, Aristide Theodoridès, later added that he and his wife followed ‘avec une douloureuse sympathie les événements en Tchécoslovaquie’.2963 The Soviet occupation quickly put paid to any considerations of Jaro returning to Prague, as dreamt by Žába. Typically, Jaro did not write down his impressions, but this was the second invasion to sever his ties with the country of his birth, which he had been pleased to see were slowly renewing. It had happened before; it had to be endured. Jaro, even as his private thoughts remain inaccessible, can probably be seen as a man who had made his decision. He did relish the idea of retirement in Prague, especially if Žába was suggesting setting-up a research centre built around his personal library. He would continue supporting Žába, he would support his student Malek at Oxford, and he would donate his library to Prague, but he was not going to grieve to the extent that it would affect a life now clearly settled in Britain and that held such promise. Finally, like Ernest Gellner,2964 he was no longer longing for a lost city of a hundred spires. The spires of Oxford could do very well. Soon after the invasion, Žába wrote in dismayed tones from the Czechoslovak Institute’s villa in Giza. He had intended to add to the string of congratulatory letters sent to Jaro, but ended up lamenting the uncertainty of the new situation. The concluding part of Žába’s missive, however, was finished several days after the body of the text, and focused on Ptahshepses Baugraffiti.2965 2959

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2054A. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2056A. 2961 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2183A. 2962 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.2200A. 2963 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1887. In the same letter he discussed readings of P. Gurob II and O. Chicago 120733. 2964 Interview with E. Gellner, by J. Davis; Davis 1991. Reprinted http://www.lse. ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/gellner/InterGellner.html (accessed 4 March 2020). 2965 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 24 August and 5 September 1968, from Giza. 2960

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Contact and book exchanges with European Egyptologists remained unaffected. A young Austrian Egyptologist named Helmut Satzinger contacted Jaro regarding his work on rock inscriptions at Sayala.2966 In September, the Nubian campaign scored a media hit with the revealing of Abu Simbel in its new location, and Jaro was asked for help by Joseph Omlin, the future editor of the Turin Erotic Papyrus (55001), who was struggling with its hieratic texts.2967 Jaro had set of documents on this papyrus in his collection, which Omlin could consult for help.2968 Later that autumn, Jaro and Marie took their fourth trip in Philadelphia, where he resumed his position as visiting curator at the UPMAA. He was pursued by the usual correspondence. Moss asked for details about the reading of Queen Karomama’s titles on a statue in the Louvre,2969 and Posener required Jaro’s opinion on some of his readings of ostraca.2970 Jaro felt safer in his part of the world, while Žába related that ‘I shall now need your help more than ever.’2971 Egypt was to be a neutral meeting ground. The graffiti team in Thebes had a busy season in front of them in January 1969. After three years they were a smooth-running and experienced team. The graffiti hunters had divided into three working groups. The first consisted of Marie and Ashiry mapping and identifying the Spiegelberg and Howard Carter graffiti, closely followed by Kurz and his assistants working on topography. They, in turn, were followed by Jaro, Sadek, and Chimy.2972 This season was intended to be followed by work on a publication, which brought a new set of challenges, not least of which was clarifying local toponyms.2973 Facsimiles for publication were first made by Sadek, and then by Chimy whose work was revised by Sadek, while Jaro maintained general supervision. 2966

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1763, 9 August 1968, from H. Satzinger. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1559. 2968 The Turin Papyrus 55001; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 3.748–3.765, photographs and tracings. Drawings made by Gustav Seyffarth are among the collection. 2969 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1453. 2970 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1724. 2971 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 24 November 1968, from Giza. 2972 Černý et al. 1969: vii. 2973 Černý et al. 1969: ix. 2967

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Sadek also autographed the transcriptions, again mentored by Jaro.2974 Work on the graffiti was becoming increasingly difficult for Jaro. It was now established that his colleagues, most often Sadek, would copy the outlines of graffiti and enlarge them on sheets of paper for Jaro to see.2975 This slowed the process, but allowed the ailing expert as much input as he could provide, and he could still train his colleagues directly during fieldwork. The lone work that started in 1926 with mountain walks, and developed into a systematic team effort in 1966, was now becoming an established survey with upcoming publications. It was to become one of Jaro’s main legacies, but not only in the sense of him being among the pioneers of systematic graffiti studies. It was teamwork and collegiality that enabled the project to develop, for Jaro was open to working with Egyptian colleagues as equals, and they in turn accepted him and Marie as partners. There was still much walking and moving through the Theban landscape, with some much-needed breaks for which Sadek provided his coffee-maker. Ritual coffee with Bernard Bruyère and friends from Deir el-Medina, which had a ‘coffee stela’ dedicated to them, had a successor, as during some of these breaks Jaro and Sadek followed in the footsteps of the workmen and left graffiti with their names and titles. The engraved hieratic texts were observed as late as the 2010s.2976 The self-effacing Jaro exercised a very Egyptian performance by appropriating the landscape in an act of writing, but it is symbolic that he did so in unison with an Egyptian colleague. From the ‘coffee stela’ with Bruyère—an intrusive but fitting ‘artefact’ in the Theban landscape—to graffiti shared with an Egyptian colleague, Jaro had inadvertently drawn a comprehensive arc for the symbolic ideal of the development of Egyptology in the twentieth century, though in 1969 the ideal was incomplete. In February, Jaro and Kurz began to revise the general image of the area. They walked along paths in the mountain and analyzed the locations of groups of graffiti contextually in the landscape. 2974 2975 2976

Černý et al. 1969: xi. Personal communication, Cynthia Sheikholeslami and Fayza Haikal. Personal communication, Cynthia Sheikholeslami and José-Ramón Pérez-Accino.

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Kurz prepared descriptions of the mountain locations,2977 a research topic that has seen much development since.2978 Jaro considered these graffiti to be traces of history embedded in a geographical setting. His particular point of interest was the royal cachette, or rather its choice of location and the process of moving royal mummies between the wadis and the cachette. He had also started to think about the differently-titled groups of workmen,2979 and whether the presence or absence of a group might reflect circulation of the community in their environment, and how this could help in understanding their work processes and life conditions. By that point, Jaro thought that the gist of their activity—a royal tomb—ought to have taken on average four years to finish.2980 While Jaro and Marie were living on the Hathor and pursuing graffiti, they received some bad news from Lower Egypt. Žába had suffered a heart attack during that season’s work in the mastaba of Ptahshepses.2981 This was perhaps unsurprising, as like Jaro he was a chain smoker, and was by that time infamous for staying up late at night and eating irregularly. And as his colleagues and students could not fail to spot, the quality of his work was decreasing. But there were other factors. As the director of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology he needed to be least nominally in good standing with the problematic Czechoslovak authorities, but Žába was not happy in his position. He felt that Czechoslovakia had not promoted its case in obtaining a share from the gifts that Egypt had donated to other countries during the Nubian campaign. He complained about both sides: about Egypt for not proffering ‘UNESCO-promised’ gifts, and about Czechoslovakia for not pleading the cause of Egyptology. He overlooked, or conveniently forgot, the political freeze in Prague that accompanied decreasing Soviet interest in engaging diplomatically with Egypt. Scholars in the humanities and social sciences were in the crosshairs of the Ideological Committee of the Party Central Committee: ‘Primary importance was given to 2977 2978 2979 2980 2981

Černý et al. 1969: xii–xiii. Dorn 2018; Ragazzoli 2018; Salmas 2018b; Rzepka 2014. Černý et al. 1969: xvi. Černý et al. 1969: xvii. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 9 March 1969.

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“the completion of the cleansing of the top executive bodies of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and academic institutions of right-wing opportunist and anti-socialist elements”.’2982 In the perspective of 1969, the most complicated moments of the ‘normalization’ were yet to come.2983 The fact that neither Soviet nor Czechoslovak Egyptology was profiting as much from the Nubian campaign as they might have expected was tied to larger political developments.2984 The Soviets had regarded Egypt as problematic since the later part of the 1960s,2985 though perhaps felt it could be a proxy in an anti-Israeli Cold War conflict,2986 and preferred to deploy their specialists as military advisers.2987 There was little room for any soft power, and they let their views be known across their satellite diplomatic network. Žába was not up-to-date with new structures of power in Prague, and his health was failing him, but replacing him at short notice would not bode well for an Institute that had only been operational for a decade. Jaro, however, followed the news of his illness closely. Jaro and Marie made their way slowly back from Egypt in April, to the expected small pyramid of letters waiting in Oxford. The deluge of letters appears to have slowed in the late 1960s. Jaro’s failing eyesight meant that could not read or write as efficiently as in the past and so wrote less often, but it’s possible that he didn’t keep as many letters as he once had. He planned to stay mostly in Oxford for the rest of the year, though trips to Copenhagen and Paris were considered, and then undertaken, later that summer.2988 There was plenty of follow-up work on the Theban graffiti, and the manuscript of his first intended volume 2982

Oates-Indruchová 2008: 1770. See Oates-Indruchová 2008. 2984 For which see Loktionov 2019. There is undoubtedly more to be said about the variety of outcomes of the Nubian campaign for world Egyptology; see Carruthers 2017, and forthcoming work by the same author. 2985 Ferris 2011. 2986 Ginor and Remez 2017: 1965–1967. 2987 There is some debate on the presence, numbers, and influence of these: e.g., Dawisha 1979 vs. Laron 2010: 99–118. 2988 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 20 May 1969. The stamps in Jaro’s identity card confirm a late August trip. ACEGU, Collection Černý, Jaro’s UK travel document, pp. 8–9. 2983

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on the workmen of Deir el-Medina was nearing completion. His outreach remained undiminished, as Jaro was now consulting with Michel Malinine, who was entangled in reading Papyrus Loeb.2989 Žába also sent a letter that is hard to explain except as self-centred, stating that Jaro could visit Prague again, pressing him to promise to do so,2990 and already planning the logistics of transporting Jaro’s library. Jaro was at this time helping Žába’s student Malek to settle in Oxford,2991 but he was willing to consider further book exchanges and even to countenance the practicalities of an eventual library transfer. His contact point for this in Prague was, tellingly, Verner. Jaro and Marie hosted the Raineys in June, who celebrated Rainey’s birthday party while in Oxford.2992 Their Philadelphia connections were both professionally and socially satisfying. Mail flowed in over the summer. Elmar Edel was particularly interested in hieratic texts from the Aswan area.2993 In August, the IFAO mission nominated Jaro as expedition member for the 1969 to 1970 season,2994 and a meeting with French colleagues in Paris in the early autumn was considered very agreeable.2995 Jaro’s colleague, collaborator and, in matters of ostraca, mentee Serge Sauneron took over as director of the IFAO. It was a pleasure for Jaro to see another colleague succeed in their career. His relationship with the IFAO had now lasted for forty-five years, and he was still welcome on the premises in Mounira. Sauneron had plans for extensions and changes,2996 but as of now Jaro and Marie could plan to stay in the wing of the old palace, with its large rooms and high ceilings overlooking the gardens of the Institute. A trip was planned for the upcoming spring. Marie’s seventieth birthday was celebrated in Oxford at the beginning of October 1969. She wore one of her special-occasion 2989

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1364. ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 20 May 1969. 2991 Personal communication, Jaromir Malek. 2992 The Raineys to the Černýs, 20 May 1970, recalled in a letter now in the Rainey Collection, UPMAA. 2993 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.470 and following. 2994 Archives IFAO, personal file J. Černý. 2995 The trip again attested by stamps in Jaro’s identity card; ACEGU, Collection Černý, Jaro’s UK travel document, pp. 10–11. 2996 Sauneron modernized the IFAO buildings; see Vercoutter 1980: xx–xxi. 2990

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dresses and pearls. The weather was dull but warm, and they could still enjoy their garden.2997 Both daughters, Anna and Naomi, came to see their mother and Jaro, and the couple was photographed arm-in-arm. Their life’s journey was going well. Not perfect, obviously, as health problems had made themselves known. Knowledge of the health risks associated with smoking was only gradually sinking in,2998 and age-related eye issues, from cataracts to macular degeneration, are aggravated by smoking. Jaro was inadvertently making his situation worse. In December, Žába finally admitted that there was little chance of any additional places for Egyptologists in Prague. His dream of a study centre with collections, a library (with the expected decisive contribution of Jaro’s books), and teaching rooms was crushed. Žába felt slighted by the university and political authorities,2999 not least because his manuscript (which Jaro had helped to revise) on rock inscriptions was still being kept in a drawer at the university publishing house. Nonetheless, Žába reported that a trip to Egypt for 1970 had been allowed by the authorities—and by his doctor—and was keen to follow up on his consultations with Jaro about masons’ inscriptions in the mastaba of Ptahshepses.

1970 The year began quite well. Although Jaro’s eyesight was failing and his reliance on his family and colleagues was increasing, he was preparing for another season in the Theban mountains. Marie, who had been quite ill in Thebes the previous year, deliberated whether she was ready to attend another season of fieldwork, but in the end decided to go with Jaro to Egypt.3000 It was not only his needs that prompted her to go; she was now comfortable with her role in the team, and enjoyed it. 2997 Courtesy of the Allott family archive, photographs from the Allott family album, October 1969. 2998 Berridge 2007: 24–51. 2999 ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 6 December 1969. 3000 As referred to in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1894, 16 January 1970, from A. Théodoridès.

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Before departing Oxford, Jaro secured longer-term help with the Griffith Institute’s Topographical Bibliography project—the Prague alumnus Malek. Although his communication with and obligations to Prague were ongoing, Malek was settling in well, and was pleased that his original short-term assignment was to be prolonged. Securing the services of a scholar from across the Iron Curtain, even on a temporary basis, was a small victory for Jaro. Malek’s ostensible superior Žába, irrepressible and irritable in equal measure, urged Jaro to tell Malek to hasten from Oxford to Abusir, where the Czechoslovaks were about to begin another excavation campaign. Žába’s letter of that January was largely full of gloom, as he still felt deeply unappreciated by his university and included various hints at the lack of both respect and remuneration.3001 Some good news followed: the Coptic Etymological Dictionary had finally gone to print. In its preface, Jaro summed up developments that extended back to his time in Cairo during the Second World War, when he began to compile a slip-index with Coptic etymologies. After his arrival in Oxford in 1951, he had finally read the Études d’étymologie copte by Eugène Dévaud, a thesis that was published in 1922, the same year as Jaro’s dissertation.3002 Devaud’s work was appreciated in its time by Wilhelm Spiegelberg,3003 who had also compiled a Coptic dictionary, and the short thesis provided Jaro with the impetus to eventually develop his collection of slips into a fully-fledged dictionary.3004 Devaud made only a lexicographical assessment, tracing select Coptic words back to their Demotic and Egyptian predecessors or to Semitic loanwords. Jaro substantially expanded this collection, yet again following in Spiegelberg’s footprints as he had done so long ago in pursuit of the life and works of Egyptian craftsmen and artists. Jaro tied a few loose ends when he and Marie arrived in Cairo, checking another volume of Catalogue des ostraca,3005 and looking forward to another opportunity to see Deir el-Medina. Egypt 3001 3002 3003 3004 3005

ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 11 January 1970. Dévaud 1923. Spiegelberg 1923: 268. Černý 1976: ix. See also Jaro’s last report, reprinted in Černý 1970a.

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had reopened to foreign Egyptologists following the UNESCO campaign, allowing the IFAO to return to Jaro’s ‘community of workmen’, as he still named them. He also met with Žába in early February, and probably listened to a good deal of moaning. Žába had many reasons to complain, and relished making his grievances known. Jaro and Marie did not stay long in Cairo, and perhaps due to the brevity of their visit they lodged in the Semiramis Hotel.3006 The Semiramis was one of the grandes dames of Cairo and, unlike the Hotel Shepheard, had survived the riots of 1952.3007 It was also where Jaro’s erstwhile benefactor, Cyrill Dušek, stayed when he began his career as a Czechoslovak minister plenipotentiary in the early 1920s.3008 The place carried many memories, but Jaro left no hint as to whether he felt any nostalgia. In his letters he mostly looked forward. March and early April were again spent on the expedition houseboat in Luxor, with the tenants focusing on the graffiti of the Theban Mountain. Jaro had his assistants with him, and Marie was again mapping graffiti in close partnership with Egyptian colleagues, per established practice. The opportunity to revisit Deir el-Medina finally occurred when, one day in March and as soon as he heard about the renewed excavation works, Jaro made a detour to the ancient settlement. But the visit to Deir el-Medina and Qurnet Murai, where the IFAO had resumed its archaeological activity, did not initially go according to plan. A new architect in the IFAO team, Georges Castel, and other younger team members failed to recognize Jaro when he came to visit the site, taking him for just another random visitor and telling him that he was not allowed on the excavation. The old man smiled and left. The reis, their Egyptian foreman, pointed out to Castel that the man he had just unceremoniously turned away was Jaroslav Černý, the doyen of Deir el-Medina studies who had dedicated forty years of his life to the place. Castel was mortified. He wrote and dispatched an apology immediately, inviting Jaro to come on site. Jaro did so a few days 3006 Žába’s letter of 1 February 1970 was addressed to Jaro at the Semiramis, ACEGU, Correspondence, Z. Žába to J. Černý, 1 February 1970. 3007 Its end came only in 1974. The current Hotel Semiramis in central Cairo is a new building. 3008 Macková 2014b: 84.

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later, and demonstrated a peculiar brand of sympathy. He did not berate Castel, and the architect recalled the whole incident as a particular testament to Jaro’s understanding and kindness.3009 If Jaro’s typical kindness to colleagues can be interpreted as pragmatic and promoting a mutually beneficial approach, then this sort of kindness had a rather different feel: that of a genuinely warm personality that was not easily offended. In Castel’s recollections, both Jaro and Marie left a deep impression of gentleness and elegance.3010 It is also worth noting that it was an Egyptian colleague—the reis—who informed his French superior about their visitor’s identity. This would have been unlikely had Egyptian workmen not been so accepting of Jaro. A retired IFAO expedition member had no authority over the workmen or the reis, but at least some still had respect for an elderly expert who dedicated so much of his life to Deir el-Medina and its inhabitants. Jaro was naturally very intrigued by the new work at his favourite site, especially now that his three-volume treatise on the lives and work of its inhabitants was progressing, and the first volume was nearly finished. Completing other tasks, as he had been doing before leaving for Egypt, was a logical step in finishing a work he had originally begun with his 1922 dissertation. There were still many ideas and concepts that had not been committed to paper, not least those concerning the daily lives of the ancient workmen, although he frequently talked about these aspects with colleagues and students, particularly during his trips to Philadelphia. Despite years of preparation and meticulous collecting, his intended synthetic work that would capture the minutiae of ancient daily life and the creation of ancient artwork was still largely unwritten. At least Jaro now had a clear idea about the topography of the place, and revisiting the habitat of ‘his’ workmen had refreshed his knowledge. Jaro and Marie were back in Cairo and working at the IFAO by mid-April, this time for several weeks. They settled in the Institute’s compound, enjoying the luxury of its tropical garden. The time came to consider returning to Britain, as the Egyptian spring was getting rather warm, but Jaro was in no hurry. He 3009 3010

Personal communication, Georges Castel, October 2017. Personal communication, Georges Castel, June 2019.

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continued transcribing and collating ostraca despite his worsening eyesight. He and Posener were famed, over the years, for having trays of ostraca delivered to their rooms in the researchers’ wing, often first thing in the morning along with their breakfasts.3011 Trying to perfect the reading of fading texts, in changing light during different times of the day or with a lamp tilted at varying angles, required strenuous effort, but from Jaro’s perspective there was an urgent need to read these scraps of texts if he was to reconstitute ancient lives. On 15 April Marie wrote a postcard, co-signed by Jaro, to their friends the Raineys in Philadelphia: ‘Jaro is transcribing some of the many ostraca stored here. He hasn’t yet made up his mind when we’ll return to Oxford.’3012 Jaro lingered in his old haunts in Cairo well into May, dating his brief report for the IFAO to the 15th of that month.3013 He was glad to note that some of the ostraca from Deir el-Medina that were believed to be lost had been identified on the Institute’s premises. Jaro mentioned that he had only used about half of the three months allocated to research time by the IFAO, and hoped to continue the task in the spring of 1971. He had methodically planned his book, his text editions, and more graffiti expeditions. The Czechoslovak team frequently invited Jaro and Marie to visit them in a villa on the Pyramids Road in Giza during April and May, hosting them generously. Activities in Egypt, including these meetings, had become the chief focus of Žába’s year. For a few days or weeks, the team from Prague had ‘their’ professor Černý back. The world of ‘comrades’ and Party meetings, enclosed behind barbed wire in Czechoslovakia, could ostensibly be forgotten. The last party took place on the eve of Marie and Jaro’s departure. Žába later recalled that Jaro was looking forward to being home again.3014 Spring in Oxford was a season to look forward to, the best time to enjoy one’s own garden. Despite the Cold War, life was not bad in the ‘safe’ side of the world. 3011

Personal communication, Susan Allen. M. Černý to the Raineys, Cairo, 15 April 1970, the Rainey Collection, UPMAA. 3013 Reprinted in Černý 1970a: vii. 3014 Archive of CEGU, administrative files 1970; letter from Z. Žába to J. Malek, preserved in carbon copy. 3012

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Only after all the ostraca work and social calls in Cairo were discharged did the couple travel back to Oxford, where Jaro was eagerly awaited. As in past years, and indeed for the past fortyfive years, the routine of fieldwork alternated with a routine of research and teaching, with the latter being Jaro’s preferred form of mentoring advanced and mature colleagues. There were always students who wished to consult with him, but his most frequent conversations these days were with members of the Topographical Bibliography team, especially its new member Malek, who had also just returned from a season in Egypt, and with Egyptologists who regularly returned to Oxford such as Groll and Shafik Allam. Groll remembered a conversation between Moss and Jaro over an unnamed, but difficult, hieroglyphic text allegedly to be included in the Topographical Bibliography.3015 After much poring over a photograph, Jaro said, ‘Well, I think I see a man here.’ Moss, with a twinkle in her eye, countered. ‘I see a woman…’ The lifelong admirer of spirited women did not object. Jaro’s own notes on the texts of the workmen and their women were developing. He rewrote many of his earlier observations with his new ballpoint pen. His writing, neat and legible, became more and more compact as his eye disease progressed; older and newer notes may be distinguished easily,3016 as traces of a long process of piecing together an Egyptian life-world. Jaro quite methodically kept to a routine of morning coffee, usually outside the faculty rooms. He preferred the nearby Randolph Hotel, refurbished and extended in 1952, its architecture considered acceptably Neo-Gothic.3017 Indeed, he was becoming very keen on consultations that took him away from the workspace allotted to him as an emeritus professor in the Griffith Institute building behind the Ashmolean Museum.3018 A hotel café evidently offered a more congenial environment, even though, in an attempt to disguise the Victorian Gothic style, the interior was 3015 Second-hand oral history evidence: personal communication, Deborah Sweeney, September 2019. 3016 Passim in many Černý manuscripts and well visible in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20 series on Late Egyptian grammar. 3017 Sherwood 2002: 324. 3018 The building no longer exists. It was replaced by the Sackler Library with the Griffith Wing and an extension to the Ashmolean Museum.

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dressed in very bright colours with 1950s and 1960s textile patterns and simplified shapes. Jaro, having preferred simple shapes for his own bookcase and desk, was probably not bothered by the modernisation, and anyway, he was coming for the taste of coffee. Although he accepted the institution of ‘afternoon tea’, and respected its social function, his stimulant of choice was coffee and a cigarette. Jaro was expected in the Griffith Institute on 29 May as usual, with colleagues wondering where he would prefer to have his morning coffee. That he was somewhat belated that day did not solicit much comment at first. He habitually arrived around 9:30 to 10:00 am and, after all, he was entitled to come in at his leisure. But instead a phone rang in the offices of the Topographical Bibliography. It was Marie with her final message.

Unfinished synthesis: workmen to artists The distant past inspires the sense and the respect of differences between men, at the same time as it refines our sensitiveness to the poetry of human destinies. Marc Bloch3019

It was 1958 when Jaro began to think he should—and could— finish his synthesis on the workmen of Ramesside Deir el-Medina, but his plans were changed during the 1960s, first by the UNESCO programme in Nubia, and then the survey of graffiti on the Theban Mountain. Jaro embarked on that project as soon as his part in the last CEDAE volumes on Nubia was committed to print in the mid-1960s.3020 By then he was entrenched in the ‘research factory’ style of the UNESCO project, of teams in the field and cooperation among the team members. The narrative of participation had changed too, as Egyptian Egyptologists became an established part of the Egyptological community, though it required someone of Jaro’s stature, character, and background to diplomatically navigate the role of mentor and teacher without being perceived as patronizing. 3019 3020

As quoted by Weber 1991: 258. Černý 1967b.

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Jaro was primarily an epigrapher among the Nubian temples, and an epigrapher and hieraticist in his graffiti project. These had long been his field specialities and he had honed his craft. The graffiti volumes that were published before or shortly after his death represented good practice in the study of rock inscriptions,3021 because the work was systematic, if not exhaustive (some figural graffiti escaped the team),3022 and paid close attention to where the epigraphic features were located in the landscape. The demands of the work were heightened by his worsening eyesight, but Jaro’s colleagues proved capable of making adjustments to overcome his disability, allowing him to supply his expertise without significant impediment. In his later years Jaro also finalized two contributions to larger historical syntheses that presented an outline of Egyptian history: in the Cambridge Ancient History, and in the Fischer Weltgeschichte series.3023 He wrote shorter papers on a range of subjects.3024 One ongoing project was finally cleared in 1965, on the hieratic texts from the tomb of Tutankhamun.3025 He also had the sad duty of being obituarist-in-chief for Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner.3026 Jaro’s obituaries for Gardiner articulated his deep respect for the scholar. He did not hesitate to explain the exceptional circumstances of Gardiner’s career as a privately-funded gentleman scholar, noting that ‘this was a privilege of which Gardiner was fully conscious throughout his life and he made a great and highly successful effort to live up to it.’ Jaro was also concerned with showing Gardiner as a wellrounded Egyptologist, as a philologist and linguist, and the author of a much-used grammar and many editions of texts, but one who supported archaeology, who co-authored a Topographical Catalogue of Theban Tombs with Arthur Weigall, and who supported Nina and Norman de Garis Davies in their epigraphy. Jaro drew attention to Gardiner’s researches on the Sinai inscriptions and the early alphabet he discerned. In one of the obituaries, he added: ‘From this primitive alphabet subsequently came all other 3021 3022 3023 3024 3025 3026

Černý et al. 1969; Černý and Sadek 1970; Černý et al. 1971. Dorn 2018. Černý 1965a; Černý 1966c. Černý 1966a; Černý 1966b; Černý 1967a; Černý 1970b. Černý 1965b. Černý 1965c; Černý 1965d; Černý 1965e.

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alphabetic writings including Greek and our own.’3027 Here Jaro was subtly suggesting to his readers the relevance of Egyptological studies in understanding their own civilization. Jaro’s personal thoughts of Gardiner, like so many of Jaro’s other private thoughts, remained his own. In his communications with Gardiner he maintained unchallenged deference, based, it seems, on his respect for Gardiner’s work and generosity. The imprint of Gardiner was indelible in Jaro’s output as an editor of texts, as a grammarian, and in his numerous quotes referring to Gardiner’s insights, yet Jaro ultimately pursued different goals, and did not live to publish the work that Gardiner would have regarded as his duty. He wanted to see his books on the community of workmen finished, but circumstances conspired to keep him from finalizing his thoughts, even though (or perhaps because) he continued to occupy himself with the project. As his eyesight weakened throughout the 1960s, consulting on the works of others and lecturing became more easily-manageable activities. Still, he set about the task and divided the work into three sections. The structure of his 1922 dissertation was briefly resurrected in the manuscript of the first part.3028 He tackled local toponyms first, to situate the community in their landscape and to elucidate the terminology they had used to describe their environment and themselves. He then examined the organization of the community and the prosopographies of its notable members. This became the first volume of the Community of the Workmen at Thebes in the Ramesside Period. What emerged was a detailed picture of a well-organized, elite community with a number of literate members and complex professional training. The two gangs of the tomb, their foremen, their scribes, their families, and their service personnel have since become common—even fundamental—knowledge in Egyptology and ancient history.3029 Fifty years later, it seems hard to imagine a research landscape in which referring with ease to the community of Deir el-Medina had not been possible. 3027

Citations from Černý 1965e: 156, 161. The drafts of various chapters are located in GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 13. 3029 Deir el-Medina database: https://dmd.wepwawet.nl/. Accessed 3 June 2022. 3028

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Detailed information on the individual professional groups and prosopographical information on the important members of the community was built on excerpting their administrative and personal documents for well over four decades. Jaro had a synthetic approach, building on the example set by Wilhelm Spiegelberg by using both the monumental and non-monumental record. As he observed in the Fonti indirette volume,3030 he adhered to the notion of hieratic being used for ‘unofficial’ records—now normally termed non-monumental—yet in his treatise he also recognized the highly official character of control over a community that was entrusted with a task of huge importance for the state: creating a monument to the king. The second volume of the intended synthesis had been intended to describe the community’s work processes in the Valley of the Kings,3031 but only a few chapters were written. What survives begins, once again, with an introduction to the physical character of the site, followed by remarks on the workflow of a royal tomb project. The rest of the volume, which would have covered the workflow in greater detail, and a third volume that was projected to deal with daily lives and personal affairs of the workmen, remained unfinished. The private lives and community concerns that he had sketched so energetically but unsatisfactorily in 1922 were never presented, and so this work, something of a ‘Montaillou of the East’, as Jac. Janssen later referred to Deir el-Medina, remains an unfulfilled promise. It is mainly the unfinished ‘Valley of the Kings’ that reads as Jaro’s most historical text, drawing the reader to the slopes of the Western Theban wadis, and to worksites peopled with stonecutters, plasterers, and artists. The people of Western Thebes, Jaro’s first love, had to await their portrait until so many other duties, things that ‘needed doing’, could be discharged. These volumes, as with other works by Jaro, rested on an apparatus of primary sources, and Egyptian terminology was quoted often. Jaro saw materials from Deir el-Medina as being of utmost interest for the study of Late Egyptian,3032 and Late 3030 3031 3032

Černý 1963c. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 13.43 shows a draft. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.9.I.

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Egyptian was a significant branch of his study, but the community in many respects came first; the wellspring. He devised and established modern Egyptological terminology for the community. He consistently called the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina ‘workmen’, to distinguish them from previous interpretations in which they were either a diverse group of necropolis personnel or a priestly community. He also sought, in a somewhat limited way, to distinguish the diversity of tasks these workmen tackled, as the word ‘draughtsman’ features in his work frequently. The paradigmatic change in terminology, making ‘workmen’ into ‘artisans’ or ‘artists’, happened later.3033 Studying the community made Jaro think of ancient individuals, and led him to explore the byzantine issue of an ancient Egyptian mentality. Among Jaro’s papers there are some undated notes for talks and lectures—some of which were likely destined for the general public—one of them being daringly titled The Character of Ancient Egyptians.3034 The subject matter was not new to Egyptology, as Heinrich Brugsch had tried to tackle it before Jaro was born, carrying the burden of a concept that sought to insert Egyptians into the context of the Old Testament.3035 Jaro was not remotely interested in the Biblical element, but rather began his narrative by noting the contrast between mighty temples and tombs of stone, imperishable and imperturbable, and relatively inconspicuous earthly dwellings, before going on to discuss the joyful character of Egyptian life expressed in tomb decorations, and in ideas about an afterlife conceived as a continuation of the earthly one with all its commitments and joys. This spirit was celebrated by Jaro and Brugsch alike. Jaro realized that a modern observer might find the formal and ritualized character of Egyptian material to be a significant barrier to its appreciation. But even though he was aware of existence of canons and norms in both visual and written culture (other than a simple modern reading at face value) and how they might be a barrier, he was still influenced by previous styles, of 3033 See Andreu 2006, and subsequent works which defined the people of Deir el-Medina as artists or artisans; see also Andreu et al. 2002; Gaber et al. 2017. 3034 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.89, notes for a lecture. 3035 Brugsch 1881, 1: chapter II.

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Gardiner or of Francis Llewellyn Griffith. Hence, he opined that Egyptians ‘were no profound thinkers,’3036 even though contemporaries like Henri Frankfort or Edward Evan (E. E.) EvansPritchard had long regarded this approach as patronizing or at least inaccurate, reflecting the debate on ‘primitive’ or ‘prelogical’ minds developed by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. Evans-Pritchard preferred to address other mentalities via double translation,3037 and rejected the primitive/modern dichotomy and its teleological implications: ‘Evans-Pritchard’s method requires common sense to be compared with common sense, ritual with ritual, theology with theology so that the appropriate level may be kept.’3038 Within a few years, an even clearer break with the ‘primitive mind’ approach was to be articulated by John Rankine (‘Jack’) Goody in his Domestication of the Savage Mind in 1977. Jaro also came close to Gardiner in his views on Egyptian written expressions of aesthetic enjoyment. Gardiner was rather disparaging in his 1920 publication of a small corpus of graffiti in Western Thebes, believing that these secondary inscriptions lacked the desired spontaneity.3039 Jaro derived his understanding of such texts from what are known as visitors’ graffiti, in which visitors appreciated the monuments as places of memory and as sacred spaces. Jaro concluded that in all their formal beauty of expression, the graffiti come across as somewhat over-formulaic comments, no doubt fashionable among their writers and possibly taught as a part of a well-educated person’s curriculum, which has, to a large extent, been corroborated by subsequent research.3040 Strictly speaking, Jaro was not comparing ‘common sense with common sense’, as both he and Gardiner expected ‘spontaneity’ in what is now recognized as codified cultural communication, but he at least realized that graffiti were expressions of a complex communication system. He saw the presence of cultural patterns and norms and encouraged their study, notably in his exchanges with Erik Iversen regarding the canon of Egyptian art. He chafed against the limits of his own understanding, wishing to know 3036 3037 3038 3039 3040

GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5, p. 20. Salamon 2010. Douglas 1980: 28. Navrátilová 2010. Ragazzoli 2013; Verhoeven 2012.

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details of Egyptian life that he felt unable to access despite ongoing debates about Egyptian art.3041 There was one aspect of ancient Egyptian culture where Jaro was truly impressed, enraptured even, despite its formal decorum: visual art.3042 He neither denied nor affirmed its ritual purposes but insisted on the Egyptian love for nature and beauty, and the resulting capability to express natural forms strikingly well, even without having recourse to perspective: ‘Elements taken from the world of animals and plants pervade all the objects of daily life, so that even at home the Egyptian was all the time surrounded by nature.’3043 Jaro both identified the resource of Egyptian art forms, and acknowledged the impact Egyptian art has had on the modern viewer. He believed that the enjoyment of art was shared by the ancient culture and its modern audience, thus implicitly searching for, if not articulating, a balance between cultural design and social structure—a topic that is the subject of ongoing debates in history-writing disciplines, including Egyptology,3044 more than fifty years after his death. 3041

Verbovsek 2011: 361–364. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.89, pp. 10f. 3043 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5.89, pp. 12–13. 3044 In 1929, Adolf Erman admitted a few words of praise for Georg Ebers, namely that, thanks to Ebers, ‘one began to realise that they [the Egyptians] were human like anyone else’ (Erman 1929: 257). Also in 1929, Eric Peet observed that ‘the Egyptian told his tales for a pure joy of story-telling’ (Peet 1931: 27), and used as his examples the very stories that later became the material for assessments of Egyptian political discourse as expressed in literary works—though later in the same work he stated that Egyptian texts had no power of ‘conjuring with words’ (Peet 1931: 131–132). In 1956, Posener put literature and politics in one book title (Posener 1956), and the question of whether Egyptian literature was ‘political’ or ‘literary’, whether it was expressing cultural patterns or individual concerns, or simply both, is ongoing. One example, Egyptian love poems have been variously interpreted as witnesses to the ancient experience of love and to diverse social and cultural practices. For Peet, they were a testament to the Egyptians’ ‘love of brightness and gaiety’, of which it ‘may safely be affirmed that up to the present no poet has written of love without saying many things which his Egyptian forerunners thought and said three thousand years ago’ (Peet 1931: 97). Peet was an ‘anti-presentist’ (see Lewis 2016), but the impact of these texts made them ageless in his eyes. Later, the perceived spontaneity and individuality of the love songs came under scrutiny when Waltraud Guglielmi (in 1996) ‘suggested that a carnival character and “Gegenwelt” were present in the New Kingdom satiric and also erotic ostraca … pTurin 55 001 and consequently—as these are not entirely unrelated—in the love poems’ (Landgráfová and Navrátilová 2009: 15). Bernard Mathieu arrived at a different conclusion by arguing that love poetry was not an idiosyncratic, potentially subversive reading of individual emotions, or even a carnivalesque feast, but an embodiment of most the important elements 3042

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Since Jaro’s day, Egyptology has generally moved closer to cultural and historical anthropology, at least in part heeding Evans-Pritchard’s call. Alongside ongoing involvement in source-processing and cataloguing, it has tended to tell more about groups than individuals, more about patterns and structures than individual agency. Still more recently, the fascination with ‘how societies function’ has been challenged by acknowledging the diversity of ancient experience, and by a search for its traces and imprints.3045 Lived experience, individual agency, doubt, subversion, and enjoyment have been emphasized as relevant subjects of historical research,3046 contingent with the ongoing re-reading of ancient texts and discussions of ancient society. Recognition of the modern experience of a past culture, including its limitations, is now a shared concern across historiography.3047 In that context, Jaro’s efforts to grasp ancient experience and its modern reflections cease to be anachronistic speculation, instead becoming a forerunner of modern approaches to his beloved subject, though for his part Jaro preferred to approach the subject empirically, and was uninterested in addressing the tension between ‘French speculative theorizing and English fieldworking empiricism’, as Mary Douglas characterized traditions in anthropology.3048 One attribute of ancient Egyptian culture and society stood out, in Jaro’s opinion, and could be fully attested: their humanity, articulated as the kindness and care encoded in their idealized biographies and wisdom texts: ‘To sum up, shortly: Egyptians were a merry people, rather too appreciative of food and drink, but gifted and possessing good artistic taste, formalists, but kind and human.’3049 * * * of Egyptian culture: divine and magical powers, fertility, and renewal—the central concerns of Egyptian religious thought (Mathieu 1996: 245–248). Love poems have also been reinterpreted as a part of a Hathoric ritual expected to be performed in a religious setting (see the discussions on love poetry in Mathieu 1996 and in Navratilova and Landgráfová 2015), and the most recent interpretations see them as reflections of both human and divine love (Darnell 2016), and of patterns as well as of lived emotional experience. 3045 Baines 2007: 4–5. 3046 Parkinson 2009: 265–278; Frood 2013. 3047 Its Egyptological aspect was further addressed by Parkinson 2009: 270–278. 3048 Douglas 1980: 42. 3049 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 5, p. 20.

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Postmodern preoccupations with rhetorical exercises, sometimes pursued at the expense of a focus on past events and sources, but alongside examinations of the limits of our own understanding,3050 would have been alien to Jaro. Yet history is ‘always history for someone’,3051 and it is also always by someone. It is inevitable that every historian has agendas and dispositions that are reflected, to a certain extent, in their work: in the narratives they select and in the voice they prefer. One need not be a postmodernist to recognize this, as Jaro’s coevals among British historians, including Alan John Percivale Taylor and Herbert Butterfield, had a keen sense of both a ‘commitment to scholarly detachment’ and ‘the individuality of the historian’.3052 Jaro, though, avoided purposefully shaping a public persona, avoided overt if well-articulated activism, avoided even personal diaries destined for posterity. As a result, it is only possible to identify the values and interests Jaro embedded in his texts, and he chose to emphasize kindness and humanity. These, in his view, transcended the abyss of time and cultural difference.

3050 The matter has been discussed for at least three decades, with earlier antecedents on both sides of the debate; see Collins et al. 1994. 3051 Jenkins 1991: 25. 3052 Smyth 2016: 117.

Book VII Legacy records There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.3053 Any enclosed discipline sets its stamp, its pattern, upon its students. That pattern is susceptible to analysis and prediction. Frank Herbert3054 Es ist weder neu noch originell, Fachvorgängern ihre Gebundenheit an den Zeitgeist nachzuweisen und sie aus der Perspektive neuerer, aber ebenso zeitgeistiger Standpunkte abzustrafen. Martin Fitzenreiter3055

1970–1973 aftermath of a passing The death certificate was issued on 29 May 1970, at the Radcliffe Infirmary, with myocardiac ischemia listed as the cause of death.3056 Jaro’s passing was sudden, hidden from his closest companions, in plain sight of strangers. His crises held this pattern: for the first, office workmates rushed towards a collapsing man on a train to Palestine, covered in his own blood; for the second, he was behind the walls in Beckenham, restrained by hospital staff, their distance reflected in reports and letters. Now he died on the road. Like his Viennese contemporary Wilhelm Czermak, Jaro appears to have had a symbolic way of passing. Czermak, the reserved, high-strung dignitary, died in his Chancellor’s robes after a graduation ceremony, on the threshold of the great university hall in Vienna. Jaro, the quiet worker and relentless traveller, died in transition, in a liminal space, in his everyday clothes, under an open sky. Had he choreographed his life with 3053 3054 3055 3056

California State College, Fullerton Interview with Frank Herbert (1969). F. Herbert, Dune, 1968 [1965], p. 161. Fitzenreiter 2007: 330 note 25. GIA, Collection Černý, Jaro’s death certificate.

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the sort of self-fashioning seen among some contemporary public intellectuals—a work of art to encapsulate a central message— a more fitting passing could hardly be imagined. The first days and perhaps weeks must have felt surreal to Marie and to Jaro’s colleagues at the Griffith Institute. Letters addressed to Jaro kept arriving at Linkside Avenue and the Institute. Jaro’s desk at home was still strewn with notes. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin wrote around this time, when he believed Jaro and Marie would be returning from Egypt, to relate the good news that he had obtained a British Academy grant for research at Amarna. Martin wished to thank Jaro for his support in the matter, but his old teacher never had the opportunity to read the letter, which was posted on 28 May. Instead, the secretary at the Griffith Institute, Fiona Strachan, replied that ‘Professor Černý died suddenly on Friday and as you can imagine it was a terrible shock to all of us as he was here all day Thursday and was on his way to the Institute when it happened.’3057 A brief Oxford Times obituary was printed on 5 June 1970, and an unnamed colleague summed up Jaroslav Černý’s achievements: ‘He was the leading Egyptologist … he had published an immense number of Egyptian texts, his particular field being studies of the language. We have lost a considerable scholar.’ In a few short words the obituary quantified Jaro’s research, qualified it as language- and text-oriented, and noted that publishing and editing was one of the key characteristics of an Egyptologist. It fairly echoed Jaro’s mentor Alan Gardiner, who self-confessedly lived to ‘complete text-publications which it was my duty to complete.’3058 Gardiner cast a long shadow. Near the end of July, while still in Egypt, Zbyněk Žába had to reconcile himself to the fact that he had lost his own mentor. He received an update from Jaromir Malek, to which he replied: You have my warm thanks for your letter, which confirmed the terrible news we had had from the Cairo Arab papers. We refused to believe it at first. In particular, I am glad we now know those 3057 GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1369, 28 May 1970, from G. T. Martin; GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1370, 1 June 1970, from F. Strachan, announcing Jaro’s death. 3058 Gardiner 1962: 5.

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few details that have given a certain comfort, namely that the Professor was spared physical suffering and mental anguish. We are constantly reminded of the moments in Černý’s company and our thoughts are with Mrs Černá.3059

Marie had to tackle Jaro’s will, which left his papers to the Griffith Institute, and his books, plus their bookcases and even his desk, to the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in Prague. Her daughters came to visit and Anna stayed with her for some time in the summer of 1970. They could soon count on Žába coming to Britain despite the political freeze in Czechoslovakia. Žába was not easily deterred when in pursuit of an objective. Marie was in an active contact with Jaro’s colleagues globally, most of them being less assertive and obsequious than Žába. Obituaries needed to be written and research projects finished. She fielded a barrage of letters as an antidote to sorrow, although they also reminded her constantly of the days when she listened to Jaro outlining his research plans. Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt was so close a friend that she felt a comparable sense of bereavement, but also felt compelled to convey a remark by Jaro that if not for his Manya, he would have been long dead. Desroches-Noblecourt reminded Marie of Jaro’s devotion.3060 But personal expressions of sympathy were nearly always accompanied by the question of pursuing Jaro’s work. Concerns for Marie’s wellbeing and for Jaro’s professional legacy permeated nearly every letter. Two projects were, inevitably, particularly pressing: the workmen’s community and the Late Egyptian grammar. Marie sent photostats of Jaro’s notebooks to Desroches-Noblecourt and to others. Jean-Claude Goyon even hoped that Marie might take up some of Jaro’s work, but she described herself as not being an Egyptologist, and as rapidly growing older. She was, most probably, growing tired. Since Marie did not consider herself to be in position to finish Jaro’s work, she sought professional allies. She and DesrochesNoblecourt discussed Aristide Theodoridès and Serge Sauneron 3059 ACEGU, Administrative folders, carbon copy of the letter from Z. Žába to J. Malek, 26 July 1970. 3060 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2398, 25 June 1970, C. DesrochesNoblecourt to M. Černý.

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as possible editors of Jaro’s manuscripts on the Deir el-Medina workmen, and in the end chose Sauneron.3061 Desroches-Noblecourt had very definite views on some of the assigned works. She was happy with Sauneron or Theodoridès or Eiddon Edwards tackling the workmen, or with Edwards, Arthur Shore and Jack Plumley taking a hand in finishing the proofs of the Coptic etymological dictionary, but was much less certain whether Sarah Groll was the right choice for the Late Egyptian grammar.3062 But Groll was available, and was able to visit Oxford.3063 Sauneron soon stated his interest in finishing Jaro’s manuscripts, his main focus being on the workmen, further work on the Repertoire onomastique, and the papyri of Deir el-Medina.3064 The heartfelt condolences he included in his letter prompted an outpouring of grief in Marie’s reply, where she mentioned how lively and full of plans Jaro had been up until his death, ‘not ill at all’.3065 Marie had company and help, from Edwards, and from Helen Murray and Malek at the Griffith Institute, who organized the transfer of Jaro’s papers to the Institute’s Archive while his books being readied for transport to Prague. Malek also took several fragments of papyri and five ostraca from Jaro’s personal possessions into the care of the Ashmolean Museum.3066 Other more mundane issues had to be settled. On 28 August 1970, the solicitors Pothecary and Barratt were informed by the University that Jaro took his superannuation benefits as a cash sum but that he was ‘in receipt of a supplementary pension of £592 per annum from the University which was being paid by monthly instalments in arrears.’ Payment was actually made until 3061 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2398, 25 June 1970, C. DesrochesNoblecourt to M. Černý. 3062 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2397, 17 July 1970, C. DesrochesNoblecourt to M. Černý. From this letter, and from the draft enclosed with Černý Mss. 21.2398, it is evident that Marie had sent photostats of Jaro’s notebooks to DesrochesNoblecourt and to other Egyptologists. 3063 During her trips, Groll stayed in then recently-founded Wolfson College in North Oxford, as her note in the preface to the 1975 first edition of A Late Egyptian Grammar explains. She also donated a copy to the college library. 3064 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2402, 1 September 1970, S. Sauneron to M. Černý. 3065 Draft enclosed to GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2402. 3066 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2382, 31 August 1970, from R. W. Hamilton, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, to M. Černý.

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31 May 1970, so that nothing further was due in this respect and the pension had ceased upon his death.3067 This left Marie with limited financial means. In autumn of 1970, a posthumous seventh volume of nonliterary ostraca appeared with an emotional introduction by Sauneron, and a reproduction of the last report that Jaro wrote for the IFAO regarding his work.3068 Sauneron’s words recalled how little Jaro was concerned with building the façade of an identity. He simply was; he never sought to project himself. Sauneron’s words evoked Jaro’s personal modesty and warmth, and conveyed the loss felt at the IFAO by the passing of a scholar who had been part of the Institute’s history for forty-five years. It seemed like the passing of an era, confirmed perhaps by the death of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser on 20 September 1970. As a politician he had influenced and formed the social and political backdrop of Egyptology only in the last third of Jaro’s career, but he did so decisively. Marie was kept busy with numerous requests—mainly from Jaro’s obituarists—into the new year of 1971. Harry James was keen to obtain the portraits taken by Milan Zemina during the visit to Prague in 1967.3069 These showed a content, lively Jaro, as well as a Jaro with the gravitas and dignity of an Oxford don. James compiled a carefully written obituary, and the care taken in obtaining a suitable portrait was reflected in a series of letters he exchanged with Marie between January and April 1971.3070 Perhaps it was kindness, too, that kept the communication going, as Marie’s replies to the ongoing condolences showed her lasting grief. Marie was feeling rather low as the flow of letters continued, now from more distant parts of the world. Desroches-Noblecourt had her own bereavement after her mother passed away in spring 1971, but maintained the exchange of letters with Marie. In May,3071 Marie wrote that she was 3067

OUA, personal file J. Černý. Černý 1970a. 3069 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2415, 9 January 1971, from T. G. H. James to M. Černý. 3070 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2416–21.2418. 3071 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2383, 26 May 1971, C. DesrochesNoblecourt to M. Černý, including a draft of a reply by M. Černý dated 10 June 1971. 3068

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expecting Žába to move Jaro’s library, while Groll was working intently on the Late Egyptian grammar using materials now deposited in the Griffith Institute. Sauneron and Edwards were both working on preparing Jaro’s project on the Deir el-Medina workmen for print, despite Edwards being caught in a whirlwind of preparation for the Tutankhamun exhibition in London.3072 Žába finally moved the library in the summer of 1971.3073 It was his last major act as the director of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology, and he even managed to convince the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education to finance the transport. But Žába’s lifestyle of sleepless nights, black coffee, and cigarette smoke caught up with him. He died on 15 August 1971, leaving the Institute exposed to the regime’s displeasure. Jaro’s books and furniture had to be stored, provisionally, as the Institute was soon to be disbanded. Czechoslovak State Security had already shelved the file on Jaroslav Černý. He was listed together with a number of foreign nationals and other exiles who were of interest to state security,3074 but the file had been shredded by 1988. Work on the posthumous publications continued in 1972. Both Sauneron and Edwards were meticulous editors, but Marie recalled something disconcerting that she intended to share with her daughter Naomi. In a draft letter,3075 Marie referred to substantial editing proposals by Edwards that had made her apprehensive about Jaro’s posthumous authorship. Her uneasiness was based on an earlier understanding of Jaro’s reaction to the fact that Edwards had claimed authorship of Oracular Amuletic Decrees of the Late New Kingdom. She referred to a moment, possibly in 1960 before the Decrees were published, when Edwards had asked Jaro if he would mind being just thanked as a contributor, rather than being named as a co-author. ‘Jaro on return 3072 Archives IFAO, Collection Černý, Box 05 letters, between S. Sauneron and I. E. S. Edwards. 3073 The spedition specialists Gentransco moved the library in July 1971, and a waybill is preserved in ACEGU file J. Černý, donated by A. Allott and N. McIntosh. 3074 File scan AP1OP_5, ABS, 614375-644775. 3075 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2393A, 21.2393B, 21.2393C, 6 May 1972, from M. Černý to I. E. S. Edwards discussing corrections to the manuscript on the workmen. Her notes are enclosed with this draft, and some seem to refer to a previous working relationship between Jaro and Edwards. These notes were destined to become part of a letter to Naomi that has not been identified.

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from London [was] white as a sheet’ and didn’t calm down until being told by Gardiner that anyone who looked at the book would know its actual author. If accurate, then Marie’s recollections show a different side to Jaro, one anxious about his work and its recognition, and tired of always being the giver. She had the instinctive reaction of a protectress, occasioned by a highly specific situation involving Edwards. During 1972, Marie visited Egypt once more, her first visit on her own. She probably met with friends and acquaintances, and there were more condolences to be accepted. At least the trip brought her away from Linkside Avenue, now sporting a curiously empty front room where Jaro’s study used to be. In June she was back in Oxford, encouraging Groll to continue with the grammar. In early letters to Desroches-Noblecourt, Marie characterized Groll as a shy person who needed to be incited and encouraged, but in later ones she gave the impression of Groll being honest and outspoken.3076 Marie was still being consulted by obituarists, asking for more photographs or for revisions of their texts, such as Edwards did in September 1972.3077 She replied to scholars interested in his posthumous publications that they were known to be underway.3078 She had become more of a secretary to her husband than ever. In 1973, the major step in concluding Jaro’s work was made when the IFAO published A Community of Workmen in Thebes in the Ramesside Period. Editorial adjustments by Sauneron and Edwards did not influence the attribution of authorship, and Marie’s anxiety had not been warranted. The ‘Montaillou of the East’ was revealed, to a certain extent. Morris Bierbrier’s review reflected the realization that the work was but a fragment: ‘It was 3076 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2386, 19 June 1972, M. Černý to C. DesrochesNoblecourt; GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2399, 26 June 1972, C. DesrochesNoblecourt to M. Černý. 3077 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2392, 25 September 1972, I. E. S. Edwards to M. Černý. Edwards consulted with Marie about his paper for the British Academy, and she returned some minor corrections. She observed that she met Jaro on 20 January 1944 in the ‘Czech Foreign Office’. Jaro was said to have noted this in his diary, and therefore must have kept a diary that has since been lost. 3078 GIA, Černý Collection, Černý Mss. 21.2414, 9 October 1972, from G. Goyon to M. Černý, and an enclosed draft reply by M. Černý to G. Goyon.

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his [Jaro’s] intention to publish a comprehensive history of this community which he knew so well, but unfortunately he was able to write only a portion of his study before his untimely death.’3079 The reviewer focused on the painstaking details of the workmen’s genealogy and prosopography,3080 and concluded: It is regrettable that so important a work as this lacks an index, and thus it is extremely difficult to check references. Perhaps this gap will one day be filled. It is also hoped that as a memorial to Professor Černý the publication of Deir el-Medina material which his studies have inspired should continue. Such publications will undoubtedly bring more revisions to this work but will also prove its lasting worth.3081

The major obituaries were all out by 1973, including one by Edwards in the Proceedings of the British Academy, by Žába in Archiv orientální, and by James in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. The obituaries offered diverse perspectives. Žába’s hastened to appropriate Jaro, with a wealth of lumbering detail: Characteristically, Professor Černý did not seek British nationality even after 24 years of life spent in the United Kingdom. He preferred to remain a Czech. In 1965 the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology (Charles University) in Prague and in Cairo elected him Honorary Member, and Černý came to Prague in 1967 to receive the decree personally from the hands of the Rector of Charles University. As his last act of deep attachment which he had always felt towards his country and towards Charles University in particular, he bequested [sic] his library to the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology with which he had always had the best scientific as well as warm personal contacts. Whenever in Egypt, Černý never failed to visit our Institute’s excavations there and to encourage its members in their work.3082

Interestingly, a reference to Jaro’s birthday on 22 August appeared in a section on important anniversaries in a Czechoslovak military magazine in August 1973,3083 under conditions of tightening ‘normalization’. 3079 3080 3081 3082 3083

Bierbrier 1977. In accordance with his own particular area of study; see Bierbrier 1975. Bierbrier 1977: 189. Žába 1971: 388. Obrana lidu, list Československé armády, vol. 32, issue 33, 18 August 1973.

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James staked a claim of British academic ownership of Jaro, but it was qualified ownership, and perhaps more in tune with Jaro’s own feelings: He himself reserved his greatest love for his own native land, and although he lived a virtual exile for most of his last years, he retained the closest links with Czecho-Slovak Egyptologists … Černý was truly international. It is therefore a matter of pride to British Egyptologists that he made his home in Britain for so many years. On the very day before his death he told a friend that he had been happy in this country and had never regretted coming here. It was a privilege for us to have him in our midst.3084

Desroches-Noblecourt thought with no less strength of conviction that Jaro was ‘French at heart’. But Jaro’s allegiances were not mutually exclusive. He lived as a multicultural figure. He was a member of the ‘international citizenry’, as Michel Foucault termed them, but was not overtly revolutionary in his statements or his behaviour, and did not projecting a flamboyant public persona as many of his contemporaries had (including Desroches-Noblecourt, Stephen Glanville. Stephen Gaselee, and Foucault himself). The celebrity persona that others affected to promote their work or views was simply not part of his approach. Shortly after Jaro had passed away, Foucault unleashed a debate about the relationship between knowledge and power, that the… … problem is thus not solely to determine how power subordinates knowledge and makes it serve its ends nor to determine how it superimposes itself on it and imposes on it ideological contents and limitations. No knowledge can be formed without a system of communication, of recording, of accumulation, of displacement— which is itself a form of power. No power, on the other hand, can be exercised without the extraction, appropriation, distribution, or retention of knowledge. At this level, there is not learning [connaissance] on one side and society on the other, or science and the state, but rather the fundamental forms of ‘pouvoirsavoir’.3085

3084 3085

James 1971: 189. Cited Keenan 1987: 13, with references.

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Jaro knew from the outset of his professional career that knowledge makes deals with power and vice-versa; the decisive aspect was with which power and how, and whether anything could be done to challenge that power if it was found wanting. Eventually, in his promotion of international Egyptology as a global intellectual project that communicated across boundaries, he quietly militated for the power of the international scholarly citizenry, not unrelated to ‘the right of private individuals actually to intervene in the order of politics and international strategies. The will of individuals must inscribe itself in a reality over which governments have wanted to reserve a monopoly for themselves.’3086 Foucault developed his paradoxes of power and knowledge in directions that do not need to be addressed here, but some elements of his thoughts about international citizenry and its challenge to power resonate with Jaro’s attitudes, even if the two intellectuals otherwise had few overt comparisons. Jaro remained Masarykian in his empiricism, taking every-day, practical steps, and engaging in ‘practical humanistic work.’3087 In that respect, he practiced some of the values promoted by Masaryk’s ‘Castle’ myth, the myth of Czechoslovakia being founded as an ideal democracy: The Castle myth aided the development of a twentieth-century Czech national consensus—or at least a discourse—about the value of democracy, the legitimate use of power, cultural tolerance, and many other values said to be represented by the West. If this admittedly uneven and contested consensus, bolstered by the international community, dominates Czech or East European politics in the twenty-first century, then it would mark the Castle myth’s most important and durable victory.3088

Whether it will come to dominate East European policy in the twenty-first century is debatable, but Masaryk’s vision came to be lodged in the minds of individuals throughout the twentieth century, in the minds of people like Jaro. He found the ideals of Western humanism to be an important element for all humanity even if, having lived through the worst twentieth-century conflicts,

3086 3087 3088

Cited Keenan 1987: 21, with references. Kovtun 1990: 9. Orzoff 2009: 220.

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he was not an uncritical admirer of his civilization. His nomination of Jean-Paul Sartre for a Nobel Prize suggests this. Jaro might have appeared demurely bourgeois, especially later in life, and his colleague and obituarist James probably inadvertently reinforced the image of a sedate bridge player with a cup of coffee listening to Mozart;3089 a member of the establishment. But there were other sides to him: the adventurer of the 1930s, at home on trains across continents, or in the desert; the keen swimmer, in the Red Sea or in a pond somewhere in Bohemia; the dancer eager for company; the challenger of the status quo; even the desperate man attempting suicide when there seemed no hope. These aspects were still there in Jaro, throughout his life, however limited by age or myopia. And these were aspects that his academic obituarists were not prepared to include—no more than Masaryk’s early biographers were prepared to include his love life as a widower. Jaro’s family and friends knew the complex man, but chose to remain silent amid the chorus of formal commemorations. Jaro succeeded in projecting his chosen persona, the one in which he ‘seemed to many people the typical austere scholar,’ although even the author of this observation, James, felt compelled to add that he ‘responded warmly to companionship and friendship.’3090 Jaro’s resilience in the decades following Second World War was rebuilt on the warmth of companionship, whether at home with Marie or with his friends, though the professional acceptance that eventually led to the material security of permanent employment undoubtedly played a role. Jaro succeeded in rebuilding his life in ways that his psychiatrist, Erwin Stengel, would have approved. Stengel himself passed away in 1973, to be remembered as a humanist psychiatrist with an attention to… … the human plight and the cry for help, to the description of the emotional message, and to the declaration that patients have to gamble with their lives to bring their needs to the attention of others. What are doctors, his life’s work asks, if they can’t read this message, if they are cross and won’t help? Stengel didn’t see therapy 3089 Predilections referred to by James 1971, and in personal communications from Peter M. Neumann (bridge and Mozart), and Malek (coffee). 3090 James 1971: 188.

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as a simple problem, nor necessarily as often successful, but as an imperative command to a true physician.3091

He certainly succeeded in supporting Jaro, who came to terms with the major changes in his life and retrieved his purpose. 1974–1992 memories Marie lived with her memories in Linkside Avenue. She was visited by her family, with both daughters successfully combining a family with academic careers. She had agreed to Groll working on the Late Egyptian grammar and using Jaro’s extensive notes, mainly from the grammar manuscripts (in English and French) kept in the Griffith Institute. She looked forward to the work, as she had to the Coptic Etymological Dictionary, which had the advantage of bringing in some royalties. The dictionary was eventually published by Cambridge University Press in 1976, but was in process of being typeset when Jaro died. The publisher’s note says the proofs were undertaken by Shore, Edwards, and James, with advice from Plumley, drawing on information from Jaro’s research archives.3092 The Sir Alan Gardiner Settlement for Egyptological Purposes provided a subvention for the printing costs.3093 Marie had only a short walk to get from the house to Jaro’s grave in Wolvercote Cemetery. It is a peaceful place, with trees surrounding the graves of people from all nations and denominations, fitting for a man who did not like artificial boundaries. Famous names appear among its inhabitants, notably J. R. R. Tolkien, who was buried there in autumn 1973. In 1975, the first edition of a co-authored Late Egyptian Grammar was published in Rome. Groll assumed—possibly following conversations with Jaro—that the way his notes were organized (particularly in Černý Mss. 20.11 to 20.15) should be the guiding principle for the grammar. Groll defined these notes, which dated to 1969, as ‘examples of the way Černý wanted the book written.’3094 The resulting book rather gives the impression 3091

Jenner 1973. The manuscript of the Coptic Etymological Dictionary is preserved as GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 48.1–5. 3093 Publishers’ note in Černý 1976: vii. 3094 Černý and Groll 1975: II. 3092

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of a collection of attested grammatical forms, lacking some of the longer explanations that Jaro included in his various notes since the 1920s. It still serves as a reference grammar, fulfilling the dictum that ‘a reference grammar should last beyond the lifespan of its author.’3095 As a collection of grammatical forms it is also useful to anyone working with Late Egyptian hieratic texts, or attempting to read the vast array of verbal forms and syntactic arrangements of Late Egyptian sentences. Hieratic writing, especially its non-literary form, exhibits a complex wealth of individual hands, and reading it presents palaeographical challenges, so knowledge of what was grammatically and orthographically possible in the language is invaluable. Jaro’s painstaking collection of forms from papyri and ostraca, and of both literary (he included Wenamun in some detail) and non-literary texts, ultimately suggests that he understood his grammar as something to help the ‘decipherer’. Whatever Jaro’s intentions, his grammar started as a collection of teaching notes and the resulting co-authored work is definitely not a textbook. It does not explain in sufficient detail Jaro’s choices and preferences when using non-literary texts, and consequently does not address the origin or dating of the diverse idioms of Late Egyptian, blurring its linguistic variations,3096 even though Jaro had emphasized both dialects and the variety of Late Egyptian texts ever since his 1929 teaching outline.3097 Some Egyptologists viewed Groll’s efforts as deviating from what they believed would have been Jaro’s intentions.3098 The memory of Jaro lingered. Also in 1975, Jac. Janssen noted in the preface to his Commodity Prices from the Ramessid Period: ‘This book would never have been written but for the encouragement of the great scholar to whose memory it is dedicated. Observing from my Ph.D. thesis my interest in economic matters, he offered me with his characteristic generosity the use of his invaluable notebooks.’3099 The book was, of course, dedicated to Jaro. 3095 3096 3097 3098 3099

Aikhenvald 2014: 6. Polis 2018: 78–88. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 20.1. Janssen and R. Janssen 2014. Janssen 1975: xviii.

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Deir el-Medina ostraca and papyri have continued to be published since Jaro’s death, resulting in a large number of volumes with increasing levels of detail, particularly for individual ostraca. Digital technology has been used to create databases of ostraca, often using data from Jaro’s unpublished notebooks, in an ongoing project that began in the early 1990s.3100 Work at Deir el-Medina was resumed in the 1970s and has continued with vigour, making Egyptologists well aware that ‘despite decades of work at the site, Deir el-Medina had not yet yielded everything to archaeological investigations.’3101 Excavations led by Dominique Valbelle and Charles Bonnet in the mid1970s brought to light vital information concerning the site’s stratigraphy and the historical development of the settlement. Valbelle’s work on the site was followed by her synthetic view on the ‘ouvriers de la tombe’, which used the material collected by Jaro. The vision of recreating ‘village life’ influenced both specialist and popular presentations of Egyptology. In his popular 1984 book on Deir el-Medina, Ancient Lives: the Story of the Pharaoh’s Tombmakers, John Romer wrote: ‘[the] biography of a 3,000-yearold village … [the] broad vision of the village and the framework of individual lives inside it rests heavily upon the work of the late Jaroslav Černý, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, who spent much of his life studying these ancient people.’3102 In specialist Egyptology, the paradigmatic character of Deir el-Medina in studies of New Kingdom Egypt has been both challenged and emphasized.3103 In the 1990s, Lynn Meskell revived its social anthropology aspects.3104 The legacy of Egyptology in Prague was less easily maintained, as it was largely de-institutionalized in the 1970s. Work at Abusir resumed only in the late 1970s, and continued within the limits allowed by the Communist administrators of the Faculty of Arts. Jaro’s library was eventually installed, including its bookshelves,

3100 3101 3102 3103 3104

Demarée and Haring 2003. Gobeil 2015: 16. Romer 1984: xi. Dorn and Hofmann 2006. See, e.g., Meskell 1998a; Meskell 1998b; Meskell 1999a; and Meskell 1999b.

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but characteristically his portrait was not allowed to hang in the room.3105 Political relations between the Eastern bloc and Egypt remained tense, especially after the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979.3106 A slow easing of tensions came during the 1980s with the revival of some Czechoslovak diplomacy in the Middle East. But it was tough maintaining Czechoslovak Egyptological fieldwork amid studied political disinterest,3107 so its academic existence was never guaranteed. Finally, in the autumn of 1989, the predictions of British intelligence specialists regarding longevity of Eastern Bloc satellites came true. The Berlin Wall was breached and the Iron Curtain came down. Marie lived to see the country of her birth free again, passing away in 1991. She left her daughters as guardians of the letters she had exchanged with Jaro, and the Griffith Institute has continued to curate his professional legacy. In the early 1990s, Eugen Strouhal came to the conclusion that a tribute to Jaro in Prague was overdue, and an exhibition on ‘the Egyptian tomb-makers’ was opened in 1992. Jaro’s stepdaughters, Anna Allott and Naomi McIntosh, were invited as guests. Jaro’s ‘bit of’ a pupil, Jac. Janssen, also visited to Prague and Pilsen at the time of the exhibition, where he was accompanied by his wife Rosalind.3108 The exhibition focused on Deir el-Medina, and contained artefacts obtained via the IFAO’s division of finds in the context of, and as a consequence of, Jaro’s activities there. Jaro’s biographical information was added, along with a few personal effects donated by his stepdaughters, such as a pair of spectacles and a magnifying glass. Like previous exhibitions in Prague, information on the reception of Egypt and its history of research was presented in an idealized and

3105 According to her 2017–2018 recollections, when Anna Allott visited Prague in 1973 she was shown the newly-installed library, minus the portrait (personal communication, A. Allot). Miroslav Verner shared an identical recollection (personal communication, 2019), noting that the portrait’s particular nemesis was a prominent faculty member and communist named Marcela Kubešová (born 1934), who ran the conglomerate of former departments of Egyptology and Oriental Studies under the ‘normalization’. 3106 Zídek and Sieber 2009. 3107 Zídek and Sieber 2009; see also Verner 2008a; Verner 2008b. 3108 Janssen and R. Janssen 2014.

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concise form,3109 but putting Jaro at the centre of such a display was made possible only by regime change. Shortly thereafter, in a parallel move to that of his family in Britain, the descendants of Jaro’s brother, Miloslav, donated further objects from the Černý family to the Náprstek Museum, enabling it to develop a thought-provoking exhibition in which objects pertaining to a scholar joined the artefacts that had constituted his research objectives. At around this time, Rosalind Janssen began a study of the history of Egyptology at UCL. The interviews she conducted with Jaro’s UCL students and colleagues in preparation for her book constitute a unique historical resource.3110 Janssen combined the university’s archival record with oral history, and assembled the first biographical account of Jaro that was contextualized with the institutional history of his London employer. Personal perspectives on Jaro captured his professional self-presentation, but also the projection of a personality that was at the same time warm and diffident. The description of Jaro in The First Hundred Years influenced subsequent narratives of his personal and professional journey, including this one.3111 Janssen’s portrayal of Jaro provided an appropriately nuanced portrait of the man, one where he is not defined by illness or nationality, but as a suitably ‘irreducible’ personality. Jac. Janssen once suggested that Jaro’s contribution to the study of Deir el-Medina consisted of making this settlement the Egyptian equivalent of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s paradigmatic Montaillou.3112 Jaro’s input on historical matters was sometimes recognized, but for many Egyptologists he has remained the philologist par excellence,3113 as if this were the highest prestige his discipline could confer. More recent and detailed histories of major Egyptological projects upon which Jaro left his imprint— be they major bibliographies such as the Topographical Biblio3109

Navratilova and Podhorný 2019. EES Archives, audio files. 3111 Malek 1998; Růžová 2010. 3112 Jac J. Janssen, in a talk at the UCL in 1992; EES Archives, audio file; see also Meskell 1999b: 3. 3113 Stevenson 2015, using Jaro’s nomination as Professor of Egyptology in 1950 as an example of Gardiner entrenching philologically-oriented Egyptology at Oxford. 3110

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graphy and the former Annual and now Online Egyptological Bibliography, the general development of Deir el-Medina studies,3114 or the expansion of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague3115 —are either in the process of being written or remain to be written.

3114 A history of archaeological work at Deir el-Medina was published as Gobeil 2015. A thesis by Delphine Delamare on transnational studies of Deir el-Medina is forthcoming. 3115 An outline can be found in Thompson 2015–2018, III: 219–220, 290–291, 314–317.

Epilogue: Of artefacts, books, and letters I must also admit that I am a great believer in ‘acquired naïveté’, by which I mean a conscious and determined decision to be somewhat naïve, precisely in a situation that is all but rotting away with sobriety and cynicism, that for years has been leading us astray. It is a naïveté that knows full well what it faces and what it contends with, but it also knows that despair creates more despair, hatred, and violence, while hope—even if it is the product of this ‘acquired naïveté’—may very slowly bring about the mechanisms of prospect, of faith in the possibility of change, of extricating oneself from an eternal victim mentality. David Grossman3116 History may be servitude. History may be freedom. Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Four Quartets –Little Gidding

Seen by those who had been close to him, Jaro’s life was cut tragically short. His professional efforts appear truncated, with a number of posthumous works edited, or co-authored, by others. On his desk there was an unfinished book, unanswered letters, and notes on unpublished artefacts. He did not live to see the revitalisation of work in Deir el-Medina, nor to see the International Association of Egyptologists’ reviving the idea of international congresses of Egyptology in the late 1970s. It would seem that both personally and professionally, he was deprived of seeing the fruition of ideas and projects he held dear or hoped for. Despite his opportunities and privileges, he did not fulfil his apparent mission to produce a new paradigm of Egyptology, but he did see and contribute to harbingers of Egyptology as a global intellectual project.

3116

Grossman 2009: 107.

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A distant and etic reading of Jaro’s life might inadvertently suggest that he was an unpolished version of an ideal modern Egyptologist. In an ideal world, he would have integrated archaeology and philology to produce an insightful historical synthesis that elucidated the cultural and social structures of Egypt, as exemplified by the unique community of Deir el-Medina. But he did not emerge from his ‘chrysalis, metamorphosing from a philologist to a historian’,3117 as Johan Huizinga, the other mentor of Jaro’s mentee Jac. Janssen, had done. Nor did he develop some sort of a precursor to the concept of community archaeology, as currently advocated.3118 He simply cooperated with his Egyptian professional peers and was not dismissive of the contribution that Egyptian workmen, with their local knowledge, could make to archaeological activity. He acknowledged them, including by name, in his published work. Jaro overcame or adapted to the vicissitudes of his life. He had to contend with exile that he initially found difficult to accept, but he ultimately found a life that offered him ample satisfaction and the place of his exile transformed into home—in the terms of the mediaeval scholar Hugh of St. Victor, he ‘extended his love to all places,’ and so would be a ‘strong man’. He had to overcome his outsider status, yet he was still—even in his most disadvantaged moments—a fortunate member of Western academia, particularly from an Egyptian perspective. Nowhere was this privilege clearer than in his access to medical care and the attentiveness of his peers in the 1950s, principally during his mental health crisis. Their willingness to accept him, given the historical stigma associated with mental ill-health, was due to their willingness to see Jaro as a whole person, not one framed by a single ‘demerit’, if demerit it be. It is as implausible to propose the image of a heroic researcher who single-handedly trailblazed social history and microhistory in Egyptology, only to leave his magnum opus unfinished, as it is to propose the image a privileged white male who used his peer network to raise him to a position of consequence. Deconstructing his life into an epilogue full of second-hand remorse 3117 3118

Otterspeer 2010: 44. Wendrich 2018; Tully and Hanna 2013.

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or critique, simply because he wielded the intellectual and societal tools of his period, would be doing injustice to a lively and active human being who pushed the boundaries of his discipline with all the means he had at his disposal. To view him critically precisely because he had the privilege of being a white male with academic training, and the talent to build a social network that bolstered him socially and professionally, would miss a critical element in his life. Jaro’s intense focus on work was balanced by his willingness to interact with and help others, to open up professional venues, to broaden his epistemic community,3119 and to avoid gatekeeping. When and where he had privilege and power, he often used them to the benefit of others. Jaro began as a self-funded individual with an original research idea, albeit one framed by the expectations of Egyptology’s philological paradigm. He continued as a sponsored researcher, but not as part of a large ‘research factory’, such as the Berlin Wörterbuch project. He became part of a team at the IFAO in Cairo, but this participation still fuelled his own research agenda even as it enabled him to develop a concerted, networked approach across institutional and national boundaries. He later became a research assistant and, still later, a partner to Alan Gardiner, which tilted his productivity significantly toward text editing and philological studies. Only toward the end of his life did he fully become part of an institutional academic hierarchy, in Britain, and part of a large ‘research factory’ with the UNESCO campaigns in Egypt. Recording and cataloguing were a substantial part of his activity, and the editions he produced were a substantial part of his published output. He lived through a transformation in Egyptology, and this had an impact on how he worked, accessed Egyptian material, and presented his knowledge. If things can tell Jaro’s story of professional evolution, then three categories can do so satisfactorily: Egyptian artefacts, books, and letters. The artefacts with which he was most involved were ostraca and papyri, inscribed objects that might have located him in the 3119 The concept of an epistemic community may prove helpful for the history of Egyptology, given the complex standing of the discipline (for a concise outline, see Haas 2008).

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shadow of pure philology. But the bearers of texts that epitomize Jaro’s work and life always carried the ‘scent of human flesh’— the scent that his contemporary Marc Bloch wished historians would chase.3120 The artefacts Jaro chose to work with, to collect, even to procure for others, had been taken out of their original contexts, so their story was unfocused in the imaginations and concerns of modern readers. Jaro’s concern was their original story, their past ‘life’, and most of all the ancient lives that he believed they reflected. He hoped that the full picture of a past life could eventually be assembled by discovering, publishing, collecting, and connecting these fragments of texts. He was well aware that scholarship, dedicated and focused as it might be, is not infallible. His answer to quirks, prejudices, and oversights was to go back to the source, to the primary material, even if—as Jaro made clear in his teaching notes—an understanding of the Egyptian past could not be achieved by philology alone.3121 At the same time, even as he quipped that ‘anyone can dig’, he understood the interpretation process as constituting an inevitable necessity; an artefact cannot speak by and for itself. The painstaking process of piecing together evidence left him reluctant to make generalizing statements, but he began his research journey by asking generalizing questions. He did not see his efforts as the final step, or the last word. It was always a process, in which a better reading of a text might come the following day, or in a year’s time. But he was like a forensic specialist trying to capture every trace of a past human life—every trace on the rocks, in the sand, on the fragments of a papyrus. A philological, archaeological, or historical problem was always a cold case in which new evidence or a new reading of old evidence might change the perspective and the interpretation. Artefacts were not only seen, copied, read, edited, and made to speak about ancient lives. The ancient artefacts circulated in the modern world, travelled as participants in the processes of modern social memory, and as the currency of social and cultural capital 3120 The original quote, ‘The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies,’ first appeared in the English edition of The Historian’s Craft in 1953, p. 26. 3121 He has had a significant following in this respect, but his (unpublished) input is not generally recognized; see Eyre 2011, esp. p. 602.

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between individuals, institutions, communities, and nations.3122 The stories of papyri and ostraca, of their ‘diaspora’ across countries, are an inevitable, if contested, part of the history of the study of ancient and modern Egypt. Ancient artefacts became ‘wondrous curiosities’ (in the words of Stephanie Moser),3123 but also objects of national(ist) pride and prejudice, in Egypt and beyond.3124 Mobile artefacts outside Egypt ensured international publicity and, by extension, funding, especially in the commercial models of subscription archaeology employed by Flinders Petrie and his contemporaries.3125 Jaro was involved in the uncovering, transporting, collecting, reading, conserving, and editing of artefacts both written and anepigraphic. The only step in their journey with which he was not directly involved was their display, as objects of museological inquiry and public gaze. For Jaro, access to objects was important for research and for teaching, which was how he envisaged that his chosen field might help to make a more cultivated, more knowledgeable world. He took steps that were hands-on and pragmatic; practical solutions for improving education in Egyptology. Jaro could not imagine teaching future generations of students in Prague the way he was taught by František Lexa, with occasional self-funded trips to museums or by looking at artefacts as images in books. The artefact collection at the Oriental Institute in Prague and in the National Museum would be based on artefacts approved for partage in Deir el-Medina, and to a smaller extent on purchases, and it was meant to provide academic access to authentic objects, and to illustrate aspects of written culture and the social and cultural history of Egypt. Exhibitions or displays for the public were desirable but perhaps secondary, and became more common only after Jaro had left Prague. His role in collecting artefacts and procuring them for Gardiner may appear controversial today, and in retrospect Jaro’s partnership with Gardiner is closely related to changing attitudes throughout the twentieth century. The texts destined for Lansdowne Road 3122 On the changing nature of some of these networks of relationships involving artefacts, see Stevenson 2019. 3123 Moser 2006. 3124 Gershoni and Jankowski 1986: 178; Reid 2015. 3125 Stevenson 2019: 10–14.

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were going to a private collection in a privileged social context in a colonial metropolis, and were on occasion obtained under conditions that Jaro himself later came to assess critically. In the 1920s he decided against his own conscience to carry fragments of papyri that had originated at Deir el-Medina across the Egyptian border, so that they could be joined in thematically arranged collections in the UK, not trusting that official powers in Egypt would facilitate scholarship with the efficiency he desired. In the 1930s, and still in 1941, Jaro was willing to adopt methods involving the partial deception of powers-that-be in order to achieve the same result, serving his benefactor and—so he believed—the study of Egypt. The travels of Sinuhe during the Second World War were apparently his breaking point. He very much wanted the ostracon to be complete and, since half of it was already in England, no other way seemed feasible. So Sinuhe had to travel, yet again, in secrecy, and through dangers that risked destruction. Jaro’s diffidence to Gardiner was at odds with the opinions of some colleagues. Cecil Firth was ‘sympathetic to “Egypt’s legitimate claim to resist undue spoliation by the Museums of America and Europe”,’3126 even as Gardiner was in favour of creating collections outside Egypt. Shortly thereafter, Jaro came to the conclusion that this approach was no longer adequate or acceptable. The next consignment of interesting papyri that emerged via dealers was beyond what Jaro was willing to countenance. He was, in part, witnessing the struggles of Egyptian Egyptology and changes in Egypt itself. Egyptology had been poised on the edge of change since 1922, with the discovery of Tutankhamun’s burial, but its nationalization, or ‘indigenisation’,3127 did not spell a total break in cooperation or in the use of international expertise, nor of demands for the repatriation of bodies of knowledge located outside Egypt. Rather, there was a perceived need to redress the previous imbalance tilted toward foreign scholars. If international Egyptologists saw themselves as facing restrictions, scholars from Egypt saw new opportunities opening before them. There was a need for a more willing, and more respectful, approach. Herbert 3126 3127

Stevenson 2019: 146, quoting Firth’s correspondence. Reid 1985.

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Fairman and Jaro were alike in declaring that Egyptology, amidst all its national(ist) struggles, was an international project. Travelling artefacts should no longer be in hands of collectors and dealers, no longer in secretive suitcases and boxes with incomplete lists of contents. If the international project was to flourish, it had to do so differently, within a more equal relationship between Egyptian and international researchers. A partnership. No one yet envisaged the severe limitations that the Egyptian state later employed while trying to reverse decades of a laissezfaire practice. Changes in thinking about the artefact diaspora and global Egyptology came to directly affect fieldwork, which was deemed to need a more systematic, organized, and well-published approach. The idea of a British institution spearheading international cooperation in Egypt began brewing during the war, spurred by a concern for British geopolitical interests in the region alongside an interest in the monuments themselves. It was abandoned only in 1951. Perhaps for people like Fairman and Gardiner the two concerns were closely linked. The idea was replaced by an Egyptian-driven initiative in the 1950s and 1960s, but the resulting UNESCO campaign did not happen in a political vacuum. Whether or not Western Egyptologists such as Walter Emery, Jaro’s successor at UCL, or Zbyněk Žába, his pupil from Prague, were ‘embedded in colonialist practices,’ they wanted to see their work ongoing, and had to deal with a ‘distinct set of institutional and political conditions, and particular clientele, at a specific point in time.’3128 Genuine desires to preserve ancient monuments and to ensure that Egypt remained open for international teams were concurrent with Egyptian political desires to fashion a non-aligned position in a Cold War world, and the image of a modern, technologically advanced country. The international surveys run by UNESCO and CEDAE in the 1950s and the campaign to save Nubia in the 1960s and 1970s were an answer to the fragility of monuments in a redefined regime of historicity,3129 which considered protected cultural heritage as

3128 3129

Both quotes from Lewis 2016: 11 of 15. Hartog 2005: 13.

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an international as well as a national asset.3130 This concept reiterated that heritage was not for export. The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (signed in Paris in November 1970, a few months after Jaro’s death; the bold text being in the original) stated several considerations as crucial, including: Considering that the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural and educational purposes increases the knowledge of the civilization of Man, enriches the cultural life of all peoples and inspires mutual respect and appreciation among nations, Considering that cultural property constitutes one of the basic elements of civilization and national culture, and that its true value can be appreciated only in relation to the fullest possible information regarding is origin, history and traditional setting.

And so international Egyptology came to cooperate with the etatist Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser, even though some specialists were not convinced that total state control over its antiquities was necessarily beneficial for all stakeholders. Jaro’s contemporary Bernard Bothmer suggested that the post-1952 development leaned heavily toward both radical nationalist and etatist solutions,3131 in a wish to implement a thorough departure from the previous era. The mobility of objects was curtailed, and replaced by a preference for exclusive national ownership of Egyptian artefacts by Egypt. Several decades later, Ali Radwan articulated the impact that state control had on the professional identity of Egyptologists: ‘a real Egyptologist is not a collector, and he cannot be dealer.’3132 Radical etatist solutions may achieve a degree of protection, though it is debatable whether they achieve ‘mutual respect and appreciation among nations.’ Nonetheless, it is significant that Jaro’s passing coincided with a more organized and codified approach to the circulation of antiquities. His own changing approach to cultural property embodied the transition.

3130 3131 3132

On museological discussions post-1970, see Stevenson 2019: 217–223. Bothmer 1981. Radwan 2003: 104.

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Jaro cooperated with the new nationalized Egyptology of Egypt, offering his expertise, promoting the cause of Egyptological work done to the best possible standards, and setting new benchmarks by integrating the work of the outside specialists with Egyptologists, initially with geographers and geologists during the CEDAE and UNESCO campaigns. Instead of artefacts, published records were being circulated. Debates on the degree to which Egypt or any other country should be integrated into global Egyptology are ongoing, and seem as far from settled as nationalist discourses on all sides, whether glorified or repudiated, still have the power to influence research and the history of scholarship. The mobility of objects further highlights the general importance of mobility for Jaro, and for his generation and their research projects. It has been noted that a comprehensive approach to educational globalization integrates ‘the mobility of people, objects and ideas’ and investigates ‘their relation to each other’. In Jaro’s time, and with his active participation, Egyptology developed into a global intellectual project with mobile people, objects and concepts, and as such it also depended on ‘the mobility of ideas, institutional models, and bodies of knowledge connected to the movement of people.’3133 Yet throughout the long decades of Jaro’s life, the movement of people and objects was to become more and more restricted. The declining mobility of artefacts and scholars reflects the tensions between global and local aspects of twentieth century history—between the international, transnational, and national narratives of scholarship, and between an ‘unencumbered’ liberal self and a more bounded, ‘encumbered’ self with national(ist) obligations.3134 More cosmopolitan members of central European nations were caught in the middle of such tensions. The Czechoslovak case is illustrative. Through his transnational activities, Jaro was deploying Masaryk’s maxim that the ‘love of one’s own nation should not entail non-love of other nations.’ That may have been Masaryk’s vision, but the formation of nation states— including Czechoslovakia—at the end of the First World War was 3133 3134

Citations from Huber 2015: 82. Discussion in Arthur 2005.

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accompanied by the growth of nationalist ideologies throughout Europe. Although Jaro did not fit the definition of a public intellectual, his mobility and crossing boundaries became a political act,3135 subverting the territorial, bounded identities propagated by modern states and political blocs. From being one nation’s patriot, he developed his identity into one of a ‘citizen of nowhere’, weaving the narrative of his own existence based on multiple allegiances and dialogues. He stood at an intersection of countries and disciplinary interests, an intersection that may well signal the possibility of dialogue between contested narratives of national histories in Egyptology.3136 The diverse efforts of international Egyptology led Jaro away from his early historical interests. He accepted the necessity of recording and cataloguing artefacts after forming his original research plan, as a necessary step that could not be avoided if meaningful histories were to be written. He became a resourceprovider, and ended up being criticized by some for not achieving the kind of syntheses his audience came to expect.3137 He genuinely tried to marshal his evidence to feed such a synthesis, but offered only brief glimpses of historical prowess.3138 It is perhaps just as well that Jaro was an experienced and meticulous cataloguer, as toward the end of his career this aspect of Egyptology took on a new urgency with the UNESCO campaigns in Nubia. Critical readers may have felt that Egyptologists focused too heavily on the discovery, recording and (all being well) publication of texts and images, but the fragility of monuments was all too real. Fairman’s wartime concerns, however patronizing and disrespectful to his Egyptian colleagues, were based in fact. As the circulation of artefacts was curtailed, the circulation of knowledge expanded. The sheer amount of information produced during archaeological and philological research was vast, and the UNESCO mission added to it masses of data obtained from 3135

For which see Monsutti 2018. For the concept of dialogicality and narratives in-between, see Meretoja 2018. 3137 As illustrated by the 1954 Oxford University Press offer for Jaro to write a comprehensive introduction to Egyptology. 3138 A comment by J. T. Davies, who had read Jaro’s 1945 work on Naunakhte, stated in a private communication with Fairman that was relayed to Gardiner (GIA, Collection Gardiner, Correspondence, AHG, 42.94.81, 30 November 1946). 3136

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sciences such as hydrology and geology, for which traditional Egyptologists had no training. The task of analyzing Egyptian material was becoming broader, but Jaro and most of his contemporaries had little motivation to explore the theoretical models available to history, anthropology, and the social sciences. This could, perhaps, be left for the future, once enough cataloguing had been done. Jaro had little opportunity, or perhaps little inclination, to become a research manager like Desroches-Noblecourt, Bruyère, or (with a somewhat smaller team) Rosalind Moss. The closest he came to being the principal investigator of a ‘research factory’ was during the Theban graffiti operation. But he had both the opportunity and the inclination to explore elements of his discipline beyond his speciality of Late Egyptian documents, with which he was a master. Jaro’s systematic approach to material was reflected in his systematic approach to Egyptology as a research network. What he considered highly necessary, even a priority over synthetic historical works, was the organization and dissemination of knowledge within the discipline. He teamed with Moss to help her deliver one of Egyptology’s most important research infrastructures as a logical step—a self-imposed duty with happy benefits— in his relocation to the UK and to Oxford. To recall Moss: ‘Our work has been considerably lightened by consultation with him at every and any moment concerning the innumerable problems which have arisen during the years of preparation.’3139 Her words are formal, and do not do justice to the thousands of hours Jaro spent searching texts, touring museums, and visiting and revisiting sites to gaze up figures on a wall. Because that is what the Topographical Bibliography needed most: someone who could visit and revisit sites, and provide an actual link to a physical reality of Egypt. A bibliography organized as a form of ‘deep map’,3140 this was a project that placed Egyptology at the forefront of structured research information. An image of ancient Egypt, built site upon site, could now be found in one place, in one series of books. The project also evaluated the historical legacy of Egyptological archives, and made them accessible for future use.

3139 3140

PM I2.1, ix. Bodenhamer et al. 2015.

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The one category of object that can travel relatively unhindered, except when restricted by totalitarian regimes, is books. In 1949, when Jaro’s whirlwind of correspondence was partly focused on building his personal library, UNESCO proposed a book coupon scheme so that ‘a humanist in Czechoslovakia can follow the latest developments in Shakespearian research and criticism in England.’3141 That ideal did not eventuate until several decades later, but books still crossed Czechoslovakia’s borders as Jaro managed to beat even a totalitarian regime. He assembled his library with a zeal comparable to contemporaries with more substantial means, such as Gardiner, dedicating to them a large part of his earnings. There was a continuous stream of exchanges with remote colleagues, even during wartime, and additional books and offprints were acquired from bequests or gifts from scholars, such as Gerald A. Wainwright, who had no more use for some of their possessions.3142 Jaro’s decision to bequeath his library to his alma mater, Charles University, was the parting gift for Prague, a university that had exploited and cast him aside, and which was again lost toward the end of his life when the optimism of the Prague Spring was dashed. It is to his credit that he did not change his mind when hope transformed into the politics of headless conformity. After his passing, his books vanished beyond the Iron Curtain as messengers of international Egyptological scholarship, and to an uncertain fate. The Communist regime could easily have decided to destroy the library. Egyptology in Prague was disbanded in the 1970s, and the books waited for a decision on their fate, hidden for years in their crates in a faculty attic. In the end, Jaro’s gesture became one of the lifelines of Czechoslovak Egyptology, though it took twenty years for freedom to return to the Prague university. Letters written in Jaro’s elegant hand travelled to all directions of the compass. Nowhere is Jaro’s transnational personality so clear as in archives hosting his correspondence or correspondence about him. The letters reflect both his personal story and the social structures in which he lived and, as good ego-documents should, they make clear his personal agency. 3141 3142

Droit 2005: 119. GIA, Collection Černý, Černý Mss. 21.1935–21.1940.

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Jaro lived multiple roles within his discipline, from private scholar to university teacher and from epigrapher to historian, and he inhabited them without losing interest in the long-term objectives of historical understanding. His high workload, and the lateness of stable employment, meant that he was unable to finish the two major projects closest to him. His social and economic history of the Ramesside workmen was first planned in 1922 but remained unfinished in 1970, and the Late Egyptian grammar that grew from fifty years of note-taking was published posthumously by a student. But his dedicated pursuit of ancient Egyptian history grew from authentic interest, a genuine fascination with a past that had left so many traces and yet was unreachable— unless its language and social structures could be better understood. Each of Jaro’s varied roles was situated at the intersection of political interests and funding opportunities, but each reflects his intellectual interests, his work ethic, and the exigencies of raw necessity, most notably with the protection of monuments in wartime and the rescue operations ahead of the Aswan Dam. His life was mostly lived on the move, giving full sense to the adage that ‘life is a journey’, or rather a series of journeys. His story, and the stories of the ancient Egyptians he found so fascinating, was one of scripts, of spaces, and most importantly of people. Jaro’s social network and patterns of communication were vast. They included female scholars from early on and throughout his career, at a time when few were ready to allow them an impactful role. They were collaborative, effortlessly busting boundaries and stultified disciplinary thinking. They comprise a layering of identities over time. They also contradict the slightly ossified view of him embodied in a visual document, the interminably reprinted photograph of Jaro from 1967.3143 It is a good portrait, but is of an elderly male who seems to be a pale representative of the academic establishment. Jaro was neither a typical representative of any establishment nor a fossilized scholar. Jaro was drilled by his respectable parents in the social conventions that enabled him to enter the upward draft of social mobility. He was aware of society’s expectations, and those of academic politics, but also of desirable objectives such as promoting disciplinary and social cohesion. Conventions, rules, and disciplines 3143

This became the face of posterity for Jaro in Bierbrier 2019: 94.

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were accepted insofar as far as they made sense to him. There was nothing disconcerting about self-fashioning a palatable social persona and the image of a competent professional, so long as Jaro saw these traits as truly being his, and so long as they allowed him to be what he truly wanted to be: a man driven by curiosity. Jaro was also willing to accept a role in broader social structures beyond the academia—such as in diplomacy—so long as he could accept their overall ethos. Outside these structures, or in their absence, he was pragmatic but not selfish. He learned that there was always scope for variation and for finding a new way. He had to learn some of these lessons the hard way, coming up against the limitations of what he as an individual could cope with. In the face of adversity, he had to learn resilience; as adversity advanced, he had to grow stronger. He countered division and tribalism by offering ‘acquired naïveté’, offering help and openness to those in need even when some contemporaries would not. When Marie recalled that Jaro was full of life, it was the remembrance of a sparkle of a man, who was not calcified in his opinions or in his position, or content with his achievements. If he could not change the world or its political (or even academic) systems, he could at least do something within reach: help a colleague, keep an academic conversation going, recommend a student, avoid ostracizing, think in terms of developing the infrastructures that underpinned Egyptology. He did not write a synthesis, or write an explicit methodology for Egyptology, but Jaro left a massive research archive that enabled others to pursue such goals. He left colleagues who were glad to have had his friendship, and his scholarship, available. He left the memory of a good person, not a flawless one. The journeys that Jaro and his contemporaries began for Egyptology are far from resolved. Some of the ambiguities his generation faced are still present. The organization and funding of Egyptology remains precarious, especially where its role as a global intellectual project, and a part of world history with specific significance for Egypt, is concerned. The responsibilities placed upon historians, archaeologists, and Egyptologists are increasingly broad, and great expectations are laid at their feet, but only limited assistance is offered. Historians are asked to use their powers to unscramble intricate histories and entangled memories, and to do so in a world unwilling to listen to a nuanced

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conversations but all too willing to pass judgement. It has become the norm to think that people operate in bad faith, that knowledge always has an unholy alliance with power, or indeed that the expert is suspect.3144 Some of the problematic deals made between scholarship and various aspects of the nineteenth- or twentieth century Zeitgeist are indeed visible,3145 but the opposite is also true. As Willeke Wendrich puts it: From being at the forefront of a European and Euro-American nationalistic contest of who would decipher hieroglyphs first, or who had the largest collection of antiquities, the international archaeological research establishments have become budget drains and are regularly threatened with being closed down, while for the Egyptian government, archaeology’s main importance is the attraction of tourist income.3146

Western involvement with the ‘Middle’ or ‘Near’ East takes many different forms, whether geopolitically or in terms of constructing cultural identities.3147 For politicians, beginning with Muhammad Ali, it might be the case that ‘antiquities were primarily bargaining chips to be exchanged for European diplomatic and technical support.’3148 But for scholars on all sides of the debate this has meant negotiating with one type of sponsor or another. Oriental Studies has never been particularly wellfunded,3149 and its adherents find it increasingly difficult to achieve potentially constructive, Alois Musil-style deals between business and politics, in which academia seeks not to oblige a geopolitical paradigm, but to cultivate and refine the debate, to open a discursive space, to discuss transnational cultural memory,3150 and to combine microhistorical and global views. The ideal ‘meshwork’ of Egyptological practice was conveyed recently by a professional Egyptian excavator,3151 in a call for 3144

Thus Michael Gove: ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.’ An interview with Faisal Islam on Sky News, 3 June 2016. 3145 Voss 2013. 3146 Wendrich 2018: 191. 3147 For which see Fitzenreiter 2007. 3148 Reid 2002: 54. 3149 Marchand 2009: xxxii. 3150 Or transcultural memory; see Erll 2011. 3151 The term ‘meshwork’ is borrowed from Ingold 2011.

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constructive connections and cooperation within and well beyond academia: I want everyone to come, tourists to come back to stay, drink tea, see families. The people love the tourists and want to be friendly with them, not just for business … We also want Arab people to come and see … and for people from Alexandria and Cairo to come to Luxor as many people don’t know what temples we have … We need to keep excavating and to work with Europeans. I want UNESCO and everyone to work together.3152

Despite such high hopes, the future of Egyptology is far from certain, as political decisions continually influence opportunities for scholarship, which has to strike diverse deals while balancing the demands of day-to-day survival with necessary opposition to academic or societal conformity. And conformity takes many different guises, including the call-out, ‘cancel’ culture of the twenty-first century, which is conducive neither to comprehension nor to conciliation: ‘This is not a dialogue. It is a showy monologue of purity, always bound to unravel.’3153 Jaro recognized that there was no perfect system, but also recognized the need for personal responsibility and day-to-day action that might make a system better. Such ideas too often go unheeded. ‘Acquired naïveté’ is in short supply. Yet the relevance of such a simple idea is perhaps even more germane now than in his day, in exploration as well as in policy-making. The pursuit of history has the potential to revive the common cultural concern, to animate both the search for a shared humanity and the recognition of a past (and present) that has yielded the profusion of human experience. The discipline of Egyptology encompasses thousands of years of history and two turbulent centuries of the modern era. It validates the universal appeal of studying the past, and confirms the relentlessness of re-reading the past in the present. And yet, fifty years after Jaro’s death, trust between Egyptian Egyptologists and their international partners still seems fragile. Egyptology has yet to become the global intellectual project that Jaro wished it to be. 3152 3153

Tully and Hanna 2013: 383–384. Moore 2020.

Plate 1. Jaroslav Černý’s parents engaged: Anna Navrátilová and Antonín Černý before 1896; studio photograph; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 2. The officer, his wife, and his heir: the Černý family around 1900; studio photograph; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 3. Přemysl Šámal; portrait by Ivan Mrkvička; after Zlatá Praha 42 (1925): 23–24.

Plate 4. Cyrill Dušek; official portrait, bequest of the Dušek family; Prague, National Museum archive, Collection Cyril Dušek, photographs, box 13, inv. no. 574. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 5. Egypt, possibly late 1920s, early 1930s: Černý and other members of the expedition of Deir el-Medina during leisure time (possibly at Suez); photographer unknown; Cairo, AIFAO, nb 2004 01765. © IFAO.

Plate 6. At work in Western Thebes: Deir el-Medina in the 1930s, Bruyère and Černý and others, unnumbered, Archives Bruyère, Box 19, Maison et équipe vers 1935; the crew are seated on the dig house veranda; photographer unknown; Cairo, AIFAO. © IFAO.

Plate 7. Černý with Tomáš Masaryk in Egypt, 1927; probably photographed by a member of Masaryk’s entourage; Archives of Prague Castle, Fonds Masaryk in Egypt; Prague, National Museum archive. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 8. King Fuad I in Prague; news record; National Museum archive. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 9. The Salon of Madame Baum, with Černý and Mrs Irena Foit, 1934; Bequest Baum, no. I.374; photographer unknown, possibly František Vladimír Foit; Prague, National Museum. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 10. Deir el-Medina in the 1930s, Bernard Bruyère’s notes, 1933–1934; Cairo, AIFAO, unnunmbered, Archives Bruyère, Box 19, Maison et équipe vers 1935. © IFAO.

Plate 11. Czechoslovak legation in Cairo with Černý and the Šámals on the entry staircase of the legation villa; photographer unknown; ANpM and Černý family archive, unnumbered. © National Museum, Prague.

Plate 12. Černý with friends and colleagues at the IFAO; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Collection Clère, Clère Mss. 27.5.1.1.1. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 13. Evening at the Cairo legation, 1930s; Černý in the top row, centre; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology; unnumbered; photographer unknown. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 14. Marie Sargant in the 1950s, photograph probably by a family member; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott.

Plate 15. Fursecroft Building, George Street/Brown Street, London; photograph by the author, 2017.

Plate 16. 2 St. Michael’s Terrace, London; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott.

Plate 17. The Cruciform Building, the UCL University Hospital. © Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons.

Plate 18. Beckenham; the front of the main hospital building; photograph by the author, 2017.

Plate 19. The wedding; official wedding photograph; the archive of the Allott family, courtesy Anna Allott.

Plate 20. 2 Linkside Avenue, North Oxford; photograph by Jaromir Malek, before 2010; courtesy Jaromir Malek.

Plate 21. Černý in his garden at 2 Linkside Avenue, Oxford, the 1950s; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.94A. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 22. Černý with Sir Alan Gardiner, probably presenting him with a copy of the Turin Canon, photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.39.19. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 23. Marie Černý on board in Nubia; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series, 101.141 (also Černý Collection 50.60.4A–C). © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 24. Černý with Alan Gardiner at The Queen’s College (?), the 1950s; photographer unknown; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, unnumbered. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 25. ‘Chasse aux graffiti’, Aziz Sadek, Marie and Jaroslav Černý, and team; Archive of Cynthia Sheikholeslami and Aziz Sadek, courtesy Cynthia Sheikholeslami.

Plate 26. The epigrapher at work; photographer unknown; Oxford, Griffith Institute, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series, 101.15. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 27. The Queen’s College Governing Body; photographer unknown, photograph from the Allot-McIntosh gift; unnumbered; Prague, the Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 28. Prague 1967, visit to the historic Chancellery building of Charles University; photograph by Milan Zemina; unnumbered; Prague, Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 29. With the Czechoslovaks at dinner, 1967; photograph by Milan Zemina; Prague; unnumbered; Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 30. Černý with Zbyněk Žába at Abusir, 1968; photograph by Milan Zemina; Prague; unnumbered; Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology. © The Czech Institute of Egyptology.

Plate 31. The last spring in Deir el-Medina; Oxford, Griffith Institute Archive, Griffith Institute Photographs, Egyptologists Series 101.2. © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

Plate 32. Černý’s glasses, photograph by the author, 2017; Oxford, Griffith Institute Archive, Černý Collection 50.7.

Plate 33. In the garden of Sennedjem: the Černý headstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, North Oxford; photograph by the author, 2019.

Archives Allot/Sargant family private archive Archiv bezpečnostních složek [Security Services Archive] (ABS), Praha Archive Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tübingen, Namens- and Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommer-Semester 1967 Archive of the Charles University (AUK), fonds Filosofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, fonds J. Černý, fonds Egyptologický ústav Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences/The Masaryk Institute Archive, Praha (AAVCR/AUTGM); Fonds Lexa, Fonds TGM/Prague Castle Archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology (ACEGU), Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Praha: The library of J. Černý, plus a folder containing a small group of handwritten notes found inside six different books in the library of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague Archive of the Czech National Bank (AČNB), fonds Živnobanka, Prague Archive of the Egypt Exploration Society, London: audio files Archive of the Hlávka Foundation, Praha (Archiv Nadání Josefa, Marie a Zdenky Hlávkových) Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMZV), Praha: fonds London archive (Londýnský archiv), series of personal files (OSO), file J. Černý, file M. Sargant Archive of the Náprstek Museum (ANpM), The Černý Collection, digital copies of family archive holdings, collection registers: Departmental archives and library of the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, collection J. Černý (family photographs, letters, lectures, offprints, notes), Prague Archive of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania (AUPMAA), Philadelphia, the Rainey Collection, Gunn Collection; obituaries and a limited number of materials related to Černý’s stay in Philadelphia Archives IFAO (AIFAO), Cairo: Archives Wild, Černý, Bruyère, Sauneron Archives of the Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth (FERE), Bruxelles Archives of the National Museum (ANM), fonds Baum, Prášek; Prague

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Archives of the Presidential Office, Prague Castle, Praha (AKPR): fonds Prezidentská kancelář, collection Přemysl Šámal (1867–1941), correspondence, and a file on J. Černý, no. 1024, entitled ‘Doc. Dr. Jaroslav Černý, cesta do Egypta’ Author’s archive British Library, Mss. Collections, London Brooklyn Museum, the Cooney correspondence, Brooklyn, New York Brown University Library & Archives, Providence Central Military Archive Prague, fonds and files 37-14/1-91 Střední východ Griffith Institute, Archive, University of Oxford, Collections Černý, Clère, Gardiner, Gunn, Newberry Imperial War Museum, Photography Collections (IWM), London Moravian Regional Archive (MZA), Brno National Archive of the Czech Republic, Praha (Národní Archiv ČR): Police directorate archive, Collection Šusta National Archives, London, Kew (TNA): War Office, Cabinet, Foreign Office Oriental Institute Archive, University of Chicago Oxford University Archive, Oxford (OUA): personal files and a pension scheme file for Černý, file Professorship of Egyptology Parish register, Roman-Catholic, Plzeň (N), 1897–1898 = fol. 1–401 Pilsen City Archive, (Archiv města Plzně): Matrika Plzeň, Plzeň I-vnitřní město, 1900–1901; Elementary school registers, II. národní škola (II. obecná chlapecká škola, Karlovarská třída), sign. 408–1; Hlavní katalog c. k. českého gymnasia Regional Archive Blansko, Blansko Regional Archive Kladno, Fonds Niederlova okresní nemocnice Kladno 1935–1953, Kladno Regional Archive Slaný, The register of citizens in Slaný: February 1921 (fonds OÚ Slaný) Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen: Collection Lange; Collection Iversen UNESCO archives: Renoliet, J. J. (1999). L’UNESCO oubliée. La Société des Nations et la coopération intellectuelle (1919–1946). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, and Archives of UNESCO, https://atom.archives. unesco.org/susta-josef University College London, Records Department, London

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Index Abbas II Hilmi 25 Abubakr, Abd el-Moneim 483, 510 Abu Ghurab see Abusir Abusir 323, 356, 465, 476, 508, 585, 597, 617, 625, 635, 641, 644, 659, 670, 698 Abu Simbel 551, 566–567, 589–590, 594, 599, 610–611, 636, 637, 644, 664 Abahuda 589–590 Abydos 147, 178–179, 229, 236–237, 253 Akhenaten 31, 298, 552 Alexandria 113, 146, 154 n. 643, 155, 327, 343, 349, 360, 370, 483, 718 Amada 590, 599, 610–611, 629 Amarna 168, 178, 300, 302, 333, 552, 630, 686 Antiquities Service 104, 186, 232–233, 326, 332–333, 336, 350–354, 410, 483, 524, 547, 593 Arkell, Anthony, J. 342, 436, 444, 489, 493, 495 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 177 n. 728, 332, 392, 437, 518, 571, 594, 635, 674, 688 Aswan 157, 589, 668 Aswan Dam 548–549, 555–556, 565, 570–572, 590, 601, 608, 616–617, 631, 637 Baedeker’s Egypt 174 Bankes stelae 590–591, 593, 635 Baumgartel, Elise 466 n. 1973 Belgian Egyptology 191, 206, 215–216, 221, 261, 276, 421, 437, 451, 486, 623, see also Capart, Jean Beni Hasan 373, 585 Berlin School 64–69, 76, 103–104, 128, 207, 330, 411, 425, 705 Bibliography AEB 221, 444, 559 Topographical Bibliography xix–xx, 192, 329, 432, 465, 479, 495, 518, 541, 542, 552–553, 559–561, 611, 620, 622, 636, 670, 674–675, 713 OEB 221, 701 Bissing, Friedrich Wilhelm von 126, 577 Blackman, Aylward M. 137, 241, 316, 374, 449, 646, 480, 508, 561 n. 2417, 567 Blackman, Winifred Susan 158, 161–162, 163 Borchardt, Ludwig 104, 227, 274, 282, 476 n. 2024, 617 Borchardt, Mimi 227, 274, 282, 311–312, 313 Bothmer, Bernard V. 282, 459, 478, 483, 564, 594, 710

814

INDEX

Botti, Giuseppe 133, 134, 145, 174–175, 215, 224, 227, 230, 234, 284, 293, 308, 540, 626, 663 Breasted, James H. 64–65, 79, 104, 127, 133–134, 213, 230, 599 British Egyptology 133–135, 177, 186–187, 188, 190, 207, 212, 228, 236, 256–257, 294, 314f., 327, 334, 350f., 364, 372, 374, 400, 422, 428, 436, 444, 464, 473, 478–480, 509, 537, 544, 560–561, 569–570, 593, 603–604, 615, 628, 638, 674 British Museum, London 286 n. 1178, 392, 417, 437, 481, 465, 550, 585 Brooklyn Museum, New York 531, 593 Broome, Myrtle 236, 237 Brugsch, Heinrich 119, 679 Brunton, Guy 322, 324, 331, 336 Bruyère, Bernard 118, 157f., 169, 171f., 178, 179, 187, 188, 206, 210, 216, 225, 232, 233, 235, 250–251, 302, 322, 327, 378, 393, 410, 447, 466, 474, 475–476, 500, 508, 576, 619, 665 Bruyère, Françoise 167, 179 Calverley, Amice 236 Caminos, Ricardo 525, 539, 540, 551, 599, 630 Capart, Jean 191, 192, 206, 210, 216, 221, 236, 259, 261, 276, 285, 290–292, 297–298, 319, 437, 443 Carnarvon, George Herbert, 5th Earl of 147 Carter, Howard 147, 181, 227, 326, 479, 553, 664 CEDAE 548f., 552f., 566, 576, 587f., 590, 594, 599–600, 607f., 613–614, 626–631, 637f., 644, 709, 711 Černý, Jaroslav and Alan Gardiner 133f., 231–247, 289f., 312f., 478f., 634, see also Gardiner, Alan and graffiti 116, 119, 125, 147, 168, 172, 176, 185, 212, 251, 308, 313, 324, 337, 370, 433, 475, 553, 568, 585, 589, 594, 611, 641f., 644, 646f., 654f., 664f., 676, 680 and IFAO 140, 168–169, 176, 184, 187, 197, 209f., 229, 233, 311, 318, 324, 374, 587 and ostraca 132, 148–150, 199, 246, 256, 291f. and UCL 400, 422, 423f., and passim until 520 and UNESCO 548–638 and University of Oxford 515f. Bank job 98–102, 135f., 143f., see also Preiss, J. Childhood 38–67 Parents 35–47, 59f., 102, 204, 214, 222 Charles University in Prague see Lexa, František; and Žába, Zbyněk Chester Beatty, Alfred 186, 260 Chester Beatty papyri 208, 231–232, 235, 256–257 Chicago House 179, 567, 590, 599–600, 611 Crabitès, Pierre 227 Creswell, Sir K. A. C. 142 Cromer, Evelyn Baring 19, 158 Crum, Walter Ewing 137, 199, 436, 440

INDEX

815

Czechoslovak Egyptology see Lexa, František; Žába, Zbyněk; and Černý, Jaroslav Czermak, Wilhelm 465, 685 Daressy, Georges 148, 371 Daumas, François 608, 654 Davies, Nina de Garis 228, 237, 274, 552, 676 Davies, Norman de Garis 137, 228, 239, 252, 274, 333, 342, 552, 676 Dawson, Warren 467, 500 De Buck, Adriaan 444, 448, 449f., 592, 634 Deir el-Bahri 171, 173, 181, 646–647 Deir el-Medina 109, 117, 119–121, 144–173, 178f., 188f., 194–197, 209–235, 249f., 259f., 288f., 318, 322, 383f., 409f., 424, 457, 466, 472, 474f., 482– 484, 500, 531, 534, 552, 565, 568, 578, 587, 595, 600, 609, 614, 619, 622f., 634–635, 642, 660, 665f., 670f. Desroches-Noblecourt, Christiane 269f., 306, 322, 438, 456, 486, 525, 543f., 566, 576f., 608, 622, 638, 685f. Dévéria, Theodule 149 n. 611, 290 Drioton, Étienne 157, 170, 270, 351–352, 353, 373, 378, 483, 524, 525, 634 Edwards, I. E. S. 133, 358–359, 378, 432f., 476, 489, 491, 495, 500, 513, 530, 594, 615, 688f. EES/EEF 229, 236, 248, 333, 351f., 453, 508, 520, 317 Egyptian Egyptology 153, 163 Egyptian Museum, Cairo 147f., 179, 184, 186f., 209, 212, 224, 288, 326, 353, 372, 416 Egyptian Museum, Turin 45, 107, 123, 124, 133f., 172, 177, 193, 199, 273, 450, 488–490, 584, 619, 626 King-list 378, 526, 600 Ostraca 132, 175, 298, 626 Papyri 123–124, 145–146, 175, 251, 261–262, 287, 290, 327, 664 Emery, Walter B. 306, 322, 334, 351, 359, 422, 608, 613, 617, 709 Erichsen, Wolja 449 Erman, Adolf 64f., 69, 103–104, 105–106, 133, 146, 175, 191, 195f., 207, 282, 288, 411, 447 Fairman, Herbert 241, 252, 298–401, 415, 452, 464, 465–466, 472, 485, 520, 525, 545, 567, 569–608, 613f., 629, 709 Fakhry, Ahmed 376 Farouk I of Egypt 266, 309f., 349, 352, 360, 361, 522, 524 Fathy, Hassan 476 Faulkner, Raymond 207f., 232, 243, 308, 433, 458, 540, 541–542, 584, 586, 605, 618, 641 Firth, Cecil M. 147, 646, 708 FERE 192, 261–263, 286, 291–292, 443, 451, 559 Fuad I of Egypt 138, 202, 266 Foucart, Georges 140, 141–142, 147, 149, 170, 178 Fořtová-Šámalová, Pavla 259, 335 Frankfort, Henri 422, 425, 530, 680 French Egyptology see IFAO; and Desroches-Noblecourt, Christiane

816

INDEX

Freud, Sigmund 21, 83, 304–304 Gabra, Sami 257, 276, 326, 448, 576 Gardiner, Alan H. 133f., 137, 222, 226, 228, 229, 231–247, 250, 252, 254–257, 260, 273, 289f., 295, 302, 306–307, 312f., 317, 320, 321–323, 331, 332, 345, 350–353, 356, 359, 364, 366, 373–374, 377–378, 392, 410, 419, 421, 427–428, 448, 450–451, 467, 473, 478f., 506, 513, 525, 541, 567, 584, 588–589, 599, 605–606, 612, 634 Garnot, Jean Sainte Fare 462f., 520, 581, 584, 586, 587, 591, 608, 611, 616f. Gerf Hussein 600 German Egyptology 104, 282, 456–457, 460–461, 626, 630, see also Berlin School Gladstone, William Ewart 19 Glanville, Stephen R. K. 322, 374, 400, 422, 425, 427f., 431, 436, 440, 450, 464, 473, 496 n. 2108, 497 Golénischeff, Vladimir xl, 138, 148, 170 Grapow, Hermann 227, 460, 468, 539 Griffith, Francis Llewellyn 77, 294, 480, 518, 680 Griffith Institute, Oxford 392, 478–481, 518, 540–542, 600, 605–606, 641, 674, 686f. Gunn, Battiscombe 147, 170, 188, 212, 228, 244f., 251, 327, 433, 443, 448, 463, 465, 473, 479–481 Habachi, Labib 63, 179, 379, 472f., 589–590, 593, 599, 643 Hall, H. R. H. 137 Halle, Henriette (Henni) von 191 Harris, John R. 534, 543, 551, 569, 583, 594, 610, 613–616, 638 n. 2848 Harvard University 229, 248, 252, 534 Hassan, Selim 164, 257, 353, 483 Helck, Hans Wolfgang 587, 635–636 Hopfner, Theodor 403 Hussein, Taha 276, 508, 576 IFAO 120, 139f., 148–169, 311, 467, 577, 587, see also Černý, Jaroslav; and Bruyère, Bernard Iversen, Eric 62, 284–285, 298f., 448, 452, 551, 585, 592, 605 James, T. G. H. (Harry) 355, 480, 551, 649 Janssen, Jozef 443, 449, 559 Janssen, Jacobus J. 581, 606f., 614, 618–622, 632, 697, 699–700 Janssen, Rosalind M. 440, 699–700 Jelínková-Reymond, Eve (Eva) 405, 433–435, 443, 484, 545, 582 Jéquier, Gustave 147, 170, 227 Junker, Hermann 325, 460 Kahle, Paul, Sr. 585 Kahle, Paul, Jr. 538, 544, 585 Kákosy, Lászlo 581 Kaplony, Peter 550 Karnak 181, 370, 611, 656 Kees, Hermann 456, 626

INDEX

817

Keimer, Ludwig 227, 360, 464f., 483, 586, 595 Lacau, Pierre 104, 140, 170, 188, 232, 256f., 308 Lampson, Sir Miles, later Lord Killearn 110, 266f., 285, 299, 349f., 361, 370 Lauer, Jean-Philippe 525 n. 2226, 583 Leclant, Jean 585 Lefebvre, Gustave 148, 178, 179, 324 Lepsius, Karl Richard xx, 64 Lexa, František 63, 75–84, 95f., 132, 144f., 168f., 195, 200f., 419f., 568, 601 Liverpool, University of 177, 472, 473, 542f., 569, 585 Louvre, Paris 135, 184, 218, 273, 293, 322, 324, 437, 583, 641, 664 Ludwig-Borchardt-Institute for Architectural and Archaeological Research 312 Luxor 157f., 178f., 181f., 187, 195, 211, 232f., 247, 252f., 312, 370, 373, 476, 566f., 599, 642f. Malek, Jaromir 654, 663, 668, 670, 686f. Mariette, Auguste 326 Martin, Geoffrey 622, 686 Maspero, Gaston 117–118, 190 Memphis 332, 355, 415, see also Abusir; Mitrahina; Saqqara Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 138, 457, 470, 472, 543, 585, 596 Michałowski, Kazimierz 235f., 269, 646, 656 Mitrahina 323, 569, 578 Montet, Pierre 323, 338 Moss, Rosalind 188f., 329, 432, 448, 495f., 518, 541f., 559f., 612, 621, 654, 660f., 713 Murray, Margaret 353, 372, 530, 327 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 541, 586 Náprstek Museum, Prague 594, 700 National Museum, Prague 46, 707 Newberry, Percy E. 325, 364, 436, 447, 468 Nubia 446, 548f., 568, 589f., 600f., 613f., 626, 636f., 644, 709 O’Connor, David 642, 654 Oriental Institute, Chicago 127, 133, 179, 236, 375, 543, 567, 590, 593, 600, 611, 637 Oriental Institute, Prague 111f., 138, 185f., 194f., 200f., 213, 217f., 229f., 249, 262, 420f. Parker, Richard A. 487, 538f., 586, 590, 634, 687 Peck, Caroline Nestman 584 Peet, T. Eric 116, 126, 133f., 174f., 206–207, 212, 221, 228, 235f., 246f., 288f., 308, 411, 537, 681 Pennsylvania University of 569 University Museum 641f. Petrie, Hilda 195, 646 Petrie, Sir William Flinders 94, 126, 163, 195, 248f., 292, 444, 627, 707 Piankoff, Alexandre 247, 324, 337, 464, 474 Plumley, Rev. Jack 455, 464, 571, 580, 585, 634, 688

818

INDEX

Polotsky, Hans Jacob 338, 377f., 412, 539f., 663 Porter, Bertha 190, 192 Posener, Georges xl, 210f., 225f., 257, 273, 324f., 425, 451, 455f., 466f., 472f., 482–492, 553, 568, 583–584, 600, 660, 664, 673 Posener-Kriéger, Paule 585, 597, 644 Prášek, Justin V. 63, 69–76, 79, 111f. Preiss, Jaroslav 97, 143f., 169f., 180, 211f., 214 Pyramids 146, 323, 343, 605 Abusir 356, 597 Giza 327 Medum 212 Saqqara 147, 227 Qantara 361f. Quibell, James P. 646 Qurna 162, 410, 476, 643 Rainey, Froelich 642, 668f. Ranke, Hermann 510 Reisner, George A. 104, 254, 327, 329, 459, 595 Reisner, Mary 595 Roeder, Günther 456, 460, 486 Rowe, Alan 212 Šámal, Přemysl 143f., 169f., 180, 185f., 193f., 203–205, 211f., 237, 250, 269f., 281f., 335 Saqqara 147, 227, 323f., 330, 333f., 350, 356, 377, 520, 638, 646 Sargant, Anna, later Allott 387, 427f., 430–500, 550, 605, 699 Sargant, Marie, later Černý 3–5, 10f., 80f., 343f., 386f., and passim from 406 Sargant, Naomi, later McIntosh 387, 408, 453, 463, 502f., 690, 699 Sargant, Thomas 386f., 439, 487 Sayce, Archibald H. 79, 166, 244, 518 Schiaparelli, Ernesto 118, 133, 145f., 160, 172 Schliemann, Heinrich 79 Sethe, Kurt Heinrich 69, 133, 191, 261, 411, 552 Sinuhe 361–362 The Tale of S. 76, 106, 252 Ashmolean Ostracon of S. 321, 332, 336, 346, 379, 381, 708 Steindorff, Georg xl, 63, 104, 120, 129, 174, 226, 282, 460 Suez 328, 361 Suez Crisis 369, 457 n. 1926, 522f., 570f., 578, 586, 610 Turin, King-list, museum see Egyptian Museum, Turin Twain, Mark 32f. Valley of the Kings 147, 156, 168, 172, 181f., 611, 623, 678 Varille, Alexandre 237, 252, 322, 337, 374 Žába, Zbyněk 223, 405, 434f., 443, 462, 465f., 468f., 484, 496, 500f., 514, 520, 527f., 568f., 581–583, 588, 601f., 615f., 620f., 632, 644, 648f., 654, 659f., 666f., 669f., 687, 690f., 709