Dows Dunham Recollections of an Egyptologist

to be gleaned from the various official statements and from long conversations
with people in all kinds of positions - government officials,
representatives of the various embassies, scholars, and Egyptian notables
from up and down the country. He would spend hours pacing up and
down his office, sucking his pipe and weighing such evidence as he
could gather as to the rights and wrongs of the war. Then, at last, after
many days of anguished thought, he made his decision, perhaps the
hardest of his life. I remember the tears welling from his eyes as he
expressed his judgment that the Allies were in the right and his decision
to take that side, which meant for him the breaking of old ties and
friendships. And then, having made his decision, he returned to work.
Throughout the war Reisner offered his services as a source of intelligence
on Egyptian matters to the British authorities in Cairo. Many
were the discussions he had with Egyptians from the provinces and
from all walks of life. He was able to furnish the authorities with a great
deal of information bearing on the morale and the attitudes of the
natives, whom he knew so well. Although, as an American, he was
neutral, his help to the Allied cause was of no little value, and he was
highly regarded by the British who were at that time to all intents and
purposes the rulers of the country.
By the autumn of 1914 World War I had built up into a major conflict.
There was much anxiety as to Turkish threats to Egypt and general
insecurity in the Mediterranean area as well as in Europe. My family
at home became very insistent that I return to America. While Reisner
himself believed that the danger to our safety was not great and had no
thought of shutting down the excavations, my father, after consulting
the authorities in Washington, felt otherwise. After correspondence
back and forth, Reisner reluctantly agreed that I should go home and
suggested that I take a position at the Boston Museum for the time
being. Accordingly, I was given an appointment as an assistant in the
Department of Egyptian Art, where I unpacked and recorded the shipment
of Egyptian antiquities that had recently come in from the
excavations. I did this from the autumn of 1914 through the following
summer. By the autumn of 1915 there was no immediate prospect of
invasion of Egypt, and I returned to Cairo to resume field work with the
Harvard-Boston Expedition.
During the months spent in Boston I had been studying hieroglyphics,
using Adolf Erman’s Egyptian Grammar, which was published in German,
and I took the book back with me to Egypt. The customshouse at
Port Said, where I landed, was under tight military security, and the
examination of arriving travelers very thorough. My passport and other
documents were quite in order, however, and as a neutral American, I
anticipated no trouble. But when the Egyptian military customs officials
came upon Erman’s Grammar, written in an enemy language, I was
immediately under suspicion. I was placed under detention for some
hours, and only after my case had come before a somewhat senior
British officer was I able to convince the authorities that I was a harmless
archaeologist and permitted to resume my journey to Cairo.
That autumn, in the intervals between excavating and recording at
Giza, Reisner instructed me in hieroglyphs (using the same grammar
book that had so aroused the suspicions of the customs officials at Port
Said). These lessons usually took place in the evenings, and although
Reisner was a good teacher, study in the evening after normal working
hours, when both teacher and student were apt to be tired, was not
altogether satisfactory, and my progress was not as rapid as it might
have been.
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