page_title: Caroline Ransom Williams
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Caroline Ransom Williams / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: The American Museum journal Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches) Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s) Authors: American Museum of Natural History Subjects: Natural history Publisher: New York&#160;: American Museum of Natural History Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: 408 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL hence figures extensively in classic literature. Martial's epigram, for instance, is well known. Finally, it may be instructive to note the observations which Arrian, a military officer in the service of the Emperor Hadrian, has written down in regard to coursing, as prac- tised among the Gauls with both scent- and sight-hounds. In his dissertation on hunting he writes: "The most opulent and luxurious among Text Appearing After Image: Courtesy Melropolilan Museum oj Art, TV. Y. Erect-eared hound from Cyprus; 300-400 B.C. the Gauls course in this manner. They send out good Hare-finders early in the morning, to those places where it is likely to find Hares sitting, who send back word if they have found any, and what number; then they go out themselves, and put them up, and lay in the dogs, themselves following on horseback. "Whoever has good greyhounds should never lay them in too near the Hare, nor run more than two at a time. For, though the animal is very swift, and will oftentimes beat the dogs, yet, when she is first started, she is so terrified by the hollowing and by the dogs being very close, that her heart is overcome by fear; and, in the confusion, very often the best sporting Hares are killed without shew- ing any diversion. She should, therefore, be suffered to run some distance from her form and re-collect her spirits, and then, if she is a good sporting Hare, she will lift up her ears, and stretch out with long rates from her seat, the dogs directing their course after her with great activity of limbs, as if they were leaping, affording a spectacle worthy the trouble that must necessarily be employed in properly breeding and training these dogs." Finally, special mention may be made of one of the subjects represented in the accom- panying illustrations. Varieties of the hound, including the familiar one with erect ears, are incised in a limestone grave-stela now in the Cairo Museum. It is a royal monument found at Thebes, and dates from the 11th dynasty, approximately 2100 B.C. The following note regarding this stela has been kindly supplied by Miss Caroline Ransom, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The stela shows King Horus accompanied by one attendant and five of his dogs. The latter were evidently of a southern race, for all have Berber names inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs above their figures, and in three instances a translation of the foreign name into Egyptian is written vertically before the dog's breast. This stela finds mention in an Egyptian document written nearly one thou- sand years later than the date of its erection, namely in the "Abbott papyrus" now in the British Museum. In this document is con- tained the official report of the inspection of the royal tombs, under Rameses IX of the twentieth dynasty, to ascertain what damage had been done by tomb robbers. It is one of the romantic episodes of Egyptian archae- ology that the actual stela mentioned in the ancient document should come to light." Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Caroline Ransom Williams was an Egyptologist and classical archaeologist. She was the first American woman to be professionally trained as an Egyptologist. She worked extensively with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other major institutions with Egyptian collections, and published Studies in ancient furniture, The Tomb of Perneb, and The Decoration of the Tomb of Perneb: The Technique and the Color Conventions, among others.
context_section_description: From 1905 to 1910, Ransom was an assistant professor of Archaeology and Art at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, eventually becoming chair of her department. She also served on the managing committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. In 1909, Ransom became the first female (corresponding) member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (German Archaeological Institute), founded in 1898.
  She also participated in the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG, German  Oriental  Society). Such affiliations connected Ransom to an international  community  of current scholars and reinforced her position as an active member of the academic world.
  In 1909-1910 she was a vice-president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America.
  In 1910 she became assistant curator in the recently established Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) in New York under the direction of First Curator Albert M. Lythgoe.  From 1910 to 1916, she worked with the artifacts in the collections, co-authoring the Handbook of the Egyptian Collection of the Museum (1911). In 1912, Ransom received an honorary doctorate (Litt. D.) from Mount Holyoke College on its 75th anniversary.
  Between 1913 and 1916, the Tomb of Perneb was moved from Egypt and reconstructed at the Metropolitan Museum. While Lythgoe and others were in the field during the winter, Ransom supervised the American side of the work. This included administration and planning for the reception and installation of the pieces of the tomb, and for the exhibit's opening. Reconstructing the tomb took three years. It opened to the public in 1916. The opening was accompanied by the publication of an 80-page booklet, The Tomb of Perneb, co-written by Lythgoe and Ransom.
  In 1916 Ransom married Grant Williams, a real estate developer in Toledo, Ohio, and returned there to live. Although they did not have children, family obligations to her husband and aging mother limited Ransom's ability to take on major professional commitments. She continued to work with the  Metropolitan Museum of Art  and the New York Historical Society (NYHS) by commuting from Toledo, Ohio, to New York several times a year.
  In the winter of 1916/17 she cataloged the Egyptian collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In 1918, she catalogued the Egyptian holdings of the Detroit Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art.
  From 1917 to 1924, she was a curator of the Egyptian holdings of the New York Historical Society, cataloguing the Abbott Collection of Egyptian Antiquities.
  She repeatedly refused offers that would have required relocating to Chicago, New York, or Egypt. In a number of cases, most notably that of the Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus, she directed potentially prestigious work to others.
  The papyrus is probably the most valuable one owned by the Society and I am ready to waive my interest in it, in the hope that it may be published sooner and better than I could do it.
  — Ransom Williams to Breasted, Letter, November 22, 1920
  During the 1926/27 season, Caroline  Ransom  Williams took part in the Epigraphic Survey of the inscriptions at Luxor, at the invitation of Breasted of the University of Chicago. She was one of four epigraphers on staff, the others being  William  F. Edgerton, John A. Wilson and the director of the site, Harold H. Nelson. In the Oriental Institute's report, Breasted expressed his "profound appreciation that Dr. Williams worked an entire season at Medinet Habu out of pure interest in the project and with almost no remuneration." Ransom Williams worked on the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. She is credited with largely establishing the epigraphic standards for the group's work, with the assistance of Edgerton and Wilson.
  In 1927/28 she was the first lecturer in Egyptian Art and Archeology at the University of Michigan.
  In 1929, Ransom Williams became president of the Mid-West Branch of the American Oriental Society.  She was the first woman officer of the AOS.
  In 1932, she published The
caption: Erect-eared hound from Cyprus; 300-400 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art
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