Marianne Clancy has sent in a couple of photos and would appreciate help in identifying the people shown, thought to be Egyptologists. She believes they were taken in 1925/6 and knows that the gentleman in the top left in the close up is the anthropologist Maurice Emetaz who was a member of Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris (as shown in this 1928 membership list).
Marianne wonders whether the seated lady is Margaret Mead. If she is shown, that would also narrow the possible dates for the photograph as she travelled to Polynesia in 1925, returning to New York in 1926. She would be about 24 at the time and there are obviously fewer photographs of her as a young woman than in later life, but there is one here. (Oddly it is a blog post about the online world Second Life but contains a surprisingly interesting insight into Mead’s work. The link is to a Google translation of the original Swedish.) Personally I am more inclined to suspect that if Margaret Mead is shown that she may be the woman stood to Maurice Emataz’s left (i.e. to his right as we look at the image).
Marianne also wonders whether one of the gentlemen is Flinders Petrie of Howard Carter. I am sceptical. I am sure somebody has studied anthropologists and Egyptologists of the 1920s and may be able to offer to insights.
(There are slightly larger versions if you click on them.)
Thanks
Kate
By Kate Phizackerley