Born: 17 November 1913, France
Died: 23 June 2011
Country most active: Egypt
Also known as: Christiane Desroches
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
While working with Alexandre Varille at the Temple of Karnak in 1940, Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt found herself doing all the hard work of excavation in the savage sun, heat, and violent windstorms while he did paperwork in the cool of the night. She later discovered, after the site had been shut down for lack of funding, that he had published all of her notes and photographs—given to him when she left Egypt—under his own name, never once mentioning her.
It was a foreshadowing of things to come. For years, Desroches Noblecourt spearheaded an international campaign to save 22 Nubian monuments in Egypt and Sudan, which would have been submerged by the lake created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Yet when all was said and done, her partner in the endeavour, Egyptian Minister of Culture Tharwat Okasha, tried to erase her from the story. In a long essay about the project, he failed to mention her role in engaging UNESCO—a key partner—at the beginning, painting it as something he had done entirely on his own. She is mentioned in one sentence of one footnote.
In contrast, the third member of the trio that had led the campaign, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO René Maheu, wrote to her that “After this extraordinary accomplishment, how can I not think of you, who pulled me in, guided me and took me on the most marvelous adventure of my life?”
Even when others told the story of her vital role in print and broadcast media years later, Okasha would go out of his way to actively dispute the truth. In response, Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, a Swedish archaeologist who had worked on the project from the start, wrote that Okasha and other Egyptian officials had expressed sad resignation and paralysing overwhelm when the idea of saving the temples was first put forth. Indeed, he stated, it was only Desroches Noblecourt’s belief that it was possible that changed their minds. Fortunately, she and her work were too well-known for Okasha to rewrite history, and her contributions were acknowledged by many others both at the time and in the decades since.