Margaret Murray

Используя концепцию Джорджа Стокинга о презентизме и историцизме как двух методах изучения историографии, автор данной статьи ставит вопрос о том, ограничено ли было использование эвгемеристического метода в британской фольклористике только в викторианский период, как это традиционно считается в современной науке. Через анализ трудов Маргарет Мюррей, посвященных феномену ведьмовства, а также публикаций в журнале "Фольклор" (Folk-Lore) демонстрируется, что не только обсуждение эвгемеристической теории не завершилось с концом викторианской эпохи, но и сам эвгемеризм продолжал рассматриваться как вполне рабочий подход вплоть до 50-х годов XX в.

During the witch-hunts, it was believed that the body of the witch had been marked by the Devil to seal their pact. In order to find this mark, suspected witches were subjected to humiliating and torturous bodily examinations. In the early twentieth century, Margaret Murray’s controversial, yet highly popular witch-cult theory marked a radical departure from these ideas. According to Murray, an Egyptologist and folklorist, some body marks had been tattooed by the witches themselves, as a sign of their membership of a secret fertility cult. This compelling lecture not only discusses the depiction and ownership of the body of the witch throughout the ages, but also traces the influences behind Murray’s flawed yet persistent theory. It takes the audience on a bewitching journey, all the way from tattooed ancient Egyptian mummies to the court trials of 16th century French witches with hare footprints on their shoulders. This fascinating and lavishly illustrated talk examines the transformation of the witch’s body from the diabolic into the sacred sphere. More info: https://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/talks/myth-magic/un-holy-bodies-from-devil-s-mark-to-witch-s-tattoo/

Studies in the history of archaeology tend to favor a heroic male fi eldworker. This approach unfortunately eschews the work done by archaeologists in other academic areas, such as in the museum, in the library, and in the classroom. In fact, coursework, museum collections, and the classroom were crucial to training future archaeologists for their careers in the fi eld, as collectors, and as teachers. This chapter highlights the classroom training of archaeologists in the early twentieth century by focusing on the Egyptology program at University College London (UCL). I explore part of the career of Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963; fi g 8.1 ), who spent much of her life training students in the classroom. It was her organization and consolidation of the fi rst two-year training program in archaeology at UCL that produced graduates who became famous fi eld archaeologists.

This article explores the history of mummy unwrappings in the West, culminating in Margaret Murray’s public unrolling of two mummies in Manchester in 1908.  Mummy unwrappings as a practice have shifted often between public spectacles which displayed and objectified exotic artifacts, and scientific investigations which sought to reveal medical and historical information about ancient life.  Although others have looked at Murray’s work in the context of the history of mummy studies, I argue that her work should be viewed culturally as poised between spectacle and science, drawing morbid public interest while also producing ground-breaking work that continues to this day.  Murray’s main goal was to excite the interest of the public while at the same time educating them in the true history of ancient Egypt, and while ascertaining new scientific information and contributing to the scholarly interpretations of ancient Egypt.

This article outlines the lives and achievements of the British archaeologist and anthropologist Margaret A. Murray, mostly known as the assistant of Flinders Petrie. This publication hopes to give this woman the credit she deserves for her accomplishments.

Dr Margaret A Murray’s The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921) theorised that medieval and modern witchcraft is a pagan religion. Murray asserted that contemporary witches were keeping alive an ancient fertility religion (now often referred to as the ‘Old Religion’). With her theory, Murray created the modern witch as the purveyor of fertility and designated paganism a ‘nature based religion’ that extolled the sacrality of nature and the individual’s role as caretaker whilst critiquing and distancing itself from the modern patriarchal destructive dominion over the earth and its natural resources. Despite its ultimate academic rejection, Murray’s ‘Old Religion’ is still thriving amongst adherents. This paper shall examine the two lives of the Murray thesis: it’s academic shame and how Murray’s antimodernist rhetoric has informed the ecological-mindedness of modern pagans.

Two major excavation campaigns took place at the site of Borġ in-Nadur in the twentieth century, one by Margaret Murray and another by David Trump. This paper highlights, the discoveries and interpretations put forth by archaeologists. Archival material is used to throw light on the published stratigraphic sequence from the Bronze Age huts on site.

Desde el momento mismo en que se configura un campo historiográfico específico dedicado al estudio de la represión judicial de la brujería en la Europa moderna, los historiadores profesionales se abocaron a la resolución de un dilema que condicionó sus investigaciones durante el siglo y medio que se extiende entre 1820 y 1970: ¿la caza de brujas debe concebirse meramente como la persecución masiva de un crimen imaginario o resulta posible identificar, por el contrario, fenómenos realmente existentes detrás de aquella cacería judicial impulsada por los agentes del estado y de las iglesias modernas? La presentación que aquí proponemos tiene como objetivo rescatar del olvido esta fase fundacional de la historiografía de la caza de brujas, un intenso debate plurisecular que estalla en el siglo XIX con el enfrentamiento entre positivistas y románticos, y que no pierde intensidad hasta la remisión definitiva de las teorías de Margaret Murray a comienzos de la década de 1970. Estas polémicas pretéritas constituyen la matriz de la cual emergen modelos interpretativos tan potentes como los que caracterizan actualmente a la pujante historiografía de la caza de brujas, un campo de  ertudios cuya plena consolidación y reconocimiento académicos debe mucho a la superación de los debates que constituyen el tema central dela presente conferencia.

En 1921, la Oxford University Press publica The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, un libro firmado por la egiptóloga escocesa Margaret Murray, que produciría una verdadera revolución en el campo historiográfico dedicado al estudio de la represión judicial de la brujería en la Europa moderna. Contra toda la literatura académica anterior dominada por los herederos de la historiografía positivista decimonónica, que afirmaban que a caza de brujas no había sido más que la persecución masiva de un crimen imaginario, Murray vino a sostener que la represión masiva de la brujería entendida como crimen colectivo derivó de un malentendido cultural, pero de un orden diferente del imaginado por la historiografía racionalista. Es en el contexto de la figura, del paradigma interpretativo y de la influencia de Margaret Murray, que debe entenderse la emergencia del modelo de análisis alternativo encarnado por el historiador italiano Carlo Ginzburg. Uno de los objetivos de la presente exposición, de hecho, pretende demostrar que muchas de las audacias, muchos de los aportes, pero también muchas de las contradicciones y debilidades de la producción de Ginzburg dedicada al estudio de la brujería europea, no pueden comprenderse en plenitud sin tomar en cuenta aquel reinado de medio siglo de la Witch-cult theory de Margaret Murray.

This paper highlights the classroom training of archaeologists from 1900-1935 by focusing on the Egyptology program at University College, London (UCL).  I will explore part of the career of Margaret Alice Murray and her cohort who spent much of their careers training future well-known field archaeologists.  I argue that it was her organization and consolidation of the first two-year training program in archaeology at UCL that produced the graduates who quickly became famous field archaeologists in their own right.  Therefore I argue that it is first the classroom, and not the field, where the “heroes” in archaeology are made.