Barbara Adams
February 19, 1945- June 26, 2002.
Barbara Adams, co-director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition and Research Curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, tragically passed away in June 2002 at the age of 57. In addition to her long and fruitful involvement with the site of Hierakonpolis, Barbara was the author of numerous articles, ten scholarly monographs and in the last years of her life an inspiring teacher at the Institute of Archaeology of University College London. She will be remembered for her important contributions to scholarship, the museum world and a popular appreciation of the wonders of ancient Egypt. Founder and guiding force of the high successful Friends of the Petrie Museum, she was also edited the popular Shire Egyptology series through over 25 volumes.

Born in Hammersmith, west London on Feb 19, 1945, Barbara began her career at the Natural History Museum, but after a brief stint as beauty queen, winning the title of Miss Hammersmith, she moved to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in 1965. Originally composed of the private collection of Sir Flinders Petrie, the "father of Egyptian archaeology" the Petrie Museum's collection is of immense scientific importance. But because Petrie was obliged to distribute the more display worthy objects to the subscriber who funded his excavations, his collection was made up in large part of fragmentary and poorly preserved pieces, and as a result had remained unpublished. Barbara quickly realized the contribution to be made by the study and conservation of these little known objects in conjunction with the archival excavation records. Her first task was to resurrect the museum's holdings from Quibell and Green's 1898-9 excavations at Hierakonpolis, a site realized to be of critical importance for understanding the origins of Egyptian civilization even before the Hierakonpolis Expedition took to the field. Thus when not dealing with administrative duties, she embarked on the laborious task of cataloguing, collating and conserving. Her success was marked by her first major publication, Ancient Hierakonpolis and Supplement in 1974 in which she not only published the objects from the site, but also made available the archival notebooks of F W Green. Throughout her life she continued to perfect this particular brand of archaeology, that of excavating museum basements. She rescued and restored unpublished material from Garstang's 1906 excavations at Hierakonpolis in The Fort Cemetery at Hierakonpolis (1984) and Ancient Nekhen (1995), in which she also provided an overview of all the work at the site. She also "re-discovered" the magnificent Early Dynastic stone lions from Petrie's excavations at Koptos and saw to their restoration and display, now at University College London. Although a respected authority of the Pre- and Early Dynastic period, she developed a keen interest in wherever her beloved collection lead her. In 1985, with the aid of the Petrie Museum Friends, she instigated the conservation of the museum's important collection (one of the largest in the world) of encaustic wax mummy portraits of the Roman period, several of which were displayed in the international exhibition Ancient Faces.

In 1980 she was invited to join the team excavating at Hierakonpolis led by Michael Hoffman, with whom she developed a close friendship. This was a realization of a long-held aspiration and a major turning point in her professional career. At Hierakonpolis she played a major role, especially in the early excavations at the elite cemetery of Hierakonpolis' Predynastic princes at Locality 6 in 1980, 1982 and 1986, with study seasons devoted to that work in 1988 and 1992. She worked at the town site of Nekhen with Walter Fairservis in 1981, and again in 1984 she made an important contribution to the ceramic dating of Hoffman's stratigraphic sondage in Nekhen in square 10N5W. This was the first excavation made below the water table using pumps anywhere in Egypt and the long delayed publication of this important work was to have been her next project. After Hoffman's untimely death in 1990, Barbara was charged with the task of publishing his work, and in 1996 she helped to rescue the languishing project by assuming co-directorship of the expedition and resuming excavations in the elite cemetery.

Although Hoffman was never that interested in cemetery excavation, considering the lack of information on settlements, Barbara was always convinced that further excavation in this elite cemetery, albeit repeatedly plundered, would more than repay the effort. Nevertheless even she was astounded by the accuracy of her prediction. Among her many outstanding discoveries are Egypt's first funerary masks, fantastic creations made of fired clay, curved to fit over the human face and definitely meant to we worn, as well as Egypt's earliest life-sized stone statue found in pieces near the entrance to what must be the largest tomb of that time (c. 3600BC). It was a cruel twist of fate that she was diagnosed with cancer in the autumn of 2001 just weeks before she was due to resume these investigations. Having completed the publication of Hoffman's work in 2000 with the publication of Excavations in the Locality 6 Cemetery at Hierakonpolis 1979-1985, and with another monograph on the exquisite stones from the Royal Tombs at Abydos in press, this was to be Barbara's last dig season before she was to sit down for the first time in her life and write up her own remarkable excavations.

She is survived by her husband Robert Adams, her life long companion and an international community of friends and colleagues who will deeply miss her collaboration and advice. Her work will of course be continued by the Hierakonpolis Expedition, and at her request Stan Hendrickx will publish her work at Locality 6..

Publications of Barbara Adams

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