Open AccessCaptain Nemo/Lt-General Pitt Rivers and Cleopatra’s Needle — A Story of Flagships
Author(s) -
Christopher Evans
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
bulletin of the history of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2047-6930
pISSN - 1062-4740
DOI - 10.5334/bha.15204
Subject(s) - parallels , cleopatra , ethos , history , character (mathematics) , literature , reading (process) , art , philosophy , linguistics , mechanical engineering , geometry , mathematics , engineering
Recently re-reading Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea for ourchildren I was struck by the marked similarities between the novel’s elusiveprotagonist, Captain Nemo, and the renowned later 19th century British archaeologist,Lt.-General Pitt Rivers. Could they have been the same person? How could something soseemingly blatant have gone unnoticed? These questions are, of course, only raised in aspirit of academic tongue-in-check. Yet, in an ethos of ‘learning through amusement’(itself directly relevant to the themes of this study), exploring the parallels betweenthese two ‘heroic’ individuals provides insights into the nature of 19th centuryscience, Victorian edification and disciplinary institutionalisation (e.g. Levine 1986).This eclectic contribution will, moreover, be introduced with the third component of itsheadline title – Cleopatra’s Needle – as this provides an appropriately quasinauticalparable on the project of 19th century archaeology and the problem of ‘deep time’(Murray 1993)