Grafton elliot smith biography
•
Mummies, magic and medicine in ancient Egypt
What is the future of curatorial practice? How can the relationships between Indigenous people in the Pacific, collections in Euro-American institutions and curatorial knowledge in museums globally be (re)conceptualised in reciprocal and symmetrical ways? Is there an ideal model, a ‘curatopia’, whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia, which can enable the reinvention of ethnographic museums and address their difficult colonial legacies? This volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of the play in curatorial practice, reviewing the different models and approaches operating in different museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world, and debating the emerging concerns, challenges and opportunities. The subject areas range over native and tribal cultures, anthropology, art, history, migration and settler culture, among others. Topics covered include: contemporary curator
•
The achievements of ancient Egypt so fascinated some people in the first half of the twentieth century that they assigned it a unique role in the spread of world civilisation. They credited Egypt with every nyhet from stone building to embalmment, clothing style to personal decoration, and religious deities to philosophy and science. More importantly, they saw Egypt not just as the innovator but as the source from which all the rest of the world learnt these things.
The most prominent campaign to place ancient Egypt at the centre of world history was led by a distinguished Australian-born scientist who turned to writing popular histories on the eve of the first world war. For a quarter-century from 1911, Grafton Elliot Smith, supported by his protégé W.J. Perry and others, argued the Egyptocentric case to a receptive audience, especially in Britain, despite strong opposition from specialists in Egyptology, archaeology and social anthropology, who dismissed his ideas as illuso
•
The University of Sydney - The University of Sydney School of Medicine
Online Museum
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
Jump to: navigation, search
MB 1893 MSurgery 1893 MD 1895
Grafton Elliot Smith, anatomist and anthropologist, was the first student to obtain his MD by examination within the Faculty. He went on to be a world acclaimed Egyptologist and was the first person to use X-ray to examine a mummy. When the tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered, Grafton was responsible for the examination of his preserved body. He was also a prolific writer able to attract a wide readership for his publications in the fields of Anatomy and Anthropology.
Grafton was born in Grafton, NSW in 1871. His first interest in science was sparked by a small textbook on physiology which his father brought home when he was about 10 years old. In his Fragments of an Autobiography, he writes of attending Professor Anderson Stuart’s course of instruction in physiology