Myrtle Broome - Artist and Egyptologist
Council Chamber
From 5th July 2025 to January 2026
Myrtle Florence Broome was a British Egyptologist and artist known for her illustrated work with Amice Calverley on the Temple of Seti I at Abydos in Egypt and her paintings of Egyptian village life in the 1920s and 1930s.
Myrtle Broome was born in Holborn and the Broome family came to Bushey in about 1900. Myrtle Broome studied with Hubert von Herkomer’s cousin, Bertha Herkomer, who taught in Bushey and Watford at that time. Her father, Washington Broome, who had been associated with William Morris, was a music publisher and ran the old Bourne Press. He had a house 'Avalon' built in Grange Road, Bushey and decorated it with Myrtle’s help.
Myrtle was an adventurous and versatile artist and between 1911-3 she studied at University College London for the Certificate in Egyptology where she was a pupil of Margaret Murray and Flinders Petrie. In 1927 she worked at Qau under the auspices of the British School of Archaeology. This led to her working every summer between 1929-37 at Abydos as the assistant of Amice Calverley copying tomb inscriptions.
Four folio volumes of the expedition’s work were published after the completion of the project in 1938. These made a notable contribution to the field of Egyptology and Myrtle became known amongst Egyptologists as one of the finest exponents of the art of epigraphy, the study of inscriptions.
Myrtle retired from Egyptology in 1937 and returned home to Bushey for good due to her father’s illness. For the rest of her life, she spent a quiet retreat with her art in her home of Avalon. She died in Bushey, 27 January, 1978.
Exhibition organisers: Lucy Kinna and Laura Garrido-Gonzalez