"Time Hath No Power Against Identity": Historical Continuity and Archaeological Adventure in H. Rider Haggard's She

"Time Hath No Power Against Identity": Historical Continuity and Archaeological Adventure in H. Rider Haggard's She Shawn Malley University of British Columbia IN H. RIDER HAGGARD'S 1887 African adventure novel She, archaeological theory and practice are hermeneutic tools for exploring and reconstructing the past. Establishing continuity with the remote past through the study of its material remains a central theme in nineteenth-century archaeological thought and in Haggard's novel. Largely through the appropriation of artifacts from the Middle East, Egypt and Greece, archaeology both enlarged the Victorians' knowledge of the past and furnished them with a flattering pedigree blossoming from the seedbeds of civilization. In She, the archaeologist-protagonists Leo Vincey and Horace Holly discover their own cultural roots in the interior of southeastern Africa as they explore the ruins of the protoEgyptian civilization of Kôr: through the authenticating aegis of archaeology , Leo and Holly materially consolidate their English heritage. The novel is thus an important literary indicator of archaeological theory in the late-Victorian period and, moreover, an index—or archaeological site—of Victorian mores that infused science in the late nineteenth century. By the time of She's publication theories of geological and biological uniformitarianism espoused by Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin had effected a fundamental change in the study of the archaeological record. The challenge of investigating human development within the new cosmogony encouraged the shift from collecting and appreciating arti275 ELT 40:3 1997 facts as art objects to the systematic analysis of remains for their intrinsic archaeological information. Archaeologists such as General Augustus Pitt-Rivers, whose Excavations in Cranborne Chase (1887) transformed excavation into an exact science, and Egyptologist Flinders Pétrie, excavation leader of the Egyptian Exploration Fund (established in 1883), transposed biological evolution to their classification schemes.1 As Pitt-Rivers asserts in his 1875 essay "On the Evolution of Culture," the "principles of variation and natural selection have established a bond of union between the physical and culture sciences which can never be broken. History is but another term for evolution."2 Evolutionary sequence depicted in artifacts told a story of material continuity down through the ages.3 Pitt-Rivers states explicitly that the archaeological record represents a traceable continuum with the past: there "are huge gaps in our knowledge of the history of the human race ... ; but surely, if slowly, science will open up these desert places, and prove to us that, so far as the finite mind of man can reach, there is nothing but unbroken continuity to be seen in the present and in the past."4 Glyn Daniel points out that while Darwin provided an organic and philosophical model for the doctrine of evolution, archaeology provided its material proof: "Thereafter , once this proof was widely understood, archaeology became part of the general study of man and his culture, not merely an antiquarian hobby."5 Evolutionary theory, which revolutionized all branches of the study of humankind, provided an imaginative stage upon which novelists such as Haggard could explore the "origin" of their own species. Central to Haggard's literary engagement with scientific thought of the last quarter of the nineteenth century was his relationship with anthropologist, folklorist, and critic Andrew Lang, to whom She is dedicated. Lang read the manuscript after it had been accepted for serial publication in The Graphic and offered substantial critical and editorial advice before book publication in 1887. Lang's theories and interest in anthropology, archaeology, and cultural evolution shed light on Haggard 's own depiction of the study of ancient civilizations in She. Two important anthropological and archaeological theories stemming from evolution and espoused by Lang recur as themes and motifs in She, namely "diffusion" and "survivals." Theories of diffusion represented attempts to trace the origins and development of civilization through time and space via social and commercial contact between different societies; survivals are the physical, linguistic, religious, and ritualistic 276 MALLEY : HAGGARD traces of such diffusion. Diffusionism and survivalism were theoretical avenues through which nineteenth-century scholars examined the past in relation to the present. The idea of studying survivals from ancient civilizations lingering in modern culture was first put forward by Lang's mentor, Edward Burnett Tylor...