Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters) has passed away after a long battle with cancer. Despite earning a PhD in Egyptology from one of the best programs in the entire world, the gender mores of the 1950s prevented her from finding work as an Egyptologist.
In a classic example of making lemonade out of lemons, she turned to writing fiction. Mertz was a prolific author who wrote over 50 books in genres ranging from popular Egyptology to romance. She’s probably best known for her Amelia Peabody series of mysteries, which she published under the pseudonym of ‘Elizabeth Peters.’ Although the Peabody books were set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main character’s passion for Egyptology let Mertz put her academic background to good use.
Mertz was a first-class writer, and she will be sorely missed.
As for those learned scribes. . . it has come to pass that their names will endure forever, although they are gone, having completed their lives. . . they made heirs for themselves of the writings and books … which they made…. Their… memorial tablets (are) covered with dust, their chapels forgotten. But their names are pronounced because of these books of theirs. . . more profitable is a book than a graven tablet, than a chapel-wall well built. . . a man has perished, and his corpse has become dust. . . but writings cause him to be remembered in the mouth of the story teller.
-Papyrus Chester Beatty IV
Codex Lochianus 