Margaret Murray

Margaret Alice Murray was born in Calcutta in 1863 and later studied Egyptology at University College London under Flinders Petrie. She joined UCL’s archaeological staff and became an influential teacher, taking part in excavations and producing studies of Egyptian religion, material culture and mummification.

Murray also wrote extensively about folklore and European witchcraft. Her theory that early modern witch trials preserved traces of an organised pre-Christian religion became influential in popular culture but was rejected by later scholarship for selective use of evidence. She nevertheless remained a prominent public intellectual, served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955 and lived to the age of one hundred.

M. J. Trow makes Murray the historical protagonist of Four Thousand Days and Breaking the Circle. The novels use her archaeological training, University College London career and interest in belief systems as the basis for fictional murder investigations set in 1900 and the Edwardian period.