Nancy Hatch Dupree was born in Cooperstown, New York, and after spending much of her childhood in India, she arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1962 – her dedication would eventually earn her the nickname of the ‘grandmother of Afghanistan’.
After her initial arrival as a diplomat’s wife, she wrote the first of many guides in English regarding major historical and archaeological sites in Afghanistan, and soon she met Louis Dupree, an archaeologist she married in 1966; for years to come, the pair travelled throughout the country conducting archaeological excavations. Her five guidebooks covered all major archaeological and historical sites.
However, in 1979, Nancy Dupree was forced to leave Afghanistan due to the Soviet invasion. Whilst in a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, she realised that the circumstances would likely lead to a great loss of documents that held information regarding the culture and history of Afghanistan – in order to avoid such a fate, she and her husband formed the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR). In their pursuit to save knowledge, by 1999 the collection consisted of 7,739 titles in an array of languages. In 2005, Nancy returned to Afghanistan with the collection. It was moved to Kabul University and renamed the Afghan Center at Kabul University (ACKU). With the belief that access to information is important, the organisation’s motto is ‘sharing information for nation building’.
Furthermore, in 2007 she established the Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to preserving Afghan cultural heritage. In her life, she published over 1,000 articles, reviews, encyclopaedia entries, chapters in books, and monographs on various Afghan subjects covering numerous aspects of the culture and its history, and she had received numerous awards for her efforts in educating Afghan people in fields regarding cultural heritage.
“All of us need to raise our voices so we can slow down this endangering of heritage.” – Nancy Hatch Dupree
Post by Ayla Joseph as part of the TrowelBlazers Digital Fieldwork Project at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.
Images provided by the Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation and David Gill, and used with permission.
Further reading by Nancy Hatch Dupree:
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch; Kohzad, Ahmed Ali (1972). An Historical Guide to Kabul. Afghan Tourist Organization.
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch; Dupree, Motamedi (1974). The National Museum of Afghanistan: an illustrated guide. The Afghan Tourist Organization.
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch (1977). An Historical Guide to Afghanistan. Afghan Tourist Organization.
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch (2002). Cultural heritage and national identity in Afghanistan. Third World Quarterly. 23(5), 977-989.
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch (1996). Museum under siege. Archaeology, 49(2), 42-51.
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch (1988). Demographic reporting on Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Modern Asian Studies, 22, 845-865.
I flew Nancy many times in Afghanistan when my company had a contract with the Red Cross flying out of Peshawar Pakistan. She invited us one night for supper when we did a night stop in Kabul. The most wonderful person I have ever met.