Elizabeth B. Moynihan, who died on Nov. 7 at the age of 94, was known in political circles as a shrewd campaign manager who elected her husband to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and held on to the seat during his 24-year tenure. was. But only part of Mrs. Moynihan’s life was in Washington.
Once her “head and heart” Said, Moynihan remained in India and served as U.S. ambassador from 1973 to 1975. Mrs. Moynihan was initially irritated by the strict diplomatic protocol. Eager to experience India beyond the ambassador’s residence, she immersed herself in the country’s history, and her research led her to become a prominent Mughal garden scholar.
After reading Babur’s memoir, Baburnama, translated in 1921, Mrs. Moynihan was “fascinated by Babur’s adventures and amused by his wild adventures with his friends.” [and] I was fascinated by his depictions of Indian flora and fauna,” she said. I wrote this in retrospect several years later..
Perhaps most of all, she was fascinated by the emperor’s description of the lotus garden he had built near the city of Dholpur. Scholars believed that the site, like many Mughal gardens with their geometric wonders and flowing waterways, had been lost to time. Mrs. Moynihan held out hope that she might still be found.
In 1978, Mrs. Moynihan returned to India many times. Using her ‘The Baburnama’ as a guide, she found her way to Jhor village on the outskirts of Dholpur. On a stone terrace where cow dung putty was drying in the sun, she pulled back some lentil branches and saw what was left of Babur’s lotus pond in front of her, she later told the Washington Post. told the paper.
This discovery surprised Indian archaeologists. welcomed The New York Times persuaded Mrs. Moynihan to give an interview shortly after the victory, calling it an “important archaeological discovery.”
“I don’t do interviews in America.” she said, “Because I’m not interested in answering questions like, ‘What’s it like to be married to Pat?'” But this is something about myself that even Moynihan doesn’t know. If he knew I could do it, he would be just as happy as everyone else. ”
In the following years, Mrs. Moynihan identified and documented several other gardens built by Babur. She is the author of Paradise as a Garden: Persia and Mughal India (1979) and edited the book Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj and Her Mahal (2000). did.
The latter chronicles a study of Mahtab Bagh, a forgotten garden near the Taj Mahal, a 17th-century tomb in Agra, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art. Mrs. Moynihan led a team of Americans who worked with Indian scholars on the project, which has been credited with dramatically expanding modern understanding of the Taj Mahal.
Mrs. Moynihan ArchivesThe book, now in the Smithsonian Institution, contains hundreds of photographs, drawings, and drawings of gardens associated with Babur in India and throughout Asia, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran.
“Scholars still use her photographs and paintings,” said Elizabeth Moynihan, curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the National Museum of Asian Art. said in an interview. “In some cases, these are the only records we have of those gardens.”
While her husband served in the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Moynihan paused her studies every six years to focus on his campaign.she I waved my hand Instead, she uses her well-honed political instincts to fend off potential challengers and help keep her husband above the fray.
Mrs. Moynihan, a political consultant and friend of the Moynihan family, said her husband “essentially considered his job to be working on campaigns” so that he could “do his Senate work.” Mandy Grunwald, who was a consultant for the campaign, said in an interview.
“I think I was able to help him, and that feels great to me,” Mrs. Moynihan said. told the Times. “But we’re not twofers. The people of New York never elected the two of us. After the election, I disappear and spend a lot of time with Babur.”
Elizabeth Therese Brennan was born on September 19, 1929 in Norwood, Massachusetts, and raised in nearby Stoughton. Like her husband, she too came from an Irish family of limited means, with her father largely missing. Mrs. Moynihan’s mother attended secretarial school, and she later became the editor of a local newspaper.
After high school, Mrs. Moynihan enrolled in Boston University, but dropped out because she ran out of money and wanted to go to New York.
She was drawn to politics and participated in Democrat W. Averell Harriman’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1954. Moynihan, who also worked on the campaign, followed Harriman to Albany, where they shared an office as part of the governor’s staff. They married in 1955.
Mrs. Moynihan accompanied her husband to Washington, where he joined the Department of Labor under President John F. Kennedy. The couple then moved to Massachusetts, where he taught urban studies and government at Harvard University. A lecture on architectural history at university sparked Mrs. Moynihan’s interest in the history and construction of gardens.
Mrs. Moynihan refused to return to Washington with her husband when President Richard M. Nixon appointed him assistant chief of staff for urban affairs. “We had a big fight about it,” she said years later, referring to his tenure in the Republican administration.
When the Moynihan family moved to India, they took their three children with them. “Everything was overwhelming,” Mrs. Moynihan said of her culture shock. She said, “Pat is not a career diplomat and I’m not attached to that whole world. I cried a lot.”
“But I think I was lucky that something grabbed me,” she added, referring to her studies of Babur and Mughal gardens. “Then everything’s fine. People I know who haven’t had that experience couldn’t recover from the crying.”
While living in Washington, the Moynihan family had a home on the Capitol Hill. But they spent most of their lives in a 19th-century farmhouse in the upstate New York community of Pinders Corner, with the senator writing a book in an old schoolhouse on the property and Mrs. Moynihan renovating a woodshed to house her I continued my research. On the walls of the hut hung Indian hand-woven cloth with Babur’s seal engraved on it.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan died in 2003 at the age of 76 from a ruptured appendix. His son John passed away in 2004 and his son Timothy also passed away in 2015.
Survivors include a daughter, Maura Moynihan of Manhattan and Woodstock, N.Y., and two grandchildren. Mrs. Moynihan died at her home in Manhattan, said Tony Bullock, her husband’s friend and former chief of staff. The cause was not immediately known.
Mrs. Moynihan was a longtime trustee and benefactor of the Freer Museum of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which make up the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. She was a founding director of the Leon Levy Foundation in New York, which awards grants in areas such as research and preservation of the ancient world.
Looking back on her work in India, she said the most meaningful lesson she learned was that “being caught up in an idea is one of the blessings of life,” regardless of “whether other people are interested in it or not.” That was the case, she wrote.
She has a life-sized papier-mâché statue of Babur displayed in her home. He sat in a chair in the living room, wearing a turban and rich robes, smiling slightly at anyone who looked at him.