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[,t. f-."ts,Zort)Vol. l-EGYPTOLOGY

EGYPTOLOGY. Eg.r,ptolo-ef in its modern form, aiongrvith archaeologyi decipherment, and critical biblicalstudies, gre\v out of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centLiry movement in European intellectuaj history knorvnas the Enlightenment-the movement of Locke, Ne\\,ton,Leibniz, Humboldt, Goethe, Descartes, Spinoza, Franklin,and Jefferson. It r,vas the Enlightenment that transforrnedthe already ancient fascination rr,,ith Eglpt and its pastinto a systematic recording, tabulation, and anaiysis ofdata and an expioration and application of methodologiesinformed primarily by a secular-rationalist moclel ofknowledge. The first fruits of this activitv rvere the compi_lation and publication of the magnificent Description deI'Egypte and the decipherment of the ancient Egtptianscripts and language. The Egyptian expedition of Napo_leon, the Enlightenment despot par excellence and w.ould_be new Alexandet resulted in the publication of the De_sciption, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and the in_ception of the organized study of Egrpt on a vast scale.

The ancient Egyptians had been interested in their ownpast and made efforls to chronicle and systematize it as itgrerv increasingly longer, a process u,hich gave rise to theking-list tradition and uitimately to Maneth o's Aeg-,-ptiaca(third century ece). The best-knos'n ancient Egyptian"E_wptoiogist" or antiquarian is the high priest of ptah,Prlnce Khaem'uvaset, son of Ramesses II in the thirteenthcentury BCE. a restorer and scholar of ancient monu_ments, remembered in later ages as a sage and rvonder-t'orker. There are, horvever, many other indications of an_cient Egyptian antiquarian studrv The various phases of"archaism" in ancient Egt.ptian arr and architecttrre re_flect the stud"; and sometimes the rediscovery and revival,of rlraterials belon-ein-e to earlier periods. This is also tmeo[ texts; the Pvramid Texts of the late Old Kingclom u,.erecopied and redacted throi-rgh Greco-Roman times. Highl,v-educated scribes of the entire era of hierogl,vphic literacvstudied the classicai Egyptian languaee. A number of rextscontain parallel versions in classical and later forms ofEgl.ptian, including but not limited to bilingual (some-times called "trilingual") decrees such as the RosettaStone and the Canopus Decree.

Eglpt occupies a prominent place in classical litera-tlrre as earl,v as Homer. The accounts relating to Egvpt inHerodotus, Diodoms Siculus, Strabo, and plutarch ,"r,ere

a,,'ailable in the predecipherment period, although theyhad to ar.vait the revival of Greek leaining in the late HighMiddle Ages and Renaissance. A number of eminentGreek thinkers and authors, including pyhagoras, Solon,Thales, and Plato, are credited wlth traveling or evenstlldying in Egypt. These claims have been treated ,"r,ith

skepticism bv manv modern scholars, though there seemsto be more receptivitv to the credibilin'of these traditionsin the past couple ofdecades. There har.e been several rea-

sons for the adoption of a "hermeneutic of suspicion,,when dealing rvith classical ,,vriters on Eglpt: the lan-guage barriet the question of the authors' informants andtheir reliability and the presence of obviously secondarymaterial and misinterpretations of known E-eyptian rnate_rial. Methodologically, scholars have been reiuctant to ac-cept the veracity of classical statements without con"obo_rative Eglptian evidence, and they have tended to jettisonthe classical authors once native materials in Eglptian be_came available. Many Egyptologists found native materi-als markedl-'- different from the presentations by the clas_sical writers, though some of these judgments were madeprematurelv on the basis of a r-udimentarv knowledge ofEglptian and a very limited selection of materials. In par-ticular, it has been common to regard interpretive state-ments by classical authors, especiall5, any r.vith metaphori-cal or aliegorical content, as purelv Greek elaborationsollt of keeping ri,ith the Egyptian "character.,, This atti_tude has, horvever; been moderated somer.i,hat in recentscholarship, and some of the glosses in Egyptian mortu_ary texts ("As for it means etc.) can becited as native precedents. Regarding ancient Eg."ptianrvriting, the prevailing tendencv has been to emphasizethe revolutionatn nature of the phoneticalll. based ,Ceci_pherment and to regard classicaj and Late Antique state-ments on hieroglyphs as wrongheaded symbolic obfusca-tion concealing kernels of accurate knorvleclge. In thesecond half of the twentieth centllry, scholars have sho.,vngreater r,villingness to explore Egyptian anci classicalsources for suggestive corelations and to look for theconnections and affinities rather than the disjunctions be-tw,een the two colpora. (Important relevant rvorks includethose of B. H. Stricket L. Kdkos1,, L. \u. Zabkar, J. Hani,T. DuQuesne, and H. Jackson.) Thus, Horapollo, thefourth to fifth century ce, Greek grammarian of Eg-r,pt,rvho does preserv'e some traditions of identifiably genuineEgvptian origin, can be regarded as the last gasp of nativehieroglyphic scholar:ship, anci plotinus (third-century ceEgvptlan-born Roman) on hierogl,r,phs can be understoodto sav something meaningftil about the svstem. With re-gard to Piotinus himself, some scholars no longer regardit as a geographical accident that he lvas born in MiddleEgvpt and are rvilling to explore his affinities with Egyp-tian thought. The existence of authors such as Manethoand Horapollo, the material relating to Eg.r,ptian reiigionprovided by Plutarch (first-century ce Greek) and Apu-leius (second-century cE Roman), and the intimate inter-reiationship betrveen the Eglptian and Greek Isis materi-als are only some of the indications that a culturaiapaftheid such as that envisaged by man-"- scholars simpl:ldoes not account for what is attested. One Greek scholarwho may r,vell have had unusually expert know,ledge ofEg1,pt is Eratosthenes (third-centurv ecr Greek), though

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man!- modern scholars do not consider tl-re king list as-

".iU.a to him to be his authentic \ iork' This king list in-

cludes translations of the roval names that incoryorate

u..r.ur" renditions of u'ords and hierogiyphs' Eratos-

theneswaslibrarianofAlexandria,andhisexperimentto

"ul"rrtu," the circumference of the earth shows that he

traveled as far as Aswan'

The figure of Thoth, Egyptian god of u'isdom and writ-

ing and luthor of sacred books' was the focus of a reli-

gilr. ,yrrtll"sis in late antiquity thal gave rise to a body

If *,titirrg, in Greek known as the Corpus Hermeticum'

Thoth was equated with Greek Hermes' Roman Mercur-

ius, and (according to the Persian-Jer''u'ish author Artapa-

nrr.) UiUIi"ul Moses. A number of scholars have proposed

Egyptian analogues and antecedents for materials and

"Jr,""p,, in the Hermetica' Thoth-Hermes and the Her-

-"ti.u provide a bridge from late antiquity to Renais-

sunce Ll.ope, when they-anci Greek texts as a whole-

*"r".edi,co,,eredandtranslatedbl.Italianscholarssuchas Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola' and Giordano

Bruno.In medieval times, the main source of information

about Egypt avaiiable to European scholars rvas the Bible'

fhen the iurg"-s.al" encounter betu'een Europe and the

Middle East began, with the Cr-usades (eleventh to thir-

teenth centuries cr), which opened up an exotic realm to

European experience and imagination' This u'as an indu-

bitabie factor in the genesis of European fascination u'ith

the ancient Near East, including Eglpt' but for a long

time the primary motivations for visiting the Near East

remained crusading and religious pilgrimage (which were

often identical). The Crusades brought Europeans face to

face r.r,ith the Arabs'civilization and language and (along

withtheMus]imoccupationofspain)begantheprocessby which Greek lear-ning reentered western Europe' Greek

literature would dramatically increase the available mate-

rials deaiing with Eglpt and foment much new interest'

while travel to the Uiddle East-including Eglpt-wouldtake on a much more scholarly and antiquarian cast' Both

thesetendencieswouldemergestronglvintheRenais.sance.

Along with the development (or relival) of humanistic

philosophy, the Renaissance was characterized by the

flo.u"tlrg of an interest in antiquity focusing on but not

limited to the classical civilizations' This interest wds far

from merely academic, but was predicated on the premise

that the wisdom and accomplishments of the "ancients"

canServeasamodelforpresentendeavors,andasanin-centive for excelience' This movement was fueled by the

obelisks and other Egyptian and Eglptianized monu-

ments in Rome itself' R"t'uittu"t" scholarship subsumed

the classical texts' Egyptian content and was intrigued by

Eglpt for its own sake, attaching considerable impor-

EGYPTOLOGY 449

tance to Egrptian religion' ln a sense' the Renaissance

was pickin! up r'r'here the classical rvorld lelt off' as Eg5'p-

tian deities and mYsteries had been among the most pop-

ular in the Roman Empire' There has been a tendency

to regard the Eglptianizing elements of Renaissance (and

subsfquentll' fdight"t"'''ent) culture as more faqade than

substance, but some recent scholarship has questioned

this position.Aithough all of Father Athanasius Kircher's life fell

within the serrenteenth century he straddled the cusp

betweentheRenaissanceandtheEniightenment.ThisIearned Jesuit, rvho is often unfairly ridiculed for his un-

successful attempts to read hieroglyphs' made signal con-

tributions to Egyptian studies, as weil as to other fields'

suchasSinologyandgeograph},.Iversen(1971)rightlyre-g;.J, Kir.t"ri, "th" father of modern Eglptology'" He

r.r,as the first European scholar to write a grammar of Cop-

tic,whichherecognizedasaformoftheancientEgyptianlanguage. He also produced legible copies of hieroglyphic

inrJ.ipiiorrr, as did his older contemporary G' Hoerwart

,onHohenburg,authorofTlrcsaurusHietoglyphicorum'The rigorous exploration and description of the Great

ey.u..rid b1' John Greaves, published io Ptrantidograplzia

fiOqO),rn'as probabll' the first instance of scientific archae-

ology in Eglpt, just as Kircher's Coptic grammar was the

staiing poi-r,, fo, Eglptian philoiogy Likewise' the study

of Eg5,ptian art can be said to begin u'ith a pioneering

.*poli,ion of an aesthetic of Eglptian sculpture in its own

t..rr'r, b1' the eighteenth-century artist Giambattista Pir-

anesi.The Enlightenment paved the u'a-v for the decipher-

ment of pre-Coptic Eglptian in a number of concrete

rvays. Great interest in the tlpology and origins of writ-

ings and language, focusing on Chinese' Eg5'ptian' and

UJbr"*, p.ouid"d important impetus tort'ard decipher-

ment. In the seventeenlh century the English philosopher

John Locke studied ancient Jerr"ish coins n'ith inscriptions

in the Paleo-Hebreu' alphabet; in the eighteenth century'

the Phoenician/Paleo-Hebreu' script u'as definitively de-

"iffr"r.a, as \'vas the script used for Palm1-rene Aramaic'

Crfptog.upny, used in inter-national intngue' made great

;.i;"ti-;ihe earll'work of Trithemius to the expertise

of Isaac Ner."'ton's older contemporary John Wallis' The

mathematical discoteries of Gottfried \Alilhelm Leibniz of

the sel,enteenth century added to the to.gibox of decipher-

ment procedures. rv\rilliam Warburton anticipated some of

the arguments of the decipherers of E'g5'ptian' calling for

a ,e;ection of the s1'rnbolic/Neoplatonist approach' Thus'

at the beginning of the nineteenth century Georg

Friedrich Grotefend was making the first strides in the de-

.ip}r".*"rr, of OId Persian cuneiform' even while Sylves-

t.. d. Su.t'and Johan Akerblad achieved their initial suc-

cesses in the decipherment of Demotic'

450 EGYPTOLOGY

It has been normative for moder-n Egyptology to defineitself as beginning rvith the decipherment of the nativescripts and pre-Coptic forms of the Eglptian ianeuage,conslrmmated though not singlehandedly' achieved by'J.-F. Champollion. The success ol this decipherment de-pended on the affirmation of the essential phoneticismof Egyptian writing and the rejection of the symbolic-metaphorical-allegorical perspective; this in turn seemedto entail the reiection of much of rvhat classical sourcescontain relative to Eg1pt. It ,"vas the culmination of a pro-cess that had gathered steam in rhe seventeenth centurywith the increasing emphasis on pure rationalism and therise ol empiricism. To some extent, the decipherers andtheir immediate successors were simply'ovenvhelmed bvtheir nerv-found abilitv to read te\ts in pre-Coptic Egr,p-tian and to plunge into the deep t'el1 of primary sources.More problematic was the increasing tendency to denyprofundity and insight to the Eglptians in contrast rviththe Greeks, a development that has been explored in N{ar-tin Bernal's controversial r.vork ( 1987). Scholars' apprecia-tion o[ the content of the Egyptian texts r.vas limited byn-rdimentary understandine of grammar and lericon andcolored by nineteenth-centurv theories of "primitive" 1an-guages. Althoi-rgh it is dr-rbious u'hether the beginning ofEgvptology can be adequatelv defined as occurring at theturn of the nineteenth century it remains clear that thedecipherment is a watershed, separating modern Egr.1rtol-ogy from the history or prehiston., that preceded it.

The decipherment of pre-Coptic Eglptian was an inrel-lectual triumph of a ven. high order, all the more so be-cause the texts used, primarilv of the Greco-Roman pe-riod, rvould strike fear into the heart of anv beginningstudent of Middle Egvptian toda,r: .\s alreadv noted, clas-sical authors are often blamed for propounding a stereo-type of the hieroglyphs as esoteric s1'mbols knorvable onlythrough initiation, and thr-rs for delaving correct decipher-ment. In the context of Greco-Roman texts, 'we can see

horv this attitude needs to be qualified. Dr-rring the periodof the classical ',vriters, knorvledge of the hieroglyphs r.vas

steadilv declining among the Egvptlans themselves, rvhor.vere using Demotic as the utilitarian script and introduc-ing the Old Coptic alphabet. N,lanv of the Ptolemaic andRoman hieroglyphic texts feature hundreds ol new hiero-ghphs and new values of hieroglrphs, based on graphicvariation, phonetic change, puns, elc., and the teaching ofthis tradition was increasinglv specialized and restricted.In light of the scribal tradition of the time, the characrer-ization by some classical authors is far more appropriatethan many modern rvriters have concluded.

An important aspect of the legacv of the deciphermentto modern Egyptolog"v is the philological tilt rvhich hascharacterized Eg-v'-ptologv as an academic discipline-anenlph:rsis that has sometimes been questioned or qr-rali-

fied bv its orvn practitioners. There has been a tension be-tween philologv and archaeolog-v/art history that only inrecent decades has begun to yield to an integrated or ho_listic vieri', largely follor,ving the lead of H. G. Fischer. Ingeneral, Egyptologv continues to define itself by the abil_ity to read the language; with very limited exceptions, hi_eroglyphic literacy has been a "litmus test" for definingwho is an Eglptologist.

The rise of archaeology/decipher-rnent-based disci-plines in the first half of the nineteenth centurv did notmerelv open up ne-uv vistas of the past and extend our reli-able continuum of history. It aiso raised questions thatwere ambivaient and sometimes threatening for the intel-Iectual and ideological status quo. Like Dar.u.inian evo-h-ition and geology, archaeology-which r,vas especiallyclosely linked with the latter-attempted to address thereconstruction of the past independent of Scripture, andto challenge the "biblical" reckoning of the age of theearth. The reading of royal names of the pharaonic periodquickll- shorved that the king list given in Manethos Ae-gyptiaca corresponded ciosely with the original monu-ments, er.'en in Eglpts earlv periods, and Manetho's totalsreached back to a very remote antiquitv. There rvere sev-eral responses to the advent of this extrabiblical data. Atone extreme, some rejected archaeology and "pagan"sources (though they r,vere used and transmitted by manyearly Christian authorities, such as Eusebius) and consid-ered it impious even to appeal to extrabiblical sources toatfirm the tlrth of Scripture. At another extreme, somescholars u,elcomed the opportunity to cut the Bible downto size, as it'uvere-especially the Hebrerv scriptr-rres andthe Jeri,'s. N4any schoiars used archaeological and docu-mentan'/inscriptional discoveries to proof-text or vindi-cate biblical accounts. Some (iike A. H. Savce in his 1904fulontLnwt Facts and Higher Critical Fancies) regarded ar-chaeologl'and Near Eastern te\ts as proriding a cor.rec-tive io iviral u,ere seen as the dangerous excesses of thehigher critics. In both the archaeological and textualspheres, these are controversies that continue todav. Ex-cavations u,ere sometimes undertaken in order to resolvebiblical questions, and findings rvere often interpreted ina biblical iight, as indicated by such titles of earlv excava-tion memoirs as The Store-Cit1t of Pithom cLnd the Route ofthe Exodts or The Land of Goshen. The Famine Stela onthe island of Sehei, copied by Charles E. Wilbour, was im-mediatelv compared with the biblicat t'amine in the Jo-seph nar-rative and published by H. Brugsch under thetitle Die biblischen sieben Jahre von Hungersnoth (1891).The proposal (nor,v rvidely accepted) that the Eglptian In-structiot'ts of- Amenompe ivas a source of part of the Bookof' Proverbs met with strong resistance from some schol-ars. Undoubtedly, the neu, Near Eastern cliscoveries pro-vided an ancient context and milieu for the Bible fbr the

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first tinre. Meanu,hile, n-ranv scholars applied tl-remselves

to learning as much about ancient Eg\pt and its nei-eh-

bors as possible u,ithout ulterior biblical concerns.One of the inain thlrsts of nineteenth-centur-\'Egyptol-

og--v \vas the cornpilation of copies of inscribed standingmonuments by individual scholars and rrajor expedi-tions, an enterprise initiated by the Napoleonic expedi-tion. Some copyists ranged over Eglpt and Nubia; othersstayed in one inscription-rich area. The most celebratedu,ere Champollion himself, Ippolito Rosellini, John Gard-ner Wilkinson, Robert Hay, Prisse d'Avennes, Charles E.

Wilbour, and Karl Richard Lepsius. Jan-res Breasted'sgreat \\,ork of collation and translatton, Anciert Records

of Eg1,pt, rvhile published after the turn of the trventiethcentury', is red15, the culmination of the nineteenth-centun'copying effoft, and the Epigraphic Sun,ey he ini-tiated is one of its offspring.

The iirst scholarly attempt to explore the relationshipbetu,een the Egtptian and Semitic languages r,,'as madeb-v the nineteenth-centun. philologisr Theodor Benfe--v

rvhen Coptic r.r'as still the only form of Eg1'ptlan knou,n.As research on pre-Coptic Eg-vptian adr,anced, Egvptolo-gists and linguists propounded dil'erse vieu's of the rela-tionships-if anv-bet\veen Eglptian and neighboringlanguages. For some, Eglptian u,as .st.tl generis or repre-sented a primitive t1-pe of language in rvhich the u,ord and

root \\,ere the same (thus P. Renouf, see belou'), a rriew

echoed bv the great American linguist William Du,ightWhitnel: In this approach, similarities betu,een Egyptianand Semitic \\/ere seen as superficial, illusory,, and/or theresult of borrou'ing. For some of these scholars, Egvptian,u'hile essentialh,unrelatable in a phl,logenetic sense, was

regarded as somehou, essentia]lv "Afr"ican." (Perhaps

these r,ieu's of Egrptian u,ere faciiitated b1'the strong spe-

cialization in Chinese of a number of nineteenth-centuryEglptologists, such as Charles Wyciiffe Goodu'in, SamueiBirch, and Renouf, linked rvith the then-current Euro-pean stereotlpes of the Chinese language. Could the ma-jor shift from "nineteenth" to "tu'entieth" century or"pre-Ernan" to "Berlin school" Eglptologl' [see below']

have been partly a function of a shift from the ascendancy

of iargely Sinological Egyptologists to others u'ho rtereprimarill,semitists?) For others, Eglptian became a com-ponent of ph1'logenetic schemes, some of them prefigur-ing proposals that remain part of the current linguisticdiscussion. For Lepsius (also a pioneer of the study ofmoderrr Nubian), Egyptian belonged to a group essen-

tiailv similar to Afroasiatic; for Jens Daniel Carolus Lieb-Iein, t]ris itself r.r,as part of a group tentatirrelr' designated"Noahitic," much like the proposed "super-family" or"macro-familr'" of Nostratic.

As the decipher-rnent ushered in modern, "scientific"Eglptolo-q1,, so the vn'ork of Adolf Ennan and his col-

EGYPTOLOGY 451

leagues and students in the Berlin School, starting in tl're1880s, ir-ritiated the modern, "scientific" phase of Egvptianphilologr''. One aspect of this u'as a marked turn in the

direction of Semitic for the perceived affinities of Egvp-tian. There were seteral fundamental reasons for thisstance: (1) the identification of the natir,e scripts as unvo-calized and including in their inr,entory the aleph and thealtin; (2) the consequent identification of the Eglptianroot as essentially similar to the Semitic root, and thepursuit of methodologicall-v rigorous lexical/etvrtologicalcomparisons; (3) the anah,sis of Coptic verb-classes as

coresponding to types of older consonantal root; (4) theidentification by Erman of the Stative ("Pseudoparti-

ciple," "Old Perfective") form of the Egyptian vet'b as cor-responding to the Akkadian Stative ("Pernansive") andother Semitic forrns; and (5) the insistence on the para-digmatic alignment of pronouns and grammatical forma-tives in Egyptian and Semitic. The general methodologi-cal rigor of the Berlin scholars suggested productive linesof research, yielded impressive results, and at least insome quaders enhanced the u'ork's credibilit-v. It did,hor,r,ever, become mired in nationalistic bickering, espe-

cialll' among English, French, and German scholars. Er-man and his cou,orker-s propounded a clear division ofthe ancient Eg-vptian language into stages, each of rvhichrequired its orvn grammar; and the r,i,ork of Kurl Sethe

and others on the verbal SlrStem gave rise to the "classical"

Egrptoiogical r,ieu, that the geminating and non-geminating forms con'espond to the Semitic categories ofperfect and imperfect. The perfect/imperfect dichotomvr.r,as pou,erfully influential and is still maintained at least

in par.t bv manv Egrptclogists, aithough its monolithicnature has been increasinglv questioned, beginning rtiththe u,ork of Battiscombe Gunn in the 1920s. The strongSemitic cast assumed b1'Eglptian in the u'ork of the "Ber-

lin school" u,as a major target of criticism by opponentsof the neu, approach, such as Edouard Nar-ille and Gaston

Maspero. Indeed, Masperot emphasis on Berber compar-isons actually pointed to a more balanced assessment ofthe place of Eg-r,ptian in u,hat u-ould come to be regardedin the 1930s to 1950s as Hamito-Semitic or Afroasiatic.

Under the leadership of the Berlin scholars, remarkablepinnacles r,r,ere reached before World \4'ar II, with Er-man's grammars, Kurt Sethei magisterial u,ork on theEglptian verb, and the V/onerbuch der cigl,ptischenSpraclrc (1926-1963), to mention on11, a feu' of the mostoutstanding achievements.

It is often assumed that pre-Berlin Eglptian philologyu,as a blundering, haphazard, entireiy "unscientific" en-

terprise. This caricature is r-einlorced bv the often-

reprinted careless u'orks of E. A. \Ar. Budge (r,',ho feli far"

short of the standards of the best of the "oid school" andu,as blasteC by his "pre-Berlin" colleague Renouf), and b1'

EGYPTOLOGY

the crusading denunciations of Breasted. This is a graveinjustice. The best nineteenth-century Egyptian philolo-gists were learned in manv other languages, includingChinese, as Champollion and Thomas Young had been,and in the new discipline of "comparative philologv" orlinguistics as represented by the Grimm brothers (JacobLudwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl), Franz Bopp, and otherarchitects of that field. Their work often shows an emdi-tion and sophistication for which it is given scant credittoday.

The study of language rvas stronglv related to otheremergent comparative studies in anthropology, folklore,and religion, all of rvhich rvere significant in nineteenth-century Egyptologv. One of the scholars mosr active inthis research was English, Peter Le Page Renouf, whosubscribed to the then-popular etrrnological theory ofmyth. With this perspective, he compared EgyptianWenen-Nefer with the Hare of Natir,'e American mythology,not on a diffusionist level but on u-hat might be called anarchetlpal level. Follorving the publication of James G.Frazer's The Golden Bough ( 1890), some Egyptologists ap-plied his approach to Eglptian materials and became ad-herents of the "Myth and Ritual" school. Moving into thetwentieth century a seminal development in the study ofreligion was the publication of Rudolf Otto's Das Heilige(The ldea of the Hoh', 1917), and the rise of the phenome-nology of religion. This had a strong effect on the studyof Egyptian religion, especiallv in the work of Dr-rtchEglptologists, beginning rvith G. r'an der Leeur.v and con-tinuing with A. de Buck, C. J. Bleeker, J. Zandee, M.Heerma van Voss, and Herman te Velde. Outside of theNetherlands, such major contributors to the field as Sieg-fried Morenz and Erik Hornung har-e also taken a phe-nomenological approach.

In generai, it can be noted that a dispassionate lookat the history of Eglptologv refutes the accusation thatEgyptologists have been (or are) isolated and disregardother fields. In language, archaeolo-s-v, literature, myth,and religion, Egyptolog-v trom the beginning has been in-tertwined, engaged, and interactive rvith other disciplinesand has attempted to locate itself in a "global" context-as witnessed bv Baron von Bunsens mid-nineteenth-century work Aegyptens Stelle in der llleltgeschichte.

Nineteenth-centurn' Egyptian archaeology began, andcontinued for decades, as an unregulated and fiercel}, na-tionalistic enterprise focused on the acquisition of objectsfor major mllseums, and it was inseparable from the pur-chase of and other forms of prospecting for antiquities.Giovanni Belzoni, perhaps the most colorful figure ofearly nineteenth-century expioration, has been revealedas a more careful excavator and recorder than the stereo-tvpe would suggest. A re-eulaton' authority was intro-duced in 1858, when the French scholar Auguste Mariette(r.r,ho would also orieinate the plot for Aida) was ap-

pointed the first Conservator of Antiquities in a newlyformed government department.

If Erman marks the turning point in philologv, WilliamMatthew Flinders Petrie marks the shift from the exclu-sive focus on objets d'art, inscriptions, and monumentalremains to "difi archaeology," introducing a new set ofpriorities and a methodological approach far more rigor-ous than other work then being done in Egypt. The use ofstratigraphy and the concept of the type-series was funda-mental in his approach; the type-series is exemplified byhis ambitious development of the "sequence Dating" sys-tem for Predynastic pottery. Petrie did not ignore mon-umental remains, but he studied them with increasedprecision, as in his early work on the metrology of Stone-henge and his Giza survey (undertaken initially to testclaims about the measurements of the Great Pyramid).By todays standards, Petrie's work was very fast and wascharacterized by taking small samples of many sites, butby the standards of the times it was a major systematicendeavor. Petries publication program was just as re-markable: a steady stream of excavation reports publish-ing his materials in an orderly fashion, year in and vearout. Petrie believed strongly that all archaeologv is salvagearchaeology and saw his excavations as a frantic raceagainst time. In addition to transforming the archaeologyof Egwt, he brought his rigorous approach to the EasternMediterranean region, where he began to work in an ef-fort to follow the Hyksos (whose remains he correctlyidentified at Tell el-Yahudiyyeh) back to their homeland(Hltksos and Israelite Cities, 1906). Although Jacques deMorgan first correctly identified Predynastic remains as

prehistoric, it was Petrie who placed the analysis of Pre-dynastic materials on a rigorous footing, and prehistoryremained a major theme of his lifes r.vork, culminatingin his Prehistoric Egypt (1920) and The Making of Egypt(1939). At Abydos, he sorted out the site after Emile Am61-

ineau's excavations, and he ct-rrrecily ideutified and or-dered the tombs of the rulers of the Early Dynastic period,bringing that formative epoch firmly into the historv ofEg1pt. Important light was cast on the beginning of the

Egyptian state by the excavation at Hierakonpoiis by Pe-

trie's students James E. Quibeil and Frederick W. Green.Outspoken and often abrasive, Petrie cared little about theopinions of others, and his Brirish School of Archaeologyin Egypt/Egyptian R.esearch Account had rocky relationswith the Egypt Exploration Society, which became thedominant British Egyptological organization. Amelia Ed-wards, the authoc traveler, and Egypt enthusiast, en-

dowed the Edwards Professorship of Egyptology at the

University of London, emphasizing the teZtching of scien-

tific excavation and created for Petrie as first incumbent.The United States entered the world of Egyptologv dur-

ing the nineteenth century although not until the 1890s

rvas a reguiar university position in that field created

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there. Memphis, Tennessee, is named after Memphis,Eglpt; a delegation of Memphis officials visited Egypt andtook back a block from the original Memphis given tothem by Mariette, a profoundiy Eglptian act. George R.G1iddon, an American consul in Egrpt during the pre-Civii War period, popularized Egyptologv widely throughhis lectures and his book Ancient Eg1'pt (1847), whichwent through many editions. A self-professed "Champol-lionist," he seems to have been the first American scholarto learn Eglptian. His insistence on the presen'ation andconsenration of antiquities was remarkably forward-looking. Perhaps the dominant American in nineteenth-century Egyptology, though he kept a r-erv modest profile,was Charles Edwin Wilbour, a Neu' \brk journalist whofled to avoid indictment with the T\r,eed Ring of "ma-chine" politicians. Moving first to Spain and then toEg3pt, Wilbour became known as an Eglptologist, collec-tol and indefatigable copyist of inscriptions, r,^,,hich hegenerously made available to colleagues. His collectionand library formed the nucleus of the Brooklyn Museumof Arts Eglotian Collection and Wilbour Library In thelater nineteenth century Charles Moldenke, an adherentof the "old" (i.e., pre-Berlin) school, moved from Germanvto the United States, r.r,here he rather picturesqueiy rebuilthis castle.

American Eglptolog-v as an academic and institutionalphenomenon, and ongoing fieldwork bv American schol-ars, began with James Henry Breasted, generally regardedas the giant of American Eglptologl'. This great scholarand teacher was also responsible for a significant ad-vancement of the place accorded to Eglpt and the NearEast in the human and Western heritage-what he caliedthe "New Past." His zeal and evan-eelical style inspiredlarge public audiences as well as wealthy patrons; he wasan extremely effective fundraiser and publicist. As profes-sor of Eglptology at the University of Chicago, beginningin 1896, he embarked on the expedition mentioned above,which culminated in the publication of Ancient Records ofEg1'pt (1906), and he rvas the major force in the establish-ment of the Oriental Institute. A student of Erman andvigorous partisan of the Berlin school, Breasted firml5, es-tablished the "new" movement as norrnative for the studSr

of Eglptian ianguage and chronologf in North America.His history textbooks, especially Ancient Tintes: A Historyof the Earll- World (1915), appreciativelv revier.r,ed by The-odore Roosevelt, were extremely influential in the treat-ment of Egypt and its neighbors in the secondary schoolcurriculum. Some of his other outstanding contributionsr,r,ere his authoritative Histotlt of Eg'pt (1905), ground-breaking and insightful studies of Eglptian religion, andconsummate editions of two very difficult and imporlanttexts, the Memphite Theology and the Edwin Smith Sur-gicai Pap1,nrs. In works such as The Da*tt of Conscience(1933), he insisted on the morai vision and sensitivitv of

EGYPTOLOGY 453

the ancient Egvptians. The Oriental Institute itself and hisstudents u,ho carried on his work are probably his mostimportant legacy.

The Victorian author Amelia B. Edu'ards, mentionedabove, was a major benefactor and popularizer of Egypt-ology whose books, such as A Thousand Miles Up the Nile(1877), exerted considerable influence. During that pe-riod, other women also began to leave their mark onEgyptology. Mary Brodrick and Helen M. Tirard areknown mainly for translating French and Ger-rnan worksby Maspero, Emile Brugsch, and others into English, withrevisions and addenda attesting to their ou,n scholarship;they also r.r,rote articles and general books. Husband-and-wife teams worked in the field, notably Annie and EdwardQuibell and Winifred and Paul Brunton, a tlpe of collabo-ration later immortalized by Elizabeth Peters (BarbaraMertz) in her "Peabody and Emerson" mysteries. Wini-fred Brunton, an artist, painteci the memot'able pcitraitsin Kings and Queens of Anciertt Egypr (1926) and GreatOnes of Ancient Egtpt (1930). The first \\,oman Egyptolo-gist of major stature uras Petrie's student Margaret A.Murray, r.l'ho wrote prodigiously on folklore, Europeanrvitchcraft, and comparative mythologl, as weil as

Egyptology. Her work was often controversiai; her oft-reprinted s-ynthesis Tlte Splendour That Vlas Egypt (1949)

elaborates many of her ideas. Her Elententary EgyptianGrannntar (1905) and Elementary Coptic Grantmar (1911)

were long popuiar. The title of her autobiography, M1t FirstHundred Years (1963), gets one up on Petriei Seventy Years

in Atchaeology (1931). This can only be seen as a good-natured dig, as she u'as extremely devoted to her mentor.

The first concession granted to women field directorsin Eg1pt r.vas the temple precinct of Mut (South Karnak);the archaeologists rvere Margaret Benson and Janet Gour-lay, who published The kmple of Mut in Asher in 1899. As

was the case in other academic fieids, it uras not easy forwomen to pursue Egrptological studies or careers in theearly decades; Margaret Murray was discouraged fromstudying anthropologl', and Kurt Sethei hostility com-pelled Elise Baumgartel to stud5r u,ith \Alaiter Wreszinskiin Konigsberg. Special mention must be made of AmiceCalverly's exemplary u'ork at Abydos and that of GertrudeCaton-Thompson in the Faiyrrm. Other u,omen scholarswho became active b1' the mid-twentieth century includeMilitza Matthieu, Miriam Lichtheim, $tiirifred Needleland Nora Scott. An unusual and fascinating figure in thehistory of Egyptologf is Dorothy Louise Eady, betterknown as Omm Setl-, who moved to Eg)?t, worked as

Selim Hassan's assistant, and made Abydos-of whichshe had unrivaled knou,ledge-her ph-vsical and spiritualhome.

The participation of women in Eglptology has in-creased until todaf it can fairly be said that its prac-titioners comprise an indiscriminate assortment of men

EGYPTOLOGY

and women. The insights and perspectives of women'sstudies brought to bear on the studv of Eglptian societyand the understanding of Eglptian art, Iiterature, and re-ligion have been more significant than the existence andnumber of female Egyptologists. In recent years, notablework has included that of Gay Robins, Lana Troy, andBetsy Bryan; Womenb Earliest Records (1989), edited byBarbara Lesko, rvas a benchmark for the study of womenin the ancient Near East.

The Third Reich affected Eg5rptology as it did so muchthat happened globally during its cataclysmic twelve years(1933-1945), and so much that has happened since.Egyptoiogy continued in German and Austrian institu-tions of higher learning. A contemporary reviewer notedthe appearance of Wolfgang Helck-s monograph Der Ein-fluss der Militiitfiihrer in der 18. _lgltptischen Dynastie(1,939) as a sign of the times. In the neighboring field ofAssyriology, it was possible for Erich Ebeling to includein a criticism of Benno Landsbergers work a call for theestablishment of a "rein deutsche \Vissenschaft" ("purelyGerman science"); Landsberger \\-as one of a number ofeminent Near Eastern scholars trho succeeded in emi-grating. Among Egyptologists, Ludriig Borchardt movedto Switzerland; Georg Steindorff (rrho was deleted fromthe masthead of the Zeitschri'fi fiir.lg1.ptische Sprache dur-ing the 1930s), Bernard Bothmer, Rudolf Anthes, andWaiter Federn sought refuge in the United States. Hans-Jakob Polotsky, who was to have been Sethe's successorat Gottingen, settled in Palestine, 'uvhere he becamefounder of the "Jerusalem school" and of Israeli Egyptol-ogy. Polotsky went on to be recognized as the preeminentEgyptological linguist of rhe second haif of the twentiethcentury. Raphael Giveon, whose Eglptological studieswere then in the future, settled on a kibbutz.

Past the midpoint of the twentierh century the study ofthe Egyptian language'uvas dominated by Alan Gardineq ascholar of almost unparalleled productivity, consummatestandards, and powerful influence. In addition to hismany Egyptological publications, Gardiner also wrote no-table works in general linguistics. The three editions ofhis Egyptian Grammar (1927-1957) provided generationsof students in many countries uith their curriculum inMiddle Eglptian. Aspects of the Gardiner paradigm rverequestioned by Battiscombe Cunn (studies in EgtptianSynta-r, 1924), Hans Jakob Polots\ (Etudes de synta_recopte, 1944, and many other works). and Thomas WiliiamThacker (The Relationship of the Seniric and Egyptian Ver-bal Sltstems, 1954), but the comprehensive and compendi-ous nature of Gardiner's rvork made it difficult to super-sede. Aithough Polotsky never produced a comprehensivegrammat his analysis of the Eglptian verbal system be-gan to achieve increasing acceptance in the 1960s. Hissystem, elaborated and in some \\'ars revised bv Morde-

chai Gilula, John B. Callender, Friedrich Junge, WolfgangSchenkel, Helmut Satzinge4, Antonio Loprieno, EricDoret, Leo Depuydt, and others, became known in the1980s as the "Standard Theory." The generai trend hasbeen to accord greater nuance and subtlety to Egyptiansyntax.

One of the major aspects of the study of EgSrptian reli_gion in the mid-twentieth century especially in theEnglish-speaking world, was the identification of Egyp-tian and other ancient Near Eastern thinking as "mytho-poeic thought"-defined as a mode of thought that auto-matically personifies its surroundings and all observablephenomena and is thus incapable of philosophical ab-straction. This claim was associated especially with thepost-Breasted "Chicago schooi" centering on John Wilsonand Henri Frankfort; it was presented in its most classicform in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946),entitled Before Philosophy (1951) in its abridged edition.Frankfort and his colleagues were strongly influenced bythe French anthropologist Lucien L6r,y-Bruhl, who ar-gued his concept of the "primitive mentality" in In pensdesauvage (The Savage Mind, 196211966); L6r,y-Bruhl. him-self had second thoughts in notes that lvere pubiishedonly after his death. The "mythopoeic" thesis-entailingthat thought must be emancipated from mlth before phil-osophical reasoning is possible-has been increasinglychallenged and rejected, for example, by Lana Troy, Her-man te Velde (who iabels it a "superfluous fiction"), andM. Biloio.

As was the case with reiigion, the vision of Egyptianpolitical and cuitural history in the post-World War II pe-riod was strongiy influenced by John Wilson of Chicago,especiall-v: his forcefully argued work The Burden of Egypt( 195 1 ; paperback, The Cuhure of Ancient Egltpr). This workregarded the post-New Kingdom period as one of declinein which E_eJpt lacked the cultural vigor to continue theconstructive growth of its tradition or to interact cre-atively with its neighbors. Although Wiison eventuallyqualified this judgment in his autobiography, it set thetone for a devaluation of the Late period and a minimiz-ing of the Egyptian contribution to the Greco-Roman

"vorld. Staning in the 1970s, the pendulum has been

sr.vinging in the opposite direction, and increasing atten-tion has been iavished bn all aspects ol the post-Empireperiods, beginning perhaps with Kenneth Kitchent com-pendious and ambitio:us Third Intermediate period (1972).

The profound and elegant exposition of rhe principlesof Egyptian art by Heinrich Schrifer has had at least asmuch staring power as Gardiner's Grammar and hasbridged the period from World War I through the 1970sin its successive incarnations (lst edition i919, through4th edition, 1964; English translation bv John Baines withintroduction by E. Brunner-Traut, 1974). Among the

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mention the studies of the canon of proportion by E' h'er-

sen and Gay Robins and the proposals on symbolism

in ar1 by Philippe Derchain and Wolfhart Westendorf'

Fiscl'rer introdrrced an increasingly fiuitfui focus on the

interrelationships between hieroglyphs and representa-

tional ar1.

If Tutankhamunt tomb was the Egyptian discovery (or

perhaps the archaeological discovery regardless of region)

ihu, *or, captured the public imagination in the first half

of the trventieth century, the Aswan High Dam salvage

campaign in Nubia has been the most influential and sem-

irrrt .r..rt in Egyptology as well as Nubiology in the sec-

ond half of the century. Its influence and consequences

have been great and far-reaching' It appealed to the popu-

lar imagination and spread a global awareness of E5'p-

tianmo-numentsandculturewhilecallingforthaglobalcoordinated effort of unprecedented extent' Under the

auspices of UNESCO, the campaign was conducted on the

fr"*ir" that the threatened sites and monuments are the

"o-*ortreasureofallhumankind'Manycountriessentmissions to Nubia, including some in which Egyptology

had been of low profiie or virtually nonexistent' A number

oi lmpo.tunt archaeologists who had never worked in the

NiIe Valley became directors of expeditions' among them

William Y. Adams; this cross-fertilization brought more

anthropological perspectives and new field methods into

fgyptirn u."fru"ology and enriched its theoretical devel-

oi*".rt as well as practice' The amount of fund-raising

was prodigious, and the institutional base and infrastruc-

ture of Eglptology expanded' Some major discoveries'

such as the A-Group cemetery at Qustul' provided impor-

tantnewmateria]andsometimesgaverisetoControvers},'The autonomy of ancient Nubian studies received impor-

tant impetus. It is to some extent the expansion initiated

in that era that has more recently become the victim of

the belt-tightening, downsizing, and changed priorities of

the late twentieth century' Despite this' the intervening

decades have seen the flowering of Eglptology in many

countries, including Japan, Spain' Argentina' and China'

Afrocentrism or Pan-Africanism is a perspective-

some would say an ideology-that has had considerable

appeal among African Americans and Akican intellectu-

uiu. ft i. one of the most truly grassroots and most contro-

versial approaches to ancient Egypt' It comprises trvo

strandswhichhaveconverged:oneinAmerica'beginningwith G. G. M' James (Stolen kgacy, 1954)' and one in Af-

rica, starting with the work of the Senegalese physicist

Cheik Anta Diop (e.g., The African Oigin of Civilization;

Myth or Reatity?, 1974). Afrocentrism has gained a u'ide

dlo*i.rg in the African-American community on all lev-

els of education and is especially identified with authors

such as Molefi Keti Asante, Ivan Van Sertima' Maulana

EGYPTOLOGY 455

Karenga, and Legrand H' Clegg III' ln Africa' Diop's work

has beln continued and broadened bv Th6ophile Obenga'

According to the Afrocentrists, ancient Egrpt uras a black

African civiiization, and the ancient Egyptian Knil ("the

Black Land") refers not to the soil but to the inhabitants'

Cultural parailels throughout Africa (many aiready noted

by mainstream scholarship) are taken to demonstrate the

black African nature of Eglpt, and Eglpt is held to have

originated much if not all of the cultural legacy of the

clalsical worid. These points are, according to Afrocen-

trists, the subject of a wide cover-up by "establishment"

scholars, against whom considerable hostility is some-

times expressed. Afrocentrist claims have recently re-

ceived a detailed and sympathetic discussion by Martin

Bernal in his controversial wotk, Black Athena' and in the

Iate 1980s and 1990s Afrocentric issues are being ad-

dressed by mainstream Egyptologists' American Afrocen-

trism arose in a context of the African-American commu-

nityt attempt to arri\/e at a positive self-definition in the

face of second-class status and cultural contempt' and Af-

ricanAfrocentrismaroseinananalogousprocessinthervake of coionialism' Martin Bernai is compelling' how-

ever, rvhen he warns against the tendenc-v to expose ulte-

rior motives for minority paradigms rt'hile assuming that

the dominant Eurocentric paradigm is objective' It is un-

deniable that scholarly and normative views of ancient

Egypt have been strongly affected b-v- racist-and colonialist

stereotlping. Manv scholars have even denied that the

tcushite nventy-fifth dynasty u'as of black African origin'

and manv of the classical u'orks of Eglptology contain

statements that are insensitive, to sa'v the least' Ivan Van

Sertima insists that Kushites colonized Mexico' and Th6o-

phile Obenga and others attempt to remove Eglptian

f.o* th. Afroasiatic language family', providing many ety-

mologies claimed to link Eglptian rvith "sub-Saharan" or

"Negio-African" languages, such as Wolof' One partial by-

proJuct of Afrocentrism has been the increased apprecia-

tion of Nubia as an autonomous high civilization' Another

interesting development is the adoption of ancient Eglp-

lcian maat as an ethic for the Afiican-American commu-

nity. The first generally acknouledged major African

Egy'ptologist ortside Eglpt and Sudan' M' Bilolo' teaches

at a center in Zarre named after Cheik Anta Diop'

Another approach to ancient Eg5'pt that has consider-

able popular-appeal can be described as metaphysical or

esoteric; Egyptologists generally inclu'de in this category

revisionist -upp.ou.h", to the age and construction of

Eg5ptian monuments. Egylptologists often label these ap-

p''ou"t'"'withtheratherunflatteringterms.,Egypto-mania" and "Egyptophilia" and sometimes with the less

disparaging "Eglptosophy'" The unitv implied by this Ia-

bel is less than it appears at first glance' as it encompasses

a spectlum ranging from the Rosicrucian Order to "an-

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cient astronaut" enthusiasts. Mainstream Egyptologistsgenerally reject these approaches because, as they see it,they depend on data and claims of verification outside of"scientific" methodologies; they use materials that are in_authentic or wrongly interpreted; they bypass establishedEgyptology and have not "done their homework.,, Fortheirpart, proponents ofesoteric approaches often regardthemselves as transmitting or discovering the authenticwisdom of ancient Eglpt and accuse Eg5ptologists of re_fusing to recognize its true nature or of knowingly con_cealing it. Egyptosophists generally regard establishedEgyptology as an exclusivist in__eroup that ignores thembecause they lack specialist credentials and that dismissestheir evidence without a fair examination, and they oftenexplicitiy reject the rationalist Enlightenment paradigm.The frequently polemical nature of communications onboth sides has made constructive dialogue difficult.

Ancient Eglpt has continued to figure prominently inthe symbolism and teachings of secret societies and mys_tical orders of initiates such as the Masons, the Rosi-crucians, the Golden Dawn, and the orders initiated bvAleister Crowiey; it also looms large in the lore of g.o,rp,devoted to esoteric studies, such as the Theosophical So_ciety. On one level, this is a continuation of RenaissanceHermeticism and its further Enlightenment develop_ments. The Rosicrucians consider Akhenaten a founderof their tradition and maintain an Egyptian Museum inCalifornia; the Egyptologist Max Guilmot is a member ofthe Order and has written a rather devotional pamphieton initiation in ancient Egypt as tvell as pureiy academicEgyptological publications. The monuments at Giza, es-pecially the Great pyramid and Great Sphinx, have beenthe focus of much Egyptosophical attention. Of the manyclaims made for numerological and prophetic interpreta_tions of the Great pyramid, the most celebrated have beenthose of Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scot_land, whose claims petrie first went to Egypt to test. TheAmerican trance clairvoyant Edgar Cayce gave a numberof "readings" on the history of the Giza mtnuments anda "hall of records" under the Sphin_x; the foundation ad-ministered by his descendants has lavishly subsidized ar-chaeology at Giza. Peter Tompkins and Livio Stecchinihave revived the numerological approach to Great pyra_mid measurements with a focus on correspondences withthe measurements of the planet Earth. The mathemati_cian and modern-day Hermetic philosopher R. A.Schwaller de Lubicz, along with his wife Isha, his step_daughter Lucie Lamy, and the Eg3rptologist AlexandreVarille, propounded what became known as the ,.sym_

bolist" approach to ancient Egypt. Schwaller spent yearstaking meticulous measurements of the Luxor Templeand its decoration; he interpreted it as an aliegorical map_ping of the human being as microcosm progressing

through different stages of development, in accordancewith an intricate numerical system. He expounded this inle temple de l'homme (The kmple of Man 1957/199g) andmany other works; the major advocate and popuiarizer ofSchwaller's work today is John Anthony West. During the1990s a major controversy has erupted over a geologicalexamination of the Great Sphinx by Robert Schoch andThomas Dobecki, who went to Eg1rpt at West,s invitationand published findings indicating that the Sphinx amphi-theater and body are heavily eroded by precipitation andhence millennia older than generally recognized. Anothergeologist, David Coxhill, has recently concurred in this as_sessment, which has been dismissed by most Egyptolo-gists. At least as controversial has been the related pro_posai by Eglptian-born Belgian engineer Robert Bauvalthat the Giza pyramids map the stars in Orion,s belt. Aspart of the "New Age" pursuit of global spirituality andself-improvement, there are some who follow a tiigiriypersonal vision of ancient Egyptian religion as a spiritualpath. Indeed, the Egtrptian religion has devoted adherentstotally outside of the "New Age,, community, Omm Setyhaving been one of them.

As John Baines has noted in a penetrating article on"restricted knowledge, hierarchy and decorum,, in ancientEg5rpt and Egyptology, the scholarly understanding of an_cient Eglpt's religion has shifted to a strong consider_ation, and in some cases general acceptance, of featuresthat several decades ago were the sole domain of theEgyptosophist. It can be debated how much of this is dueto the Egyptosophists, but in any case it provides com_mon ground for discussion.

Fieldwork (often with improved methodoiogy andtechnology), new data, interdisciplinary cross_fertilization,and shifting and deepening theoreticai perspectives havebeen converging to focus on a number of themes andfrontiers in current Egyptology. One important frontier isthe emergence of the Egyptian state, illuminated espe_cially by discoveries at Hierakonpolis and Abydos; in thesame breath one can perhaps mention the Neolithic"megalithic" site at Nabta playa. lSee Astronomv.l The fo_cus on the late periods has continued along with fieldworkin the Delta and Sinai, and the remarkable underwaterdiscoveries in Ptoiemaic Alexandria, which have sparkeda media outpouring on Cleopatrii.'Foreign relations havebeen highlighted by discoveries in southern Israel and theNile Delta, including the Aegean frescoes at Tell ed_Dab.a,and by textual studies, and they have been the subject ofscholarly syntheses such as Donald Redfords Egypt, Ca_naan and Israel in Ancient Times (1992). The understand_ing of Egypt under the persians, ptolemies, and Romansas a "muiticultural society" has arisen in the context ofthe debate on "multiculturalism,, in American educationand society. In the realm of language and ,uvriting, gram_

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marians hare been engaged in a reassessment and some-tjmes attempted supersession of Polotskys "Standard

Theory'," u-hile scholars of r,r,riting systems have been fo-cusing increasinglr' on the semiotic and esthetic aspectsof the Eglptian scripts. Dl,nasty "0" discoveries at Abl,doshave raised the possibilit.v that Egrptian writing mav havebeen the earliest, after all. Thanks partly to the w-ork ofFoster and the inclusion of Egyptian selections in the Nor-ton Antholog.,- of World Literature and other standard edu-cational resources, ancient Egyptian literature is moreu,idely appreciated and has begun to enter the "canon."

The lnterpretation of Eg-vptian literature and art have be-

gun to reflect the poststructuralist school of criticism. Inthe study of Egyptian religion, "mysteries" (sit;, 5r3) and"initiation" (bsi) are now well accepted, and some schol-ars entertain the possibility that moftuary text materialshad a this-worldly application or ritual per{ormance (a

proposal first made by Walter Feciern for tire "Transfornra-

tion Spells"). Recognition of the existence of ancientEgyptian mysticism has moved from the fringe to themainstream, and comparisons r.vith South and East Asianmaterials have been presented in scholarly literature. Thervord "phi1osoph1," is norv applied to Egyptian thought(J. P. Allen, M. Bilolo). More fundamentail1,, the seri-ousness and sophistication of Eglptian spiritualitrl theol-ogy', and cosmology are widely discussed. The expansionof public interest and of amateur Egyptology is sholvn bythe rise of organizations such as the Society for the Studi,-

of Egyptian Antiquities, local chapters of ARCE (Ameri-can Research Center in Egypt), and kindred -eroups inBritain, Australia, Spain, Japan, and elservhere, and bythe emergence of publications such as KMT: A ll4odentJountal of Ancient Egypt.

Should this survey then end on a note of ebullient op-timism, a vision of Egyptology advancing from strengthto strength? Alas, that would be naive and Poil1.'ana-ish.

What can euphemistically be terrrred retrenching or ciown-sizing in institutions of higher learning has convergedu,ith the reassessment of priorities au,ay from humanitiesand in favor of "professional" and commercialll' orientedprograms. This syndrome has resuited in a shrinkage ofthe academic Eglptological establishment, a paucity ofpositions, a decrease in job security for the positions thatexist, the merger and abolition of depanments, and thefailure to fiIl positions of retirees. The very restricted jobmarket is a disincentive to enrollment in Eglptologicaland cognate degree programs, as is the decrease in thesize and breadth of faculties. More and more Eglptolo-gists are working in other fields. Are we looking at theprospect of Eglptology in the turenty-first centun'makinga full circle to the nineteenth century once more becom-ing a largely amateur field, man1,' of rvhose practitionersr.l,ill need to pursue it as a hobby? Will this tend to restrict

EGYPTOLOGY 457

substantive invoh,ement in Egr.ptolog\- to the rl,ealtl-rv?

Will the critical mass of Egrptologr,, and some otl-rer fieldsas rvell, need to sur\i\.e outside the universiti'? lf theuniversities had to preserl'e human knou ledge in the faceof some global threat. rvould they any longer be able todo so?

Can rve affirm of Eglptology rr,,hat Stephen VincentBen6ts Daniei Webster demands that r,-isitors to his gravesa1' of the Union-that she "stands as she s1ood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed"? We would certainly liketo think so. Time u'ill tell.

lSee also Afrocenrrism; Ancient Historians; Archaeo-logical and Research Institutions; Archaeologl'; BiblicalTradition; Decipherrnent; Educational Institutions;Egrptomania; Historical Sources; Historiograph;-'; Inter-pretation of Evidence; Islam and Ancient Eglpt; Muse-ums; Rosetta Stone: \\-isdom Tradition; attd biograpl'Licalarticles on Cafier, Cltatttpolliori, Herodotus, Lepsius, Ma-fletl1o, Petie, and PhLtarch.)

BIBLIOGRAPHYBaines, J. "Restricted Krr'r,.ledge, Hierarchv and Decorum." Jountal

of' rlte Anterican Resear, i: Ce ttter itt Eg1:t 27 ( 1 990 ), 1-23. A thought-ful discussion which ::icludes reflections on non-or.thodox ap-proaches to ancient Eglpr.

Baines, J., and J. Malek..{:'t;-: of Anciert Egtpr. Net \brk and London,19E0. One of the most u'eful reference rtorks about ancienl Egvpt,including sections on "The Studl of Ancient Eglpt" and John Gard-ner \\tilkinson.

Betrnal, M. Black Atltena: Ti:e -\fi'otLsiatic Roots of Clossical Civilization,vol. 1. London, 1987. Provocatile and controlersial, more reliab]errhen dealing rvith the histon'of scholarship and ideologl, thanrrhen theorizing about Egrptologr'.

Breasted, C. Pioneer to ri:: Past: The Stotl of Jantes Henn Breasted,

Arclneologist. Neu, \brk. 1943. A lery sympatheric account b5, oneol the great scholar's so:s.

Brr-rgsch, H. Die Agyptolo;-ie. Leipzig, 1897. A culminatir.e statementof one of the greatest nineteenth-centun'Eglptologists, includinghis endorsement of the Berlin sr-stem of philologr:

Budge, E. A.W. The Munin*.2d ed. Reprint, Nerr \brk and London,1972. Contains an inte:-esting selection of material trom classicalsources about Eglptian u'riting. As a u'hole, this u,ork exemplifiesthe lou end of pre-Beriir Egvpto)oglr

Davies, W.Y. Egltptiart Hi:roghplr. Berkelel and London, 1987. Aclear and concise desc-plion of ancient Eg1'ptian language, wrir-ing, and deciphermen:.

Dunham, D. Recollectioris ot art E$'ptologlsl. Boston, 1972. An infor-mal and conrrersationa-i autobiography; includes reminiscences ofGeorg Steindorff.

DuQuesne, T. "Eg1pt's Image in the European Enlightenment." In Ses-

hat: Cross-cultural Perstectiyes in Poetry artd Philosoph,-, vol. 3, pp.28-43. London, 1999. -1,rr ertremell' erudite and thorough explora-tion of the Egyptian legacv and its European reception, u,ith de-tailed consideration oi naterial of genuinely Eglptian origin.

Greener, L. The Discovery o'Egypt. London, 1966. -{ beautifully rvrit-ten and literate histol of the stud)' and erploration of Egvptthrough the dearh of \1a:ietre.

Hoens, D. J. "A Short Sur;el of the Stud1, of Eglptian Religion in theNetherlands." In Srad;:-. itt Egtptiatt Religion Dedicated to Profes-

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458 EGYPTOMANIA

sor Jan ZatlJee. edited br' lvl Heerma van Voss et al., pp. 1 i_27Leiden,1932.

Hoffman, NI. A. Eg1-pr Belbre the pharaohs.2nd edn. London, 1991.An engaging narrative of prehistoric archaeologl. in Egr.pt as u,ellas the prehistorA of the region itself.

Iversen, E. "The Hieroglvphic Tradition.', In The Legacl, of'Eg,-pt, ed_ited by J. R. Harris, pp. 170-196. 2d ed. Orford, 1971. An ercellenrdiscussion oi the study of hierogll,phs and other Aegvptiaca up un_til the decipherrnent: conserrv.ative in its assessment of the E_eyptiancontent of classical materials.

Pope, M. The Ston'ol Archaeological Deciphennent: Front Egtptian Hi-erogly-phs to Litrcar B. Nerv \brk, 19i5. Contains one of the mosrcomplete generallv accessible discussions of hieroglvphic scholar_ship during rhe Renaissance and Enlightenment and the decipher_ment of Demotic.

Wilson, J. A. Sl-grzs and Wonders on pharaoh. Chicago, 1964. Focusingon but not limited to rhe historv of \merican Eglptoiogr,l packeJrvith infornation and documentation.

!!ilson, J. A. Tlntsands of'f-ear.s: Att Arcluteologists Searchlbr AncientEg1,pt. Nerv \brk, 1972. Autobiographr. of one of the most influen_tial American Egyptologists, Breasteds student.

IAbrtham, I.D. British Egtprologt. Norman, Okia., 1971. Especiallvinformatir,e tor the earlier period of scholarshrp.

Yates, F. A. Ciordano Bruno and tlrc Hennetic TraLlition. London, 1 96.1.A landmark s.ork in intellectual histon.. Note that \htes dismissesthe possible authentic conrent of the Egr.ptianizing material usedbr Rcnajssance Hermeticirrr.

Articles about manv figures in rhe histon of Egvptolog,v- have ap-peared in the magazine K..\1.7.: A llodent JotLnml of-Ancietu Egtpt.

EDT,IUND S. MELTZER

EGYPTOMANIA. As a dominant power in the Medi_terranean region and the Nile Vallev for mr_rch of the sec-ond millennium gcp,, Eglpt became a strong cultural in-fluence on its neighbors during the first millennjum ncr.The extent to rvhich ancient Egvpt continues to fascinateand influence \,V-estern civilization is astouncling; this fas_cination and its expression are kno\\rn as Egwtomania.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were enthralled bvthe age ot Eglptt pvramids, tempies, and hierogiyphic in_scriptions, as well as its multitude of deities_the human,animal, and human-animal combinations. Both societieseven adopted elements of pharaonic culture, in particularthe worship of Isis, to whom temples were built in theGreek port of Piraeus by the founh centurn BCE and inRome's seaport, Ostia, bv the third centunl BCE. Bv thefirst centun BCE, Egyltomania had become a Romanfashion: Frescoes sho',ving Nile scenes decorated housesand fantasv E_qvptian pleasure gardens featured a Nile set_ting r.vith Egyptian statues (genuine r,vhere possible, localcopies othenrise). The Egyptian-stvle buildings and theanimals portraved on the mosaic floor of the first_centurvBCE temple of Foftuna at praeneste (present_dalr pal-estrina, Itall') er.idence the gro\ving mvstique of Egvpt inRome.

With Egvpts conquest b1.' the Roman Octavian in 30

BCE, the flow of Egr,ptian objects (including obelisks) intoRome increased dramatically. Most came from sites inLor,ver Egypt and represented the art of the tr,ventv_ninthdynastv through the ptolemaic period. Imported lvorks ofart, in turn, influenced artists in Rome, some of whomwere originally from Egypt. Those artists producedEgyptian-style sculptures ro meet popular demand. Al_thor-rgh some of their creations were faithful imitations,others were alvku,'ard pastiches of Egyptianized elements.One of the best known is the first-century cE Mensa Isi_aca, a silver-and-gold-iniaid bronze tabie top that depictsa host of Eglptian deities rvirh imitation hierogllphs thatmay have come from an Isis sanctuary. Rediscovered in1537, the figures on the Mensa Isiaca long serv-ed as mod_els for Western anisrs.

Cults of Eglptian deities, particularly Isis. were popu_lar throughoLlt the Roman Empire. Rome,s Isaeum Cam_pense complex, rebuilt after a fire by the emperor Domi_tian (r. 81-96 ca), inciuded a drontos, serapeum, andobeiisks, as well as a temple to Isis. That complex re-mained an important cult center throughout the imperialera, and its mins became a major source in Europe forboth Egyptian and Roman-Egvptianized sculptures, fromthe thirleenth century cE. Rome also boasted several pvra-mid tombs, and the propoftions of Gaius Cestius,pyramid(c.12 ece), the only one ro sunive, became the modei forlater European pvramids.

Rome's greatest Egyptomaniac lvas uncloubtedlv theemperor Hadrian (r. 117-139 ce), whose foiend Antinousdrowned in the Nile River during their visit to Egypt; hewas later deified by Hadrian. The gardens of Hadrian,svilla at Tivoli (near Rorne) featr-rred an extravagant Eglp_tianized section, the Canopus, r,r,hich contained a minia_ture Nile, many statues, and at least one temple to avarietv of Egyptian deities, including an EgJptianizedAntinous. Made in the classicai style, his statues wereshown wearing an Eglptian kilt and the nemes-headdress.These statues became a model for Europeans depictingEgyptians throu_qhout the Renaissance and even intopost-Napoleonic times, .,vhen the distinction betweenEgyptian and Egyptianized scuipture was widelv recog_nized.

In Egypt, Christianity eventuallv sr:perseded the olderreligious cults, which rvere finally banned bv the emperorJustinian in 553 cE. Yet the influence of Eg_vpt_particu_lariy the Isis cult-on Christianity cannot be denied; notonly does the pose of the Madonna and Child echo figuresof Isis holding her son Homs on her knee but the cuitoF the Virgin Mary aiso absorbed many of Isis, atributesand titles.

With the spread of Islam or-rt of Arabia and the arrivalof Islamic forces in 64 I ce , Egvpt became isoiated lromEurope and entered into Western ideology as an un_