Egyptology
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Egyptology, the study of pharaonic Egypt, spanning the period c. 4500 bce to ce 641. Egyptology began when the scholars accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt (1798–1801) published Description de l’Égypte (1809–28), which made large quantities of source material about ancient Egypt available to Europeans. For a discussion of the long-standing fascination with ancient Egypt, see Sidebar: Egyptomania.
Written Egyptian documents date to c. 3150 bce, when the first pharaohs developed the hieroglyphic script in Upper Egypt. The documents of these kings, their successors, and their subjects, as well as the archaeological material of their culture, well preserved by Egypt’s arid climate, provide the source material for Egyptological study.
After the Roman conquest (31 bce) the knowledge of pharaonic Egypt was gradually lost as Hellenism infused Egyptian culture. The temples alone preserved pharaonic religion and the hieroglyphic script. Christianity, introduced in the 1st century, slowly eroded this last bastion of pharaonic culture. By c. 250 ce the Greek alphabet, with six added letters from the demotic (cursive hieroglyphic script), replaced the hieroglyphic system. The last known hieroglyphs were carved in 394 at Philae, where the worship of Isis survived until about 570. Some observations about pharaonic Egypt had passed into Greco-Roman civilization through such Classical authors as Herodotus and Strabo. The worship of Isis and Osiris had also spread throughout the Roman Empire, and Manetho, an Egyptian priest, had compiled a list of kings for Ptolemy I that preserved the outline of Egyptian history in Greek. These factors helped keep a dim memory of ancient Egypt alive in Europe.
After the Arab conquest (641) only the Christian Egyptians, the Copts, kept alive the ancient language, written in Greek characters. In Europe the Coptic texts taken from Egypt during the Renaissance awakened interest in the Egyptian language. Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit, published a Coptic grammar in 1643, and European travelers to Egypt returned with antiquities and stories of wondrous ruins. The first scholar known to have engaged in scientific work, the 17th-century English astronomer John Greaves, measured the pyramids of Giza.
In 1799 a French engineer found the Rosetta Stone, a trilingual stela with Greek, hieroglyphic, and demotic texts. Knowledge of Coptic permitted the deciphering of the stone’s inscription, a work completed in 1822 by Jean-François Champollion. He and an Italian scholar, Ippolito Rosellini, led a combined expedition to Egypt in 1828 and published their research in Monuments de l’Égypte et Nubie. Karl Richard Lepsius followed with a Prussian expedition (1842–45), and the Englishman Sir John Gardner Wilkinson spent 12 years (1821–33) copying and collecting material in Egypt. Their work made copies of monuments and texts widely available to European scholars. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s government (1805–49) opened Egypt to Europeans and consular agents, and adventurers began to collect antiquities, often in ways that amounted to plunder. From this arose the great European Egyptian museum collections. Auguste Mariette went from the Louvre in 1850 and began excavations at Memphis, where he found the Serapeum. He convinced Saʿīd Pasha, viceroy of Egypt, to found the first Egyptian museum at Būlāq (1858; moved to Cairo, 1903) as well as the Service des Antiquités (1863). Mariette became the first director of this organization, which worked to stop the hitherto uncontrolled digging and collection of antiquities.
The research of Emmanuel de Rougé in France, Samuel Birch in England, and Heinrich Brugsch in Germany established Egyptology as an academic discipline. In 1880 Flinders Petrie brought to Egypt his technique of controlled, scientifically recorded excavation, which revolutionized archaeology; he pushed back the origins of Egyptian culture to 4500 bce. The British Egypt Exploration Fund (later Society), founded in 1882, promoted excavations using Petrie’s principles, and other professional associations of Egyptologists spread these standards. Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow published in Berlin the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, an exhaustive dictionary of hieroglyphic Egyptian. In 1954 Wolja Erichsen published his demotic lexicon, Demotisches Glossar. The Germans Erman, Eduard Meyer, and Kurt Sethe, the English scholars Francis Llewellyn Griffith and Sir Alan H. Gardiner, and the Czech Egyptologist Jaroslav Černý conducted research that shaped the currently accepted outlines of Egyptian history. James Henry Breasted founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and pioneered American Egyptology with his survey of Egypt and Nubia (1895–96). He started the Epigraphic Survey in 1924 to make accurate copies of the inscriptions on monuments, which are subject to deterioration from exposure to the elements, and to then publish these records. The group’s current project, which began during the 1990–91 season, is a record of the temple of Amon in Madinat Habu.
American museums opened Egyptian collections in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and excavations in Egypt helped enlarge their exhibits. The University of Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Brooklyn Museum, and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University all have conducted work in Egypt. The discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb (1922), as well as Pierre Montet’s excavations of the intact royal tombs at Tanis, heightened public awareness of Egyptology.
The worldwide UNESCO-sponsored effort to raise the temples of Nubia and Philae above the waters of Lake Nasser (1960–75) and the Egyptian government-sponsored tours (during 1972 in London and 1976–79 at six U.S. museums) of objects from Tutankhamen’s tomb spurred international interest in Egypt. Researchers working in Nubia gained access to ancient Egyptian sites, especially in the poorly explored Nile River delta. In the 1970s excavation of ancient Avaris and Per Ramessu (city of the biblical Ramses) and Mendes yielded important insights into these ancient cities.
The building of the Aswān dams (1902 and 1970) led to international salvage excavations in Nubia, the results of which shed light on Egyptian history. A salvage operation led to a great find in the waters off Alexandria. In 1994 Jean-Yves Empereur—the archaeologist who founded the Centre for Alexandrian Studies (Centre d’Études Alexandrines)—was called in to study an underwater site before a concrete breakwater was erected over the area. The site, which contained huge masonry blocks, columns, and a statuary (including a colossal statue that is thought to represent Ptolemy II), is believed to hold some remains of the Pharos of Alexandria—the lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In 1976 the First International Congress of Egyptology convened in Cairo; reconvening at three-year intervals, it fosters closer contacts among scholars around the world. After 1952 Egyptians themselves became more involved in Egyptology. Regional museums opened at Alexandria, Al-Minyā, Mallawī, Luxor, and Aswān as increasing numbers of tourists visited Egypt.
Still, despite 200 years of excavation and research, many little-explored sites remain in Egypt. This was evidenced in the mid-1990s by a find near Bawiṭ (Al-Bawīṭī), south of Cairo, where archaeologists found one of the largest necropolises (burial places) ever uncovered; burials there dated to the Roman era, about 2,000 years ago. Excavators uncovered some 100 mummies, ranging from the remains of wealthy individuals buried with golden masks to those buried in less costly terra-cotta or plaster; workers dubbed the area “Valley of the Golden Mummies.” Based upon the 100 or so tombs yet to be opened at Bawiṭ, archaeologists expected the necropolis to hold between 5,000 and 10,000 mummies. The site was particularly interesting to scholars concerned with the burial practices of ordinary people during Egypt’s Greco-Roman period. In addition, the tombs had never before been opened, which allowed archaeologists the opportunity to study an undisturbed site.