Egyptology
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Egyptology, the study of pharaonic Egypt, spanning the periodc. 4500bce toce 641. Egyptology began when the scholars accompanyingNapoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt (1798–1801) publishedDescription de l’Égypte (1809–28), which made large quantities of source material aboutancient Egypt available to Europeans. For a discussion of the long-standing fascination with ancient Egypt,see Sidebar:Egyptomania.
WrittenEgyptian documents date toc. 3150bce, when the first pharaohs developed thehieroglyphic script inUpper Egypt. The documents of these kings, their successors, and their subjects, as well as the archaeological material of theirculture, well preserved by Egypt’s arid climate, provide the source material for Egyptological study.
After the Roman conquest (31bce) 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 lastbastion of pharaonic culture. Byc. 250ce theGreek alphabet, with six added letters from thedemotic (cursive hieroglyphic script), replaced the hieroglyphic system. The last known hieroglyphs were carved in 394 atPhilae, where the worship of Isis survived until about 570. Some observations about pharaonic Egypt had passed into Greco-Roman civilization through such Classical authors asHerodotus andStrabo. The worship ofIsis and Osiris had also spread throughout the Roman Empire, andManetho, 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 Arabconquest (641) only the Christian Egyptians, theCopts, kept alive the ancient language, written in Greek characters. In Europe theCoptic texts taken from Egypt during the Renaissance awakened interest in the Egyptian language.Athanasius Kircher, a GermanJesuit, published a Copticgrammar 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 astronomerJohn Greaves, measured thepyramids of Giza.
In 1799 a French engineer found theRosetta 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 byJean-François Champollion. He and an Italian scholar,Ippolito Rosellini, led acombined expedition to Egypt in 1828 and published their research inMonuments de l’Égypte et Nubie.Karl Richard Lepsius followed with a Prussian expedition (1842–45), and the EnglishmanSir 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 theSerapeum. He convincedSaʿīd Pasha, viceroy of Egypt, to found the first Egyptian museum at Būlāq (1858; moved toCairo, 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, andHeinrich Brugsch in Germany established Egyptology as an academicdiscipline. In 1880Flinders Petrie brought to Egypt his technique of controlled, scientifically recordedexcavation, which revolutionized archaeology; he pushed back the origins of Egyptian culture to 4500bce. 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 theWörterbuch 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 theOriental Institute at theUniversity of Chicago and pioneered American Egyptology with his survey of Egypt and Nubia (1895–96). He started theEpigraphic Survey in 1924 to make accurate copies of the inscriptions on monuments, which are subject todeterioration 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 ofAmon inMadinat Habu.
American museums opened Egyptian collections in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and excavations in Egypt helped enlarge their exhibits. TheUniversity of Pennsylvania, theMetropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), theMuseum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Brooklyn Museum, and the Institute of Fine Arts ofNew York University all have conducted work in Egypt. The discovery ofTutankhamen’s tomb (1922), as well asPierre Montet’s excavations of the intact royal tombs atTanis, heightened public awareness of Egyptology.
Theworldwide UNESCO-sponsored effort to raise the temples of Nubia and Philae above the waters ofLake 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 inNubia gained access to ancient Egyptian sites, especially in the poorly exploredNile River delta. In the 1970s excavation of ancient Avaris andPer Ramessu (city of the biblical Ramses) and Mendes yielded important insights into these ancient cities.
The building of theAswān dams (1902 and 1970) led to international salvage excavations inNubia, 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 thePharos of Alexandria—the lighthouse that was one of theSeven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In 1976 the First International Congress of Egyptologyconvened 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 largestnecropolises (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; workersdubbed 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 duringEgypt’s Greco-Roman period. In addition, the tombs had never before been opened, which allowed archaeologists the opportunity to study an undisturbed site.