ARCHAEOLOGY, EGYPTOLOGY, IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM

The fact that few Egyptians attained prominence as Egyptologists in the early days was not because of a lack of Egyptian interest in its pharaonic past. Rifa`a al-Tahtawi, the famous Egyptian intellectual, had traveled to Paris in the early 1800's when Egypt was all the rage, thanks to the Egyptian exhibit at the Louvre and the headway Champollion was making in deciphering hieroglyphs, and returned to Egypt with a new interest in ancient Egyptian history. He had protested when Mohamed Ali offered an obelisk to King Louis-Philippe. Tahtawi was an early progenitor of an Egyptian nationalism, later elaborated by Mustafa Kamil and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, which took pride in the great super-state created by the pharaohs and celebrated its pharaonic heritage as the unique distinguishing factor of Egyptian-ness.

No, it was not a lack of interest that kept Egyptians from studying Egyptology. Rather, it was French and British Egyptologists who took pains to deliberately exclude Egyptians from the profession. Mariette, who is revered in Egypt as the founding father of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and is buried in a sarcophagus in the garden of the Cairo museum, actively fought to stomp out the careers of some early Egyptian Egyptologists. German scholar Heinrich Brugsch set up a ?School of the Ancient Egyptian Language? in 1869 and included ten Egyptians among his students. But Mariette feared losing his monopoly over the country's antiquities if an Egyptian was qualified to eventually take over his post. So he actually conspired to prevent Brugsch's Egyptian students from being allowed to study in the museum or at archaeological sites. According to Brugsch, speaking about his school,

?my old friend Mariette worried that it might lead the Viceroy to have it up his sleeve to appoint officials who had studied hieroglyphics to his museum. No matter how much I tried to set his mind at ease, he remained so suspicious that he gave the order to museum officials that no native be allowed to copy hieroglyphic inscriptions. The persons in question were thus simply expelled from the Temple. [12]

The school ended up closing because Mariette refused to hire its graduates in the Antiquities Service; the Egyptian students had to take other jobs outside of Egyptology. Later, British and French, who were still fierce rivals for power in Egyptian affairs, still cooperated to exclude Egyptians and maintain European hegemony over the Antiquities Service. All in all, ?in the half century before 1922 Western archaeological interests in the Antiquities Service forced three indigenous Egyptological schools in succession to close by refusing to employ their graduates? (Reid 1985:246).

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Originally posted by ausar:

...No, it was not a lack of interest that kept Egyptians from studying Egyptology. Rather, it was French and British Egyptologists who took pains to deliberately exclude Egyptians from the profession. Mariette, who is revered in Egypt as the founding father of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and is buried in a sarcophagus in the garden of the Cairo museum, actively fought to stomp out the careers of some early Egyptian Egyptologists. German scholar Heinrich Brugsch set up a ?School of the Ancient Egyptian Language? in 1869 and included ten Egyptians among his students. But Mariette feared losing his monopoly over the country's antiquities if an Egyptian was qualified to eventually take over his post. So he actually conspired to prevent Brugsch's Egyptian students from being allowed to study in the museum or at archaeological sites. According to Brugsch, speaking about his school,

?my old friend Mariette worried that it might lead the Viceroy to have it up his sleeve to appoint officials who had studied hieroglyphics to his museum. No matter how much I tried to set his mind at ease, he remained so suspicious that he gave the order to museum officials that no native be allowed to copy hieroglyphic inscriptions. The persons in question were thus simply expelled from the Temple. [12]

... Later, British and French, who were still fierce rivals for power in Egyptian affairs, still cooperated to exclude Egyptians and maintain European hegemony over the Antiquities Service.

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