Although Egypt in the fifth century was highly integrated into the empire, it also began to develop new elements of distinctiveness. In part this trend resulted from divisions in theology and church politics that emerged around the Council of Chalcedon in 451, leading to deep splits in the church by the middle of the sixth century and the creation of competing church hierarchies. The native Egyptian language came to have its own literature and began to be used more widely in official contexts. At the same time, Alexandria remained a vibrant center of Greek culture, which permeated the rest of Egypt as well. The economic and social elite of the cities, increasingly closely tied to the imperial administration, concentrated wealth and power in their hands to a degree not seen earlier, even as most of the population continued to live in villages and work the land.

‘Since time immemorial’ is a poetic and legally significant phrase that expresses the idea of a time that extends beyond the reach of memory, record or tradition. It seems an apt phrase to use when starting any discussion regarding the study of Egypt. In contrast to many other nations, Canada was not yet a country when an Egyptian revival was sparked by Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) and the subsequent Voyages of Denon and the multi-volume publication the Description de l’Égypte. Each of these phenomena helped to introduce the exotic land of the pharaohs to the European and North American continents. Though not yet united into a single polity, Canadians shared in this fascination and revival from an early date, embarking on tours of the far-away land and bringing back remains of that ancient culture from the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Unlike the long history of Egyptology in the west, Japanese Egyptology began relatively recently. A seminal moment in its birth occurred in 1862, when Japanese visited Egypt for the first time, as part of the so-called First Japanese Embassy to Europe, sent by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Subsequently, the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe visited Giza in 1864, and was memorialised by a famous photograph, taken by Antonio Béato, showing a number of Samurai warriors in front of the Great Sphinx (Fig. 19.1). From that moment onwards, ancient Egyptian civilisation became known to the Japanese people through drawings, paintings, photographs and descriptions.

In contrast to France, with its foundation of Champollion’s chair at the Collège de France, and that of Rosellini’s even earlier chair in Tuscany, Egyptology in Britain had been in the doldrums since the second half of the 1820s, with absolutely no government interest to be seen. As the British traveller Orlando Felix* (1790–1860) remarked to the Egyptological artist Joseph Bonomi in 1832, ‘Hieroglyphs are at a discount’, and talking about Egypt could result in ‘being blackballed in the clubs’. As noted in the Introduction, a number of Britons had been working in the field for some years, but their attempts at publishing their material in the UK had met with little success.

The last half-century has seen a great deal of change in Egyptology worldwide, and not just in the way that scientific and methodological tools have become incorporated into research methods as a matter of course. In Egypt itself there is a marked increase in the number of excavations taking place by countries not traditionally represented in the field, with teams from Mexico, Argentina and China now initiating projects, for example. There are also more co-directed projects (on the basis of both nation and institution), as well as more formal research (rather than rescue or conservation) excavations carried out by exclusively Egyptian teams, not just from the Ministry of Antiquities, but with a renaissance of those that are university based.

Interest in ancient Egypt in the United States dates back to the founders of the new republic. The third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1846, in office 1801–09), created an Egyptian corner in his home at Monticello, which included a map of Africa, a sculpture of Ariadne, which he had mistaken for Cleopatra (VII), and a model of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, which had been a gift in 1802 from the French writer and Middle Eastern explorer the Comte de Volney (see p. 14, above), whose memoir was partly translated into English by Jefferson as Ruins of Empires. De Volney had credited the ancient Egyptians with being an African civilisation and their achievements clearly argued against the institution of slavery. The pyramid even made its way on to the great seal of the United States (see Fig. 17.1) and later the dollar bill. An unfinished pyramid depicted on the reverse of the seal had thirteen courses to symbolise the original colonies and was intended to signify strength and endurance. The ‘Eye of Providence’ atop the pyramid on the great seal was later adopted as a symbol by the Fraternal Order of the Masons. President George Washington (1732–99, in office 1789–97), many of his generals and at least eight signers of the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons, and the philosopher Thomas Paine (1737–1809) traced the beginnings of the order to ancient Egypt.

At the time of the establishment of the first Chair of Egyptology in France in 1831, the Hungarian Kingdom, which had been part of the Habsburg Empire since 1699, was dominated by a liberal and national movement, aiming to foster modernisation, the language and culture, as well as to achieve greater autonomy within the Habsburg Monarchy (the Reform Age: 1825–48). This reform movement culminated in a revolution and war of independence during 1848–49, which was repressed by an Austro-Russian alliance. During the following period of some two decades (1849–67), Hungary was reduced to the status of a province, and administered from Vienna, to which the response of the Hungarians was an organised passive resistance. In such circumstances, coupled with a political emphasis on national aspirations and a cultural focus on national traditions, there was little awareness of ancient Egypt among the wider population during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century.

Egyptology in Switzerland was strongly influenced by Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of the country. It was equally influenced by the country’s consequent administrative and political reorganisation. Switzerland thus did not acquire museum collections through large-scale, state-supported, archaeological expeditions, as did some other European countries. Instead, its antiquities collections are largely the result of patronage and donations made during the nineteenth century. The first Egyptian coffin to arrive in Switzerland, for example, was purchased by the politician Karl Müller von Friedberg (1755–1836) and given to the Stiftsbibliothek in the city of St-Gallen. Nor did Switzerland establish research institutes in countries in which it had interests, as did certain other European countries. The fact that the research focus of Swiss universities and their various archaeological entities was directed by the cantons (states), rather than at confederal level, also meant that it was individuals, rather than institutions, that were the driving force of Swiss Egyptology.

As already noted, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, what had once been Poland had been partitioned between Prussia and the Austrian and Russian empires. During that century, nevertheless, Polish aristocrats frequently journeyed to Egypt, valuing hunting and sightseeing over other attractions or religious peregrinations. Many of these individuals reached as far as the Second Cataract in dahabiyas (sailing boats) that they had rented or purchased. Examples include the journeys of Aleksander Branicki* (1821–77), Adam Potocki❖ (1822–72), Michał Tyszkiewicz and Mikołaj Wisłocki* (1821–66).

A problem of definition immediately confronts any discussion of the disciplinary history of Egyptology in Germany: what is Germany? Unlike Great Britain and France, which were established fairly early in their histories as centralised nations, Germany was organised as a loose federation of individual states until the late nineteenth century. Moreover, German language and culture were also to be found beyond the borders of the Holy Roman Empire (from the tenth century to 1806) and the North German Confederation (1866–71). Not until the foundation of the German Empire in 1871 did Germany emerge, under Prussian leadership, as a modern state with clearly defined borders. These problems of definition are compounded by the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1806 to 1918, a multi-ethnic, but German-dominated, nation, as well as by the loss of German territories to other states in 1919 and 1945, following the country’s defeat in the First and Second World Wars (see Map 2a–d). Thus, dealing with Egyptology in ‘Germany’ can present problems, in so far as the physical and intellectual extent of the region varied.

The first to take an interest in ancient Egypt were, of course, the ancient Egyptians themselves. Prince Khaemwaset, fourth son of Rameses II and high priest of Ptah at Memphis, is often held to have been the first ‘Egyptologist’. He certainly carried out what now might be called ‘heritage’ activities in the Memphite necropolis, (allegedly) restoring monuments and carving large texts identifying their owners on the exteriors of certain examples, including the pyramids of Unas, Userkaf, Menkaure, Djoser, Sahure, Isesi and Senwosret III, as well as the mastaba of Shepseskaf and the sun temple of Niuserre. The prince also dedicated an ancient statue of the Fourth Dynasty prince Kawab in the temple at Memphis. On the other hand, while Khaemwaset was seemingly conserving the memory and importance of these structures, other monuments (including those ancillary to the pyramids in question) were being exploited as stone quarries for his father’s projects. Indeed the ‘labelling’ may well have been a direct result of the demolitions and resulting loss of any external means of identification of the pyramids’ owners. The salvage of material from ancient monuments was of course a phenomenon stretching back into the earliest times, and would continue into the nineteenth century ad.

The Nordic countries comprise Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, and have a shared history of wars, alliances and common rulers. By 1831, Denmark had lost Norway (held in personal union since the fourteenth century) to Sweden in 1814 under the Treaty of Kiel. Norway remained in a personal union with Sweden until 1905, when it broke away and elected its own king. Iceland, under Norwegian rule since the thirteenth century, remained under the Danish crown, in personal union from 1918, and gained complete independence in 1944. Finland had been under Swedish rule prior to 1809 and a Russian grand duchy from 1809 to 1917, after which it became independent. It is obvious that Egyptology developed individually in the respective countries, but at the same time there are many points of contact, parallel developments and collaborations, never more so than when the Scandinavian Joint Expedition was formed in 1963 to help document Nubia’s heritage before much of it was lost to the rising waters created by the Aswan High Dam.

In January 1831, the Parisian printer Firmin Didot published a Manifesto announcing the imminent publication of the Egyptian and Nubian monuments by Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini, based on the notes and images made during the 1828–29 Franco-Tuscan expedition (see p. 22). It contained a description of the work, equally divided between the French and the Italians, to be organised in three parts, to include albums of plates and volumes of texts in French and Italian, and to be issued in a series of fascicles. The death of Champollion in 1832, and subsequent conflicts between his brother Champollion-Figeac and Rosellini, stymied the joint project. Rosellini thus published his Monumenti dell’Egitto e della Nubia alone, in the face of many financial and interpersonal problems, between 1832 and his untimely death in 1843. The ninth and last volume of text and the third and last volume of plates, already prepared by the author, were posthumously published in 1844. This monumental work, presenting an extraordinary quantity of textual, archaeological and visual material, has been fundamental for the development of Egyptology in the Italian peninsula. Almost all the important Italian libraries subscribed to its fascicles, as attested by letters that Rosellini himself wrote to librarians and scholars all over Italy, asking them to sign the subscription Manifesto or informing them about the plans for the publication.

Writing a history of Egyptology ‘in Egypt’ is a daunting task as it involves describing the multiple histories of all the many nationalities, ethnicities and modes of government that operated within the framework of the Egyptian state, particularly from the time of the viceroy Mehmet Ali until the revolution of 1952. Politics and personalities, too, helped shape the discipline, though there are considerable lacunae in our knowledge of how the latter in particular affected the development of Egyptian Egyptology. Thus, the story of Egyptology in Egypt was actually written not only by Egyptians, but also by Turks, Armenians, French, Germans, British and Italians, as well as other nationalities, all of which worked for the different versions of the Antiquities Service and constituted the cosmopolitan population of Egypt. These various groups also responded to the antiquities in myriad ways, consciously or not, thus contributing to the different attitudes to the role that ancient Egypt played in their lives and Egyptian popular culture, sometimes influenced by Islamic attitudes to the pagan waqt al-jahilaya (time of ignorance), when anything prior to monotheism was not of interest.