Egyptology first came into prominence
with the search to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphs
during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The
rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone
by French soldiers in 1798 proved to be the key in unlocking
this language which had lain dormant for almost 2000 years.
One of the leading figures in the race
to decipher the hidden language of hieroglyphs was Jean-Francois
Champollion (1790-1832). Already fluent in
several languages (including Hebrew, Sanskrit, Coptic
and Arabic), he used a Greek passage on the Rosetta Stone,
among other sources, to determine phonetic values for
some of the signs. This was the first real step in unlocking
the secrets of the hieroglyphic code.
What followed was the wholesale and wanton
looting of the ancient monuments in order to fill the
great museums of Europe; aided and abetted by the Ottomans,
nominal rulers of Egypt at this time. Many of the great
treasures now in the British Museum's Sculpture Gallery
were acquired by the Italian adventurer (and former circus
strongman) Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823)
on behalf of the British Government.
Excavations were carried out to
unearth objects solely for gain and display. Little
(if any) attention was given to their provenance (where
they were found), or to less intrinsically precious items
found in the vicinity. Very often, these would have been
much more important archaeologically, helping to piece
together some of the gaps in our knowledge of Ancient
Egyptian history.
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A much more structured and scientific
approach was adopted by Sir
William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942)
who became the first Professor of Egyptology in
the UK (at University College London) and his many
later disciples. Petrie developed the method
of Sequence Dating
used by archaeologists to this day. Petrie excavated
many of the most important sites in Egypt; including
the Predynastic cemetaries at Naqada, the Early
Dynastic Royal Tombs at Umm el- Qa'ab near Abydos
and Akhenaten's capital city of Amarna.
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One of Petrie's most devoted sponsors
was the author Amelia Edwards
(1831-1892) . Edwards was so shocked
by the indiscriminate despoiling of the Egyptian monuments
that she helped found the Egypt
Exploration Fund (later Society), to this day
the most eminent Egyptology Society in the world. This
late Victorian period saw the first 'package holidays'
to Egypt; Mr Thomas Cook himself escorting tourists in
1869, the year the Suez Canal opened. Many visitors
had been enticed to sample the many Splendours of Egypt
as described by Amelia Edwards in her best-selling book
"A Thousand Miles Up The Nile ", in which she sailed
in a dahibiyah (yacht) named Philae .
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26 November
1922 is one of the most important dates
in Egyptology.
Howard
Carter (1874-1939) and his sponsor
the 5th Earl of Carnarvon
rediscovered the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun.
The finding of this intact Royal tomb in
the Valley of the Kings
near Luxor catapulted Egypt (Ancient and Modern)
onto news headlines all around the world.
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It is ironic that Carter's
painstaking recording of his excavations should have coincided
with a major switch in Egyptological policy. Legal
wranglings over the division of finds led to foreign teams
being refused permission to excavate and their exclusion
from Egypt for many years.
The Egyptians
themselves were encouraged to study the subject and to
take their rightful place upon the international stage.
Thus the Egyptian people can be said to have truly
regained possession of their own ancient heritage.
International co-operation was revived with the
Nubian temple rescue projects in the 1960's and 70's,
urged by the desperate need to record, collect and preserve
as much information as possible before all was lost under
the waters of Lake Nasser forever.
