Cromer and the classics: imperialism, nationalism and the Greco‐Roman past in modern Egypt

Abstract

These were not the only prisms through which Westerners refracted Egyptian encounters. Heirs of Hermeticism saw Egypt as the fountainhead of occult wisdom; belief in 'pyramid power' persists today. Some played the returning crusader, though this was more usual in SyriaPalestine Allenby entering Jerusalem (1917) or General Gouraud Damascus (1920). Others, grieving for a lost past at home, sought in the Bedouin 'natural aristocrats' or noble savages. Anglo-Indians expected to find generic 'orientals' they could rule here as they did in India.3 Since no one arrived a tabula rasa, the question is which preconceived filters one used and how these clarified or distorted encounters with Egyptian realities. Europe's fascination with ancient Egypt is well documented, Edward Said's Orientalism highlighted another Western lens for viewing 'the East', and Martin Bernal's provocative Black Athena argues that racism and other Western preconceptions distorted the development of Egyptology and classical studies. This article focuses on the uses Westerners and Egyptians made of a classical Greek and Roman discourse, a theme of particular interest as Americans wrestle with multicultural challenges to the canon of Western classics, however defined.4 Situated near the centre of Western thought since the Renaissance, the Greek and Latin classics have been used to support an endless variety of views. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperialists often