Egypt, Archaeology of

Abstract

Despite pharaonic Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and medieval European and Muslim proto‐archaeological interest in ancient Egypt, modern Egyptian archaeology developed only in the wake of Napoleon's military expedition in 1798. The expedition gathered data for its encyclopedic Description de l'Égypte and uncovered the Rosetta Stone. The philological branch of Egyptology rests on Champollion's decipherment of the Rosetta Stone's hieroglyphs, while its archaeological branch studies the human past through material remains. The founding director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Auguste Mariette, excavated extensively, established Cairo's Egyptian Museum, and slowed the export of antiquities to Europe. Britain occupied Egypt from 1882 to 1956, but their French colonial rivals ran its Antiquities Service even longer (1858–1952). Briton Flinders Petrie revolutionized excavation techniques, and American George Reisner improved on even those. In the 1920s, Egyptian nationalists won enough autonomy to keep the treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb together in the Cairo Museum and to begin regular training of the country's own Egyptologists. Germans have played leading roles in both Egyptian archaeology and philology for nearly two centuries. Fieldwork in Egypt dwindled from the 1930s until 1960, when UNESCO launched the Nubian salvage campaign ahead of the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Egyptian archaeology has flourished ever since, enriched by new theoretical perspectives (including emphasis on women and the common people) and technological innovations. Postcolonial Egypt partners with foreign expeditions and exports antiquities only for temporary exhibitions. Remote sensing, virtual reality reconstructions, and X‐raying, CT scanning, and DNA analysis of mummies have all expanded the scope of Egyptian archaeology.