Indigenous Egyptology: The Decolonization of a Profession?

Abstract

Indigenous Egyptology developed much more slowly than its Western counterparts for two reasons. First, Islamic identity tended to crowd out feelings of kinship or curiosity about ancient Egyptians. Second, Western imperial domination set back the growth of indigenous Egyptology, which might otherwise have taken root fifty years before it did. Both explanations have been overstated by their partisans. This article attempts to trace the development of the discipline among Egyptians by bringing the two factors together in their proper proportions. It notes the aversion to pre-Islamic antiquity among many pious Muslims but also documents Egyptian curiosity about the Pharaohs beginning with Rifa'a al-Tahtawi about 1830. It acknowledges Western leadership in creating the discipline of Egyptology but also notes how Western Egyptologists frustrated indigenous attempts to produce Egyptologists between the 1870s and the 1920s. The decolonization of Egyptology began in the 1920s, and the last French director of the Antiquities Service went out with the monarchy in 1952. Some questions on the relation of foreign to indigenous Egyptology, however, are still unsettled.