The Road to Mounira

Abstract

Jaroslav Černý (1898-1970) was an Egyptologist of Czech origin, a Czechoslovak and later stateless citizen, active in Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States. He debuted a cosmopolitan and productive part of his career at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale in Cairo in 1925. Černý’s presence at the IFAO constituted a dual French-Czechoslovak connection—the dominant French position in the Antiquities Service and as a preferred ally of Czechoslovakia. An analysis of intellectual and political dynamics benefits from complementing by a biographical research. Černý’s collaboration with the IFAO also constituted a major move in his individual Egyptological career. First, it opened perspectives of teamwork within Egyptian and international Egyptology. Secondly, it was a decisive step in his research strategies concerned with the community of Deir el-Medina, therefore it had a rather more intricate significance than being solely an element of a stratagem of Western dominance in Egypt, this time ostensibly represented by a smaller European nation that appeared as trying to join the existing contestants in a larger game of appropriation of Egyptian cultural heritage.