Women are from Africa and men are from Europe

Abstract

This chapter analyses colonialism and patriarchy in the field of Egyptian archaeology and how they interact with the interpretation of the past as well as the management of Egyptian heritage today. Imperialism and colonialism also went hand in hand with androcentrism in the interpretation of archaeological data and the construction of the ancient Egyptian past, which was in turn used in Western identity formation. The Western stereotypes of Egyptian women proliferated through the scholarship of mainly Western male academics as well as some Egyptians until very recently. The archaeological discoveries at Deir el-Medina by Ernesto Schiaparelli at the beginning of the twentieth century, shedding light on the lives of common women, prompted gender studies to relate to women in ancient Egypt. The Western misconception that women’s equal rights can only be attained in non-Islamic nations undermines the feminist movement in Egypt and shows a typical orientalist and colonialist stereotype that only asserts a Western model of democracy.