Whose Pharaohs?: Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I

by Donald Malcolm Reid

Book Overview

Egypt's rich and celebrated ancient past has served many causes throughout history--in both Egypt and the West. Concentrating on the era from Napoleon's conquest and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone to the outbreak of World War I, this book examines the evolution of Egyptian archaeology in the context of Western imperialism and nascent Egyptian nationalism. Traditionally, histories of Egyptian archaeology have celebrated Western discoverers such...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520240693
• ISBN13: 9780520240698
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

An Actual Book Review

The wholesale looting of the Baghdad Museum on Apr. 11-12, which U.S. troops did nothing to prevent, has lent a fresh plangency and interest to this remarkable new book about history, culture, museums, caretakers, theft, corruption and the dogfights between the West and Islam over antiquities vastly older than either culture. In two days in Baghdad, thousands of priceless treasures up to 5,000 years old have disappeared into the pockets and pickup trucks of larcenous mobs. However the Bush administration's Iraqi adventure is seen a century from now, the loss to human history and culture it occasioned is probably irreparable. Artifacts older than Abraham the patriarch have been stolen, ruinously dispersed, probably destined to be melted down for modern bangles. They will exist only in photographs, if at all, for the mobs destroyed the museum's archives as well, according to the New York Times. Donald Malcolm Reid, a professor of history at Georgia State University, has assembled a very clear, comprehensive account of another, longer, more complex process of ruin, preservation and expropriation. In this sharply written, poignantly illustrated and lucidly organized book, Reid describes how Egyptian civilization was rediscovered by Europe after Napoleon invaded the place in the early 19th century, and how its treasures were first plundered, then exported, then preserved by Europeans who generally regarded the country as their own private piggy-bank. The living Egyptians they encountered were, in their eyes, little more than ignorant Muslim fanatics. But they weren't. As Reid makes clear, a handful of enlightened Egyptian scholars were fascinated by the Pharaohs and were proud of their land's past. One, named Rifaa al-Tahtawi, wrote a history of ancient Egypt in Arabic in 1868 after studying the land and its monuments for nearly 35 years. Even earlier Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, another scholar, had warned of the dangers of a European invasion of Egypt when Napoleon arrived with his armies in 1798. His words could come from an Iraqi citizen interviewed on CNN today: "This is the beginning of a period marked by great battles; serious results were suddenly produced in a frightening manner; miseries multiplied without end, the course of things was troubled, the common meaning of life was corrupted and destruction overtook it and the devastation was general." Worse was to come. Napoleon brought with him a remarkable entourage of scholars headed by the brilliant libertine, Vivant Denon, and the result was the monumental "Description de L'Egypte," one of the most beautiful multi-volume works of art and science ever published, a work so gorgeous that collectors commissioned special bookcases decorated with gilt sphinxes to hold it, and nothing but it. But the result of the Napoleonic expedition, and its "Description," was ruinous, as Reid makes clear. A kind of Egyptian gold-rush opened up within the conquered country, and British and German scholars and