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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Books |
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Contributors to the national heritage
Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, Donald Reid, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2002. pp409
Europeans played key roles in founding the Egyptian Antiquities Service, together with Egypt's four major historical museums -- Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic -- and they continued to dominate the service until the revolution in the 1950s. Indeed, "the very words 'Egyptian Museum' and 'Egyptology' still echo the primacy that Western scholars accorded to the pharaonic era," writes the author of this book, Donald Reid, a professor at Georgia State University in the United States and previously author of a further book studying the development of another Egyptian institution, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (1990).
"Egyptology," Reid writes, "should include the study of any era of Egypt's past, but the term crystalised in the mid-nineteenth century to mean only the study of ancient Egypt, with the Greco-Roman and Coptic eras often tackled on as a postscript." The fact that the word came to denote the study of Ancient Egypt alone had a lot to do with the prejudices of the European founders of the discipline, and this ground-breaking and well-researched book sets out to examine the development of Egyptian archaeology in the context of Western imperialism and nascent Egyptian nationalism. The author's primary purpose is to write modern Egyptians into the history of archaeology in their country, and to show how different perceptions of the past helped shape modern ideas of national identity.
Reid points out that Europeans identified far more easily with Greece and Rome than they did with Ancient Egypt or Islam, and he writes that many, therefore, "denied any Greco-Roman debt to ancient Egypt and saw it as merely a stepping stone to the greater glories of Greece and Rome". However, as the author points out, three Egyptian pioneers in the late 19th and early 20th century, although they spent most of their careers in the shadow of the British occupation, resented the way that European domination of their country, together with domination of its museums and its archaeological heritage, was restricting their own careers, making it hard to encourage compatriots to identity with the national past. These pioneers were Ahmed Kamal in Egyptology, Ali Bahgat in Islamic archaeology, and Marus Simaika in Coptic museology, and it is largely their stories that Reid tells in his book.
Whose Pharaohs? attempts five levels of analysis. Firstly, it juxtaposes the relatively familiar history of Western archaeological work in Egypt with its neglected Egyptian counterpart. Secondly, it traces the development of archaeological study in Egypt in the later 19th century, showing how the great European Egyptologists, such as Mariette and Maspero, dominated the developing discipline. Thirdly, the book considers the different disciplines of Egyptology, Graeco-Roman studies, Coptology, and Islamic art and archaeology together, Reid noting that "specialists in one rarely venture much beyond their own, and sometimes the next nearest, compartment. Differences in the languages, writing systems, and religious ideas of different eras make specialization essential, but disciplinary boundaries and periodizations can become binders."
Fourthly, the author looks at both scholarly and popular interest in the Egyptian past, both in Egypt and the West, commenting that "where Egyptology leaves off and Egyptomania begins is not always clear..." And, finally, he looks at "the interplay between nationalism and imperialism on the one hand [and] the ideal of objective, universal science on the other".
The book draws on archival sources both in Arabic and in Western languages, including unpublished documents from the Egyptian National Archives, the archives of the Egyptian Ministry of Finance, the Cairo University archives, the foreign affairs archives of Britain and France, the archives of the British Library and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, as well as the hitherto unexploited manuscript memoirs of Marcus Simaika, founder of the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Rifaa Al-Tahtawi, the first of Reid's case studies, was born near Assiut in Upper Egypt in 1801, and though he did not himself excavate the Pharaonic sites or study hieroglyphics, he was important in spreading interest in Ancient Egypt among his compatriots. "When there is a fourth edition of Who Was Who in Egyptology, it should include Al- Tahtawi," writes Reid of this important scholar, who was head of Egypt's School of Languages under Khedive Ismail and set up a translation programme of European works of history and philosophy into Arabic, including Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and of their Decline and histories of the ancient Near East and of Greece and Rome.
Benjamin Zix, Dominique-Vivant Denon travaillant dans la salle de Diane au Louvre
Al-Tahtawi's own historical work, Anwar, published in 1868, attracted notice for its innovative coverage of Pharaonic Egypt and for its description of the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine eras. Al-Tahtawi mentions the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family to escape Herod's persecution, and in sequels to the book he gives an account of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire to the accession of Theodosius, together with an account of pre- Islamic and early Islamic history.
Neverthelesss, despite Al-Tahtawi's efforts his compatriots were slow to realise the importance of Egyptian history for contemporary notions of national identity. Similarly, though Ali Mubarak, the late 19th century minister and engineer who planned the new city of Cairo, publishing his classic work of town-planning and historical description, Al-Khitat Al-Tawfiqiya Al-Jadida, in the process, "also treated ancient Egypt" in his writings, making an attempt to reclaim Egypt's past and present for his compatriots, when Khedive Abbas II "with Cromer and Maspero in attendance", inaugurated the new Egyptian Museum in 1902 and convened the Second International Congress of Classical Archaeology in Cairo in 1909, only "one Egyptian gave a paper". Maspero headed the committee in charge of planning this congress, it also including three Frenchmen, a Briton, a German and an Italian. Though Mubarak's work had inspired a new generation to study Eyptology, Islamic archaeology and Coptology, represented by such figures as Ahmed Kamal, Ali Bahgat, and Marcus Simaika, respectively, consciousness of Egypt's ancient history was still slow to permeate society as a whole.
Only gradually did a handful of scholars realise that archaeology could help shape national identity, exploring ways to train Egyptian specialists in a field until then dominated by Europeans. Thus, Reid introduces Chapter 5 of his book, entitled "Egyptology in the Age of Maspero and Ahmad Kamal", with a quotation from an English writer, John Wilson: "the Director-general of the Service of Antiquities caustically remarked that with the exception of Ahmad Bey himself, few Egyptians had shown any interest in antiquity. Ahmad Kamal responded: 'Ah, M. Lacau, in the sixty-five years you French have directed the Service, what opportunities have you given us?'"
Kamal, another of Reid's case studies, was born in Cairo in 1851 and "took to Egyptology with a passion". He studied at Cairo's Madrasat Al-Lisan Al-Qadim (School of Ancient Languages), gaining a professional post in his subject at 30 years of age by becoming secretary-translator at the Bulaq (later Egyptian) Museum. While there, Kamal managed to get the permission and necessary funding from Maspero to conduct a tiny school of "Egyptology" in the museum, by which he meant the study of "Egypt", as well as of Pharaonic history. "Other Egyptians came in to teach Arabic, arithmetic, and geography," notes Reid, adding, "Kamal's little school survived the Urabi revolution and the British conquest and graduated its only class in 1885... The list of antiquities inspectors for 1899 includes two alumni of the school."
Kamal struggled to establish his new discipline of Egyptology for Egyptians in a hostile colonial environment. "He had a two-part task -- to establish himself as a serious Egyptologist and to persuade his countrymen to identify with Ancient Egypt," Reid writes, noting that Kamal was a prolific scholar who contributed 29 items in French to the Antiquities Service publications, and a book in Arabic on ancient Heliopolis. However, notes Reid, Kamal's Arabic works "were invisible to his Western colleagues. He seems to have imagined an audience of Arabic-reading fellow specialists, students, and the general public, but the first category scarcely existed as yet ... [though his] well-attended lectures at the High Schools Club between 1906 and 1908 enabled him to preach his agenda to an influential elite of students and higher-school alumni." Kamal's great breakthrough was to persuade the Ministry of Education to form an Egyptology section in the Higher Teachers College in 1910.
"Ali Bahgat was the Ahmad Kamal of Islamic archaeology and the Museum of Arab (later Islamic) Art," notes Reid. "Like Kamal, he had to fight an uphill battle to establish himself as an archaeologist during the hey-day of Western imperialism... Yet like Kamal, [he] owed his very calling to European mentors and worked hard to win recognition from the international scholarly community." Bahgat also acquired skills in European languages that would serve him well, speaking, in addition to Arabic and Turkish, French, German and enough English to carry out research. Like Kamal, Bahgat was concerned to challenge European claims that only Europeans could be competent scholars.
Of Turkish origin, Bahgat wrote for the periodical Mawsuat between 1898 and 1901, sometimes signing his articles with his own name and sometimes using the pseudonym "athari" (antiquarian or archaeologist). The assistance he offered in Arabic to the fellows of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire, writes Reid, "gained him acceptance in the inner clique, where he was encouraged on a path of Orientalist scholarship, museology, and Islamic archaeology". This was a stepping-stone to Orientalist circles abroad, and in 1899 he read a paper at the 12th International Congress of Orientalists in Rome. "It was his first contribution to the cause that Orientalists and Arab scholars of the nahda [revival] shared -- the need to study, revive, and publish classical Arabic texts. His paper was on Al-Qalqashandi's medieval compendium on Islamic scribal technique (Subb Al-Asha fi Sinaat Al-Insha), which was later printed and distributed in Cairo." In 1912, a remarkable opportunity diverted Bahgat's attention to other matters, for in this year he began excavation work at Al-Fustat in Cairo, which made him a founding father of Islamic archaeology.
"The remarkable thing at al-Fustat was that an indigenous Muslim was in charge," notes Reid. "Bahgat [was put] in charge of excavations... with no funds earmarked ... the best Bahgat could do was to tighten surveillance over the individuals and companies who had long been mining al-Fustat for fertilizer. Bahgat reported that everyone benefited from the system: The Museum of Arab Art obtained Arab antiquities (mostly pieces of glazed or unglazed pottery), stones with hieroglyphics went to the Egyptian Museum, scholars learned about the layout of al-Fustat, fertilizer companies made their profits, cultivators got fertilizer, and the state obtained leveled land it could use for other purposes." With observations such as these, the author of Whose Pharaohs? provides a fascinating window on who benefited from the rediscovery of Egypt's cultural heritage.
Chapter 7 of the book, entitled "Modern Sons of the Pharaohs?" tells the story of Marcus Simaika (1864-1944), founder of Cairo's Coptic Museum and, to a large extent, of the modern study of Coptology. According to Reid, "one day in the winter of 1908, Simaika called on Patriarch Cyril (Anba Kirullus) V and found him surpervising while a silversmith weighed out old silver gospel covers and church vessels to be melted down for reworking. They bore fourteenth- and fifteenth- century inscriptions in Coptic and Arabic. Simaika, then vice president of the Coptic Community Council, offered to raise the LE180 market value of the bullion if these objects would be saved in a storeroom as a start towards a museum. The patriarch agreed, and the Coptic Museum was born."
Simaika, who grew up in a Coptic quarter north of Ezbekiya in Cairo, was, like Kamal and Bahgat before him, "the pioneer who struggled to kindle enthusiasm for the antiquities and history of a vital phase or aspect of the national past..." The Coptic Museum filled a gap in historical coverage between the Egyptian Museum and the Graeco-Roman Museum on the one hand, and the Museum of Arab Art on the other. "The Coptic Museum belonged to the church," Reid writes, "and although Simaika freely admitted European inspiration, its founder was Egyptian," pointing out that interests in the Coptic and Pharaonic pasts were not mutually exclusive and that both types of interest "were easily compatible with territorial Egyptian patriotism". Knowledge of Coptic prepared one not only for Coptic studies, but also for learning Ancient Egyptian, and both kinds of interest were also compatible with a deep interest in Egypt's Islamic history.
Finally, this remarkable book, containing sensitive case studies of the Egyptian founders of national Egyptian disciplines and drawing on little-known archival sources in a variety of countries, casts much-needed light on neglected topics in the development of Egyptology and on the vital contribution made by these distinguished men to the study of Ancient Egyptian, Islamic and Coptic history.
Reviewed by Jill Kamil
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