Whose pharaohs?: archaeology, museums, and Egyptian national identity from Napoleon to World War I

Figure 1. Framing and claiming Egyptian antiquity: Cécile's engraved frontispiece to Description de l'Égypte, vol. 1: Antiquités: Planches (Paris, 1809). The landscape shows no sign of Cairo, Islamic monuments, or modern inhabitants.

Figure 2. A monument to Western Egyptology: the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, inaugurated in 1902.

Figure 3. Enshrining Auguste Mariette: Mariette's sarcophagus and statue, inaugurated in 1904, in the garden of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

Figure 4. Western founding fathers of Egyptology: plaque on the facade of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Architect: M. Dourgnon.

Figure 5. The "wet drapery" look: Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, personifying Upper Egypt, flanking the portal of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

Figure 6. Imperial Latin: inscription in the name of Abbas Hilmi (II), the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The Hijri date, in Latin with Roman numerals, is also well disguised from Egyptians.

Figure 7. Reframing and reclaiming Egyptian antiquity: Arabic magazine cover, 1899. Ancient Egypt serves here as an inspiration for a modern Egyptian renaissance. Abbas II presides, with reformist scholar-officials (clockwise) Ali Mubarak, Rifaa al-Tahtawi, Abdallah Fikri, and Mahmud al-Falaki framing the scene. In Bertrand Millet, Samir, Mickey, Sindbad, et les autres: Histoire de la presse enfantine en Égypte, Dossiers du CEDEJ 1-1987 (Cairo, 1987), 31.

Figure 8. Egypt through classical lenses: Athanasius Kircher as Oedipus deciphering the riddle of the Egyptian sphinx. Frontispiece, by J. A. Canixus, engraved by C. Biolmaert, to Kircher, Oedipus aegyptiacus, 4 vols. (Rome, 1652-1654), vol. 1.

Figure 9. Egypt through biblical lenses: Egypt Saved by Joseph, by Abel du Pujol, 1827. On a ceiling in the Egyptian section of the Louvre.

Figure 10. Classical or pharaonic trophy: which should go to France? "Cleopatra's Needle" and "Pompey's Pillar," Alexandria. In Benoît de Maillet, Description de l'Égypte, ed. L'abbé le Mascrier (Paris, 1735), 144.

Figure 11. French savants besieged atop Pompey's Pillar: Siège de la Colonne de Pompée: Science in the Pillory, engraving by J. Gillray, 6 March 1799, as reproduced in Napoleon in Egypt (Brookville, N.Y.: Hillwood Art Museum, Long Island University—C. W. Post Campus, 1990), 12.

Figure 12. Staking a Prussian imperial claim: the Lepsius expedition celebrating the birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV atop the Great Pyramid in 1842. Engraving by Georg Frey, reproduced in Bernhard Lepsius, Das Haus Lepsius (Berlin, 1933), facing p. 80.

Figure 13. Napoleonic plunder, Napoleonic scholarship: Dominique-Vivant Denon travaillant dans la salle de Diane au Louvre, allegorical portrait by Benjamin Zix, ca. 1809-1811.

Figure 14. Rifaa al-Tahtawi, reformist scholar-official, head of the Translation Bureau, the School of Languages, and the abortive antiquities service and museum (1835). Author of the first history of ancient Egypt in Arabic (1868). This postage stamp is evidence of his current recognition.

Figure 15. Muhammad Ali's choice? A pyramid as a symbol of Egypt. Masthead of Al-Waqai al-Misriyya, Egypt's official journal, 1829. In Amin Sami, Taqwim al-Nil, vol. 2 (Cairo, 1928), 346.

Figure 16. Tourists on the porch of Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo. Photographer unknown, n.d. In Deborah Bull and Donald Lorimer, Up the Nile: A Photographic Excursion: Egypt 1839-1898 (New York, 1979), 17.

Figure 17. Beset by "lesser breeds"? Donkey Boys and Foreigners, by C. Rudolf Huber, in G. Ebers, Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, vol. 2, trans. Clara Bell (London, 1878). Note the hostile portrayal of the Egyptians.

Figure 18. A Trip to the Pyramids, Old Style, in Reverend Samuel Manning, The Land of the Pharaohs: Egypt and Sinai (London, n.d.), 48.

Figure 19. Gender and tourism at the Pyramids: "Few people visit the Pyramids without climbing up them as their energy permits. Just look at those American women on their way up, falling into the clutches of the Bedouin before your very eyes." (Character in Muhammad Muwaylihi's A Period of Time, trans. Roger Allen [Reading, England, 1992], 358.)

Figure 20. Aesthetic arrangement in Mariette's Bulaq Museum. Although dismissing such arrangements as "useless to science," Mariette said he used them to catch the attention of Egyptians. In Auguste Mariette-Bey, Album de Musée de Boulaq (Cairo, 1871), plate 37. Photograph by Hippolyte Délile and Émile Béchard.