Chapter 19
Ten Key Egyptologists
In This Chapter
Meeting the treasure hunters
Bringing on the scientists
Furthering Egyptology in the 21st century
During more than 200 years of Egyptian archaeology, hundreds of important archaeologists, scholars, and historians have contributed in one way or another to the discipline of Egyptology. This chapter looks at ten people who have made Egyptology what it is today, although many others made equally important discoveries and contributions and continue to do so – so this list is by no means conclusive.
Giovanni Belzoni (1778–1823)
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Initially, Belzoni travelled to Egypt to sell a new type of water wheel (nothing to do with his strongman career). When this endeavour proved unsuccessful, he turned to the more lucrative work of excavating and transporting ancient monuments. In 1816, he started working for Henry Salt; one of his first jobs was to move the top half of a colossal statue from the Ramesseum, near Luxor. The statue today forms part of the Egyptian collection at the British Museum.
Belzoni carried out extensive excavation work and discovered, among other things, the tomb of Sety I and the temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel in Nubia. Although his techniques of excavation were scandalous by modern standards – he often used dynamite when a trowel would have sufficed, and he had a habit of carving his name into objects – Belzoni did a lot to promote Egyptology through the exhibition of his objects.
He excavated for more than eight years. He died of dysentery in 1823 on an expedition to locate the source of the river Niger.
Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832)
Egyptologists will always remember Jean-François Champollion as the linguist who made the final breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphs. His discovery changed Egyptology and enabled the world finally to read the ancient Egyptian language.
Champollion was always interested in language, and by 1807 (when he was 17) he had delivered his first paper on the language of ancient Egypt at the Lyceum. He spoke many languages, including Hebrew, Coptic, Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldean, when he embarked on deciphering the Rosetta Stone, a stela from Rosetta in the Delta written in three languages: hieroglyphs, demotic, and ancient Greek (see Chapter 11).
Champollion consulted with the English physician Thomas Young and compared notes until Young’s death in 1817, after which Champollion continued the work. By 1822, he had worked out the key to hieroglyphs, although it wasn’t until the completion of his grammar book in 1832 that he was able to read hieroglyphs with any certainty.
Between 1828 and 1829, Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini travelled to Egypt to record and survey further monuments, no doubt bringing back detailed copies of inscriptions to decipher. Champollion died from a stroke in 1832; not until shortly after were his books Egyptian Grammar and then Egyptian Dictionary published, so he never got to see the difference his work made.
Karl Lepsius (1819–84)
Karl Lepsius, a German Egyptologist, gained his doctorate in 1833 and then used the newly published Egyptian Grammar by Champollion to learn to read hieroglyphs. He made his first trip to Egypt in 1842 with the aim of recording the monuments and collecting antiquities, which was the norm at the time. In his career he collected more than 15,000 artefacts, which formed the basis for the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.
Between 1842 and 1845, Lepsius led the Prussian expedition to Egypt and Nubia and recorded its work in 12 volumes entitled Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. This publication is still valuable for modern Egyptologists because many of the monuments recorded have since deteriorated, and these volumes provide clear images and descriptions of their appearance more than 150 years ago.
Lepsius founded the study programme of Egyptology at the University of Berlin and was appointed the keeper of the Egyptian collection at the Berlin Museum, which housed his growing collection from the expeditions. The Berlin Museum still thrives today and houses some of the most famous images in the world, including the painted limestone bust of Nefertiti.
Amelia Edwards(1831–92)
Amelia Edwards, an English Egyptologist, journalist, and novelist, went to Egypt in 1873 and was hooked. This trip inspired her to write A Thousand Miles up the Nile, a travelogue of her adventures.
Writing, however, wasn’t new to Edwards: Her first poem was published at 7 years old, her first short story at 12. She was home educated and was clearly a promising student. She had written a number of travelogues prior to her Egyptian trip, recording her adventures with her female travel companion.
On her first trip to Egypt, she spent six weeks excavating at the site of Abu Simbel. In 1880, she set up an informal group to deal with the conservation and excavation issues of Egypt. In 1882, the organisation was officially named the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society). The society’s goal, then and now, is to excavate and record the monuments of Egypt. You can visit the society’s Web site at www.ees.ac.uk.
On her death, Edwards bequeathed a number of artefacts, her books, photographs, and other Egypt-related documents to University College, London, to be used as teaching aids for Egyptology students. As a supporter of the Suffrage movement, she chose University College because it was the first college to admit women as students. She also bequeathed enough money to set up the United Kingdom’s first professorship in Egyptian archaeology and philology at University College, which went to W. M. Flinders Petrie.
W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853–1942)
Flinders Petrie was an archaeologist for more than 70 years. He started his Egyptological career in the 1880s when he went to measure the Great Pyramid at Giza. He then directed excavations at a number of important sites around Egypt at a time when there were still lots of things to be discovered.
Petrie was not only a famous Egyptologist but also a great archaeologist. His seriation dating technique is still used worldwide. This technique creates relative dates for any site through the arrangement of items into an evolutionary sequence. (See Chapter 15 for more on this technique.) Petrie also had a great interest in the less glamorous side of archaeology and collected all the bits – mostly hundreds of potsherds – that most archaeologists left behind because they weren’t gold and shiny.
Over his many years excavating, Petrie collected thousands of Egyptian artefacts, some of great interest, which he sold to University College, London, in 1913, creating the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Petrie retired from his position as Edwards Professor at University College in 1933. He then excavated for a few years near Gaza before his death in Jerusalem in 1942.
Howard Carter (1874–1939)
English Egyptologist Howard Carter was born in Kensington in London and is famous for his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.
However, Carter had a rich career prior to this discovery. He started life as an artist and was sent to Egypt to record the tomb decoration at Beni Hasan (see Chapter 18). He then tried his hand at archaeology alongside Petrie at Amarna, although Petrie didn’t think Carter would be a great archaeologist. Just goes to show what an impressive find can do.
Carter was appointed inspector general of Upper Egypt in 1899 and was responsible for putting electric lights in the Valley of the Kings. He resigned his position in 1903 after a dispute with some drunk and disorderly French tourists. He worked as a draftsman and antiquities dealer until Lord Carnarvon offered to finance excavations, employing Carter as director. They worked for many years around Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, making many discoveries until by accident in the last year of excavating they found KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The remainder of Carter’s life was filled with recording and analysing Tutankhamun’s artefacts, as well as writing excavation reports and giving lecture tours around the world.
Alan Gardiner (1879–1963)
Sir Alan Gardiner was an amazing linguist and made great advances regarding the language of the ancient Egyptians. He was an expert in hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphic script that the Egyptians used for everyday writing. Egyptology students the world over are familiar with Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar, a comprehensive guide to Egyptian hieroglyphs with a dictionary that is still used regularly. During his career, Gardiner made trips to Paris and Turin to copy hieratic manuscripts; many translations being used today are the result of his work.
Gardiner was born in Eltham and was interested in Egypt from a young age, which resulted in his being sent to Gaston Maspero in Paris for a year to study. He then returned to The Queen’s College, Oxford. From a wealthy family, Gardiner never needed to work and spent his time teaching himself all he wanted about Egypt and Egyptology and pursuing his own goals. From 1912 to 1914 he held a readership at Manchester University, after which he continued his linguistic work.
Jac Janssen (born 1922)
Professor Jac Janssen, a Dutch Egyptologist now in his 80s, has been fundamental in the work at Deir el Medina (see Chapter 2). He has held the emeritus professorship of Egyptology, University of Leiden, Netherlands, for many years and is now living in the United Kingdom where he still works to further enlighten students and historians on the workmen’s village of Deir el Medina.
As a New Kingdom hieratic expert, Janssen has worked on many of the inscriptions from Deir el Medina, which has provided invaluable information regarding the day-to-day lives of everyday Egyptians.
Janssen has worked primarily on the economic side of history, publishing important books such as Commodity Prices from the Ramessid Period: An Economic Study of the Village of Necropolis Workmen at Thebes, which gives all the prices for various household goods. In 2006, he published a book on the economic use of the donkey at Deir el Medina called, not surprisingly, Donkeys at Deir el Medina.
Kent Weeks (born 1941)
Dr Kent Weeks, an American Egyptologist, is best known for his current work in the Valley of the Kings on the Theban Mapping Project, which resulted in the rediscovery of KV5, the tomb of the sons of Ramses II. The discovery of KV5 is a major achievement. The Theban Mapping Project began in 1978 with the goal of recording the locations of tombs, temples, and other archaeological sites and structures on the Theban west bank. This is a monumental task that will take many more years to complete.
Weeks has worked in Egyptology from the 1960s, and from 1972 taught at the American University in Cairo. Between 1977 and 1988 he returned to the United States as the assistant and then associate professor of Egyptian Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to the American University in Cairo for the professorship in Egyptology that he still holds.
Rosalie David (born 1947)
Professor Rosalie David OBE holds numerous titles, including:
Director of the Manchester Mummy Project
Director of the KNH Centre for Biological and Forensic Studies in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. The project was set up in 2003 to enable the unique opportunity for university training in biomedical Egyptology
Director of the International Mummy Database (University of Manchester)
Director of the Schistosomiasis Investigation Project (University of Manchester)
Professor David set up the Manchester Mummy Project in order to study the 24 human and 34 animal mummies in the Manchester Museum collection. Before the project was set up, mummies were X-rayed using portable equipment in galleries or in situ at the find site. Manchester now provides permanent facilities for ongoing mummy-related research. Recent successes include discovering the DNA of a schistosomiasis (bilharzia) worm found inside one of the mummies.
Manchester is also home to a tissue bank, which includes a collection of Egyptian mummified tissue from mummies held in various international museums. The tissue bank is a modern resource for DNA, which can provide information about these Egyptians of the past, and a real pioneering project.
Professor David is the first female Egyptology professor in the United Kingdom and has taught Egyptology for more than 25 years. She received an OBE from the Queen in recognition of her services to Egyptology in the New Year Honours List of 2003.