Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 19–44 brill.com/jeh Critiques: Past and Present Research ∵ De-colonizing the Historiography and Archaeology of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. Part 1. Scientific Racism Uroš Matić* Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster [email protected] Abstract The process of epistemological de-colonization of the historiography and archaeol- ogy of ancient Egypt and Nubia has begun unfolding only in the last two decades. It is still set in the context of descriptive disciplinary history with little reflection on and criticism of background theories and methods. As a consequence, some of the old approaches and concepts live on in the discipline. Utilizing the concepts of “thought collective” and “thought style” (sensu Ludwik Fleck) this paper analyzes previous works on ancient Egypt and Nubia written in the colonial discourse. Three key ideas run like threads through these works: 1. scientific racism, 2. socio-cultural evolution, and 3. colonial and imperial discourse. In this paper the emphasis will be put on scien- tific racism, its development, and its remnants in the archaeology and historiography of Egypt and Nubia. * The work leading to this publication was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement n° 605728 (P.R.I.M.E.—Postdoctoral Researchers International Mobility Experience). I would like to thank Angelika Lohwasser, Bettina Bader, Christian Knoblauch and Filip Franković for our discussions, reading the draft, and giving me useful suggestions during my work on this paper. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18741665-12340041Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 07:27:36AM via free access 20 Matić Keywords Ancient Egypt – Nubia – scientific racism – polygenism – the Hamitic question – colonialism – imperialism 1 Introduction Archaeology and historiography in the 1980s and 1990s were targets of post- modern criticism which manifested itself in numerous study fields, such as feminism, neo-marxism, queer, and postcolonial theory.1 Postcolonial criticism of archaeological discipline and its practice was especially strong in the former colonies,2 and in fields which were from their onset framed within imperialist and colonialist projects.3 Egyptology also found itself as the target of post- colonial criticism, primarily because of the remnants of colonialism in field archaeology in Egypt4 and the orientalist and colonialist roots of the discipline.5 Most of the criticism of colonialism dealt with the roots of Egyptology in colo- nial projects of France and Great Britain,6 and considerably less was done on the topic of colonial discourse within interpretations of ancient Egypt and Sudan and the application of postcolonial theory.7 The existing criticism of colonialism in Egyptology, and especially interpre- tations of Egyptian-Nubian interrelations, tends to primarily concentrate on some authors8 and does not situate their works within a broader context of what Ludwik Fleck termed “thought collective,” defined as “a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction.”9 According to Fleck: 1 Johnson, Archaeological Theory. 2 E.g. Liebmann and Rizvi, Archaeology and The Postcolonial Critique; Lydon and Rizvi, Hand- book of Postcolonial Archaeology. 3 E.g. Roman archaeology in Britain, see Webster and Cooper, Roman Imperialism; Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen. 4 Meskell, “The Practice and Politics of Archaeology in Egypt.” 5 Said, Orientalism; Reid, Whose Pharaohs? 6 Reid, Whose Pharaohs? 7 Van Pelt, “Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations”; Matić, “Der ‘dritte Raum’, Hybridität und das Niltal”; As Jane Webster wrote, the question is to what extent does our position within “post imperial” condition cause us to reassess not only ancient imperialism but also the episte- mological basis of our discipline which developed in the context of Western imperialism? Webster, “Roman imperialism and the ‘post-imperial age’,” 1. 8 Van Pelt, “Revising Egypto-Nubian Relations”; Matić, “Der ‘dritte Raum’, Hybridität und das Niltal.” 9 Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, 39. Journal of EgyptianDownloaded History from 11 Brill.com10/06/2021 (2018) 19–44 07:27:36AM via free access Part 1. Scientific Racism 21 The general structure of a thought collective consists of both a small esoteric circle and a larger exoteric circle, each consisting of members belonging to the thought collective and forming around any work of the mind [Denkgebilde], such as a dogma of faith, a scientific idea, or an artistic musing. A thought collective consists of many such intersecting circles. Any individual may belong to several exoteric circles but probably only to a few, if any, esoteric circles.10 By examining previous works on Egypt and Nubia, written in the colonial discourse, one can recognize a distinct thought collective, and thus better ex- plain how certain ideas were developed and inherited after this collective was no more. In his 1971 debate on human nature with Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault argued that within the traditional history of science, importance was given to the creativity of individuals at the expense of the analysis on how great scien- tific revolutions not only remove the obstacles, prejudices, and preconceived ideas on the way of gaining knowledge, but also eliminate and mask a certain amount of existing knowledge. This would act as if a new grid is applied, which while it allows the appearance of previously masked phenomena, at the same time masks existing phenomena.11 This means that ideas and concepts which are later abandoned, at least by some, continue to exist under the new grid. They do not disappear but even continue transformed. This grid consists of social and intellectual conditions which are historically contingent. It corre- sponds to Fleck’s “thought style” defined as a “special ‘carrier’ for the historical development of any field of thought,” and determines the formulation of every concept.12 Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar argued (in 1979) that social dimensions of how scientists work cannot be separated from the truth claims they make. In their analysis of productions of scientific knowledge, they aim to: “specify the precise time and place in the process of fact construction when a statement became transformed into a fact and hence freed from the circumstances of its production.”13 In the words of Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan one has to stress that: 10 Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, 105. 11 Chomsky and Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature, 15‒19; Wiktor Stoczkowski argued in his defense of history of archaeology that scientific thought is a combinatory activity as it operates with an organised set of pre-existing ideas which are modified according to the rules of internal transformation triggered by external stimuli, Stoczkowski, “How to benefit from received ideas,” 25. 12 Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, 39, 9. 13 Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life, 105. Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 19–44 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 07:27:36AM via free access 22 Matić The point is that in a world structured in dominance, comparisons are initiated in the name of those values, standards, and criteria that are dom- inant. Once the comparison is articulated and validated, the values that underwrote the comparison receive instant axiomatization as universal values.14 Historiography of any archaeology and thus also of the archaeologies of Egypt and Nubia should foster critical reflection about the fundamental structures of the discipline.15 Therefore, the purpose of this study is not to concentrate on single authors who wrote about Egypt and Nubia in colonial discourse,16 but to concentrate on the entire “thought collective” (sensu Fleck) and, fol- lowing Latour’s and Woolgar’s approach, to specify the times, places, and contexts of the naissance of concepts frequently used in writing on the ancient Egyptian and Nubian past. In this paper the colonial discourse within the studies of ancient Egypt and Nubia will be analyzed as a “thought style” (sensu Fleck). One can also outline key ideas which were shared in certain stag- es, and which were later transformed. In the words of Foucault, these concepts stayed there although new grids were introduced. There are three key ideas which run like a thread through the works of authors dealing with Egypt and Nubia: 1. scientific racism, 2. socio-cultural evolution, and 3. colonial and impe- rialist discourse. This paper will analyze the development of scientific racism and its remnants in English and German speaking archaeology and historiog- raphy of Egypt and Nubia. 2 Polygenism, Negroes, and Slave Politics Under the term scientific racism, one understands a pseudoscientific idea that there is empirical evidence for the justification of racism, including the notion of racial superiority or inferiority.17 It is the practice of the classification of indi- viduals of different phenotypes or genotypes into predefined racial categories.18 14 Radhakrishnan, Theory in an Uneven World, 74. 15 Murray and Spriggs, “The historiography of archaeology,” 151. 16 Some excellent reflections on the works of single authors are found in Ambridge, “Impe- rialism and Racial