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Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D1 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D2 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D3 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Dialogues with the Dead Egyptology in British Culture and Religion 1822–1922 DAVID GANGE 1 Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D4 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University press in the UK and in certain other countries # David Gange 2013 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–965310–2 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D5 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: The Accession of Menes 1 ❖ 1. The Old Kingdom: Ancient Egypt at mid Century 53 ❖ 2. First Intermediate Period: The Religion of Science and the Science of Religion 121 ❖ 3. The Middle Kingdom: Orthodox Egypt, 1880–1900 151 ❖ 4. Second Intermediate Period: Petrie’s Prehistory and the Oxyrhynchus papyri 237 ❖ 5. The New Kingdom: Ancient Egypt and the ‘Cycles of Civilization’ after 1900 271 Bibliography 327 Index 349 Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D6 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D7 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste ...and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations ...And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt ...It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they may no more rule above the nations. Ezekiel The Romans are thought to have learned from the Greeks, and the moderns of Europe from both: the Greek was a copy of the Egyptian, and even the Egyptian was an imitator, though we have lost sight of the model on which he was formed. Adam Ferguson How can it be possible that the same people who built the pyramids should worship beans, vetches, leeks, onions, and even cheese? Newcastle Magazine Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:20 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D8 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:21 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D9 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Acknowledgements This book began nearly a decade ago as an undergraduate disserta- tion, set on the right track by Peter Martland. It then grew into a PhD thesis taught by Peter Mandler, whose guidance was inspiring and insightful from beginning to end. For his patient and expert advice then and since he deserves the most effusive thanks. The project developed further on a research fellowship with the Leverhulme- funded Cambridge Victorian Studies Group. I am grateful to the directors of the project for giving me time to develop the research, and to everyone in CVSG for the weekly discussions of nineteenth- century culture, without which this book would have been sorely lacking in depth. Particular thanks are due to Simon Goldhill and Michael Ledger-Lomas whose knowledge of both the ancient world and nineteenth-century religion is intimidatingly encyclopaedic. The book was then finished at the University of Birmingham. I owe the History Department at Birmingham a great debt for the faith they have shown in me, in particular in allowing me to teach the content of this book as a third-year special subject during my first year in post. Many things were altered and improved on the basis of two hours of seminars each week with Laura Bagley, Simran Dhoot, Harriet Fleck, Becky Gorringe, Zoe Hawken, Katie Hughes, Lee Oakley, James Patterson, Jonny Price, Jennifer Waghorn and Adam Wainwright (thank you all for putting up with my first attempt to construct a substantial module). I owe many other debts: to fantastic teachers and lectures such as Chris Newman and Tim Blanning, and to the friends and colleagues who have made me think about things I might otherwise have neglected: Matthew Pritchard, Sadiah Qureshi, Benjamin Thomas White, Timothy Larsen, Ros Crone, the good denizens of Fight Club, and my wife Llinos Elin Owen. There are several institutions without which this book would not be possible. First and foremost, Trinity College, Cambridge who funded my master’s degree and several extended research trips, but also Wolfson College, Cambridge and St Radegund who provided convivial homes while at CVSG. For other financial support, I thank Comp. by: PG0844 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734582 Date:13/10/12 Time:13:59:21 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734582.3D10 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi x Acknowledgements the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust. For assistance in gaining access to research materials, Sarah Collins at the British Museum, Patricia Spencer at the Egypt Exploration Society and the staff of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Manchester Museum, Eton College, the British Library and Cambridge University Library. Comp. by: PG4500 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734583 Date:13/10/12 Time:10:21:45 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734583.3D1 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi Introduction: The Accession of Menes In 1874, The Academy, one of Britain’s leading journals of high culture, printed an oracular statement from one of Europe’s most influential historical scholars, Ernest Renan. This read: ‘a curious phenomenon is just now taking place in criticism. Egypt will soon be a beacon in the midst of the deep night of high antiquity’.1 Renan’s proclamation does not accord with our received understanding of the history of Egyptology: it seems to come either too late or too early. It was issued half a century after the hieroglyphs were deciphered, and still longer after the centuries of mystery that coalesced around Egypt’s monuments had begun to be dispelled by the celebrated efforts of Napoleon’s savants and their British, German, and Italian rivals.2 These figures had brought Egypt tangibly and vividly into the realm of European culture so that, by 1874, the civilization was surely already standing beacon-like at the darkest extremities of historical time. On the other hand it seems too early, because it was only long after Renan that another great event—the discovery of Tutankha- mun’s tomb in 1922—raised interest in Egypt to a fever pitch com- parable to that of the age of Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone. This book shows that Renan was right. In the quarter-century immediately after The Academy published his prophetic pronounce- ment, ancient Egypt gathered significance in British culture that few could have foreseen and few have subsequently recognized (although it was very widely appreciated at the time). It was in the 1870s and 1880s, not in the 1820s or 1830s, that the impact of decipherment 1 Francois Lenormant, ‘Schliemann’s Excavations at Troy’, Academy (1874), 343. 2 The event usually credited as the denouement of decipherment is Champollion’s Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l’alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques dated 27 September 1822. Comp. by: PG4500 Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0001734583 Date:13/10/12 Time:10:21:45 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001734583.3D2 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 13/10/2012, SPi 2 David Gange really began to make its presence felt and it was in the 1870s, not in the Napoleonic era, that Egyptologists found ways to communicate directly with the public and began to gain sustained interest and support from numerous reading Britons. Most importantly of all, it was in these late nineteenth-century decades that the developing meanings of ancient Egypt began to be rooted deep into British culture through their association with issues as culturally provocative as the nature of the Old Testament, the cultural status of classical literature, and the viability of evolution (Darwinian and otherwise).