Egyptology and Orientalism When Champollion Called Åkerblad an Orientalist in a Letter of June 1812 Åkerblad Retorted

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Champollion called Åkerblad an orientalist in a letter of June 1812 Åkerblad retorted: “PS. Please, Monsieur, do not give me the title of orientalist which I do not deserve anymore than that of Hellenist or Turk. My sojourn in the Orient does not give me any right to take this title.”1 This is hard to take seriously. Åkerblad was the only scholar involved in the intense Coptic and Egyptian language studies who had visited the Orient or Egypt. Champollion only went to Egypt after the decipherment in 1822, while Young, Quatremère and Sacy never left Europe. Åkerblad’s definition resembles the later and more famous traveller to Egypt Gustave Flaubert’s ironic quip: “Orientalist. A well-travelled man.”2 Åkerblad was of course an orientalist, particularly according to con- temporary criteria and had already been defined as such for decades. The most obvious example is the dedication in the Magasin encyclopédique after the publication of his Rosetta Lettre in 1802: “Savant orientaliste, res- tituteur de l’alphabet Ægyptien.” Without entering into analysis of what ‘orientalist’ meant as a self- defining term for these scholars during the early nineteenth century, the concept needs to be discussed in relation to their Egyptian interests. The decades surrounding the year 1800 are the period traditionally seen as the foundation epoch of modern oriental studies, but early Egyptian studies are seldom discussed in the debate on orientalism. As recent liter- ature has shown, this chronological assertion can be questioned. Oriental culture and languages had of course been an object of study—more or less systematically—for several centuries and the idea that the changes during these decades were so great as to warrant the introduction of a definition that upholds that the discipline changed radically is open for discussion. Nevertheless, it is true that activities intensified and were institutional- ized to a larger extent, especially during the first half of the nineteenth century, as was the case for many disciplines. Egyptology makes for an

1 JDÅ to Champollion, 12 June 1812, Rome, NAF 20357, BNF. 2 “Orientaliste” in Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, published posthumously in 1913. egyptology and orientalism 265 interesting case in this chronology, as its birth is often associated with the decipherment of the hieroglyphs in 1822. It is difficult to write about early oriental studies without referring to Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism. Said’s book has been the centre of a thirty- year debate on what constitutes oriental studies and how oriental scholars interacted with other parts of society. Said claimed that oriental studies were a handmaiden discipline to European colonialism and that they were an integral part of Europe’s quest for superiority. The images of the Orient that some orientalist scholars constructed have, according to Said, been greatly influential in forming the West’s image of the ‘East.’ A large body of research in both the history of oriental studies, and in the histo- riography on the Near and Middle East, has deepened and nuanced the view on European interactions with the East. Parallel to this constantly expanding field the discussion on Said’s work continues. Recently, both studies on the history of oriental studies and a survey of the debate in the wake of Said’s book have fuelled further debate.3 When discussing oriental studies and Egypt, an important issue is where and how we define the geographical Orient. This is not only an issue when reflecting on the Saidian concept of orientalism but is also a thorny issue when trying to understand where and how the Orient is located in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. For the scholars treated here there is no doubt that when studying Egypt they are working in a firmly orientalist tradition. Then as now, there is no consensus about the precise definition of the Orient or about what geographical area orientalism as a discipline covers. A few examples suffice to illustrate the point: Arab territories vs. Turkish/ Ottoman lands; how Greece is sometimes seen as the Levant, sometimes as an integral part of a ‘Western European’ past. Is Egypt part of the Orient or does it belong, as some recent scholars have proposed, to an African cultural sphere? Questioning the geographical definition of the Orient in the contempo- rary debate is one of the keys to breaking up a deceptively homogeneous concept of ‘orientalism.’ By defining an all-encompassing Orient, advocates of the concept as championed by Said have made a similar error to the one they accuse the ‘orientalists’ of. By accepting orientalism as defined in

3 The debate on Said’s Orientalism constitutes a genre in itself; for an extensive bib- liography see: Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: Washington UP, 2007).