Wonderful Things
A History of Egyptology: 1: From Antiquity to 1881
Published on 1. March 2015
352 pages
978-1-61797-636-0 (ISBN)
Description
The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
04/2015
The American University in Cairo Press
€50.94
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Jason Thompson is currently a visiting associate professor at Bates College. He is the editor of Edward William Lane's Description of Egypt (AUC Press, 2000) and An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (AUC Press, 2003), and the author of Sir Gardiner Wilkinson and His Circle, A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present (AUC Press, 2008), and Edward William Lane, 1801-1876 (AUC Press, 2010).
Content
Introduction
1. Historical Outline
2. Egyptology in Antiquity
3. A Medieval Hiatus
4. Ancient Egypt in the Renaissance and Early Modern Imagination
5. Ancient Egypt in the Age of the Enlightenment
6. The Discovery of Ancient Egypt
7. The Decipherment of the Hieroglyphs
8. Lifting the Veil
9. Egypt Itself
10. Hiatus
11. Consolidation
12. Preservation and Depredation
13. Taking Possession of Egypt for the Cause of Science
14. Mariette's Monopoly
15. Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Art, Photography, and Literature
16. The Golden Age
17. The Post-Maspero Antiquities Service
18. The Seven Hathors
19. New Horizons
20. Greco-Roman Egypt
21. Loret's Interlude
22. The Return of Maspero
23. Return of Maspero (cont.)
24. The Berlin School
25. Egyptology Comes to America
26. The United States Enters the Field
27. Attention Turns South
28. The Twilight of the Golden Age
