Egyptology and African History Egyptology and African History 8 Juan C. Moreno Garcia, Egyptology Department, French National Centre for Scientific Research https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.1280 Published online: 18 Uctober 2023 Summary Egyptology has played a rather ambiguous role in the stucy of the African past. While the Nile Valley was the cradle of one of the oldest states as well as of crucial innovations like writing, monumental architecture, and complex administrative managerial techniques, among others, the burden of Eurocentric historiographical prejudices considered these achievements to be a sort of anomaly. Ancient Egypt was thus interpreted through the lens of an alleged “exceptionalism”—a geographically african but, quite self-contradictorily, culturally non-African society. Such a view was rooted in a too-titeral reading of pharaonic texts and images that celebrated the differences between Egypt and its neighbors. At the same time, Egyptwas seen as a remote precedent of Western culture and societies—a venerable instigator of an uninterrupted process of progress supposedly culminating in Europe in the 19th century. Only as of the late 20th century has archaeology helped Egyptology overcome such a view, understand the African roots of the pharaonic civilization, and review the nature of its relations with its African neighbors. At the same time, intense archaeological exploration of the African regions that surrounded Egypt has revealed the critical role of Nubian and desert populations in creating original forms of political power and cultural achievement that owed little or nothing to pharaonic Egypt. The result is the emergence of more balanced historical interpretations that emphasize the complex interplay between all these actors in the social dynamics of the Bronze and Iron Age in northeastern Africa. Keywords: ancient states, ancient trade, ancient urbanism, desert exploration, Egypt, Egyptology, entanglement, ethnicity, Nubia, Orientalism, Subjects: Archaeology, Cultural History The Beginnings of Scientific Historical Research ‘The military expedition led by Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt (1798-1801) marks the birth of Egyptology as a modern academic field. The French Revolution (1789) and the decades that followed provoked a thorough reorganization of European societies. The end of the absolutist monarchies gave way to more encompassing political regimes, based on constitutions, open political deliberation in parliaments, the construction of a public sphere, and a new impetus to the production of knowledge from universities and academic institutions to scientific research and the emergence of modern scientific disciplines, including archaeology. The social basis of such regimes was reformulated too, and the emergence of the concept of “nation,” which lay at the very core of the nation-states Wien wider construction, required a complete revision of Whe cultural genealogies that resulted in that new form of community. History was an essential tool in the construction of national identities and collective mentalities and, in this formidable cultural task, ancient Egypt provided a prestigious past for the national narratives that flourished since Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print outa single artcie tor personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice]. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 18 October 2023