Egyptology | Chapter 01: the Birth of Egyptology
Introduction to Archaeology and the Birth of Egyptology
Introduction to Archaeology
This introduction defines the monument and the science of archaeology. A monument is everything the ancestors created and left behind, including tombs, temples, dwellings, daily life tools, ornaments, statues, jewelry, amulets, papyri, mummies, pottery, and other items they preserved for their afterlife. Functionally, monuments are categorized into worldly or religious:
Worldly Monuments: Used by humans in this life, such as dwellings, administrative and military structures, and all daily life tools.
Religious Monuments: Prepared for the afterlife, such as tombs, temples, shrines, sarcophagi, and funerary statues.
Regarding nature, a monument is either:
Monument (Static): Represents the structure in its original location (e.g., a temple or a tomb).
Object (Portable): An item removed from where it was found to be displayed in a museum, representing the product of archaeological excavation (e.g., statues, architectural elements, false doors, offering tables, funerary stelae, sarcophagi).
Minor Object: Smaller items.
Archaeology is the science concerned with studying everything humans left on the Earth's surface. The term is derived from two Greek words: Arche ("beginning") and Logos ("word"). Literally, Archaeology means "the word of the beginning," signifying the start of ancient human creativity or the study of everything ancient.
An interest in the ancient is ingrained in human nature, perhaps driven by curiosity or the desire to understand the thoughts of predecessors through what they left behind. Viewing ancient Egyptian history through documents, we observe the Egyptian's keenness to record events preceding their own era—such as myths, religious beliefs, and the names of previous kings—indicating a sense of history.
Travelers like Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Plutarch, Strabo, and others, who traveled the world seeking the creations, customs, and traditions of the ancients, expressed a desire to record all that is old. Egyptian monuments—including inscriptions, graffiti, and evidence of visits by rulers and others—reflect their admiration for this art or architecture. Since the Renaissance in Europe, fascination with ancient civilizations has grown, setting the stage for a science concerned with archaeology.
The 17th and 18th centuries witnessed great interest from travelers in the civilizations of the ancient Near East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc.). At the beginning of the 19th century, archaeology began to adopt its scientific dimension in both excavation and study. It gradually moved out of the hands of amateurs who dug blindly without recording, and into the hands of researchers and scholars. Rules were established, and scientific methods were used in the search for antiquities. The beginning was with the scientific excavations conducted in the Italian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were covered by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Then there were the famous excavations conducted by the German scholar Schliemann in the second half of the 19th century, which led to the discovery of Troy (northwest Turkey). Discoveries continued in the ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, Latin America, and the Far East. Auxiliary sciences appeared, such as Papyrology, Epigraphy, Geology, Anthropology, Geography, Engineering, and Archaeological Excavation. These sciences interact and cooperate with archaeology to contribute to writing human history.
With the spread of archaeological discovery movements in all countries where civilizations existed, branches of archaeology multiplied: Prehistoric Archaeology, Egyptology, Mesopotamian Archaeology, Classical Archaeology (Greek and Roman), Islamic Archaeology, etc.
Archaeological excavation missions head toward Egypt to reveal the heritage in the Egyptian soil. These missions come through foreign universities, museums, and other institutions concerned with the study of archaeology. Among the most famous archaeological discoveries are those of the German scholar Lepsius in Giza and Saqqara, the French scholar Mariette (who discovered the temples of Abydos, Dendera, Deir el-Bahari, and the Serapeum), the English scholar Petrie (considered the pioneer of archaeological excavation, who discovered many antiquities in the Delta and Sinai), the French scholar Maspero (in Saqqara), the German scholar Borchardt (in Tell el-Amarna and Abusir), the English scholar Carter (discoverer of Tutankhamun's tomb), the Italian scholar Schiaparelli (discoverer of Nefertari's tomb in the Valley of the Queens), the American scholar Reisner (in Giza), the French scholar Montet (in Tanis), Bietak (in Tell el-Dab'a), and Kemp (in Tell el-Amarna).
Egyptian archaeologists include: Ahmed Fakhry (discoveries in the Egyptian oases and Dahshur), Sami Gabra (in Tuna el-Gebel), Abdel Moneim Abu Bakr (in Giza), Abdel Aziz Saleh (in Giza, Tuna el-Gebel, and Matariya), Labib Habachi (in Luxor and Aswan), Zakaria Goneim (in Saqqara), and others.
Historical Eras Passed Through by Egypt
There are divisions for these eras: an ancient division by the Egyptian historian Manetho, and a modern division by contemporary historians.
Manetho's division is based on dynasties, dividing Egyptian history into thirty dynasties, each comprising a group of kings, relying on the sources available to him at that time.
Modern historians' division is based on eras, where each era includes a group of dynasties as follows:
| Era | Dynasties & Timeframe |
|---|---|
| Prehistoric Eras | Difficult to determine chronologically; includes the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Predynastic periods. |
| Dynasty Zero | — |
| Early Dynastic Period (Archaic) | Dynasties 1-2 (between the 31st–27th centuries BC). |
| Old Kingdom: Age of Pyramid Builders | Dynasties 3–8 (between the 27th–22nd centuries BC). |
| First Intermediate Period | Dynasties 9–10 (between the 22nd–21st centuries BC). |
| Middle Kingdom | Dynasties 11–12 (between the 21st–18th centuries BC). |
| Second Intermediate Period and Hyksos | Dynasties 13–17 (between the 18th–17th centuries BC). |
| New Kingdom | Dynasties 18–20 (between the 16th–11th centuries BC). |
| Late Periods | Dynasties 21–30 (between the 11th–4th centuries BC). |
The Pharaonic eras of ancient Egyptian history ended with the entry of Alexander the Great into Egypt in 332 BC.
Pioneers of Research in Ancient Egyptian History and Civilization
Since Champollion announced the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian language in 1822, a new science began to emerge like other sciences: Egyptology, the science concerned with studying the history, civilization, and antiquities of ancient Egypt.
Western scholars had the honor of pioneering the field of history, archaeology, civilization, and the ancient Egyptian language. Examples include: Lepsius, Budge, Brugsch, Mariette, Maspero, Borchardt, Breasted, de Rougé, Petrie, Amélineau, Firth, Schiaparelli, Champollion, de Morgan, Davis, Griffith, Emery, Spiegelberg, Montet, Quibell, Naville, Drioton, Vandier, Lauer, Reisner, Erman, Garstang, Hall, Müller, Edel, Erichsen, Thompson, Gardiner, and others.
Pioneering Egyptian scholars include: Ahmed Pasha Kamal, Selim Hassan, Sami Gabra, Ahmed Fakhry, Abdel Moneim Abu Bakr, Naguib Mikhail, Mustafa Amer, Ibrahim Rizkana, Girgis Matta, Abdel Mohsen Bakir, Labib Habachi, Zaki Saad, Zakaria Goneim, Abdel Aziz Saleh, Gamal Mokhtar, Ahmed Abdel Hamid Youssef, Ahmed Youssef (the Egyptian restoration expert), and others.
Egyptology and the Rosetta Stone
Egyptology is the science concerned with studying ancient Egyptian antiquities. If the actual beginning of Egyptology is 1822—the year Champollion announced the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian language through the Rosetta Stone—then long before this date, ever since the curtain fell on ancient Egyptian civilization and the use of hieroglyphics (as one of the scripts of the ancient Egyptian language in 394 AD) and Demotic (in 470 AD) ceased, ambiguity has shrouded this civilization. Visitors would visit and admire the creations of ancient humans, but they did not know or understand what the writings recorded on the walls of these monuments narrated.
When Egyptians embraced Christianity, things did not change much, and the monuments had deteriorated due to the passage of time. Some resorted to living in them to escape Roman persecution, viewing them as idols belonging to a people who did not believe in a heavenly religion.
Things did not change much after the Islamic conquest, even though time distances grew apart, and a new language, a new religion, and a new civilization completely different from what prevailed among the ancients entered. The monuments appeared as a riddle to them, and hieroglyphics as talismans they could not deal with.
Under this climate, some Arab historians and travelers tried to describe these monuments and determine their functional role. The pyramid was the most captivating monument to every observer of Egypt's monuments, and they named most of the massive structures they visited "palaces," while most of them were temples rather than palaces.
The follower of the writings of al-Maqrizi, al-Masudi, al-Suyuti, and others will appreciate that they made some effort in describing certain monuments that were no longer standing, even if they framed them in myths unrelated to scientific facts.
Some European travelers came to Egypt in the Middle Ages, either to search for the roots of ancient Egyptian civilization—which influenced the civilization of their Greek and Roman ancestors—or to uncover antiquities driven by fame or financial gain. To the extent that the military dimension of the French Expedition to Egypt in 1798 was a disaster, the cultural dimension was a blessing for Egyptology, represented in the book Description de l'Égypte, which recorded, among other things, Egypt's monuments through a group of scientists accompanying the military expedition.
Then came the establishment of the Scientific Institute (Institut d'Égypte), which showed great interest in aspects of life in ancient and modern Egypt. However, the most important event during the French Expedition's presence in Egypt was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone (in 1799), through which the French scholar Champollion succeeded in deciphering the hieroglyphic script in 1822, the year that represents the true birth of Egyptology.
The Rosetta Stone
The scholar of Egyptian civilization must keep in memory a set of constants, chief among which are elements that opened the door wide for anyone wanting to know something about Egyptian civilization, and the Rosetta Stone comes at the forefront of these elements. Talking about this monument means talking about the stone, the place, the time, and the human.
| Element | Details |
|---|---|
| The Stone | Made of black basalt. |
| The Place | Rashid (Rosetta), a city in Beheira Governorate. |
| The Time | The years 196 BC, 1799 AD, and 1822 AD. |
| The Human | The young French scholar Champollion. |
The first date is when the text was inscribed on the stone during the reign of King Ptolemy V; the second date is when the stone was discovered by soldiers of the French Expedition while digging a trench around Fort Julien near Rosetta; and the third date is when the young French scholar Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphic script. The human is the young French scholar Champollion.
After the discovery, the young French scholar Champollion, like other researchers, obtained a copy of the stone and devoted himself to studying it, showing intense interest in the hieroglyphic script and relying on his extensive experience in ancient Greek and ancient languages in general.
The Rosetta Stone, currently preserved in the British Museum, is made of black basalt, irregular in shape, 113 cm high, 75 cm wide, and 27.5 cm thick, with parts missing at the top and bottom.
The stone includes a decree from priests meeting in Memphis (Mit Rahina - Al-Badrashein Center, Giza Governorate) thanking King Ptolemy V (around 196 BC) for endowing endowments to temples and exempting priests from certain obligations. This decree was recorded in three scripts, in order from top to bottom: Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. The greater part of the hieroglyphic script and a small part of the Greek text were lost. The priests wanted to record this gratitude to the Ptolemaic king in the official script (Hieroglyphic), the daily life script prevailing at that time (Demotic), and then in Greek, the language used by the Ptolemies who occupied Egypt.
The discoverers of the stone had suggested that the stone contained a single text in three different scripts, and it later turned out that their suggestion was correct. After moving the stone to Cairo (Napoleon ordered several copies to be made for researchers in Europe and France), the stone reached Britain in 1802 under an agreement between England and France, and England received the stone to rest in the British Museum in London. Researchers began translating the Greek text, and researchers Silvestre de Sacy and Akerblad paid special attention to the Demotic script.
The first important steps in the field of hieroglyphics were taken by the English scholar Thomas Young, who obtained a copy of the Rosetta Stone in 1814 AD, hypothesized that "cartouches" contain royal names, and relied on other similar texts, such as the obelisk found in Philae in 1815 AD, which contained a text in Greek and another in hieroglyphics.
Despite all previous efforts in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, the greatest credit goes to the French scholar Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832). Champollion had to put forward a set of assumptions:
Whether the three scripts (Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek) represent three different texts in content, or if they represent a single subject written in the official script (Hieroglyphic), the daily life script (Demotic), and the language of the Greeks occupying Egypt.
Regarding the structure of the ancient Egyptian language: Does it rely on an alphabet (a set of letters like living languages), or was it written with signs whose phonetic value ranged from one, two, three, or more consonants?
Did this writing know vowels? Are the signs pictorial or phonetic? What tools did the Egyptian use to define the meaning of words? Were determinatives and interpretive signs used?
These assumptions and questions must have been spinning in Champollion's mind as he dealt with the stone. He must have noticed that there is more than one script for the ancient Egyptian language, alongside questions such as: Is there a graphic relationship between Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic? Is there a linguistic relationship in grammar and morphology? And what do these cylindrical signs in the hieroglyphic text mean, which surround certain hieroglyphic signs, known to us later as the "cartouche"?
Champollion read the Greek text, understood its content, and read the name of King Ptolemy, clearly following the method of relying on proper nouns that are unchangeable in all languages, except for the pronunciation of certain letters. He moved from the hypothesis that this decree issued during the reign of King Ptolemy V (196 BC) must have been written alongside Greek in two scripts of the national language, and that the name "Ptolemy" in Greek would exist in both the hieroglyphic and demotic scripts, but with Egyptian characters phonetically expressing the same letters of the name "Ptolemy". He then focused on identifying these letters in the two Egyptian texts in light of Champollion's knowledge of ancient scripts and his study of Coptic (assuming it is the final stage of the ancient Egyptian language), realizing that consonants of proper nouns do not change regardless of the languages they are written in.
The difficulty would be in vowels that determine the pronunciation of consonants with fatha, damma, or kasra. Due to the absence of vowels in ancient Egyptian writing, differences in pronouncing consonants occur, except that Coptic, in which vowels appeared, largely settled the matter.
The Rosetta Stone contained a single cartouche repeated six times, containing the name of King Ptolemy, which is the name that appeared on the Philae obelisk, in addition to the name Cleopatra. Champollion recorded the signs in Ptolemy's cartouche and numbered them, and did the same for Cleopatra's cartouche (found on the Philae obelisk, given that both names share the phonetic value of certain signs like b, t, and l). He recorded the same two names in Greek, numbered each of their letters, and matched the first sign of Ptolemy's name in hieroglyphics with its counterpart in Greek according to his method that letters in proper nouns do not change. Thus, he was able to recognize the phonetic values of some hieroglyphic signs based on their values in Greek. With further comparative studies, Champollion was able to recognize the phonetic values of many signs. In 1822, Champollion announced to the world that he had succeeded in deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, that word structure in the Egyptian language does not rest on an alphabet, but rather on signs giving the value of one letter, others for two, and a third for three, and confirmed the use of determinatives at the end of vocabulary to specify the meaning of the word.
Efforts of Arab Scholars in Deciphering Ancient Egyptian Writing
Custom has dictated that when we speak of the efforts made by scholars to decipher ancient Egyptian writing, we refer to the efforts of Thomas Young, Akerblad, and Champollion. Although these researchers succeeded in deciphering ancient Egyptian writing—especially Jean-François Champollion in 1822 AD—certain studies over spaced time periods, the latest and most important of which was the study by colleague Dr. Okasha El Daly with which he earned his Ph.D., proved that Arab Muslim scholars made strenuous efforts (even if they did not achieve huge success) to identify the phonetic value and meanings of some ancient Egyptian words.
It was necessary to point out the results reached by these Arab scholars through the study conducted by colleague Dr. Okasha El Daly: Egyptology: The Missing Millennium, London 2005.
The extent of some Arab Muslim scholars' interest in ancient Egyptian writing has been proven through the manuscripts they left us, which reveal the nature of the attempts they made—attempts uncovered by some European orientalists, such as the Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall in 1806 in London, where he published the Arabic text with an English translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's book Shawq al-Mustaham fi Ma'rifat Rumuz al-Aklam, dating back to the 9th century AD. In 1909 AD, Bausset published a collection of articles on the doctrine of the gnostics, in which he indicated the success of some Arab scholars in recognizing some hieroglyphic signs.
Some scholars in the Islamic era showed great interest in the hieroglyphic script, especially alchemists who imagined that the ancient Egyptian language carries many secrets of alchemy, particularly turning ordinary metals into precious ones. The same interest was shown by some Sufi scholars out of a belief that the ambiguity of ancient Egyptian signs requires effort to uncover.
Arab scholars were aware of the various forms of ancient Egyptian signs; Ibn al-Fatik (10th–11th century AD) points to Pythagoras's knowledge of the scripts of the Egyptian language: the public script (Demotic), the priests' script (Hieratic), and the kings' script (Hieroglyphic).
If we want to briefly shed light on some Arab scholars who tried to decipher ancient Egyptian writing, at their forefront is the alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (7th–8th century AD), who included in his books Kashf al-Rumuz and Al-Hasil attempts to read some hieroglyphic writing symbols.
Then there is the Egyptian scholar Ayyub ibn Maslama, who accompanied the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun during his visit to Egypt, and it was reported that he managed to read some ancient Egyptian inscriptions. Among the most prominent Arab scholars is Dhu al-Nun al-Misri (4th century AH), born in Akhmim (one of the cities of Sohag Governorate), who was reported to be proficient in reading inscriptions recorded on temple walls. Among his most important works is his book Hiall al-Rumuz wa Bur'a al-Alwam fi Kashf Usul al-Lughat wa al-Aklam, which included studies of many ancient scripts, including hieroglyphics. Some pages of this work contained hieroglyphic signs accompanied by their phonetic values as he perceived them.
Perhaps the most important Arab scholar in this field is Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati from Iraq (9th–10th century AD), who worked in alchemy and authored the study Shawq al-Mustaham fi Ma'rifat Rumuz al-Aklam, whose Arabic text with an English translation was published by Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall in London in 1806 AD, before the French scholar Champollion announced his discovery of hieroglyphic writing in 1822 AD.
Perhaps the most important thing Ibn Wahshiyya reached was his knowledge of the phonetic value of a number of hieroglyphic signs and his realization that signs appearing at the end of words act as determinatives helping to define the meanings of vocabulary, some of which have proven correct.
Then there is finally the Iraqi-Egyptian alchemist Abu al-Qasim al-Iraqi al-Misri (13th–14th century AD), author of the book Al-Aqalim al-Saba'a, which included copies of some ancient Egyptian texts, as well as a table of "Barbarian" (hieroglyphic) alphabet letters, where his reading of some of them was correct.
Al-Maqrizi showed great interest in the hieroglyphic script, provided translations of some ancient Egyptian texts, and succeeded in scientifically describing the monument bearing the text with high precision, no less than the rules currently followed in publishing such texts.
Module Key Takeaways
- Archaeology and Monument Types: Archaeology studies all human remnants; monuments are classified functionally into worldly and religious, and by nature into static monuments and portable objects.
- The Rosetta Stone and Champollion's Decipherment: Discovered in 1799, the Rosetta Stone contained the same decree in Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek; Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics in 1822, marking the birth of Egyptology.
- Arab Scholars' Pioneering Efforts: Centuries before Champollion, Arab scholars such as Ibn Wahshiyya, Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, and al-Maqrizi made significant attempts to understand hieroglyphic writing and recognize the phonetic values of several signs.