Imagining an Imperial Race: Egyptology in the Service of Empire

Chroniclers of Egyptian archaeology have questioned the "scientific" pretensions of native Egyptologists to a far greater degree than they have questioned such pretensions among their European forbears, the purported pioneers of "scientific" Egyptology. Such a focus upon Egyptian nationalists' appropriation of Egyptology as a symbolic means by which to bolster political agendas, although warranted, has tended to harden, in the absence of comparable questioning of European appropriations, the predominant view of "selfish" Egyptians "fiddling" with the "scientific" findings of "impartial" European Egyptologists. Yet, images of the ancient Egyptians were eminently flexible means to distinctly functional, political ends in the hands of purportedly "scientific" Egyptologists.