British Egyptology in the Nineteenth Century

Egyptology saw its birth as a science during the latter part of the nineteenth century, even though Westerners had been traveling there for millennia. These volumes will present several foundational texts of the discipline in this crucial century, showing throughout each volume the slow, and not quite complete, shift from an amateur pursuit to a professional field of study. In doing so this collection demonstrates that the timeline and specifics of the professionalization of science in the nineteenth century was often discipline specific. Yet, the collection also shows that there was a lot more at stake in this history than a story of gradually becoming a science. Long before the institutionalization of Egyptology, there were Western people traveling to Egypt for various reasons and collecting artefacts to send or take home. This collection will highlight and interrogate the foundational texts that made up the early years of the discipline, travel writings, issues on collecting Egypt, and Egypt’s place in fiction.