Notes on Egyptian Archaeology, edited by Chris Nongton, translated by Wang Shuo, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, June 2021 edition, 264 pp., 180.00 rmb
From about the beginning of the seventeenth century, the mysterious ancient Egypt was a fascinating land that attracted Western explorers, philologists, naturalists and archaeologists. Egyptian locals turned a blind eye to the historical wonders around them, but felt fresh and confused by the excitement and exploration of the Western explorers. The explorers were not afraid of hardships and obstacles, and most of them were explorers and antiquarians, philologists, painters, architects, photographers, and quickly recorded, drawn, and sketched on the back of the note paper taken from the Cairo hotel, on the back of the cigarette box, or in the diary in the Fortnum & Mason department store box, and ancient Egypt gradually revealed its true face under the burial of the quicksand of the years. It was the most fascinating and exciting journey of discovery, a great age of discovery.
Notes on Egyptian Archaeology, edited by Chris Naunton (original title: Egyptologists Notebooks, 2020; translated by Wang Shuo, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, June 2021), is a scholarly and popular book on the history of Egyptian discovery for the public, written by both Egyptologist, former president of the International Egyptian Association, and a well-known host of Egyptian documentaries. From an academic point of view, from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, the exploration and research experience of thirty-two ancient Egyptian discoverers and archaeologists, the historical evolution of the germination, formation and development of Egyptian archaeology and Egyptian studies, are all condensed in these Egyptologists' sketches, on-site transcripts, surveying and mapping maps, archaeological site photography, tomb structure analysis maps and public and private letters and other historical materials, the collection, collation and research of this kind of information itself has a high academic content. In addition, although it is only an introduction to the "Archaeological Notes", the academic issues involved are actually quite important - because from the field records of these early explorers and archaeologists, there are different perspectives and bases from the same academic issues discussed in the narrative framework of archaeology and history. For example, behind the European explorers and archaeologists who went to Egypt in the nineteenth century, there was a political and cultural competition between the great powers, and at the same time, the nationalist spirit that was developing in Egypt itself was reflected in cultural relics management and archaeological projects, which was undoubtedly an important chapter in the academic history of Egyptology, and several protagonists in the book could provide cutting-edge topics from the scene. For example, in the successive "archaeological notes", the most authentic record of how generations of Egyptologists inherited, corrected and developed the trajectory of knowledge production in Egyptology, is a veritable archaeological object of knowledge based on notes and drawings of the history of Egyptian discovery and Egyptian scholarship. To be precise, this "Notes on Egyptian Archaeology" should be called the history of Egyptian discovery and the archaeology of Egyptology notes.
Moreover, the humanistic emotional experience it evokes is a spiritual feast. "Know that the place where you stand is Memphis, the ancient capital, the seat of the biblical king of Egypt, or Thebes, which Homer calls the 'capital of a hundred doors.'" (p. 9) Is there anything more plain and deadly than this? This, of course, reminds me of the real feeling of having traveled to Egypt three times many years ago, from Alexandria to Aswan, from camels in the desert to rafting on the Nile, from temples to cemeteries, really thinking about "where you stood" and thinking about who those who have been here and seen all this in front of us are, and of course knowing that the scenery in their eyes is very different from what we see today. Chris Nongton said that many of the monuments they had seen — those of the early travelers — were now gone, such as a nearly intact temple of Amenhotep III during the New Kingdom on Elephantine Island, the portico of the temple of Philip Arrhidaeus in Hermopolis, the Ptolemaic king, and the temple porch of Hermopolis. The exquisite Corinthian columns of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in Antinoopolis, as well as the appearance of many tombs and inscriptions, have now been either damaged, moved and sold at will, or broken and destroyed in the wind and sun. So, "Yalla! We can no longer experience such an adventure, but only to see what happened with the pen of these early Egyptologists. Their notes, maps, plans, drawings, paintings, sketches, graffiti, letters and telegrams all open a window into the Egyptian world as seen by these pioneers, allowing us to return to the golden age when everything was unknown and yet to be discovered, so that we could follow the path they had traveled to understand an Egypt in the depths of history." (11 pages)
It should still start with the ancient Greek historian Herodotus's Histories, because this is a Greek historical work of the fifth century BC and the first travelogue with historical research intentions. The word "history" in many European and American languages comes from the ancient Greek language: στορ α (Historia), which originally means "investigation, inquiry, knowledge". Herodotus' Historia is primarily about the war between Greece and the Persian Empire, for which he traveled to many places, including Egypt. It is generally known that he is known as the "father of historiography", but do not forget that there is also the "father of the traveler". This is quite symbolic, and historiography has been inseparable from travel and adventure since its inception. Herodotus tells the story of Menes, Egypt's first pharaoh, and his construction of Memphis, as well as the tragic story of how Cheops (Khufu) forced people to build pyramids. Later scholars certainly found many errors in Herodotus' Egyptian narrative, but Chris Nongton was pertinent: he was always right about so many things, such as his statement about mummies, "one of the most complete sources of information on this." (14 pages)
However, the German priest Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), who is ranked first in the Archaeological Notes of Egypt, did not visit Egypt, the only exception among these early Egyptologists. He began to be fascinated by deciphering hieroglyphs from obelisks brought to Rome in classical times and a dictionary of hieroglyphicorum (Hieroglyphicorum), and although later scholars continued to point out how wrong his interpretations were, it was undeniable that the link between Coptic and ancient Egyptian was established, for nearly two centuries after Jean Fran ois Champollion, 1790-1832) successfully deciphered hieroglyphs to lay the foundation. (p. 16) Perhaps more important, it seems to me, that he ignited the interest and reverie of the mysterious history of ancient Egypt and its religious system with his great passion for exploration and his strong ability to speculate religiously—he was a staunch Neoplatonist. What struck me in particular was Kicher's instinctive attention to images, and even to the cross-examination of pictorial history, that he could draw pictures on the basis of the records of others, illustrating in great detail the images of mummies, coffins, sarcophagi, canopic jars, the interpretation of object glyphs, and he also painted the first image showing the pyramid group of Dahshur. In the knowledge archaeology of the study of the history of Egyptology, Kicher should not be overlooked.
The sketches drawn by explorers on site are often of extremely valuable historical value. Danish Navy Captain Frederik Ludwig Norden (1708-1742) came to Egypt in 1737, and his images of the Colossus of Memnon, the Sphinx in front of the Golden Tower of Khafre, the topographic map of Giza, and the section of the interior of the Great Pyramid were published after his death, becoming one of the most important sources of information available at the time. Norden's detailed drawing of the Sphinx "may be the first sketch to accurately show the sculpted features of the pharaoh's face, depicting the remains of the eyebrows, the striped turban, and the serpentine ornament (cobra) on the eyebrows." Under the wind and sun, the statue's headdress and face have obvious rock weathering and layering, and he painted it in great detail. Norden writes: "Tourists marvel at the Colossus, but they cannot help but express their indignation at the atrocities that destroyed its nose. (p. 31)
Sphinx painted by Norden, followed by the Pyramid of Khafre (1737)
From the destruction of the sphinx's nose, of course, napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798 is thought of, although that nose is none of his business. Napoleon sent artists, scholars, and troops to Egypt to conduct an unprecedented large-scale investigation and study of Egypt. Their Description de l' gypte ( Description de l' gypte ) was published from 1809 to 1829 , consisting of twenty-six volumes of text , one volume of maps , and ten volumes of folio paper containing three thousand pictures. Three thousand pictures at that time, what is this concept? It is a huge image that shapes the visual experience of the European public about Egyptian history. Dominique Vivant Denon, a polymath and artist on Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, was able to draw more than two hundred drawings over the course of nine months as his army marched. Two years after returning to France, he published Voyage dans la basse et la haute gypte (Journey to Upper and Lower Egypt), in which he said in his message to Napoleon: "I have done my utmost to sculpt the figures, without missing a single detail, and have tried to present a depiction worthy of the physical object. (p. 50) He says that when he looked at Thebes from a distance on the march, he drew a painting "as if the city were going to run." (p. 49) He was driven by the speed of the march, but on a longer-term scale of time, the sites would literally run away. The ruins of the temple of Thoth, which he painted in Helmópolis in 370 BC, were exhumed in 1826.
Chris Nongton says that Denon and his companions recorded the ancient ruins that have now disappeared, which is their most immortal achievement. (p. 53) It should be said that this is also the common merit of all explorers and archaeologists in this period. Examples include the plan and example cross-section of the Saqqala Catacombs by French architect Pascal Coste, the first garden of the Great Temple of Amun painted by the Englishman James Burton in Karnak, and the Medinet Habu by the British Arabic scholar Edward William Lane. Drawings of the second courtyard of the Temple of Ramses III, numerous drawings by the British antiqueist Robert Hay during two expeditions over a decade (now in the British Library), by the French artist Néstor Lotte A. Nestor l'H te) drawing of the interior of the Puta Temple south of Aswan... And so on, even in this book, more examples of paintings can be found to prove that the ruins, buildings, etc. in those images no longer exist, and those lines and colors on the paper have become the only visual records they have left in history. Here it is conceived that the author of the book also missed an important figure, the Scottish painter David Roberts (1796-1864). Beginning in September 1838, Roberts sailed along the Nile for several months, systematically drawing a large number of sketches and watercolors of ancient Egyptian ruins. "Because every detail is so precise, Roberts' Egyptian temple watercolor is a brilliant record of the preservation of the 19th-century ruins. And they provide important information about color for many reliefs that have almost completely faded. (Alberto Silotti, Ancient Egypt: Temples, People, and Gods, translated by Peng Qi et al., China Water Resources and Hydropower Publishing House, 2006, p. 83)
In the early adventures, archaeological activities, people's activities, scenes are also vividly presented in the paintings of painters. The British traveler and iconographer Marianne Brocklehurst saw the excavation of a large tomb in 1891 in the northeast of the famous Hatshepsut Temple, and she immediately painted two paintings on the site, one of the coffins on the ground and the other of carrying wooden coffins to the river to transport the coffins by water, "these paintings reflect a very important moment in Egyptian archaeology, a rare visual representation." (184 pages)
Before the invention of photography, all these early expeditions, drawings drawn on the site in archaeological research, were the most precious historical images. Even with photographic techniques, on-site observation and hand-drawn portraits in certain situations are still necessary. In the early twentieth century, Mr. and Mrs. Norman de Garis Davies carried out the work of reproducing the decorative paintings of egyptian mausoleums in the great necropolises of Amarna and Thebes, Egypt, in an effort to improve the quality of the shooting, while making the most meticulous observation of the mausoleum frescoes with extensive knowledge and experience. "They see a lot more than they do with a camera — they can see not only what's already on the wall, but also elements that have been damaged or that should have appeared but disappeared." Their hand-painted Egyptian tomb paintings are therefore considered the most precious pictorial records. (pp. 217-219)
Speaking of photography in early Egyptology, we must also talk about william Flinders Petrie, the famous British archaeologist and "father of Egyptian archaeology", who was the first to apply rigorous science and technology to archaeological excavations. Chris Nongton says Petrie wasn't the first to document the archaeological process using photography. But he raised that bar. He shot on site with a pinhole camera, and the quality of the photos was generally high. (p. 178) In addition, one of Petri's most significant contributions to the discipline of Egyptology was the various objects unearthed in both ordinary ancient Egyptian buildings and tombs outside of temples and mausoleums, and this required the training of those involved in excavations. (183 pages)
The protagonists of the entire historical narrative, from Egyptian exploration to Egyptian archaeology, are Europeans, and their exploration and archaeological achievements are undeniable facts, but the contributions of Arabs and native Egyptians have long been ignored. As early as the Middle Ages, the Arabs have recorded the religious culture and social history of Egypt, such as the author mentions in the book Ayyub ibn Maslama, Ibn Aboud Haqam and Ibn Umail, whose works involve hieroglyphs, ancient Egyptian religions, funeral customs, mummies, royal power and management, and their works are of high academic value. But their contribution to Egyptology was greatly underestimated, as the first Europeans to arrive in Egypt were unaware of the existence of these books. (p. 15) The first Europeans to travel and explore Egypt in modern times could not do without the help of the local Egyptians, but the contributions of the locals are rarely mentioned in their recorded texts. This is not only a matter of the unrecognized labor and contributions of the local Egyptians, but also leads to the narrative of Egyptian archaeological history being completely confined to the path of the Western academic tradition, and scholars are often bound by prejudices in historical documents. After the nineteenth century, Egyptians increasingly played a role in the management of their country's cultural and archaeological heritage, and pioneer archaeologists in their country began to play an important role. But it is only in the twenty-first century that the contributions and influences of Egypt's own archaeologists have attracted attention. In 2012, a closed burial chamber of Seti I in Abydos was reopened, which, in addition to the exquisite decorations from the Nineteenth Dynasty period, also preserves a large number of administrative documents related to the Egyptian Antiquities Bureau of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including letters, inventory catalogs, field maps, floor plans and account books. These historical sources confirm the important contributions of Egypt's own archaeologists and heritage managers. In these documents, a national Egyptologist named Hassan Hosni was very active in guiding the management of antiquities in the early 1920s, opening a path to help national scholars enter the Antiquities Board and archaeological research. In these documents, a cultural relics management archive marked "Egyptian government" was also found, indicating the authoritative position of the Egyptian Antiquities Bureau in the archaeological cause. (pp. 238-240) However, the author does not go on to describe how nationalist narratives have entered and influenced the mainstream of Western academic narratives in the academic discussion of Egyptian archaeology and history; in particular, in the interpretation of images in Egyptian antiquities, it is particularly interesting for me to know whether Egypt's indigenous academic resources can establish new and effective methods of interpretation, but this issue has gone far beyond the author's intention and goal in writing the book.
In the study of Egyptian archaeology, there are also contributions from Chinese scholars. William Petrie, a British scholar known as the "Father of Egyptian Archaeology", was mentioned earlier, and one of his students trained in Egyptology at the University of London is also known as the "Father of Egyptology" - Chinese. He is Xia Nai, and most people know him as a famous Chinese archaeologist, but there are probably not many people who know that he also made important contributions to the study of Egyptology. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1934 and continued his studies at the University of London the following year. Before going abroad, his mentor Si Nian suggested that he study a little narrower, choose a mentor, have less contact with Chinese, and preferably not study China. This may have had an impact on his final choice. In April 1936, Xia Nai chose to study egyptology for a master's degree and a doctorate, threw himself under The Gate of Petrie, and chose the beads collected by the Petry Museum of Egyptian Archaeology as the object of his doctoral dissertation. R. K. Glanville) and Petrie's assistant P. Yates Yetts) specific guidance. This research topic is extremely difficult, but it is very important. In July 1943, Xia Nai completed his doctoral thesis "Ancient Egyptian Beads", and in July 1946, the University College awarded Xia Nai a doctorate in Egyptian archaeology. The Pitri Museum at University College London still preserves nearly 2,000 cards ("Shiah Bead Corpus I., II."), which classify and register 1,760 beads from Petri's collection and draw line drawings. (See Yan Haiying, "Xia Nai, the Father of Egyptology in China," Historical Research, No. 6, 2009) More than seventy years later, this doctoral dissertation was published in the UK in 2014; the Chinese translation was published in China in 2020. The first sentence in the text of the Egyptian Ancient Jewel Examination (translated by Yan Haiying et al., Social Science Literature Press, October 2020) is: "Sir Ferindez Petri commented in his Handbook of Egyptian Antiquities: 'Beads and pottery are the alphabet of archaeological research. (p. 3) It shows how much Petrie influenced him. Stephen Quirke, a professor of Egyptian archaeology at University College London, said in the book Introduction: "Xia Nai's Doctoral dissertation was so successful that other scholars in London were discouraged from spending their entire lives repeating this work. No one conducted the study again, leaving a gap in the core area of archaeological theory and practice in Northeast Africa, directly influencing the academic research on the most closely related regions of West Asia and Southeast Europe. (p. 6) it can be shown that Xia Nai's doctoral dissertation, published more than seventy years later, is not only of academic historical significance, but, as Quark put it: "To bring to life the vital field of beading research." (Ibid.) It is also worth noting that Quark spoke of the fact that in 1893, in the historical context of the heyday of Victorian imperialism, Petri foresaw that archaeology would become a competitive field for European powers: France dominated the field of art history, Germany had the predominance of documentation, and Britain should enter the field of material culture research. The beads, which are the core of jewelry, have become the frontier topic of material culture research. (Ibid., p. 2)
Xia Nai, "Ancient Egyptian Zhu kao", translated by Yan Haiying, Tian Tian, and Liu Zixin, Social Sciences Literature Press, October 2020
Yan Haiying, "Ancient Egyptian Cultural Relics in China's Collection", China Social Sciences Press, July 2021
Looking back at Chris Nongton's account of Petrie in his Notes on Egyptian Archaeology: "One of Petri's most significant contributions to the discipline was that his focus was broader and more comprehensive. He realized that excavations should not be limited to temples and mausoleums, but should also focus on a larger number of humble houses and towns, in addition to studying all the ancient relics, including flora and fauna, remains, and amazing handicrafts, so as to gain a broad understanding of ancient Egypt. (p. 180) Xia Nai's study of ancient Egyptian beads is precisely to realize Petri's academic ideal of "having a broad understanding of ancient Egypt."
The study of Egyptology not only has the contributions of Chinese scholars, but also the collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts in China. Yan Haiying's Ancient Egyptian Cultural Relics in China's Collection (China Social Science Press, July 2021) systematically discusses the ancient Egyptian cultural relics that have flowed into China since the late Qing Dynasty, as well as the process of collection and research. According to reports, the ancient Egyptian cultural relics and materials that entered China at the end of the Qing Dynasty include: inscriptions, pottery and other cultural relics and related rubbings, photos, lithographs, etc. The flow of this information into China is mainly due to public and private personnel who travel abroad and visit and investigate. When they came into contact with Egyptian cultural relics, they brought Egyptian cultural relics and related materials back to China through purchases, rubbing, photography, and foreign museums and personal gifts. The most famous is a batch of Egyptian cultural relics purchased by Duan Fang in Egypt on his way home during a trip abroad in 1906. (p. 17) The first part of the book first discusses the discovery process and background of ancient Egyptian artifacts in China, and then conducts a professional bibliography and inscription study of the stone stele collected in China and similar stone stele collected in foreign museums, and also introduces the three painted gilded humanoid mummified wooden coffins collected in China. The second part is the emergence and evolution of the concept of the afterlife, rituals, magic and burial customs, and finally the study of the Book of the Afterlife and the Resurrection Ceremony, the Book of the Underworld and the Zodiac in the Othiris And tomb literature. Among them, the examination of the zodiac image shows that in the study of ancient Egyptian cultural relics, it is necessary to closely combine text and image research in order to crack the highly symbolic symbolic system with hidden content.