Every great figure of the nineteenth century—from Gladstone, Carlyle and Ruskin, to Byron, Tennyson and Yeats, or Lyell, Darwin and Huxley—read histories of ancient Egypt and argued about their content. They recognised Egypt as a focal point in disputes over human origins, patterns underlying human history, the status and purpose of the Bible and the cultural roles of the classics. Egyptian archaeology ingrained its influence everywhere from the lecture halls of the ancient universities, to the devotional aids of rural Sunday schools and the plots of cheap sensation fiction. This study shows h ... More

Every great figure of the nineteenth century—from Gladstone, Carlyle and Ruskin, to Byron, Tennyson and Yeats, or Lyell, Darwin and Huxley—read histories of ancient Egypt and argued about their content. They recognised Egypt as a focal point in disputes over human origins, patterns underlying human history, the status and purpose of the Bible and the cultural roles of the classics. Egyptian archaeology ingrained its influence everywhere from the lecture halls of the ancient universities, to the devotional aids of rural Sunday schools and the plots of cheap sensation fiction. This study shows how Egyptology’s development over the century after decipherment of the hieroglyphic script can only be understood through its entanglement in the historical, scientific and religious contentions that defined the era. This interest was inseparable from Egypt’s status as a Bible land. Rapidly changing forms of nineteenth-century Egyptology were defined by new assumptions about what the Bible was and what its cultural status should be. Almost every leading Egyptologist of this period published works of theology, while religious thinkers—conservative and radical—embraced the study of ancient Egypt with staggering intensity. In the mid century Egypt played a powerful role in radical biblical criticism. By the end of the century, however, the Egyptology of Petrie and the Egypt Exploration Fund was instrumental in a broad fight-back of popular religion against all forms of elite criticism. Readers of Egyptology aimed to synthesise their interpretation of ancient Egypt in accordance with their attitudes to other controversial themes: geology, literal readings of the Bible, Darwinian evolution or historical renderings of Homer. Conversely, Egyptologists recorded their commitment to this public and their debt to a host of geologists, astronomers, theologians and novelists. Drawing on the archives of individuals, Egyptological organisations and museums, this study shows how the unprecedented transformations in this period’s cultural life shaped Egyptology, and how Egyptology in turn drove these transformations on, shaping the society in which it was formed.