Egyptologists and fellahin: representing and collecting rural Egypt in the early 20th century

Egyptology is today the study of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians living around the monuments, when not employed as workmen, are typically kept well out of the excavation areas and the boundaries of the discipline. Yet Egyptology was ‘born’ with an embedded interest in the modern inhabitants of Egypt. Western collectors and travellers have left a wealth of accounts and comments on the ‘unfamiliar’ customs and attitudes of the Egyptians, and eminent scholars, such as Edward William Lane, have published works on both the ancient and the modern inhabitants of Egypt. With the development of the scientific exploration of Egypt’s past and the diffusion of evolutionist theories, academic interest in the modern Egyptians (especially in the peasants) increased even more, because their habits, crafts, and beliefs were seen as relics or ‘survivals’ of the ancient past. In the early 20th century in particular, many Egyptologists devoted time and resources to these ‘ethnographic’ studies and assembled collections of objects pertaining to contemporary rural Egypt, some of which are now in the Pitt-Rivers museum in Oxford. Another such collection, made by Egyptologist G.A. Wainwright, has been recently identified by the author among the objects of the Petrie Museum. The present article explores this phenomenon in relation to the contemporary socio-historical context and the parallel development of formal anthropological studies in Egypt