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During the height of Western imperialism in Egypt from 1882 to 1922, the British ran the country and the French directed the Antiquities Service. Two contemporary artistic allegories expressed Western appropriation of the pharaonic heritage: the façade of Cairo's Egyptian Museum (1902) and Edwin Blashfield's painting Evolution of civilization in the dome of the Library of Congress (1896). The façade presents modern Egyptology as an exclusively European achievement, and Evolution presents ‘Western civilization’ as beginning in ancient Egypt and climaxing in contemporary America. The illustrated cover of an Arabic school magazine (1899) counters with an Egyptian nationalist claim to the pharaonic heritage. A woman shows children the sphinx and pyramids to inspire modern revival, and Khedive Abbas II and Egyptian educators, not European scholars, frame the scene. The careers of three Egyptologists — Gaston Maspero, E. A. W. Budge, and Ahmad Kamal Pasha — are explored to provide context for the allegories.

This chapter reviews developments in Egyptology in Egypt from Napoleon's short-lived conquest in 1798 through the beginning of decolonization in 1922. Mariette began developing the Egyptian Antiquities Service and Cairo's Egyptian Museum in 1858, and his successor Maspero consolidated France's grip on these institutions while also founding IFAO (the Institut français d'archéologie oriental) in Cairo. After Britain conquered Egypt in 1882, Lord Cromer ruled it for a quarter of a century through an undeclared British protectorate. The leading British excavator, Petrie, was joined around the turn of the twentieth century by Borchardt, a German, and Reisner, an American, while Breasted, also American, became a leading philologist and historian of ancient Egypt. Although some medieval Egyptians had shown a positive interest in pharaonic antiquities, modern Egyptian Egyptology emerged in the later nineteenth century under European stimulus. Laboring under the difficult circumstances of colonialism, Ahmad Kamal, became the founding father of Egyptian Egyptology, while Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and other nationalist intellectuals popularized the heritage of the pharaohs among their compatriots.

The Depression, World War II, and the turmoil of the postwar years severely curtailed field archaeology in Egypt. Sidelined from public life, Selim Hassan published vast multi-volume works—Excavations at Giza in English, and a History of Ancient Egypt in Arabic. Sami Gabra presided as dean of the profession, while younger Egyptologists like Ahmad Fakhry and Labib Habachi climbed the career ladders of the Antiquities Service and universities. Under the guidance of Drioton, the last of the French directors of the Egyptian Antiquities Service stretching back to Mariette, King Faruq enthusiastically visited sites, collected antiquities, and subsidized the excavations of Zaki Saad at Helwan out of palace funds. A set of postage stamps depicted the young king as protector of Egyptian heritage from the Pyramids and Islamic monuments through to the Aswan Dam and the Egyptian University. The Museum of Egyptian Civilization opened in 1949 propagated the same message with a similar chronological sweep. In 1951, on the eve of Nasser's revolution, separate crises of decolonization nearly shut down both French and British archaeological activities in Egypt.

This chapter recounts the author's initial visit to the Egyptian Museum after her return to Cairo. She was shocked by the miserable condition of the museum itself. In western travel guides it is said, at times dismissively, that the Egyptian Museum resembles a storeroom bursting at the seams. It is true that the most priceless artifacts are crowded close together. However, when the French architect Marcel Dourgnon designed the structure at the end of the nineteenth century, he could not have known that within only a few years an ever increasing number of archaeological missions would make more discoveries and finds than in all the years since the direction of Auguste Mariette in the antiquities department.

There are different types of catalog derived from sources: (1) publications as indicated; (2) the archives of the Centre Franco-Égyptien d'Étude des Temples de Karnak (CFEETK); (3) the Journal d'Entrée and Temporary Register at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; (4) personal observations of the fragments displayed in museums and those stored in the Sheikh Labib storehouse in Karnak; (5) observations and photographs by Robert Partridge of some of the fragments in the late 1990s; and (6) information and photographs supplied by Edwin Brock of objects discovered during his recent excavations at East Karnak. In connection with this, the discussion about colossi and its mutilation is presented for better understanding that gives a more detailed excavation on what happened. Moreover, classification of fragments is discussed in this chapter.

The author of this chapter made a decision to study the animal mummy collection, and initiated the Animal Mummy Project, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Egyptian Museum, with Nasry Iskander being the designated collaborator from the latter institution. This project was one of the first modern, large-scale, non-destructive studies of animal mummies of all species undertaken anywhere in the world. The chapter's author's primary interest lay in studying the process of mummification when applied to animals, to see if chronological and geographical changes/particularities could be mapped, to understand the different categories of animal mummies, and to learn more about the ancient Egyptian environment. The ultimate aim of this project, after the mummies had been examined, was to conserve them, to produce a new, updated Catalogue Général volume as the original one had been rendered obsolete, as well as to reinstall the mummies in a more sympathetic museum environment.

Work carried out on the animal mummies in the Egyptian Museum, as well as in other collections, shows that, like humans, animals were mummified in a variety of ways throughout Egyptian history. This chapter describes different methods employed for mummification. Mummification basically involves the evisceration and desiccation of the body. Desiccation is done using common salt or natron that draws out the bodily fluids leaving the dry husk. The second method of mummification involves the washing out of the intestines, and drying the body, using natron, before anointing and wrapping it. The third method of mummification uses no incision for evisceration. Rather, oil of cedar or pine was injected into the anus, the orifice plugged, and the liquid left to melt the viscera. A fourth method used on some animal mummies involved defleshing. A fifth variation on mummification involved the total immersion of live birds in vats of melted resin/pitch/bitumen.

This introductory chapter details the last time the author met Hosni Mubarak in October 2010 in Rome when she was instructed to put together a list of 190 treasures from Cairo's museums for an exhibition of treasures from Egyptian history. It also looks at the revolutionary events in Tahrir Square and the plundering of the Egyptian Museum in 2011. The author then describes how she dealt with the challenges of corruption as she assumed a management position in the antiquities service in the Egyptian Museum. On that “day of rage” in Tahrir Square, she determined that she would be betraying herself and the youth of Egypt if she were to become the director of a museum founded by people who torture young people and beat them to death, and decided to do no more work that had any connection to Mubarak, his wife, and the regime.

This chapter is a call to archaeologists and museum curators to reflect upon their roles in the production of knowledge surrounding antiquities and to take more responsibility for historical awareness and appreciation in Egypt. Historical objects transform in significance over time and are in constant re-creation of identity, so we must keep pace with their contemporary relevance, and we should use that relevance to start a discourse on the construction of new identities in relation to cultural memories of the past through the contemporary interpretations of these objects in the daily life of different communities. People cannot appreciate what they do not know; if Egyptians do not have access to the knowledge of their ancient past, they will not understand the value of the significance of its material remains, and will continue to allow, through neglect, the total loss of archaeological sites to looting and commercial urbanization. In the end, this loss will result in a complete attrition of cultural heritage and historical memory that will further lead to a more diluted identity.