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WORK TITLE: Contesting Antiquities in Egypt
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BIRTHDATE: 1940
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CITY: Seattle
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Prof emer, Georgia State Univ; affiliate prof, Univ of Washington * https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/instructors/q-t/donald-reid.html * https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-reid-016a5b4b
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Born 1940.
EDUCATION:Princeton University, received M.A., Ph.D., 1969; also attended Yale University.
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Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 1969–, became professor emeritus. Faculty affiliate, University of Washington; adjunct faculty, School of Continuing Education, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Georgia State University professor emeritus of history Donald Malcolm Reid specializes in the study of the Islamic world—more specifically, the history of Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He “has made a name for himself as a historian of Egyptian institutions, from the early scientific societies established under the Khedive Ismail to the Egyptian University,” Roger Owen wrote in Middle Eastern Studies. “He has also written interesting, widely researched pieces about museums, archaeological rivalry and the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the various layers of Egypt’s ancient past.” Reid’s monographs include the studies The Odyssey of Faraḥ Anṭun: A Syrian Christian’s Quest for Secularism, Lawyers and Politics in the Arab World, 1880-1960, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, and Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser.
In his works, Reid shows how European colonialism has shaped the story of modern Egypt on many levels. Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt, for instance, serves as “a reminder of how sparse is the historical literature on the growth of university education in colonial, semi-colonial and Third World societies,” stated J.G. Darwin in the English Historical Review, “and how few of such studies as do exist are securely based like Reid’s on … archival sources.” In Whose Pharaohs? he looks at the emergence of modern Egyptology and the way that Egyptian scholars have been cut out of the story of the rediscovery of ancient Egyptian civilization. “The popular view of the progress of the study of Egyptian antiquities begins with the invasion of Napoleon and includes familiar European names such as Belzoni (Italian/English), Champolleon (French), Lepsius (Prussian), Mariette and Maspero (French), Wilkinson and Petrie (English),” stated William H. Peck in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. “There is little or no mention of the Egyptians who evinced an interest or attempted a study of their own heritage. In the normal course of Euro-centric study of modern Egyptology one rarely encounters the names of Rifa al-Tawaty, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Hekekyan, or … Simaika.” Even the ways in which ancient Egyptian artifacts were presented to the public was taken out of Egyptian hands. “Europeans established museums for Pharaonic artifacts,” explained Edward K. Werner in Library Journal, “but paid little or no attention to the Coptic and Islamic … legacy.”
The ways in which the study of the later ancient world and the history of medieval Egypt were left for Egyptian scholars themselves became the subject of Reid’s Contesting Antiquity in Egypt. The volume builds on the nineteenth-century groundwork laid by Whose Pharaohs? and, stated John Taylor in MBR Bookwatch, “looks at the ways in which Egypt developed its own archaeologies–Islamic, Coptic, and Greco-Roman, as well as the more dominant ancient Egyptian.” After the discovery of the unplundered tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922 by the British archaeologist Howard Carter, a huge public interest (called “pharaonism” in Egyptian archaeology arose around the world. “The role of pharaonism,” declared C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky in Choice, “conflicts between the foreign monopoly of archaeology and emergent Egyptian nationalism and scholarship.” “Reid, who always has a good eye for an anecdote,” wrote Raphael Cormack in Apollo, “shows how impossible it is to separate culture from the imperial machinations and rivalries of the time. The Graeco-Roman Museum remained an almost untouched Italian fiefdom, but everywhere else the French, British, and Germans were fighting it out for dominance. The battles tended to be focused around the French and the British. Reid devotes several arresting pages to one of the fiercest rivalries between two famous scholars of Islamic art; K.A.C. Creswell and Gaston Wiet.” “Reid continues to chart the histories of these same individuals from World War I to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that terminated the British occupation and its puppet monarchy. He argues that it was in this semi-colonial period that the Egyptian cultural and academic institutions began to finally ‘nationalize’ their ranks by appointing Egyptian scholars,” said Deniz Turker in Arab Studies Quarterly. “Contesting Antiquity in Egypt would be of interest to scholars across humanistic disciplines. It will act as a valuable reference to those studying symbols of national ideology as well as ones scavenging for minute bibliographical information on a great many twentieth-century Egyptian cultural movers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Apollo, February, 2016, Raphael Cormack, “Egyptology by Egyptians: Raphael Cormack Praises a Groundbreaking Study of Overlooked 20th-century Scholars,” p. 95.
Arab Studies Quarterly, winter, 2017, Deniz Turker, review of Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser, p. 779.
Choice, April, 2016, C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, review of Contesting Antiquity in Egypt, p. 1204.
English Historical Review, April, 1994, J.G. Darwin, review of Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt, p. 527.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, October-December, 2002, William H. Peck, review of Whose Pharaohs?: Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, p. 886.
Library Journal, March 1, 2002, Edward K. Werner, review of Whose Pharaohs?, p. 120.
MBR Bookwatch, January, 2016, John Taylor, review of Contesting Antiquity in Egypt.
Middle Eastern Studies, October, 2002, Roger Owen, review of Whose Pharaohs?, p. 211.
ONLINE
Simon Fraser University Web site, https://www.sfu.ca/ (April 5, 2017), author profile.*
Donald Reid
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Donald Reid
Donald Reid, who holds an MA and a PhD from Princeton University, is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Georgia State University. He resides in Seattle, where he is faculty affiliate with the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington.
His books include Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I; Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt; and Lawyers and Politics in the Arab World, 1880–1960. His current research is on archaeology and Egyptian identity from the First World War to Nasser.
Contesting Antiquity in Egypt
John Taylor
MBR Bookwatch. (Jan. 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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Contesting Antiquity in Egypt
Donald Malcolm Reid
American University in Cairo Press
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018-2729
www.aucpress.com
9789774166891, $59.95, HC, 516pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: The sensational discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's tomb, close on the heels of Britain's declaration of Egyptian independence, accelerated the growth in Egypt of both Egyptology as a formal discipline and of 'pharaonism'-popular interest in ancient Egypt-as an inspiration in the struggle for full independence. Emphasizing the three decades from 1922 until Nasser's revolution in 1952, "Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser" by Donald Malcolm Reid (Professor emeritus, Georgia State University, and Affiliate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington) looks at the ways in which Egypt developed its own archaeologies-Islamic, Coptic, and Greco-Roman, as well as the more dominant ancient Egyptian. Each of these four archaeologies had given birth to, and grown up around, a major antiquities museum in Egypt. Later, Cairo, Alexandria, and Ain Shams universities joined in shaping these fields. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt brings all four disciples, as well as the closely related history of tourism, together in a single engaging framework.
Critique: Impressively informative, exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser" is enhanced for academia and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the history of Egyptology with the inclusion of maps, figures, tables, a list of abbreviations, a "Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Dates", eighty pages of Notes, a thirty-two page Bibliography, and a thirty-five page Index. "Contesting Antiquity in Egypt" is an extraordinary history and a work of seminal scholarship, making it very highly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as both community and academic library collections.
Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. (History)
Edward K. Werner
Library Journal. 127.4 (Mar. 1, 2002): p120.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Reid, Donald Malcolm. Whose Pharaohs?: Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. Univ. of California. 2002. c.381p. permanent paper. photogs. maps. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-520-22197-4. $40. ARCHAEOL
In his Rape of the Nile, Brian Fagan presented a popular survey showing how Europeans and later Americans descended upon Egypt as soldiers, tourists, and scholars to loot the country's ancient heritage with no concern for the aspirations of the Egyptians themselves. Fred Bratton's A History of Egyptian Archaeology traced the development of modern Egyptology with no reference to Egyptian scholars. Reid (history, Georgia State Univ.), the author of several books on the Middle East, here offers a scholarly assessment of the reaction of the Egyptian intelligentsia to the plundering and control of the nation's antiquities and the role these activities played in the growth of Egyptian nationalism. As Reid shows, the Europeans established museums for Pharaonic artifacts but paid little or no attention to the Coptic and Islamic architectural and artistic legacy. The Egyptians took it upon themselves to found museums and institutions to preserve and study these treasures. Reid documents the tensions between the Egyptians and the Europeans who administered Egyptian institutions in a lively narrative with full references and an extensive bibliography. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Edward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Pierce, FL
Werner, Edward K.
Reid, Donald Malcolm. Contesting antiquity in Egypt: archaeologies, museums, and the struggle for identities from World War I to Nasser
C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1204.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Reid, Donald Malcolm. Contesting antiquity in Egypt: archaeologies, museums, and the struggle for identities from World War I to Nasser. American University in Cairo, 2015. (Dist. by Oxford) 491 p bibl Index ISBN 9789774166891 cloth, $59.95; ISBN 9781617976759 ebook, contact publisher for price
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MARC
Reid (emer., Georgia State Univ.) reviews the history of archaeology and Egyptology from 1914 to 1952, emphasizing the contribution of Egyptian scholars. The role of pharaonism, an interest in the shifting interests toward ancient Egypt, conflicts between the foreign monopoly of archaeology and emergent Egyptian nationalism and scholarship, and scholarly versus popular conceptions of ancient Egypt offer both rare and important perspectives on the role of archaeology in the political, social, and scholarly scene in the first half of the 20th century. The author thoroughly reviews the emergence of different museums, institutes, and university departments that dealt with Greco-Roman archaeology, Coptic archaeology, Islamic archaeology, and Egyptology. Of particular importance is Reid's emphasis on Egyptian scholars who pioneered the study of the above fields and the role they played in wresting control of Egyptology from earlier French, British, German, and US colonial dominance. Of equal interest is the constant tension and rivalry between French and British archaeologists for control of Egyptology and their role in subordinating indigenous scholarship. Intrigues to control the news related to the discovery of Tutankhamen, controversies regarding the division of archaeological remains, and personal hostilities between famed archaeologists all make for an interesting read. Numerous illustrations, copious footnotes, excellent bibliography and index. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.--C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Harvard University
Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C.
Egyptology by Egyptians: Raphael Cormack praises a groundbreaking study of overlooked 20th-century scholars
Raphael Cormack
Apollo. 183.639 (Feb. 2016): p95.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Apollo Magazine Ltd.
http://www.apollo-magazine.com/
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Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser
Donald Malcolm Reid
The American University in Cairo Press, $59.95
ISBN 9789774166891
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The first half of the 20th century must have been a thrilling time for museum lovers in Egypt; there was a dizzying array of choice for the culturally minded Egyptian or foreign traveller. In Cairo, the world's first Railway Museum opened in 1913, followed by the Agricultural Museum in 1938, and the Postal Museum in 1940. This is to say nothing of the four large museums that are the focus of Donald Malcolm Reid's new book Contesting Antiquity in Egypt-, the Arab Art Museum (now the Islamic Art Museum), inaugurated in 1884; the new Egyptian Museum, which opened its doors in 1902 (moving from an earlier site in Boulaq to what is now Tahrir Square); the Coptic Museum of 1908; and, in Alexandria, the Graeco-Roman Museum of 1892.
The book is a follow-up to Reid's 2002 work, Whose Pharaohs, which charts the early development of Egyptology and antiquarian study in Egypt. His new study picks up where the last left off--at the beginning of the First World War--and follows the story up to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, picking apart the complex 'semi-colonial' period in Egypt's history. He endeavours to show how it forms the story of these museums as well as the wider study of Egypt's vast cultural heritage.
Reid, who always has a good eye for an anecdote, shows how impossible it is to separate culture from the imperial machinations and rivalries of the time. The Graeco-Roman Museum remained an almost untouched Italian fiefdom, but everywhere else the French, British, and Germans were fighting it out for dominance. The battles tended to be focused around the French and the British. Reid devotes several arresting pages to one of the fiercest rivalries between two famous scholars of Islamic art; K.A.C. Creswell and Gaston Wiet. The British Creswell was convinced that Wiet showed him 'ten years of underground hostility against an interloper in a field he [thought] ought to be entirely French', adding that Wiet was 'the spearhead of French anti-British influence'. Wiet, who had an Egyptian wife and held soirees for Cairo's most famous writers, frequently bested the irascible Creswell with characteristic sangfroid.
Beyond the French and the British, the situation was greatly complicated by the presence of the Germans--who were disliked by many after the First World War, but increasingly determined to spread their influence during the 1930s and '40s. The Americans were also relative newcomers on the scene, launching an ambitious, but ill-fated bid to spend $10 million on a new Rockefeller Museum on the Nile. However, what Reid does, which so few others do, is use his knowledge of Arabic and the archives of Cairo to chase up the people so often not invited to the party: the Egyptians themselves.
Reid delves into sources, which are often 'scant' or 'shadowy', to create a picture of the Egyptians committed to studying their own heritage and ensuring that Europeans were not the only ones with opinions on the subject. Often patronised or simply ignored by their Western colleagues, these dogged academics had to fight for any kind of recognition. Murqus Simaika, the founder of the Coptic Museum, appears to have devoted his whole life to his beloved project, forsaking all other pursuits. There were many other Egyptian scholars like him: Ali Bahgat in the Arab Art Museum; Ahmed Kamal, Selim Hassan, and Sami Gabra in Egyptology; and Taha Hussein in the cause of Greek history. Egyptology is the main star of the book but it is far from the only one.
As well as giving long overdue credit to the unsung, Contesting Antiquity in Egypt shows how great archaeological events, such as the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, were received in 20th-century Egyptian culture. Two of the great poets of the age, Ahmed Shawqi and Khalil Mutran, wrote poems for the boy-king, warning the British (and Howard Carter in particular) to keep their hands off Egyptian patrimony. Reid shows how Egyptians--now officially independent, if practically under more British control than they wanted--used their newly discovered ancestor to press their own claims. 'Pharoah, the time of self-rule is in effect, and the dynasty of arrogant lords has passed,' Shawqi wrote.
Reid guides us through the Pharaonic sculpture of artists like Mahmoud Mukhtar, the painting of Ibrahim Nagi, and the cultural debates being played out in the Egyptian press. He also makes brief forays into the Arabic literature of the time (but never seems quite as at home there as he does elsewhere).
By the end, one wonders about scholars who could ever write a history that does not include these Egyptians. Since the publication of Whose Pharaohs, Reid's approach has been very influential. Elliott Colla's 2007 Conflicted Antiquities has added fascinating discussions of the place of Pharaonism in 20th-century Egyptian cultural output, as has the Egyptian scholar Dr Ahmed Mekawy Ouda.
In the closing pages, Reid mentions that in 1981 the busts of famous Egyptologists were moved into the garden of the Egyptian Museum, as a backdrop to the sarcophagus of the legendary French archaeologist Auguste Mariette. Then, 'the European busts in the pantheon were rearranged to make room for those of five Egyptian Egyptologists.' Contesting Antiquity in Egypt does the same in scholarly terms. It has not removed the European scholars but, by introducing their previously overlooked Egyptian counterparts, it has allowed us to see the two sides from a different angle, giving a fuller picture of both.
Raphael Cormack is studying for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh about 19th and 20th-century Egyptian adaptations of Oedipus Rex.
Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I
William H. Peck
The Journal of the American Oriental Society. 122.4 (October-December 2002): p886.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 American Oriental Society
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By DONALD MALCOLM REID. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2002. Pp. xvii + 409, illus. $35.
To quote the author, "The primary purpose of this book is to write modern Egyptians into the histories of ... four museums [Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Islamic and Coptic] and the institutions and disciplines associated with them--Egyptology, classical studies, Coptic studies and Islamic art and archaeology." The densely packed text needed to convey the multitude of ideas encompassed in this intention covers a great deal of modern history--from 1798 to the eve of the Great War, as the subtitle states. The author has set out to bring attention to the native Egyptian historians and archaeologists generally missing in Western studies of Egypt.
The popular view of the progress of the study of Egyptian antiquities begins with the invasion of Napoleon and includes familiar European names such as Belzoni (Italian/English), Champolleon (French), Lepsius (Prussian), Mariette and Maspero (French), Wilkinson and Petrie (English). There is little or no mention of the Egyptians who evinced an interest or attempted a study of their own heritage. In the normal course of Euro-centric study of modern Egyptology one rarely encounters the names of Rifa al-Tawaty, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Hekekyan, or Marcus Simaika. As early as 1835 al-Tawaty and Hekekyan led a movement to found an antiquities service and a national museum. Kamal must be credited as the first Egyptian professional Egyptologist active in museum work and education and as a respected colleague of Gaston Maspero. Simaika was the driving force behind collection of Coptic artifacts and works of art as well as the founding of the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Observing that these personalities are little known to the West and that they have not received the credit due--virtually all general histories of the nineteenth century have overlooked them--the author has methodically detailed their accomplishments. This is done in a carefully researched work of two human dred pages of text, sixty pages of notes, and a twenty-page bibliography. This exhaustive wealth of material documents the author's efforts and resources. Such detail is necessary to explain the Egyptian contributions to the study of Egyptian history within the context of the social and political development of the country from the time of Mohammed Ali in the early nineteenth century to the British occupation. This historical background serves to give a sense of the obstacles faced by aspiring scholars of native origin in a country where European authority, academic traditions, and standards had been imposed with almost complete disregard for their interest or education.
One of the great difficulties with reading this otherwise informative book is the lack of careful editing. Individuals previously mentioned are often cited with a repetition or variation of descriptive words or phrases. Thus the same person is called an Armenian, an Armenian Egyptian, a French-educated Armenian, a gallicized Egyptian Armenian, etc.; another is described as a "Coptologist-Egyptologist" and two pages later as an "Egyptologist-Coptologist." This lax editing probably also accounts for Prince Umar Tusun becoming Prince Umar Tousoun, indexed under both spellings. E. A. Wallace Budge is consistently called Earnest Budge, perhaps accurately but not as usually cited in most of the literature. The repetition of descriptive identifications generates an uneasy sense of deja vu which impels this reader to check the earlier mention of the individual or the subject. My original thought was to blame the proofreading, but a re-reading of the acknowledgements at the beginning of the book revealed that the author has thanked several publishers for permission to "reuse revised portions" of earlier works. Apparently repetitions and inconsistencies were sometimes overlooked in the compilation from several sources.
There area few simple errors to note. In figure 32, a classical head after the Apollo Belvedere is misidentified as that of a Roman emperor. In figure 42, the temple of Medinet Habu is identified as that of Ramesses II, not Ramesses III, as it should be. Both of these are probably errors of the caption-writers and not the author. In a description of one of the buildings at the Paris exposition of 1900 it is said to be "replicating the temple of Dendur" on the exterior, with a theatre for music and dance inside. Surely this was meant to be "Dendera," since the temple of Dendur, now in New York, has a very small interior.
In general this work is very usefuL k does what the author has set out to do in bringing the accomplishments of Egyptian scholars, collectors, and archaeologists to the fore. it provides a particular insight into the development of Islamic and Coptic studies and the history of their respective museums, topics not usually included in the course of Egyptology. it is obvious that a great amount of work has gone into this study. The sources consulted range from original Arable documents of councils and government agencies to popular reference works like Who Was Who in Egyptology. The book would have profited from tighter editing, but that detracts from the overall accomplishments of the work in only a small way. The title Whose Pharaohs? does not serve to convey the range of depth of the subjects included.
WILLIAM H. PECK
DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS
Peck, William H.
Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I
Roger Owen
Middle Eastern Studies. 38.4 (Oct. 2002): p211.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Frank Cass & Company Ltd.
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By Donald Malcolm Reid. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Pp.vx + 297, appendices, bibliography, index. 24.95 [pounds sterling]/$35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-22197-4.
Donald Reid has made a name for himself as a historian of Egyptian institutions, from the early scientific societies established under the Khedive Ismail to the Egyptian University. He has also written interesting, widely researched pieces about museums, archaeological rivalry and the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the various layers of Egypt's ancient past. Now, much of this work has been brought together as Whose Pharaohs?, about half of which has appeared before as articles or chapters in collected works.
The three introductory chapters detailing the history of writings about Pharaonic Egypt from Champollion and al-Tahtawi to the 1870s are new, together with a study of the first attempts to institutionalize the survey of ancient artefacts under the Khedive Ismail. What is lacking though is an overarching theme. It is true that the title suggests such a grand narrative, but by ending his survey in 1914 Reid loses the opportunity to examine the more interesting story of how the various discrete approaches he describes came together in the post-1919 period to inform a more coherent approach to Egypt's particular history and identity to be found all the way across the political spectrum, as well as in national monuments and school textbooks, until the first decade of the Nasser period. Such a perspective could even contain Lord Cromer who, though rightly condemned for his negative attitude to Egyptian education, was more easily accommodated into what was perceived as a 4,000-year-old tradition of a powerful ruler as the manager of Egypt's complex system of irrigation.
Two other general criticisms can be made. One is that Reid's tendency to see everything through the lens of incipient Egyptian nationalism, though welcome in its rescue of little known figures like Ahmad Kamal, Ali Baghat and Marcus Simaika, sometimes obscures the very real overlap between the practices and prejudices of all those engaged in Egyptian archaeology, from the scholars and administrators pure and simple through the legions of diggers, despoilers and robbers of every type and every nationality who fed them with information and artefacts. The other is an unwillingness to go very far into many of the interesting and important implications involved in such notions as the `preservation' of ancient structures. The question of what was to be preserved, and how and why, often throws a much more significant light on the perceptions of those who organized such activities, and on the debates between them, than Reid usually allows.
Given its somewhat `scissors and paste' method of composition, Whose Pharaohs? is often repetitious and could have benefited from the services of a sub-editor for longer than publishers these days usually allow. Nevertheless, the book contains huge amounts of information about people, buildings and sources as well as many leads for others to follow, such as tracking down the origins and ideological purpose of the Neo-Mamluk style which, under the rival sponsorship of both Cromer and the Khedive Abbas II, began to make an important contribution to the Cairo architectural scene in the late 1890s. There are also many visual delights including 46 very well-chosen photographs, cartoons and copies of postage stamps all of which elaborate Reid's central points in wonderfully effective ways. My own favourite is the cover photo of a youngish-looking Ahmad Kamal sitting uneasily in a somewhat rickety cane chair and dwarfed by the gigantic upright coffin of Queen Ahmose Nefetari just excavated from the Dahr al-Bahri cache of royal mummies across the river from Luxor. Here marginality is juxtaposed with magnificence, the very essence of Egypt's first efforts to make sense of its Pharaonic past.
Altogether, and in its own very special way, Whose Pharaohs? looks set to become an indispensable work of reference for all those interested in both the political and the cultural life of nineteenth-century Egypt.
Owen, Roger
Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt
J.G. Darwin
The English Historical Review. 109.431 (Apr. 1994): p527.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1994 Oxford University Press
http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/
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Donald Malcolm Reid has written an important, interesting and well-organized study of Cairo University from its origins up till the 1980s. Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: U. P., 1990; pp. xviii + 296. 30 [Pound]) is a reminder of how sparse is the historical literature on the growth of university education in colonial, semi-colonial and Third World societies, and how few of such studies as do exist are securely based like Reid's on the extensive use of archival sources. Of course, the relative accessibility of Egyptian archives is the crucial point here, but it would be nice to think that this book will serve as a model for the historical study of the modern university in a variety of other non-western settings. At first sight, some of the detailed material which Reid presents is of limited interest except to the educational historian. A closer look soon dispels that impression. In fact, Reid has organized his material briskly around four important themes: the question of cultural autonomy (i.e. the progress of Egyptianization and Arabicization); the relations between the university and the state; the issue of access to university education; and the conflict between secular and religious values in higher education. He shows with amusing details how furiously the British and French squabbled over their allocation of academic posts at the university in the 1920s and 1930s; how gradual was the Egyptianization of teaching posts (even more gradual in arts subjects, a little surprisingly, than scientific and vocational) and how skewed was the allocation of state funding between the university and the school system, so that whereas education as a whole doubled its share of state spending between 1925 and 1952, the university sector increased its share by thirteen times. This figure alone speaks volumes about the social and political development of Egypt in the period. Finally, Reid's discussion of the university and politics, culminating in the draconian controls imposed by Nasser after 1952, throws interesting light on the intriguing question of why students were so active politically up until the Revolution, a phenomenon Western historians can easily take for granted until they reflect on the comparative docility of their own student bodies through most of the period. Altogether, this book will be indispensable to students of modern Egyptian and Middle Eastern history and of wide comparative interest.
Reid, Donald Malcolm. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser
Deniz Turker
Arab Studies Quarterly. 39.1 (Winter 2017): p779.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Pluto Journals
http://arabstudiesquarterly.plutojournals.org.portal.oaklandcc.edu/
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Reid, Donald Malcolm. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser. Cairo and New York: the American University in Cairo Press, 2015. 491 pages. Hardback $ 59.95
In recent years, the controversial history of archaeology and imperialism has emerged as an interdisciplinary field in its own right. It weds such diverse subjects of historical inquiry as art, photography, politics, conservation, and preservation. Above all, it offers an inexhaustible Pandora's box of visual and documentary archives, which are as rich as the yet unexcavated sites and as contested as the objects that are unearthed. Only in the last decade, scholarship on the subject was enriched by works such as Wendy Shaw's Possessors and Possessed (2003), Maya Jasanoff's Edge of Empire (2005), and Edhem Eldem and Zeynep Celik's collaborative volume Scramble for the Past (2015). The common historiographical intent behind these archive-centered publications is twofold. One is to wrest the history of archaeology from a discourse that was all too narrowly focused on Napoleon's explorers and German Orientalists. The second is to call attention to a large and dedicated cast of amateurs and scholars--both European and Middle Eastern--who transformed the initially dilettantish practice into a discipline over the course of the nineteenth century.
It was Donald Malcolm Reid's seminal book Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I (2002) that gave such publications the impetus to break from the dominant historical perspective in favor of foregrounding the colonized and exploited lands, peoples, and cultures. It brought to life the previously underplayed agency of Egyptian archaeologists (Ahmad Kamal, Ali Behgat, Selim Hassan, Murqus Simaika, Taha Hussein, and Sami Gabra) during the nineteenth century when Egypt was caught between the Ottoman and various European spheres of political influence. In his second book titled Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser, Reid continues to chart the histories of these same individuals from World War I to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that terminated the British occupation and its puppet monarchy. He argues that it was in this semi-colonial period that the Egyptian cultural and academic institutions began to finally "nationalize" their ranks by appointing Egyptian scholars.
In Contesting Antiquity in Egypt, Reid replicates the four-museum framework that he set up in Whose Pharaohs? The pages track the transformation of leadership throughout the first half of the twentieth century in the Egyptian Museum, Graeco-Roman Museum, Coptic Museum, and the Museum of Arab Art. While his review of a critical era in the evolution of Egypt's relationship to its own antiquity is an important expansion of his previous work, several deficits impede its ability to fulfill the promise of the first book.
To begin with, the four museums do not emerge as the "arenas in the struggle for independence" that he claims they are--for the narrative never once references the specific curatorial agendas of these institutions. In fact, Reid frequently digresses from this spatial framework. The chapter on the Graeco-Roman Museum, in particular, reads rather as a history of the development of the field of Classics in Egypt. The book relies a little too heavily on the content of its prequel and trusts that his readers have read his first. Some of the most important institutions of Egyptian archaeology such as the Antiquities Service (founded in 1858 by the Egyptian Viceroy Said Pasha and led by a flurry of French scholars for decades) appear without context. At times, the historian's reliance on the prequel is so much so that identical phrases and sentences appear, most glaringly in the introduction.
Art historians, especially, will be dismayed to find that reading the visual evidence of the practices of Egyptian Pharaonism is not Reid's forte. Although the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter is central to Reid's discussion of the birth of Egyptian Pharaonism--a strictly Egyptian cultural phenomenon that he sets up in contrast to better-known Western Egyptomania--his narrative barely visits the site itself and only fleetingly touches upon the local fascination with the boy king. Furthermore, the Egyptian archaeologist-protagonists of this book are not depicted while engaged in their specialized subjects or professions. We never once encounter them expounding on the purpose of the museums they directed, the exhibitions they curated, the excavations they ran, or the objects on which they wrote. Who was their viewing public? Did they all see themselves as archaeologists? Were they keen to establish disciplinary boundaries between art history, architecture, and archaeology, and between conservation, preservation, and urban planning? Their interjected biographies, personal rivalries, and national enmities obscure their prolific scholarly careers. To probe further, did the Museum of Arab art and scholars of Islamic art and architecture benefit from the momentum of Arabism that emerged to counter Pharaonism? What kind of visual symbols from Egypt's past (Fatimid? Mamluk?) were selected for this particular movement?
Reid's iconographic assessment of the museum facades is equally curt and so is his handling of the fad for ancient Egypt in the world of consumer goods, such as the complex symbolism that appears in the commercial for the Shurbaji socks. Examples like these and other insightful snippets, such as Simaika's quest to identify manuscripts in Coptic monasteries for his museum, have the potential to strengthen Reid's argument of an Egyptian cultural reclamation, though their superficial dissection limits any potential impact.
Moreover, for someone so preoccupied with emphasizing the role of the under-represented, women in Reid's narrative still reside between the lines. We are only told in passing that Taha Hussein's and Sami Gabra's wives were faculty members, while the British Egyptologist Dorothy Eady, who later adopted the name Omm Seti, is repeatedly mentioned for her spiritual eccentricities and not once for her scholarly contributions to the field.
Contesting Antiquity in Egypt would be of interest to scholars across humanistic disciplines. It will act as a valuable reference to those studying symbols of national ideology as well as ones scavenging for minute bibliographical information on a great many twentieth-century Egyptian cultural movers.
Reid's conclusion signals a third and final book, one that will likely cover the period from the Revolution of 1952 to the military-backed regime of the present. He promises to flesh out the reemergence of pharaonic symbolism during Hosni Mubarak's 30-year presidency. Once Reid completes his trilogy, we will have the most complete historical account to date on the politics of Egyptian archaeology and its impact on the country's political ideology. It is my hope that his third book will revisit the thorough approach of the first, to bring a deeper analysis to Egypt's relationship with its pharaohs in the latter half of the twentieth century.
References
Eldem, E., Bahrani, Z., and Celik, Z. (2011). Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914. Istanbul: Salt.
Jasanoff, M. (2005). Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Reid, D. M. (2002). Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Shaw, W. K. (2003). Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reviewed by Deniz Turker
Deniz Turker is the Fari Sayeed Visiting Fellow in Islamic Art, Cambridge University.
Turker, Deniz
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Turker, Deniz. "Reid, Donald Malcolm. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums & the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser." Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 1, 2017, p. 779+. Academic OneFile, login.portal.oaklandcc.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=lom_oakcc&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485401262&it=r&asid=32c7cf39921ad4c0ce4c751dbb6c1d97. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485401262