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Geographies of Contact

 | 
Caroline Lehni
, 
Fanny Moghaddassi
, 
Hélène Ibata
, 
et al.

V. Orientalist Contact Zones

Dialogues with the Dead, and with the Living too ! British Egyptology Societies and the Politics of Preservation (1882-1898)1

Stéphanie Prévost

Texto completo

  • 1 I would like to thank Joanna Kiffin, archivist of the Egyptian Exploration Society (formerly the Ex (...)
  • 2 Margaret S. Drower, “Gaston Maspero and the Birth of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1881-3)”, The Jour (...)
  • 3 Andrew J. McGregor, A Military History of Modern Egypt: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan Wa (...)
  • 4 Thomas G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914, Cambridge (...)

1“The Egyptian Government, though well intentioned, requires perhaps some stimulus from without.”2 This was the pronouncement of the Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville, printed in the columns of The Morning Post on 9 December 1879. Quite obviously, Naville’s statement referred to the recent Egyptian crisis. Indeed, Anglo-French dual control over Egypt’s bankrupt finances, which had first been set up in 1878, had just been reinforced in November 1879 as Egypt was unable to recover from the huge cost of fighting alongside the Ottoman Empire against Russia in 1877-78.3 As the Khedive had been forced to abdicate in favour of his son Tewfik in June of the same year, Egypt was inextricably under greater European control—although it should not be forgotten that Britain’s involvement in the Dual Control Commission also derived from a desire to hold French influence there in check.4 Naville genuinely thought that foreign intervention could benefit Egypt, not only in terms of putting its finances on a sounder footing and preventing anarchy, but also in terms of furthering knowledge of its past. The Egyptian crisis had indeed called all excavation campaigns to a halt, temporarily, or at least this is what Naville dearly hoped. The latter’s call for foreign stimulus, including in the shape of a European Egyptology society, occurred at a crucial moment in Egyptian history. This was rendered even more conspicuous by the fact that the declining health of the founder of the Bulaq Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, French Egyptologist François Auguste Mariette, required his imminent replacement, thereby possibly opening up new perspectives for European explorers in Egypt. Napoleon’s 1798-1801 Egyptian campaign, as well as the popularity of the Grand Tour had fuelled a sustained “Egyptomania” in both France and Britain, with a greater desire on the part of tourists to see the monuments for themselves, despite the political instability of that Ottoman region.

  • 5 Caroline Lehni, “Lire l’Égypte en images: la représentation de l’Égypte au Royaume-Uni à travers l’ (...)
  • 6 Elliott Colla, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity, Durham & London (...)
  • 7 “History of the Collection”, British Museum, online [http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/departme (...)
  • 8 Sophie Thomas, “Displaying Egypt: Archaeology, Spectacle, and the Museum in the Early Nineteenth Ce (...)
  • 9 Thomas, “Displaying Egypt”, p. 10.
  • 10 How long-lasting the Egyptian craze was in Britain is still debated, with Patrick Conner contending (...)
  • 11 David Gange, Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822-1922, Oxford (...)

2The craze also manifested itself in France and Britain through architecture, paintings, writings, plays, as well as through museum displays of Egyptian art.5 As argued by Elliott Colla in his Conflicted Antiquities (2007), this was a somehow new phenomenon in the late eighteenth/nineteenth centuries, by which British agents in Egypt “were [now] acquiring objects not for private collections [solely] but for the young national museum of Great Britain.” This “entailed new modes of collecting, such as collecting antiquities as unique pieces rather than as more or less interchangeable objects.”6 Consistent with that new pattern, the British Museum, established in 1753, opened an Egyptian sculpture room as part of the Department of Antiquities created in 1807.7 The previously limited Egyptian collection, which had mostly been composed of figures of gods, scarabs and amulets, was increased by larger antiquities found by the French during the Napoleonic wars, which became British property under the 1801 Treaty of Alexandria. Amongst such spoils, there were the Rosetta stone, which the British Museum exhibited from 1802, as well as colossal statues and sarcophagi.8 The adventures of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a self-styled explorer who had fled Italy for England in 1803 to escape jail and who had sometime been a strongman at fairs for a living, contributed to intensifying the craze, as they received wide press coverage. On the order of Henry Salt, then British Consul to Egypt, he had been dispatched to Thebes, where he uncovered a colossal over-seven-ton granite bust of Ramses II in 1816 and successfully organised its shipping to England. It was displayed at the British Museum in early 1819. However, he is perhaps most famously remembered for opening up the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I and organising a public show of his finds in William Bullock’s Piccadilly Egyptian Hall in 1821, before they entered British Museum collections. In an attempt to capture the imagination and also to give a taste of the “real” thing, the display was arranged so that visitors had the feeling of being inside the tomb. The “Belzoni Tomb’exhibition, as it became known, was a success, with nearly two thousand visitors on the first day, with mummies being the high point of the show.9 In a 2012 article, Sophie Thomas deftly shows how the staging of Egypt and Egyptian artefacts contributed to keeping Egyptomania alive in Britain well beyond the 1820s.10 In his recent Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, David Gange confirms Thomas’s argument, even insisting that Britain’s fascination with Egypt was also inspired by the Bible and that, from the 1840s at least, there was an attempt at identifying Old Testament loci in modern Egypt, in particular the Exodus route.11

  • 12 Dominique Farale, La Turquie ottomane et l’Europe: Du xvie siècle à nos jours, Paris, Economica, 20 (...)

3Such an agenda partook of a broader European fascination and quest for Biblical origins. It also provided the background to discussions about the formation of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) from 1879 and somehow fitted in with an increased British presence in the Ottoman Empire, starting with the establishment of an Anglo-German Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem in 1841. Indeed, despite great autonomy in local affairs, Egypt remained part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, with a Khedive—a viceregal title officially created in 1867, though the term was in use before—at its head. Britain’s relationship to Egypt was also altered by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which facilitated communications with British India. If the French-built Canal was proclaimed neutral at the onset, Britain’s Conservative Premier, Benjamin Disraeli, and Foreign Secretary, the 15th Earl of Derby, feared that France would make the most out of Egypt’s near bankruptcy to gain exclusive control over the route to India and North African lands. In November 1875, they thus decided to secretly buy over the Khedive’s shares of the Canal, which was co-owned by France at fifty-six percent. As European creditors thought that Egypt was heading towards financial ruin, the international Caisse de la Dette Publique was set up to supervise payments of loans, under the command of a French controller, Edmond Joubert, and a British one, George Goschen. As Egypt’s debt worsened in 1877, the British Conservative Secretary for the Colonies, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, even mused on annexing Egypt—a suggestion from which he eventually recoiled for fear of creating a casus belli with France. Egypt remained exclusively Ottoman until 1882, when the British established joint rule with Khedive Tewfik with the Sultan’s approval after France refused to take part in the bombardment of Alexandria.12

  • 13 James L. Good, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism and the Middle East, 1919-1941, A (...)

4This was the tense international context in which Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville called for further European interference in Egyptian affairs as far as Egyptology was concerned. His plea actually coincided with a stronger Egyptian craze in Britain, after the publication of novelist Amelia Edwards’s best-selling travelogue, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, in 1877. Interestingly enough, Edwards’s best-seller came out precisely the same year as William Morris set up the Society for the Protection of the Ancient Buildings and needs to be placed in a context when amateurs, explorers and Egyptologists not only wanted to acquire further knowledge about Egypt’s ancient monuments, but also sought to interact with the local authorities and local actors, including Gaston Maspero, the French director of the Egyptian Antiquities and the Bulaq Museum since 1880, to preserve its cultural and historical heritage—whatever this meant. Indeed, while James L. Good tried to demonstrate in his 2007 Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism and the Middle East, 1919-1941 that post-World War One archaeological affairs in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq were intricately “intertwined […] with the broad agendas of the nationalist elites of the day,”13 this article will seek to show that the phenomenon predated World War One as far as Egypt is concerned. More specifically, this piece will explore how and to what extent members of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1882), the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments in Egypt (1888), the Archaeological Survey (1890) and the Egyptian Research Account (1894), strove hard to conciliate all (local) actors, often with the help of the British government, to conduct wide-ranging excavations and pursue a preservation policy in between Britain’s 1882 bombardment of Egypt and the establishment of a British protectorate in 1898.

Egyptian Antiquities for Egyptians

5By September 1881, the antagonism between the Khedive and Egyptian nationalists, led by Colonel Ahmed Urabi since 1879, seemed to give the latter the upper hand. Indeed, Urabi managed to force Khedive Tewfik to dismiss almost all his government and secured high-ranking positions for nationalists, including himself as Minister for War. Mahmoud Sami Al-Barudi, the only remaining member of Tewfik’s former government, was eventually promoted Prime Minister of the new constitutional government in the process, after Muhammad Sharif failed to fulfil this role as envisaged by Urabi. Al-Barudi and Urabi now pressed Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid to remove Tewfik, who was begging the latter for military support against the nationalists. Abdul Hamid denied Tewfik military support, but at the same time, could not accept the nationalists’plea, which, after all, challenged the power of his agent in Egypt and so, challenged his own power. The Egyptian Nationalist Party, formed in 1879 with the help of Urabi, then voiced its claims more clearly in its slogan: “Egypt for the Egyptians”—by which were meant Arab Egyptians, who, until Tewfik’s father, Khedive Ismail, launched reforms, had long been excluded from elite positions in the government and the military (to the profit of Turco-Circassians mostly). The motto also voiced clear rejection of European presence in Egypt, which had been increased since 1875. For instance, since 1879, Egypt’s Finance Minister had been an Englishman and a Frenchman had held the portfolio of Public Works, which dealt with the preservation of antiquities.

  • 14 Agatha Ramm (ed.), The Gladstone-Granville Correspondence, vol. I: 1868-1876, Cambridge, Cambridge (...)
  • 15 Stéphanie Prévost, “La Question d’Orient dans la culture politique britannique: réception et influe (...)
  • 16 William E. Gladstone, “Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East”, The Nineteenth Century, vol. I (...)

6Upon receiving the Egyptian Nationalist Party’s manifesto, which poet and Radical Wilfrid Scawen Blunt had sent him and had actually co-written, Liberal Premier William E. Gladstone wrote to the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Granville, on 4 January 1882: “I am not by any means pained, but I am much surprised at this rapid development of a national sentiment and party in Egypt.”14 Despite Gladstone’s initial reluctance to use coercion against Egyptian nationalists, he eventually agreed to join in with French Foreign Secretary Jules Ferry’s idea of a joint note re-asserting the validity of the Khedive’s power over Egypt on 7 January 1882.15 Although he had theoretically been favourable to the Egyptian nationalist movement, Gladstone became fully convinced, as the European note remained a dead letter, that the Urabi uprising clashed with his own conception of what the movement should be: for him, Dual Control should not be overthrown and neither should the Khedive. Tensions heightened and gunboat diplomacy was used on the margins of the Istanbul Conference of 3 June 1882, to hasten a peaceful end to the uprising, in vain however. After skirmishes, also against European residents in Alexandria, the city was bombarded on 11 July 1882 by British ships only: the French government had pulled out of the operation at the very last minute, but still allowed it. Such a move on the part of Gladstone split his party, as Radical Liberals argued that it contradicted the Premier’s previous rejection of the extension of the British Empire.16

  • 17 Shawki Mehani Nakhla, Sobhi Beshai and Amr Mahmoud, “Cultural Heritage Legislation” (Unimed Cultura (...)
  • 18 Note that it was only in an 1883 decree that all objects in the Bulaq Museum (formed in 1863) were (...)
  • 19 Aidan Dodson, “Antiquities Service, Egypt, history of”, in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Rog (...)
  • 20 Nakhla, Beshai and Mahmoud, “Cultural Heritage Legislation”.
  • 21 Quoted in Mahmoud Ismail, Le Caire: une cité mère à sauver. Culture, Urbanisme, Société, Paris, L’H (...)
  • 22 Mercedes Volait, “Du relevé à la conservation des « Monuments de l’art arabe »: L’itinéraire égypti (...)
  • 23 Juliette Desplat, “La relation triangulaire entre la France, la Grande-Bretagne et l’Egypte d’un po (...)

7Despite Urabi’s defeat and forced exile, it is interesting to note that the claim “Egypt for the Egyptians” was also applied to monuments and antiquities and echoed previous official Egyptian decisions.17 Khedive Muhammad Ali had indeed issued a decree in 1835 by which export of antiquities was prohibited and the Egyptian government supervised excavations, collection, exhibition and preservation of antiquities. The same year, Muhammad Ali even created a national museum, whose collections were nonetheless given away to official visitors until there was none left—which resulted in the museum’s closure in 1855.18 Mariette, who, as an eminent French Egyptologist, had been entrusted with putting together a collection of antiquities “to be ‘ found’by Prince Napoleon during a projected Egyptian tour,”19 was appointed the first Director of the just created Service of Egyptian Antiquities in 1858. Mariette called for the resurrection of the national museum idea, which resulted in the Bulaq Museum being opened in 1863. In this capacity, Mariette made sure that the 1835 khedivial decree was respected and in 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened, a high order of the Turkish Sultan confirmed that unofficial excavations were prohibited, just like the export of antiquities—coins excepted.20 Mariette held firm when the United States then claimed its obelisk, which Khedive Ismail, Muhammad Ali’s grandson who had been in power since 1863, had verbally promised the American President. Not only was that claim deflated, but Mariette even declared afterwards that there were two museums in Egypt whose heritage had to be preserved: the Bulaq Museum and Egypt itself.21 As Director of the Bulaq Museum, he was the official keeper of this cultural heritage, and not even an unauthorised khedivial promise of a gift could change that. Until the end of his tenure in 1881, Mariette successfully tried to have the regulation concerning antiquities reinforced. The March 1874 high order stipulated that all objects from old times were considered antiquities, whose export was forbidden. And just before handing over to Gaston Maspero, he secured the prohibition of the export of all antiquities, coins included, through a May 1880 decree of the new Khedive, Muhammad Tewfik. Besides, he had long fought to secure the preservation of Islamic art, which resulted in a December 1881 khedivial decree setting up the Committee for the Conservation of Monuments of Arab Art, under the aegis of French lovers of Egypt, like Ambroise Baudry.22 This was meant to reinforce France’s image as a protector of Egyptian culture, art and monuments in the context of increased British presence in Egyptian politics and a way to reassert France’s “archaeological protectorate” over Egypt.23

  • 24 Brian Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists and Archaeologists (1975), Cambridge, MA, (...)
  • 25 “Destruction of Monuments in Egypt”, The Morning Post, 15 July 1850, p. 3.
  • 26 Draft of the circular, undated, Record of the Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Monuments (...)
  • 27 Maspero to Edwards, Letter of 12 Mar. 1882, Amelia Edwards Papers, Somerville College, Oxford, ABE (...)

8In spite of stricter cultural heritage legislation, plunder of various sites continued, often with the help of locals, especially in Luxor and the vicinity. Upon his arrival in Egypt, Maspero managed to track down the robbers of the Deir-el-Bahri cache, who had been steadily selling fine antiquities and even mummies to tourists, in particular American and British ones, on various local markets (Luxor, Thebes and Karnak) for the previous ten years. The Rasul brothers had discovered the niche by chance when looking for a lost goat and relied on Mustapha Aga Ayat to ease out dealings. As a Turkish consular agent for Russia, Britain and Belgium in Luxor, Ayat had benefited from diplomatic immunity.24 Besides, the Egyptian police’s reluctance to prevent or denounce such trafficking confirmed allegations of long-lasting multi-level corruption of Egyptian officials, which those interested in preserving the ancient monuments of Egypt denounced.25 Similar accusations featured in the first draft of the circular announcing the creation of the Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Monuments in Egypt in 1888, in which the blame was laid on the Arabs and the tourists who committed depredations on monuments, but also on the Egyptian government, which was accused of utter neglect. Because founders of the Society realised they needed the support of the authorities to carry out their mission, such accusations were eventually removed from the published version of the circular.26 When Maspero reached Egypt in 1881, he was acutely aware of the difficulties (including corruption), which impending anarchy in the context of the Urabi uprising threatened to worsen, and thus placed hope in the new Egyptian regime.27

Maspero and the Egypt Exploration Fund (1879-1886): A Gentleman’s Agreement?

  • 28 Maspero to Edwards, Letters of 26 Dec. 1880 and of 20 Mar. 1881, Edwards Papers, ABE 151-152.
  • 29 The Earl of Dufferin to the Earl Granville, 28 Apr. 1883, in 1883 [C. 3462] [C. 3529] [C. 3695] Egy (...)
  • 30 Nubar to Maspero, 7 Dec. 1884, and Maspero to Nubar, 6 Dec. 1884, Gaston Maspero Papers, Bibliothèq (...)

9Maspero, a Professor of Egyptian philology and archaeology at the Collège de France since 1873, had originally been sent to Cairo by the French government to set up a French School of Archaeology. Its development was eventually entrusted to one of his students a few months later, when Maspero was promoted Director of the Bulaq Museum, somehow to his surprise. As he confessed to Amelia B. Edwards, who had become a friend after his praise of A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, he was afraid that his despatch to Egypt might be mistaken by other European powers as an imperial move on the part of France.28 He hoped to dispel such a misconception by recurrently presenting himself as a man of science who hoped to pursue Marriette’s work in preserving the Egyptian past, especially through the Museum. This implied trying more actively to eradicate looting of archaeological sites and unauthorised sales of antiquities, by cooperating with English officials, to whom Egyptian political power had been mostly devolved after Urabi’s defeat at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir in September 1882. Indeed, the Khedive remained at the head of Egypt, but rather as a figurehead, as Sir Evelyn Baring, British Consul-General in Egypt, was effectively in control. Similarly, from 1882, the Public Works Department, which was in charge of excavations and antiquities, together with the Director of the Bulaq Museum, was headed by an Egyptian official, but power was rather held by the British under-secretary and civil engineer, Colin Scott-Moncrieff. British occupation of Egypt meant that the hands of the Director of the Bulaq Museum were potentially tied by British officials, whom Maspero had to conciliate. Baring was genuinely preoccupied both with redressing Egyptian bankruptcy and with the preservation of ancient monuments of Egypt and approved of the new arrangements by which Maspero was to have six officials to help him keep an eye on archaeological sites throughout Egypt.29 But this proved insufficient, as Maspero was powerless in appointing professional guardians to protect sites and as he had to placate outraged Bedouins, who threatened not to maintain order in the desert anymore if they were replaced. Indeed, the latter relied on baksheesh paid to them by tourists visiting or even climbing up the pyramids. In 1884, Maspero eventually complained to Nubar Pasha, then Prime Minister of Egypt, that his prerogatives should be stated more clearly.30

  • 31 Edwards to Maspero, 10 Nov. 1879, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 422.
  • 32 Edwards to Maspero, 12 Oct. 1880, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 434.
  • 33 Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 302.
  • 34 Quoted in ibid., p. 304.

10In such a context, Maspero was keen on setting up the European Egyptology Society that his close friend, Naville, had envisaged in 1879, with a view to resuming excavations, as none had taken place since the Urabi Revolt. Consequently, he sought the backing of friends, in particular of Amelia Edwards and Samuel Birch in Britain. These early steps eventually culminated in the creation of the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1882, after many unexpected developments. Amelia Edwards had regularly corresponded with Maspero since 1878, and as a friend, had asked him in November 1879 to act as intermediary with Mariette, whom she did not know personally. She hoped that a collaboration would help publicize Egyptology in her own country. Thus, Maspero was to pass on to Mariette the offer of the editor of The Morning Post, who proposed to “throw open the columns of his influential daily paper to correspondence on Egyptological subjects.”31 Mariette did not act upon it—despite the fact that he had been promised subscription money raised in England for excavation purposes—, but Edwards kept in close contact with Maspero. She even confided in him in October 1880 that she was increasingly “interested in Ancient Egypt of which she would like [him] to show [her] the marvels.”32 It was only upon hearing of his appointment at the head of the Bulaq Museum that Edwards reiterated the proposition initially made to Mariette about the column in the Morning Post and the perspective of excavation money. Maspero was delighted and accepted, after securing the approval of the Egyptian Prime Minister, Riyad Pasha.33 Nonetheless, difficulties arose when Edwards and the small party behind her discovered that Birch, who had refused to support her idea of involving Maspero in what would become the EEF, also tried to separately negotiate excavation terms with Maspero. As confirmed by its official statements first published in late March 1882, the Egypt Exploration Fund aimed at exploring areas, such as the Delta, in which “must undoubtedly lie the documents of a lost period in Bible history.”34

  • 35 T. G. H. James, “Birch, Samuel (1813– 1885)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxfo (...)
  • 36 Birch to Maspero, Letters of 6 July 1869 and of 10 Aug. 1873, Maspero Papers, MS 4005, ff. 285-7 an (...)
  • 37 Edwards to Maspero, 29 June 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 438.
  • 38 Poole to Edwards, 30 Sept. 1881, EES IV b. 35, quoted in Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 312.
  • 39 Edwards to Maspero, 14 Oct. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 473.
  • 40 Birch to Edwards, EES III. j. 19, quoted in Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 301.
  • 41 See the letter of Maspero to Edwards of 4 Aug. 1881 (Edwards Papers, ABE 154) in which he says that (...)
  • 42 Hermann Alexander and Mary Teresa Brück, The Peripatetic Astronomer: The Life of Charles Piazzi Smy (...)
  • 43 Maspero to Edwards, 22 Oct. 1881, Edwards Papers, ABE 159.

11Birch, who since 1866 had been Keeper of the British Museum’s Department of Oriental Antiquities (which included Egypt), but mostly had founded the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1870, had a similar object in mind when approaching Maspero.35 Consultation of the Maspero Papers reveals that Birch had corresponded with him since 1869 and that Maspero had been elected a member of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1873.36 Edwards and Reginald S. Poole, who was Keeper of the Coins and Medals Department at the British Museum, sensed some sort of rivalry between their project and Birch’s, and were all the more upset that Maspero had agreed to publish a report of his latest findings in the transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. They encouraged Maspero to resist any sort of pressure by Birch, even accusing the latter of trying to get fame for himself out of recent discoveries, whereas he himself had never set foot in Egypt.37 Edwards and Poole dearly hoped that Maspero would favour the newly established EEF over the “natural [official] channel” of the British Museum that Birch embodied, but the latter’s pressure on Maspero was relentless.38 When Edwards learnt that Birch was trying to impose an excavator onto the Director of the Bulaq Museum in the person of the young Flinders Petrie, she ejaculated: “I only hope, if Mr. Flinders Petrie—who is a young man and an Irishman—should ever present himself at Boolak, you will deny him access to the Museum.”39 Edwards’s violent reaction results from her outrage at Birch’s hypocrisy, as he had refused to support the idea of the EEF on the ground that “chance rather than design [led] to great results” and yet, seemed to support an excavation that would enrich the collections of the British Museum.40 Besides, although Edwards was convinced that excavation could help bring proofs of the historicity of the Bible41—an object which had led to the creation of the British Palestine Exploration Fund in 1865—, the choice of Petrie was, she then thought, highly problematic. Indeed, he was then determined to go out to Egypt to evidence Scottish astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth’s controversial theory that the Great Pyramid had been designed by God and foretold the future of the British, who were identified with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.42 Edwards and Poole’s acrimony eventually subsided when Maspero apologised to them in October 1881, confessing that Birch had sometimes lacked courtesy and accepted that the latter were kept out of the EEF if Edwards and Poole thought it best.43 It brought EEF members great relief to hear that Maspero had privileged their private initiative.

  • 44 Edwards to Maspero, 3 Mar. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, ff. 440-1; Poole to Naville, Letters of 2 (...)

12Maspero accepted the new terms of the future EEF small committee that EEF money would be sent to him, who would allow an Egypologist employed by the EEF to excavate sites that they had all agreed on. Edwards having admitted that “the English [had] no Egyptologists now, save Dr. Birch, Mr Le Page Renouf and Mr Stuart Poole”, who were “engrossed by their own official work” and had got no time for exploration, Edouard Naville was chosen in 1882 and given a list of recommended sites in the following January.44 The deal also included that the EEF would publish news of findings and even if Maspero wanted the future Fund to remain “a scientists’body”, rather than a public one, he agreed to publication in the mainstream press—The Morning Post, The Times, The Pall Mall Gazette, amongst others, had all expressed support of the EEF scheme. Finally, as was made extremely clear in a private circular to the subscribers in February 1883:

  • 45 Private circular to subscribers, 2 Feb. 1883, EES XIX c.57-8.

A society has been formed for the purpose of cooperating with Mr. Maspero, Director of the Museums and Excavations in Egypt in his work of exploration in sites of Biblical and Classical interests without infringing the Egyptian law by which objects are claimed for the Bulaq Museum.45

  • 46 Maspero to Edwards, 14 Apr. 1882, Edwards Papers, ABE 164.
  • 47 Poole to Maspero, 22 Mar. 1883, Maspero Papers, MS 4036, f. 247.
  • 48 Edwards to Maspero, 02 Nov. 1885, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 665.
  • 49 Petrie to the EEF, “Memorandum on the Purchase of Antiquities in Egypt”, undated (1884?), EES XIX a (...)

13Even if only part of these transactions have survived, it remains clear that some members of the EEF were reluctant to abide by the official terms of the private circular and saw fit that their commitment to the preservation of Egypt’s ancient past should be rewarded materially. In particular, this was true of orientalist and philologist Archibald H. Sayce, who sat on the organising committee and was keen on rewarding EEF subscribers with antiquities. Maspero confessed to Edwards that despite his being favourable to more liberal legislation on antiquities, the Egyptian government had sovereignty over that issue.46 Maspero was opposed to the EEF being used for mercantile, rather than scientific purposes, but was not impervious to the idea of limited, regulated export of small antiquities. He consequently tried to secure some such objects for the EEF from the Khedive as “free gifts.”47 The EEF correspondence however shows that what Maspero consented to, was to select the most exquisite objects amongst those found for the Bulaq Museum and then, amongst the remaining ones, suggested a list of objects that could be transferred via the EEF to the British Museum—but also to the Louvre. The ratio was often half of the finds for the Bulaq Museum (free of charge), although Maspero could still buy out objects from the other half. It must be noted that subsequent arrangements between the British Museum and the Louvre sometimes took place from 1883, with quite a few objects being sent by the British Museum to its French sister institution, often against the right to publish articles about Egyptian antiquities entering the Louvre collections.48 However, some EEF members regularly complained that the Louvre always got more valuable objects.49

  • 50 The EEF dispatched antiquities to local British museums or American museums proportionately to thei (...)
  • 51 Edwards to Maspero, 3 Mar. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 633.

14As far as preservation was concerned, it is therefore clear that Maspero’s approach differed from that of his predecessor, as he did not believe Egypt should have the sole prerogative of preserving its prestigious past. Besides, his pragmatism led him to hope that if foreign museums were allowed to enrich their collections legally—like the British Museum and the Louvre, but also the Boston Fine Art Museum to which the EEF relinquished objects—,50 plunder would dwindle. Maspero’s hopes were strengthened by the EEF’s promise of cooperation in tracking down illicit purchases and depredations, even before the EEF was officially established in 1883. For instance, not only had Edwards and Poole warned Maspero against granting German Egyptologist Heinrich Schliemann an excavation permit as they suspected him of taking antiquities off the official lists of finds, but they also suggested precisely recording all the objects held at the Bulaq Museum, with a view to prevent theft. Besides, when stolen objects were suspected of being on the black market, the EEF was active in providing the British press with their description and recommended they be handed over to the British Museum, before they were returned to Egypt. More traditionally, and more specifically with a view to document Egypt’s past for posterity, Edwards regularly asked Maspero for photographs of recent finds, that were included in articles or books that she wrote, or that EEF subscribers/partners wrote. Undeniably, EEF members did their utmost to conciliate Maspero and waive suspicions of imperialism. Overall, the relationship seemed a happy one, despite the facts that, regularly from 1882, EEF members, as well as Birch, raised the issue of the safety of the Bulaq collections in a too small, possibly inappropriate institution, and that Edwards vainly pleaded with him to have “a salle des fouilles anglaises”—i.e. a room displaying discoveries found during British excavation campaigns. Her point was that it would appeal to the British public, whose view of Egypt tended to be romanticized.51 But this entente cordiale depended much on Maspero’s personality and his being replaced by Eugène Grébault upon his departure from Egypt in 1886 inaugurated a new era, fraught with tensions.

Misunderstandings about preservation and mounting Anglo-French rivalry (1886-1898)

151886 was a crucial year in the history of the preservation of Egyptian cultural heritage. Firstly, the Bulaq Museum had a new Director. Secondly, Ernest A. Wallis Budge arrived in Egypt on his first collecting foray for the British Museum, during which he bought many pieces on Egypt’s antiquities black market. Thirdly, Flinders Petrie sued the EEF after having worked for them since 1883—indeed, although they had initially warned Maspero against Petrie in 1881, Edwards and Poole eventually recommended him to Maspero for his archaeological expertise and excavation techniques.

  • 52 Edwards to Maspero, 21 June and 29 Sept. 1886, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 674 and f. 685.
  • 53 Various Nov. 1891 letters, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, ff. 52-3.
  • 54 Poynter to unidentified correspondent, 30 July 1889, EES VIII a. 28.

16Grébaut’s appointment as head of the Bulaq Museum raised anxieties amongst EEF committee members, who feared that he would refuse cooperating. Within a few months of his stepping down, Maspero was both pressed to whet Grébaut’s interest in the EEF and invited to become a member of the board of the Fund.52 Grébaut did not share Maspero’s enthusiasm for the EEF and tensions often arose, with Maspero acting as a go-between. This was in particular the case when Grébaut applied to the Minister of Public Works to file a case against the German excavator Count Riamo D’Hulst, who acted as an officer of the EEF, for having unduly removed columns, probably from the site of Bubastis. Upon D’Hulst admitting that he did, but only because columns were covered with sand and broken up in pieces—thereby making them an appealing treasure for local robbers—, Grébaut complained to Colin Scott-Moncrieff, deputy Head of the Public Works Department, that the EEF had exploited a flaw in the legislation that needed to be toughened.53 Quite surprisingly enough, members of the EEF board did not think Grébaut was the real problem, but rather blamed the French government. This feeling was shared by artist Edward Poynter, who established the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments in Egypt in 1888.54

  • 55 Whitehouse to Poynter, 27 Sept. 1888, EES VIII a. 3.
  • 56 Petrie to the EEF Committee, 30 Oct. 1884, EES XIX a. 39.
  • 57 Poole to Naville, 19 Nov. 1884, EES XIX a. 42.
  • 58 James H. Breasted, “Professor Petrie’s Egyptian Research Account”, The Biblical World, vol. 9, no. (...)

17Still, Grébaut and his followers were not isolated in considering the EEF as more destructive than preserving. Indeed, when the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments was about to be established, Poynter contacted potential subscribers and sent them the list of committee members. American lawyer Francis Cope Whitehouse wrote to Poynter that although he was at one with the project, he was outraged by reading Petrie’s name as part of the committee members: for him, Petrie was no better than a plunderer, whose “mangl[ing] remains at Hawana” was “worse than the horrors [committed by the Prussians at the battle of Königgrätz.”55 Although Petrie had somehow moved away from the EEF by that time, Whitehouse still associated them and thought the EEF fared no better. After several letters in the same tone, Whitehouse refused to join the newly formed Society, which also raised Grébaut’s suspicions. Indeed, regularly since 1884, Petrie had tried to press the EEF to alter the legislation on antiantiquities: in particular, he reviled France’s more numerous opportunities to acquire finer antiquities as the Director of the Bulaq Museum was French. But Petrie did not have the ear of the EEF Committee. Thus, although from 1884 until the late 1890s the Committee also tried to have the Khedive accept the idea that Britain’s position in Egypt would logically plea for the appointment of a British deputy at Bulaq, it took Petrie’s advice with a pinch of salt. With Petrie clearly trying to pursue an independent course while still excavating for the EEF, the relations between the two parties became more strained. In October 1884, not only did Petrie dispute Maspero’s selection of antiquities for the British Museum, but he also recommended to Poole that “agents of the fund [should] have the privilege of exporting from Egypt without Custom House examination.”56 Although he protested that his objective was not the illegal smuggling of antiquities out of Egypt, the presence of a still very active black market did not help him dispel such a fear and the reputation of the EEF started to become stained, as Whitehouse’s statement suggests. Besides, Petrie’s insistence on wanting to be paid more so that he could buy antiquities on behalf of the Fund, which would then reimburse him, caused further anxiety, also because he suggested antiquities could be bought from the Mahdi, Urabi’s follower, against whom Britain was waging a war.57 He was eventually dismissed as an EEF excavating agent in 1886 and set up his own fund, the Egyptian Research Account in 1894, out of private money and with no institutional connection, henceforth granting him more leeway in terms of excavating methodology, antiquities preservation policy, choice of fellow excavators and financial means.58

  • 59 Donald M. Reid, “Representing Ancient Egypt at Imperial High Noon (1882-1922): Egyptological Career (...)
  • 60 Donald M. Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon t (...)
  • 61 Desplat, “La relation triangulaire”, p. 225.
  • 62 Andrée Jaunay (ed.), Mémoires de Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924): Souvenirs d’un archéologue, Paris, (...)

18Petrie parted with the EEF the same year as Ernest A. Wallis Budge arrived in Egypt and started smuggling antiquities out of Egypt for the British Museum, despite Baring’s disapproval. Unlike Budge, Baring believed that “the occupation of Egypt by the British ought not to be made an excuse for filching antiquities from the country, whether to England or anywhere else.”59 Baring’s admonition remained a dead letter as Budge could often rely on the cooperation of British officers, who were happy to defy both Grébaut and Baring.60 There was a sense that antiquities were only too fair a reward for British sacrifice in Egypt and the Sudan—memories of Gordon’s death at the hands of the Mahdi during the Khartoum siege in January 1885 remained particularly vivid. As such, Baring remained powerless in preventing Budge’s further illegal purchase of antiquities on behalf of the British Museum for some years. Although the EEF had nothing to do with Budge and also disapproved of his collecting methods, the fact that the British Museum was involved in the EEF through Reginald Poole reverberated badly on the British Egyptology society. The dispute between Count Riamo D’Hulst and Grébaut about the undue removal of broken columns is highly typical of the tensions of the late 1880s–early 1890s. Baring decided to set up a Commission des Antiquités to which Grébaut was theoretically accountable, but the latter just refused to cooperate with this new body that he identified as British. Besides, for some time already, Grébault’s failure to edit catalogues of findings in the Bulaq Museum had irritated Tigrane Pasha, the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a formal complaint, asking for Grébault’s dismissal, was made to the Egyptian Premier in May 1891.61 Tensions eventually reached such a point that Grébaut was removed by the French government in 1892, the year Khedive Tewfik died. The Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux Arts then called on Jacques de Morgan, a specialist of Ancient Persia, to replace Grébaut. Morgan eventually accepted this offer—partly because he agreed that Maspero was too close to British interests in Egypt to be allowed to return—, but made it clear that he would not let himself be overcome by the English although he intended to avoid blunt, outright opposition.62

  • 63 Desplat, “La relation triangulaire”, p. 231.
  • 64 Brown to Poynter, 27 Sept. 1892, EES VIII d. 7.
  • 65 Archeological Survey circular, undated, EES XXI. 15.
  • 66 Quoted in Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte, “Concours pour le musée des Antiquités égyptiennes du Caire (...)
  • 67 For instance: Mr. Watt to Kimberley, 10 February, 1895, Foreign Office Papers, National Archives, L (...)
  • 68 As a matter of fact, technical and specialised periodicals, including the British The Builder, laud (...)

19Grébaut’s replacement in the context of the advent of a new Khedive (Abbas II) eased out tensions, as Morgan was commissioned to resume a more active collaboration with the British—at least on the face of it. Indeed, Morgan’s correspondence with Xavier Charmes, from the French Ministry of Public Instruction, clearly shows that what Morgan wanted first and foremost was to maintain France’s archaeological protectorate over Egypt, whatever the political context. With that in mind, his “international strategy,” as he called it, commanded that while doing his utmost to preserve France’s hold over the Bulaq Museum, he did not antagonize the British and worked with them as much as possible.63 In particular, he gave due consideration to all of Poynter’s propositions, including a thorough record of all intangible heritage throughout Egypt, comprising Arab/Islamic art.64 The Archaeological Survey had been set up in 1890 for that very purpose.65 But De Morgan was mostly enthusiastic about plans to preserve Karnak from destruction. Although the EEF approved of Poynter’s efforts to preserve Egyptian heritage on a broader basis, it insisted on sticking to its original mission, i. e. excavation, to avoid confusion. Still, the EEF committee included sympathetic letters by Morgan in their newsletters to subscribers. In 1894, Morgan was also animated by cooperation when he invited one Egyptologist from each main power to sit on his committee examining projects for a new museum in Cairo—which eventually opened in 1902, five years after his departure from Egypt. Indeed, collections had been transferred to Khedive Ismail’s palace at Giza, which had been turned into a Museum in 1890. As with the Bulaq Museum, Ismail’s palace soon proved too small and inadequate for the collections. Despite the formation of an international jury and the reassurance of the organiser of the competition, French architect Honoré Daumet, that “the first consideration with British architects willing to submit designs in open competition is to be assured of the bona fides of those who invite them,”66 protests on the part of British architects who could not take part in the competition—mostly because they had not met the deadline or the submission requirements—were loudly voiced at the Foreign Office.67 Out of the 73 projects received by the jury, sixteen came from Britain, two from the United States and sixteen from France; but none in the thirteen selected had originated in Britain. The announcement in early March 1895 that the four ex-aequo winners were all French unduly gave rise to British suspicions of partisanship on the part of Daumet and Morgan.68

  • 69 See respectively: Edwin Palmer to Kimberley, 08 June 1894 and Sanderson to Kimberley, 22 Mar. 1894, (...)
  • 70 Poynter to Maspero (?), 16 Feb. 1894 and Maspero to Scott-Moncrieff, 27 Apr. 1894, EES VIII d. 11 a (...)

20Despite such marginal accusations, 1894 saw the most significant attempt at bringing all forces (English officers, the Anglo-Egyptian Government, the Director of Egyptian Antiquities, British Egyptology societies and Maspero) together for the preservation of Egyptian heritage with the campaign against the Aswan dam, which threatened the island of Philae, and in particular the Temple of Isis. William E. Garstin, who was at the origin of the idea and was Scott-Moncrieff’s successor at the Department of Public Works, wanted to turn usually flooded lands into profitable, arable ones, for which he had secured the approval of the Egyptian Council of Ministers and of the Khedive, much to the dismay of the British government.69 Morgan, the EEF and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments in Egypt, as well as Maspero gave maximum publicity to what they foresaw would be “barbarous desecration.”70 Thanks to their active campaign until 1898, public outcry won over Europe and made it possible for those concerned about Philae to negotiate terms according to which archaeologists could grudgingly consent to the building of the Aswan dam. Building works started in 1898, the year Britain and France were almost at war for the Sudan and the year the British defeated the Mahdi at Omdurman, which resulted in Egypt becoming a British protectorate (though still nominally a possession of the more than ever declining Ottoman Empire). Noticeably, the collective attempt to save Philae’s monuments shows us how much, by the end of the nineteenth century, British and French archaeologists could sometimes try and go beyond national imperial agendas to preserve the Egyptian past—in other words, could try and bridge the little, and yet so critical distance between plunder and preservation.

  • 71 Astrid Swenson, “Introduction”, in Swenson and Mandler (eds.), From Plunder to Preservation, p. 5.
  • 72 Quoted in Reid, Whose Pharaohs?, p. 181.
  • 73 Donald M. Reid, “Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Herit (...)
  • 74 Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, L’Archéologie française en Perse et les antiquités nationales (1884-1914), (...)

21The years 1882-1898 corresponded to Britain’s greater intermingling in Egyptian affairs, which was also reflected in the politics of preservation of Egyptian heritage. As Astrid Swenson remarked in From Plunder to Preservation (2013), imperialism was central to histories of British (as well as many other) heritage movements—British craze for Egypt was no exception.71 Yet, Evelyn Baring, British Consul-General of Egypt from 1883 and Lord Cromer from 1892, interfered little with the French-run Service of Egyptian Antiquities and even “wish[ed] there were no more antiquities [as] they [were] more trouble than anything else.”72 Despite his caution not to exacerbate rivalries with France over the preservation of Egyptian antiquities and as a matter of fact of all Egyptian intangible heritage—i.e. monuments from all periods and antiquities—, successive French governments still continued to perceive their country as the natural keeper of Egypt’s past. To the French government, this (alleged) prerogative was meant to date back to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and colluded with the widespread European view that the preservation of Egypt’s past could not be entrusted to Egyptians alone.73 As Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam highlighted in 2004, France already tried hard to maintain its cultural footing in Persia through archaeology between 1884 and 191474 and could not accept seeing its prestige also challenged by Britain in Egypt. That the 1881 Committee for the Conservation of Monuments of Arab Art included British members, who became increasingly active from 1890, was a lesser issue for France than Britain trying to achieve a cultural standing in Egypt through the issue of antiquities preservation. Undeniably, the acuteness of the Anglo-French rivalry much depended on who was in charge of the Bulaq Museum, an overall French institution in all but name, and on the willingness of the British Museum’s interlocutor and excavators to comply with excavation rules. Yet, it must be admitted that, on the whole, major British Egyptology societies, be it the Egypt Exploration Fund or the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments in Egypt, genuinely sought to preserve Egyptian cultural heritage. They accepted that Egypt should keep at least part of it and endeavoured to have Egyptian heritage legislation respected. These societies’desire for an entente cordiale was eventually satisfied with Maspero’s return to Egypt in 1899, again as director of the Egyptian Antiquities and the Bulaq Museum: not only did it open up a new era with the Service of Egyptian Antiquities now including British representatives, but it also made possible the greater international collaboration that the EEF had always been calling for, with the best excavators now being employed by French and British Egyptology societies, whatever their nationality.

Bibliografía

Bibliography

Primary sources

Archives

Somerville College, Oxford: Amelia Edwards Papers.

Egypt Exploration Society, London: Egypt Exploration Fund Papers; Papers of the Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Monuments in Egypt and Archaeological Survey Papers.

National Archives, London, Kew: Foreign Office Papers, FO78/5384, “Preservation of Egyptian Monuments, 1894-1904”.

Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris: Gaston Maspero Papers.

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The Morning Post (London).

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1883 [C. 3462] [C. 3529] [C. 3695] Egypt no. 2 (1883): Correspondence respecting the reorganisation of Egypt.

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Gladstone, W. E. “Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East”, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 2, Aug. 1877, pp. 149-66.

Jaunay, A. (ed.), Mémoires de Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924): Souvenirs d’un archéologue, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Ramm, A. (ed.), The Gladstone-Granville Correspondence, vol. I: 1868-1876, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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Brück, H.A. and Brück, M. T., The Peripatetic Astronomer: The Life of Charles Piazzi Smyth, Bristol and Philadelphia, Adam Hilger, 1988.

Carrott, R. G., The Egyptian Revival: Its Sources, Monuments, and Meaning, 1808-1858, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1978.

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Crosnier-Leconte, M.-L., “Concours pour le musée des Antiquités égyptiennes du Caire 1895: Chronologie des Sources”, p. 17, online [http://invisu.inha.fr/IMG/pdf/Musee-Caire-Chrono-presse-sources.pdf, accessed 14 Nov. 2014].

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Dodson, A., “Antiquities Service, Egypt, history of”, in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Roger S. Backnall et al. (eds.), Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, online edition [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781444338386].

Drower, M. S., “Gaston Maspero and the Birth of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1881-3)”, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 68, 1982.

Fagan B., The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists and Archaeologists (1975), Cambridge, MA, Westview Press, 2004.

Farale D., La Turquie ottomane et l’Europe du xvie siècle à nos jours, Paris, Economica, 2009.

Gange D., Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822-1922, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Good J. L., Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism and the Middle East, 1919-1941, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2007.

Humbert, J.-M., M. Pantazzi and Ch. Ziegler (eds.), Égyptomania: L’Égypte dans l’art occidental, 1730-1930, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1994.

Ismail, M., Le Caire: une cité mère à sauver. Culture, Urbanisme, Société, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010.

Lehni, C., “Lire l’Égypte en images: la représentation de l’Égypte au Royaume-Uni à travers l’illustration des récits de voyage (1798-1914)”, Doctoral thesis, Paris-Diderot University, 2007.

McGregor, A. J., A Military History of Modern Egypt: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan War, Westport, CT, and London, Praeger Security International, 2006.

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Prévost, S., “Quand représenter l’Égypte revient à prédire le futur de l’Empire britannique: Charles Piazzi Smyth et la pyramidologie (1864-1898)”, in Vestiges du Proche-Orient et de la Méditerranée, Catherine Delmas and Daniel Lançon (eds.), Paris, Geuthner, 2015, pp. 61-78.

Prévost, S., “La Question d’Orient dans la culture politique britannique: réception et influences (1875-1898)”, Doctoral thesis, Tours University, 2010.

Reid, D. M. “Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Heritage of Arab Art in Egypt”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, Feb. 1992, pp. 57-76.

Reid, D. M., Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, Berkeley, California University Press, 2002.

Swenson, A. and Mandler, P. (eds.), From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c. 1800-1940, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Thomas, S., “Displaying Egypt: Archaeology, Spectacle, and the Museum in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Journal of Literature and Science, vol. 5, no. 1, 2012, pp. 6-22.

Volait, M., “Du relevé à la conservation des “Monuments de l’art arabe’: l’itinéraire égyptien d’Ambroise Baudry (1871-1886)”, Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 73, no. 73-4, 1994, pp. 77-97.

Notas

1 I would like to thank Joanna Kiffin, archivist of the Egyptian Exploration Society (formerly the Exploration Egyptian Fund) in London for her help with the archives of the EEF, as well as the Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Monuments in Egypt; and Kate O’Donnell, assistant archivist at Somerville College (Oxford) who facilitated my access to the Amelia Edwards Papers. Last but not least, I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Michel Zink, the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of the Institut de France (Paris), as well as to the staff of the library for allowing me access to the Gaston Maspero Papers.

2 Margaret S. Drower, “Gaston Maspero and the Birth of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1881-3)”, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 68, 1982, p. 300.

3 Andrew J. McGregor, A Military History of Modern Egypt: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan War, Westport, CT and London, Praeger Security International, 2006, p. 163-4.

4 Thomas G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 135.

5 Caroline Lehni, “Lire l’Égypte en images: la représentation de l’Égypte au Royaume-Uni à travers l’illustration des récits de voyage (1798-1914)”, Doctoral thesis, Paris-Diderot University, 2007, vol. I, pp. 15-7; Jean-Marcel Humbert, Michel Pantazzi, Christian Ziegler (eds.), Égyptomania: L’Égypte dans l’art occidental 1730-1930, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1994.

6 Elliott Colla, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity, Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2007, p. 27.

7 “History of the Collection”, British Museum, online [http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/departments/greece_and_rome/history_of_the_collection.aspx, accessed 14 Nov. 2014].

8 Sophie Thomas, “Displaying Egypt: Archaeology, Spectacle, and the Museum in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Journal of Literature and Science, vol. 5, no. 1, 2012, p. 7; “The Rosetta Stone”, British Museum, online [http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/t/the_rosetta_stone.aspx, accessed 14 Nov. 2014].

9 Thomas, “Displaying Egypt”, p. 10.

10 How long-lasting the Egyptian craze was in Britain is still debated, with Patrick Conner contending that the 1820s only marked the heyday of the interest in Egyptian antiquities whereas Richard G. Carrott identified the period 1808-1858 as the years of “the Egyptian revival”. This debate is beyond the scope of this article. See Ibid., p. 6; Patrick Conner (ed.), The Inspiration of Egypt: Its Influence on British Artists, Travellers and Designers, 1700-1900, Brighton, Brighton Borough Council, 1983, p. 56; Richard G. Carrott, The Egyptian Revival: Its Sources, Monuments, and Meaning, 1808-1858, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1978.

11 David Gange, Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822-1922, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 3.

12 Dominique Farale, La Turquie ottomane et l’Europe: Du xvie siècle à nos jours, Paris, Economica, 2009, pp. 138-9.

13 James L. Good, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism and the Middle East, 1919-1941, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2007, p. 3.

14 Agatha Ramm (ed.), The Gladstone-Granville Correspondence, vol. I: 1868-1876, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 326-7.

15 Stéphanie Prévost, “La Question d’Orient dans la culture politique britannique: réception et influences (1875-1898)”, Doctoral thesis, Tours University, 2010, vol. I, pp. 258-9.

16 William E. Gladstone, “Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East”, The Nineteenth Century, vol. II, Aug. 1877, pp. 149-66.

17 Shawki Mehani Nakhla, Sobhi Beshai and Amr Mahmoud, “Cultural Heritage Legislation” (Unimed Cultural Heritage II Report), Cultural Policy Institute, 2008.

18 Note that it was only in an 1883 decree that all objects in the Bulaq Museum (formed in 1863) were made the property of the Museum rather than that of the Khedive, thereby ensuring that the latter could not give away objects anymore without prior authorisation of the Service of Egyptian Antiquities.

19 Aidan Dodson, “Antiquities Service, Egypt, history of”, in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Roger S. Backnall et al. (eds.), Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, online edition [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781444338386].

20 Nakhla, Beshai and Mahmoud, “Cultural Heritage Legislation”.

21 Quoted in Mahmoud Ismail, Le Caire: une cité mère à sauver. Culture, Urbanisme, Société, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010, p. 83.

22 Mercedes Volait, “Du relevé à la conservation des « Monuments de l’art arabe »: L’itinéraire égyptien d’Ambroise Baudry (1871-1886)”, Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 73, no. 73-4, 1994, pp. 89-90.

23 Juliette Desplat, “La relation triangulaire entre la France, la Grande-Bretagne et l’Egypte d’un point de vue politico-culturel, 1869-1922”, Doctoral thesis, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, 2011, p. 211.

24 Brian Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists and Archaeologists (1975), Cambridge, MA, Westview Press, 2004, pp. 196-7.

25 “Destruction of Monuments in Egypt”, The Morning Post, 15 July 1850, p. 3.

26 Draft of the circular, undated, Record of the Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Monuments in Egypt, in the custody of the Egypt Exploration Society, London, EES VIII a. 2.

27 Maspero to Edwards, Letter of 12 Mar. 1882, Amelia Edwards Papers, Somerville College, Oxford, ABE 162-164.

28 Maspero to Edwards, Letters of 26 Dec. 1880 and of 20 Mar. 1881, Edwards Papers, ABE 151-152.

29 The Earl of Dufferin to the Earl Granville, 28 Apr. 1883, in 1883 [C. 3462] [C. 3529] [C. 3695] Egypt no. 2 (1883): Correspondence respecting the reorganisation of Egypt, pp. 52-3.

30 Nubar to Maspero, 7 Dec. 1884, and Maspero to Nubar, 6 Dec. 1884, Gaston Maspero Papers, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris, MS 4053, ff. 16-7.

31 Edwards to Maspero, 10 Nov. 1879, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 422.

32 Edwards to Maspero, 12 Oct. 1880, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 434.

33 Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 302.

34 Quoted in ibid., p. 304.

35 T. G. H. James, “Birch, Samuel (1813– 1885)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2435, accessed 15/11/2014].

36 Birch to Maspero, Letters of 6 July 1869 and of 10 Aug. 1873, Maspero Papers, MS 4005, ff. 285-7 and f. 296-7.

37 Edwards to Maspero, 29 June 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 438.

38 Poole to Edwards, 30 Sept. 1881, EES IV b. 35, quoted in Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 312.

39 Edwards to Maspero, 14 Oct. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 473.

40 Birch to Edwards, EES III. j. 19, quoted in Drower, “Gaston Maspero”, p. 301.

41 See the letter of Maspero to Edwards of 4 Aug. 1881 (Edwards Papers, ABE 154) in which he says that most of the subscription money sent him by the EEF comes from Jews or friends of Jews interested in Biblical archaeology and seeking to retrace the steps of Israelites in Egypt.

42 Hermann Alexander and Mary Teresa Brück, The Peripatetic Astronomer: The Life of Charles Piazzi Smyth, Bristol and Philadelphia, Adam Hilger, 1988, p. 50; Stéphanie Prévost, “Quand représenter l’Égypte revient à prédire le futur de l’Empire britannique: Charles Piazzi Smyth et la pyramidologie (1864-1898)”, in Vestiges du Proche-Orient et de la Méditerranée, Catherine Delmas and Daniel Lançon (eds.), Paris, Geuthner, 2015, p. 71.

43 Maspero to Edwards, 22 Oct. 1881, Edwards Papers, ABE 159.

44 Edwards to Maspero, 3 Mar. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, ff. 440-1; Poole to Naville, Letters of 28 Apr. 1882 and 12 Jan. 1883, EES XIX c.8 and 15.

45 Private circular to subscribers, 2 Feb. 1883, EES XIX c.57-8.

46 Maspero to Edwards, 14 Apr. 1882, Edwards Papers, ABE 164.

47 Poole to Maspero, 22 Mar. 1883, Maspero Papers, MS 4036, f. 247.

48 Edwards to Maspero, 02 Nov. 1885, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 665.

49 Petrie to the EEF, “Memorandum on the Purchase of Antiquities in Egypt”, undated (1884?), EES XIX a. 34.

50 The EEF dispatched antiquities to local British museums or American museums proportionately to their subscriptions to the EEF, either as permanent donations or for exhibition purposes (Poole, Subcommittee report, January 1885, EES XIX a. 84).

51 Edwards to Maspero, 3 Mar. 1881, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 633.

52 Edwards to Maspero, 21 June and 29 Sept. 1886, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, f. 674 and f. 685.

53 Various Nov. 1891 letters, Maspero Papers, MS 4016, ff. 52-3.

54 Poynter to unidentified correspondent, 30 July 1889, EES VIII a. 28.

55 Whitehouse to Poynter, 27 Sept. 1888, EES VIII a. 3.

56 Petrie to the EEF Committee, 30 Oct. 1884, EES XIX a. 39.

57 Poole to Naville, 19 Nov. 1884, EES XIX a. 42.

58 James H. Breasted, “Professor Petrie’s Egyptian Research Account”, The Biblical World, vol. 9, no. 2, Feb. 1897, pp. 138-42; for a list of sponsors, see: “The Archeological Record: Flinders Petrie in Egypt”, Digital Egypt for Universities, UCL for the Petrie Museum, 2002, online [http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museumsstatic/digitalegypt//archaeology/petriedigsindex.html, accessed 15 Nov. 2014]. Note that despite the split, Petrie would still collaborate with the EEF for exhibition of objects in the early twentieth century.

59 Donald M. Reid, “Representing Ancient Egypt at Imperial High Noon (1882-1922): Egyptological Careers and Artistic Allegories of Civilization”, in From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c. 1800-1940, Astrid Swenson and Peter Mandler (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 203.

60 Donald M. Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, Berkeley, California University Press, 2002, p. 182.

61 Desplat, “La relation triangulaire”, p. 225.

62 Andrée Jaunay (ed.), Mémoires de Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924): Souvenirs d’un archéologue, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997, pp. 234-8.

63 Desplat, “La relation triangulaire”, p. 231.

64 Brown to Poynter, 27 Sept. 1892, EES VIII d. 7.

65 Archeological Survey circular, undated, EES XXI. 15.

66 Quoted in Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte, “Concours pour le musée des Antiquités égyptiennes du Caire 1895: Chronologie des Sources”, p. 17, online [http://invisu.inha.fr/IMG/pdf/Musee-Caire-Chrono-presse-sources.pdf, accessed 14 Nov. 2014].

67 For instance: Mr. Watt to Kimberley, 10 February, 1895, Foreign Office Papers, National Archives, London, Kew, FO78/5384, unnumbered folio.

68 As a matter of fact, technical and specialised periodicals, including the British The Builder, lauded the jury’s conclusions. See Crosnier-Leconte, “Concours pour le musée”, pp. 34-44.

69 See respectively: Edwin Palmer to Kimberley, 08 June 1894 and Sanderson to Kimberley, 22 Mar. 1894, FO Papers, FO78/5384, f. 678 and unnumbered folio.

70 Poynter to Maspero (?), 16 Feb. 1894 and Maspero to Scott-Moncrieff, 27 Apr. 1894, EES VIII d. 11 and 16.

71 Astrid Swenson, “Introduction”, in Swenson and Mandler (eds.), From Plunder to Preservation, p. 5.

72 Quoted in Reid, Whose Pharaohs?, p. 181.

73 Donald M. Reid, “Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Heritage of Arab Art in Egypt”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, Feb. 1992, p. 65.

74 Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam, L’Archéologie française en Perse et les antiquités nationales (1884-1914), Paris, Connaissances et Savoirs, 2004.

Autor

Stéphanie Prévost was appointed lecturer in nineteenth-century British history at Paris-Diderot University in September 2011 after defending her PhD at Tours University in 2010 on “Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875-1898”. Anglo-Ottoman relations in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, as well as Britain’s representations of the East over that period, be they political and religious in particular, range amongst her current research interests, together with British women’s responses to Ottoman women’s conditions, and the role and status of British subjects in the Ottoman Empire. She has widely published on these issues, including in 2015: “Quand représenter l’Égypte revient à prédire le futur de l’Empire britannique: Charles Piazzi Smyth et la pyramidologie (1864-1898)” (in Catherine Delmas & Daniel Lançon, eds., Vestiges du Proche-Orient et de la Méditerranée, Geuthner).

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