Title: Luigi Prada | Colonial Philology? Neo-hieroglyphic Inscriptions, 19th Century Egyptology, and European Politics
Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 is regarded as defining the inception of Egyptology as an academic discipline. But his linguistic breakthrough was also bound to influence wider European social, cultural, and art history. Throughout the continent, from London to Rome, kings, queens, princes, and even popes started commissioning Egyptologists with the composition of novel hieroglyphic inscriptions celebrating them and their power, in curiously ad hoc expressions of that Egyptomaniac movement which had already gripped the continent at the turn of the century, through Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition. This lecture will present this peculiar half-scholarly half-populist phenomenon, discuss selected case studies through analysis of the original monuments, and contextualise them within the development of early Egyptology as a form of European colonial appropriation of Egypt. In contrast, it will be seen how, despite the equal popularity of Egyptomania on the other side of the Atlantic, the appetite for such neo-hieroglyphic inscriptions was never great in the USA, undoubtedly due to the different political environment of American democracy, which did not look with favour upon such autocratic—literally, pharaonic—celebrations of heads of state.
Dr Luigi Prada is Associate Professor of Egyptology (Dr. habil.) at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was educated in both Egyptology and Classics, firstly in Italy and then in Oxford. He works primarily on textual and cultural-historical studies, with a particular focus on the later phases of Egypt’s history and language(s) / scripts. Prior to Uppsala, he held academic positions in the UK (Oxford), Germany (Heidelberg), and Denmark (Copenhagen). He is active in the field, both in Egypt as Assistant Director of the Oxford-Uppsala Epigraphic Project in Elkab, and in Sudan.
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