NELC5101 - Imagining Ancient Egypt: A History of Popular Fascination from Antiquity to the Present

Thousands of years after the pyramids were built and the last hieroglyphs were written, ancient Egypt remains a source of mystery and intense interest. Why are we so fascinated with ancient Egypt, and what does that fascination reveal about us? This course explores the reception history of ancient Egypt: how people in various periods and areas of the world have thought about ancient Egypt, what it has meant to them, why they were interested in it, and how they brought the ancient Egyptian past into the present. We will focus not on ancient Egypt itself, but on the history of perceptions of, ideas about, and interactions with ancient Egyptian culture. Our investigation will include how Egyptians of later periods thought about their ancient past, as well as European and American representations (and appropriations) of ancient Egypt. A major focus of the course will be the impact of political and cultural relations between Egypt and the West on perceptions and uses of ancient Egyptian culture.
This interdisciplinary course will combine multiple areas of history—intellectual, cultural, and political—and multiple types of sources, including historical writing, literature, film, and opera. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman visitors to Egypt, we will investigate changing modes of understanding, constructing, and representing ancient Egypt, from the medieval sultans of Egypt to Mozart to W. E. B. DuBois to protesters in Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
Over the course of the semester, we will explore questions such as:
- What does it mean to think of Egypt as African vs. Middle Eastern vs. Mediterranean? Is Egypt Western, Eastern, both, or neither?
- To whom does ancient Egyptian heritage belong? How do colonialism and conceptions of race and ethnicity factor into this question?
- How do the past and the present shape each other? What is the impact of modern politics and culture on perceptions of the past? What role does the past play in the formation of modern political, social, and cultural identities?
- How can we learn about modern problems and concerns from representations of the past?