Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822-1922 (Classical Presences)

"Almost every great figure in nineteenth-century Britain, from Thomas Carlyle to William Gladstone to Charles Darwin, read histories of ancient Egypt and argued about their content. Egypt became a focal point in disputes over the nature of human origins, the patterns underlying human history, the status and purpose of the Bible, and the cultural role of the classics. Egyptian archaeology ingrained its influence everywhere from the lecture halls of the ancient universities to the devotional aids of rural Sunday schools, and the plots of sensation fiction. Dialogues with the Dead shows, for the first time, how Egyptology's development over the century that followed the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script in 1822 can be understood only through its intimate entanglement with the historical, scientific, and religious contentions which defined the era."--Publisher's website. Cover 1 Contents 10 Introduction: The Accession of Menes 12 1. The Old Kingdom: Ancient Egypt at mid Century 64 2. The First Intermediate Period: The Religion of Science and the Science of Religion 132 3. The Middle Kingdom: Orthodox Egypt, 1880–1900 162 4. Second Intermediate Period: Petrie’s Prehistory and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri 248 5. The New Kingdom: Ancient Egypt and the ‘Cycles of Civilization’ after 1900 282 Select Bibliography 338 Index 360 A 360 B 360 C 361 D 362 E 362 F 362 G 362 H 363 I 363 J 363 K 364 L 364 M 364 N 365 O 365 P 365 Q 366 R 366 S 366 T 367 U 367 V 367 W 367 Y 368 Z 368