Egyptomania in the United States



Egyptomania refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this campaign, which led to a large interest in the documentation of ancient monuments in Egypt. Thorough documentation of ancient ruins led to an increase in the interest about ancient Egypt. In 1822, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the ancient hieroglyphs by using the Rosetta Stone that was recovered by French troops in 1799, and hence began the scientific study of egyptology.

The fascination with ancient Egypt was manifested through literature, architecture, art, film, politics and religion. Very few people could afford a trip to Egypt during the peak of Egyptomania and only made contact with Egyptian culture through literature, art, and architecture. Particularly influential were Vivant Denon's Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, the Institute of Egypt's Description de l'Égypte, and Verdi's Aida.

In the French Empire style, Egyptian imagery and ornament was very widely used in the decorative arts, such as porcelain services, furniture, and later commercial kitsch and advertising. Parties and public events were held that had Egypt as a theme, where people wore special costumes. Egyptian Revival architecture lasted throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun considerably revived interest.

American culture




American literature, visual art and architecture absorbed what was becoming general knowledge about ancient Egyptian culture, making use of this knowledge in the contemporary debate about national identity, race, and slavery. Elements of Egyptian culture became particularly symbolically charged. The mummy, for example, represented the fascination of the Americans with the living dead and reanimation. This went so far that 'mummy unwrapping parties' were organized.

The figure of Cleopatra, hieroglyphic writing and deciphering, and the pyramid as a maze are other examples of how ancient Egypt has captivated Western imaginations, and specifically in the United States since the nineteenth century. Literary works that make use of these symbolic references to Egypt include "Some Words With a Mummy" by E. A. Poe, "Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy's Curse" by Louisa May Alcott or The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The impact of ancient Egyptian culture in architecture is called the Egyptian Revival, an expression of neoclassicism in the United States. Egyptian images, forms and symbols were integrated in the contemporary style. This influence can best be seen in the architecture of cemeteries, such as the use of obelisks as headstones, and prisons.

Egyptian Revival symbols and architecture was used for cemetery gateways, tombstones, and public memorials in the 19th and early 20th century. Pyramid Mausoleums, flat-roofed mastabas, lotus columns, obelisks, and sphinxes were popular in 19th century rural or garden cemeteries. For example, the gateway of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston and the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut were constructed in the Egyptian Revival style.

Other examples of this influence are the Gold Pyramid House in Illinois and the Obelisk (Washington Monument) in Washington, D.C. Movies such as The Mummy (1999) (itself a remake of a 1932 Boris Karloff film) and its sequels demonstrate that ancient Egypt and the discovery of its secrets are still of interest for contemporary western minds. Scholarly texts about this phenomenon in American culture include Scott Trafton's Egypt Land (2004) and M. J. Schueller's U.S. Orientalism (1998).

However, the fascination of Egypt did not begin with Napoleon. Ancient Greeks and Romans also took interest in Ancient Egypt's culture and reflected their interests in texts such as Herodotus' Histories and the Bibliotheca historica. When Egyptomania arrived in Rome after Emperor Augustus conquered Egypt in 31 BCE, the fascination led to similar architecture like a tomb designed as a pyramid as erected by the high official Caius Cestius. Additionally, Emperor Hadrian had his deceased lover revered as the Egyptian god of the afterlife, Osiris.

Pseudoscience
Phrenology is the study of the human cranium that claimed to be able to determine an individual's intelligence and character. Egyptian mummies served as a source for the object of study – skulls. Craniology was used to determine whether Egyptians were black or white, a debate lead in light of the justification of slavery. The key figure for this period seems to be Samuel George Morton who founded the American School of Ethnology.

He put forward the theory of Polygenesis claiming that there is not one but several human races who are in a hierarchical order with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom end of the scale.

Although science today disapproves of Morton's findings it still revalidated his professional status, because Morton's American School was to a large degree responsible for the development of the current professional status of the sciences and the renunciation of puritan ideas of monogenesis and the Christian clerical worldview, which was common at the time.

Race and national identity in the United States
According to Richard White, Egypt is not easily placed within Africa or Asia, or within the East or the West. Therefore, it seems as if Egypt is "everybody's past". The figure of Egypt has been a point of reference in the development of national identity in the western World, though these processes of identity formation are complex and involve many factors. Racial identity is central to these processes, particularly in the United States, where the emerging sense of a distinct national identity and the increasing conflict over slavery were linked in the first half of the 19th century.

Paschal Beverly Randolph crystallized the way in which Egypt served as a model for the new nation when he said, "For America, read Africa; for the United States, Egypt" (1863). Among the variety of ethnic groups that formed the population of the United States, the common denominator was being non-black, being able to define oneself using a binaristic Other.

Historically, the attempt to scientifically establish a racial hierarchy as undertaken by the American School of Ethnology evoked an understanding of whiteness as the natural American national identity. The racial identity of Egyptian pharaohs was used especially by 19th century scientists such as Samuel George Morton and his contemporaries to confirm the contemporary American racial hierarchy. This hierarchy served proponents of slavery to justify the inhuman treatment of slaves and the denial of civil rights for any but white Americans.

Types of Mankind (1854), the culmination of American School racial thinking, contains a chapter on the racial characteristics of the ancient Egyptians, starting a controversy that still rages today. For example, Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele's Race: The Reality of Human Differences (2004), a recent attempt to add academic credibility to the scientifically discredited notion that "race" constitutes an essential rather than a culturally constructed human difference, uses Egypt in a similar way. Historians have put forward three main hypotheses which clearly contradict each other.