Talk:Egyptomania in the United States

Merging "Egypt in the European imagination" and "Egyptomania"
Egypt in the European imagination covers pretty much the same ground... Churchh 09:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there is some overlap, but the merged article would have to be renamed and restructured significantly, since Egyptomania focuses primarily on Egypt in the U.S.-American cultural imagination since the 19th century. Since "Egyptomania" is a term that in principle covers all Western reception of Egypt, particularly after the Napoleonic campaign, the merging should probably go the other way. --Jottce 18:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe they don't have to be completely merged, but they should definitely refer to and support each other -- instead of being completely isolated from each other. Churchh 23:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, I agree. I am not sure how to do this, but perhaps there could be a shorter article on "Egyptomania" in general that would be thematic as the one is now (culture, racial identity, etc), but taking account of the differences (and overlaps) between American and European "Egyptomania" and then a linked chronological article that would trace "Egypt in the Western imagination" from its beginnings to the present. And the two should also be linked to Edward Said's notion of Orientalism. These steps would make a significant improvement I think. What do you think of moving "Egypt in the European Imagination" to "Egypt in the Western Imagination" and cross-referencing it with "Egyptomania" as a first step? --Jottce 09:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Renaming "Egyptomania"/"Egypt in the European imagination"
Was thinking about this -- maybe the most direct way would be to rename "Egyptomania" as "Egypt in the American imagination", and then rename "Egypt in the European imagination" as "Egyptomania". Then "Egyptomania" would be the more general article. Churchh 03:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hm. The problem with such a renaming is that "Egyptomania" has recently been used in scholarship (particularly by Scott Trafton) to refer to precisely the phenomenon described in the "Egyptomania" article, which means it is a term that specifically captures processes of national identity formation and, particularly in the United States, racial typing within that process. I know too little about the phenomenon in a European context to say whether the figure of Egypt had a comparable effect in the various European countries in which it played a role (I suspect there would be cultural differences within Europe as well, relating to different colonial interests). So a simple renaming would not solve the problem. Furthermore, "Egyptomania" is distinct from "Egypt in the European/American imagination," even though there is significant overlap -- not all references to Egypt are "egyptomanic." It seems to me that a good solution would be to have two cross-referenced companion articles: (1) "Egyptomania" (with a more conceptual/thematic approach) and (2) "Egypt in the Western imagination" branching out into "... American ..." and "...European..." (with a more chronological approach). There is also the relation to Afrocentrism that needs to be worked out.


 * I think the problem has to do with how different disciplines approach the question: Egyptomania spans such diverse fields as architecture, visual and performance art, music, popular culture, clothing, science and literature, and different disciplines will have vastly different approaches, so it is very difficult to bring all of them together in one coherent article. --Jottce 06:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Another thought: "Egyptomania" of course would also have to distinguish between "American Egyptomania" and "European Egyptomania."--Jottce 07:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Removed tamplate
However the relationship between the two articles eventually sorts itself out, Egypt in the European imagination is currently effectively the "globalized" version of this article, so I removed the "globalize" template... Churchh

I just changed "U.S." back to 'America"
in the caption of the Blashfield mural because - quess what? The figure is labeled AMERICA in the painting. Carptrash 17:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Smashing!
This is pretty near to an A-class article. The beginning reads like an essay, though, so that might need a little tweaking. I'm fiddling with the reference to the Mummy movies, since the first one at least was a remake and it seems strange to quote only recent movies when the whole history of Hollywood is full of mummy-themed horror.--Snowgrouse 08:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind; 16 years have passed and now it's become US-centric and just goes on about the racism. I was expecting an article discussing Egyptomania in the arts and culture (with various sections for architecture, jewelry, fashion, interior design, occultism/revivals of Ancient Egyptian religion etc.), rather than this. Now the whole article is just skewed towards America and the racism discussion. Imagine someone seeing a beautiful old Singer sewing machine with golden sphinxes and scarabs on, and wanting to know more about the period that produced ornament like that, or why Blavatsky chose the symbol of Isis to discuss the unveiling of spiritual mysteries. They go looking for the history of those influences and all they get is "But in the 19th century they thought blacks were inferior and that's RACIST!" and... yeah. "Ok, sure, I know that. Racism bad. But what inspired Singer and the Theosophists to utilise Ancient Egyptian imagery? Where do I go to read up on this stuff?" Snowgrouse (talk) 08:51, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

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this sentence just appeared
and I decided to move it here so that we can discuss it.
 * "It has been determined, by more astute observers, that the Ancient Egyptians were a Middle Eastern people, and thus neither European nor Sub-Saharan."

While I think it might be true "more" is one of those words - more than what, more than who?- and if someone is going to quote "more astute observers" we really need to know whose those folk are. Don't we? Carptrash (talk) 17:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Article merger
I propose merging this article into Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination, since this article is redundant to that article. Harej (talk) 05:40, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

OPPOSE -- for reasons stated here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ancient_Egypt_in_the_Western_imagination

in a nutshell: "egyptomania" is a sub-topic, NOT a synonym.

& there is plenty of content to justify a separate sub-article.

Lx 121 (talk) 08:53, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I wanted to point out that, coming from a British perspective, I found this article very confusing. 'Egyptomania' is not a mainly American term as it is treated here but is also the common term used to refer to the 19th century Egyptian craze in Great Britain. I searched specifically for Egyptomania to find out more about British Egyptomania. The first line of the article describes Egyptomania as 'the renewed interest of Europeans in ancient Egypt during the nineteenth century'. Imagine my confusion, then, as I read on and every reference was to America. I couldn't work it out, so I skipped to the talk pages and found this discussion. Surely there should at least be some disambiguation to point out that this article just refers to Amercian Egyptomania, redirecting people with an interest in European Egyptomania to the page "Ancient Egypt in the Western Imagination".

From a European perspective this was VERY confusing because 'Egyptomania' is in common parlance and was a big movement in the 19th century here, too. I work in the Museums sector - for evidence that the term is in common use see http://blog.britishmuseum.org/tag/egyptomania/ which uses the term as a tag and references it in the article. See it also here in a press article about a Northern English exhibition http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/4161457.display/ and it is also refered to in the collecting policy for the same museum http://boltonlams.co.uk/museum/museum-and-archive-policies/acquisition-and-disposal-policy and in other articles http://www.historyextra.com/gallery/egyptomania and in The Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/visualarts/article3591001.ece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Irisibis (talk • contribs) 15:39, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

This article should be divided up more to show the evolution of Egyptomania throughout different time periods. I added a short background where it began with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but Egyptomania was also prevalent during later centuries in both Europe and the U.S.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hottytoddy22 (talk • contribs) 02:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose we can have articles on both - Egyptomania should be summarized in the article on egypt in western imagination.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:00, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

If you are going to make a race of Ancient Egypt section
Then you should make a race of ancient Mesopotamian, ancient Chinese, ancient India, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Persia races sections. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.162.136.215 (talk) 16:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

U.S. centrism
I've tagged this article with globalize as it mainly looks at the U.S. POV. One key concern I have is the section on racial identity. Given that this article is supposed to be about 19th-century topics, is a discussion of contemporary African American identity really that appropriate for this page? Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 00:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It's just a very poor article, or one not actually on the usual meaning of Egyptomania (see complaints above). One approach (suggested above) is to redirect the current title to Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination, perhaps merging a bit of the content, and leave the American stuff here under a more specific title, Ancient Egypt in American culture perhaps. Johnbod (talk) 16:11, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I could get behind that approach. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 19:08, 4 May 2023 (UTC)