A Brill Calendar: April 4

Musings on Egyptology

Few scholarly disciplines reflect world history more peculiarly than Egyptology.

When Jean-Francois Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini published their research in the seminal work ‘Monuments de l’Egypte et Nubie’ after an expedition conducted in 1828, the demystification and historical reconstruction of this huge civilization began. Egyptian civilisation spanned an enormous period of more than five millennia, before it was nearly completely forgotten and obliterated during an untold number of centuries. This protracted eclipse was caused by two conquests of pharaonic lands; first by the Roman Empire (31 BC), next by the Arabs (641 AD). Another agent was a cultural one: the rise Helenism - as it prevailed around the Eastern Mediterranean during early centuries of the present era.

On extremely rare occasions this ‘resurrection’ can be taken literally. Such an example is an inauguration of the famous Taffeh Temple: not the first one along the Nile in ancient times, but a second, in the great courtyard of the Leyden Museum of Antiquities and re-inaugurated on April 4 1979 AD in a ceremonial re-opening presided over by the Princess of Orange, Beatrix.

The consecutive building of two dams in the ‘most gentlemanly of all rivers’ near Aswan – in 1902 and 1970 – caused a tenacious supranational effort to salvage and rescue Egyptian monuments during the 20th century, including – occasionally – reallocation of entire buildings. The Taffeh Temple is a gift of the Egyptian Nation to The Netherlands as a token of gratitude for the support Leyden archaeologists provided over the years to preserve the heritage of a cradle of civilization.

There is a special dimension to the Leyden temple: another Prince of Orange, Willem, first King of The Netherlands, added a Chair for Archaeology (and provision for appropriate facilities to discover and study primeval human cultures), to the traditional tasks of Leyden University; six generations before His Royal descendant.