her prote ́ge ́Flinders Petrie (1853–1942). In addition to the French Institute of
Oriental Archaeology and the Egypt Exploration Society, the Germans estab-
lished a ‘general consulate’ for archaeology in 1899 which in 1907 became the
German Institute for Egyptian Antiquity (Deutsches Institut fu ̈ra ̈gyptische
Altertumskunde) (Marchand 1996a: 195).
The imperial resistance against a native alternativeProtagonism in nineteenth-century Egyptian archaeology had resided in
foreign activities on Egyptian soil. This was not only caused by the interest
of the imperial powers in appropriating the Pharaonic past, but also by their
opposition to accepting native expertise in the study of antiquities. Mariette’s
role—as well as those of his successors—in stopping antiquities leaving Egypt
was not matched by an opening of the foundation of a national Egyptian
archaeological institution. A generalized patronizing attitude prevailed to-
wards Egyptians. Hekekyan’s geomorphological studies in the Cairo area, one
of the earliest of this kind, was received in Britain with the criticism that the
survey was not reliable because it had not been supervised by an authoritative
scholar such as his sponsor, the President of the London Geological Society,
Leonard Horner (JeVreys 2003: 9). Another case of Europeans’ patronizing
attitude or prejudice towards Egyptians is that of the French archaeologist
Mariette, who gave orders that no native would be allowed to copy inscrip-
tions in the museum. Also Maspero’s description of the opening of the
Archaeology Museum in 1863 years later is revealing. He said that the
Pasha, Khedive (viceroy) Ismail (r. 1863–79), ‘being the true Oriental that
he was... the loathing and fear which he had of death kept him from entering
a building containing mummies’ (in Reid 2002: 107). Native would-be Egypt-
ologists seeking careers in the Antiquities Service were denied entry during
Mariette’s time, despite some being trained at the School of the Ancient
Egyptian Language or School of Egyptology, created by his colleague (and
friend) the German scholar Heinrich Brugsch in 1869 (ibid. 116–18). Despite
Mariette’s eVorts against this, after his death some of Brugsch’s disciples were
able to achieve positions of importance within oYcial Egyptian archaeology.
One of them, Ahmad Pasha Kamal (1849–1923), would become theWrst
Egyptian curator at the Cairo Museum. He was appointed to the museum
after Mariette’s death, and in theWrst few years organized a course on
Egyptian hieroglyphs for a small number of students. Yet, following Maspero’s
departure to France in 1886, a period of chaos resulted in which the museum
was led by incompetent directors (Fagan 1975: 353) who disregarded native
expertise. Kamal had to close his Egyptian hieroglyphs school. Few of his
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 123