under discussion. Not surprisingly, Egyptian attendance at meetings seems to
have been poor, this being due to the resistance against European dominance
or perhaps to reluctance in the face of foreign expertise. However, it was an
Egyptian, Ali Bahgat (1858–1924), who directed the excavations at the Islamic
ruins of Fusat begun by the Museum of Arab Art in 1912 (Vernoit 1997: 5).
Despite this, in this period, Islamic archaeology did not reach the importance
that had been granted to Pharaonic Egypt. At the turn of the century new
premises for the Museum of Arab Art were built, but their cost was only a
quarter of that of the new buildings opened in 1902–3 for the Egyptian
Museum displaying collections of Pharaonic Egypt. It may be worth noting
that this imbalance in the importance given to each museum is paralleled in
the number of pages the widely used Baedeker tourist guide assigned to them
in its edition of 1908. Two and a half pages were devoted to Islamic art as
opposed to twenty-eight on Pharaonic Egypt (Reid 2002: 215, 239).
The obvious power that the classical model had in the Western world was
epitomized by the publications of the British Consul General in Egypt from
1883 to 1907, Lord Cromer, who, for example, inModern Egypt(1908), often
included untranslated Greek and Latin quotations. He served as the president
of the London Classical Association after his retirement and also had an
eVect on Egyptian native scholarship. However, not only Europeans paid
attention to the Graeco-Roman past. A few decades before Cromer, as Reid
indicates, Al-Tahtawi’sAnwar(1868), which has been admired for its novel
treatment of Pharaonic Egypt, in fact had twice the number of pages dedi-
cated to the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine periods (Reid 2002: 146). Also in
the mid 1860s excavations were undertaken in Alexandria, the town to the
north of Egypt of Hellenistic origin, by another Egyptian savant, Mahmud al-
Falaki (1815–85). He was a naval engineer who had become interested in
astronomy in Paris, and in combining it with geography and ancient topo-
graphy. His excavations aimed at drawing a map of the city in ancient times, a
work that scholars have used ever since (ibid. 152–3). Despite his expertise,
Mahmud al-Falaki seems to have perceived Europe as the centre for ‘pure
science’. He believed that scientists living elsewhere should assist European
research by compiling data and resolving applied problems (ibid. 153).
The examples of Al-Tahtawi and al-Falaki, however, seem to have been
the exception. In spite of al-Falaki’s initiative most of those involved in the
Institut e ́gyptien (1859–80), the place in Alexandria where papers on Graeco-
Roman topics were read and articles published, were Europeans. Similarly
few Egyptians participated in the discussions (ibid. 159). No Egyptian Muslims
or Copts played a part either in the foundation of a Greco-Roman Museum
in 1892 or a Socie ́te ́ d’arche ́ologie d’Alexandrie in 1893. In 1902 from
the total membership of 102 members of the society, only four were
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 125