Latest news with #Egyptology
New York Post
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Real-life ‘Indiana Jones' Dr. Zahi Hawass hits back at Joe Rogan: ‘Didn't do his homework' on pyramid alien conspiracies
Dr. Zahi Hawass has been called the real-life Indiana Jones and the Pharaoh of Egyptian archaeology — and not always with affection. Arrogant, passionate and relentlessly driven, Hawass, the former Minister of Antiquities of Egypt, has spent decades commanding excavation sites and delivering fiery public lectures with the confidence of a man who's been proven right one too many times. His recent lecture tour across the US drew large crowds. But it also came on the heels of a controversial interview with Joe Rogan, who called it 'the worst podcast I've ever done,' dismissing the famed archaeologist as a 'close-minded fellow who's been in charge of gatekeeping all the knowledge.' 13 Dr. Zahi Hawass, seen here in front of the Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza, Getty Images 13 Hawass now owns a bullwhip used by Harrison Ford (above) in the Indiana Jones movies. REUTERS But it's hard to argue with the résumé. Hawass has led or overseen many of the most significant Egyptian discoveries of the modern era: the Lost Golden City near Luxor, new tombs at Saqqara, the mummy identification of Queen Hatshepsut, and recent scans inside the Great Pyramid of Giza that revealed mysterious hidden chambers. He also spearheaded efforts to repatriate stolen antiquities and reframe Egyptology with Egyptians at the center. The Post spoke with this bombastic, unfiltered character who wears his larger-than-life reputation like a tailored khaki jacket. New York Post: You're wrapping up your US lecture tour. Was it everything you'd hoped for? 13 Joe Rogan called a May 2025 episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' featuring Dr. Zahi Hawass 'the worst podcast I've ever done.' Hawass, in turn, told The Post it was 'the worst interview I've ever done in my life.' Joe Rogan/YouTube Dr. Zahi Hawass: It was fantastic … I haven't seen an audience love a lecturer like this before. In every city, when I enter the room, there's a standing ovation. And when I finish the lecture, there's another standing ovation. It's quite remarkable. I don't think that happened when Dr. Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb 100 years ago. He never had this kind of fame. NYP: Do you ever get tired of talking about your discoveries? ZH: Never! … Every discovery I've made in my life has its own story. The last discovery I made, the Lost Golden City in Luxor, is a major, important discovery. It's the largest city ever found in Egypt, and for the first time we have a glimpse into the artisans who made the temples and the tools they used during the Golden Age. Inside the city, we found seven large royal workshops where they made the statues, jewelry, textiles and clothing for the palace. One of the most important things we found — and it's not published yet, I've only announced it during my lectures — is the name Smenkhkare. NYP: Found? Like, it was written in the hieroglyphics? 13 'Sometimes when I'm on an excavation, I think, 'This may be it.' There's a great amount of danger,' Hawass said. Getty Images ZH: That's right! It was everywhere! And I really believe that Smenkhkare is a throne name for Queen Nefertiti. I'm currently searching for her mummy so I can test her DNA and prove this theory. We start in September to search for her tomb. NYP: Out on the road, did you run into people eager to refute your research? There's a growing fringe movement that believes aliens were involved in building the pyramids. ZH: Oh yes! They're everywhere! And they like to dream. Listen, I am not against any new discovery. Just show me the evidence. I get angry emails every day from people who think I'm hiding the evidence … I get where they're coming from. If you stood in front of the Great Pyramid for the first time, I'm sure you'd find it hard to believe that it was built by human beings. Who would hire 10,000 workers a day to work for 28 years to build such a thing? It seems ridiculous even to imagine it! But this was a national project of the whole nation. 13 Hawass and his team came face-to-face with King Tutankhamun's mummy in 2005 for a controversial CT scan. AP NYP: So you'd be willing to consider aliens as co-architects, you just want proof? ZH: I want anything … If aliens built the pyramids, there would be something in the ground. I have been excavating in Egypt for decades, and I've found nothing to indicate anything but human activity. But you have someone like Joe Rogan. Did you hear my interview with him? NYP: I did. It was tense. ZH: Because he wouldn't listen to the evidence I was giving him! He said it was the worst interview he ever did in his life. Well, I'm telling you this. I want you to print this. It was the worst interview I've ever done in my life. 13 'Katy Perry came once, and I don't think she was very happy. I didn't recognize her, and didn't realize she was a singer,' Hawass said of Perry, seen above with Orlando Bloom at the pyramids in 2019. Joe Rogan/YouTube 13 'I only knew that the guy next to her was Orlando Bloom,' Hawass added of Perry. 'I think that upset her. Katy Perry/ Instagram NYP: What went wrong? ZH: I'll tell you what went wrong. When you do an interview with a person, you expect this person to do their homework. When I talked to Piers Morgan, he did his homework. Joe Rogan did not do his homework. NYP: Is it also possible that he just disagreed with you about what the evidence suggested? ZH: He was talking about these Italians [who] found eight pillars 600 feet under the Khafre pyramid. [A group of researchers claimed this spring that they had discovered 'vertical cylinders' 2,000 feet below ground.] The techniques they used, Synthetic Aperture Radar tomography, can only show 15 meters under the ground, about 60 feet. It will never be able to show 600 feet. Never! 13 Hawass said he banned Beyoncé from the pyramids after an alleged scuffle between her bodyguard and a Hawass employee. Balkis Press/ABACA / Shutterstock And if these theories are correct, why have they never come to discuss it with us? Why did they decide to announce their discovery by publishing in a magazine where you have to pay a fee to publish? How does that make sense? NYP: What if Rogan was willing to tour the pyramids with you? ZH: Oh, absolutely. I told him as much. But he rejected my invitation. It's his problem now, because for him to see the pyramids without me is useless. He said on the podcast that he wanted to go with… what's his name, the guy in England? NYP: Graham Hancock. [Hancock, who hosted 'Ancient Apocalypse' on Netflix, believes the pyramids were built by a lost-to-time civilization some 12,000 years ago.] 13 'Intellectual, beautiful' Princess Diana was one of Hawass' favorite guests to show around the Pyramids of Giza. Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images ZH: Hancock, right! He asked me to be on his Netflix show, but I'm not sure I want to do it. I also got a call from Piers Morgan's assistant, asking if I'd be available to do a show in November in Cairo, with me showing him some of my latest discoveries. I promise you, if we do it, we will beat Joe Rogan's ratings a hundred percent. NYP: You've been in the orbit of many celebrities and politicians over the years. Who surprised you most, for better or worse? ZH: I cannot forget Princess Diana. She was intellectual, beautiful, just incredible. NYP: Anybody you couldn't stand? 13 'When you close a tomb for 3,000 years, and this tomb has mummies in it, there are going to be germs. When you open this tomb, the germs have to come out,' Hawass said of so-called tomb curses. Getty Images ZH: Beyoncé came in 2008, and it did not end well. She was a very nice lady, but she had a very bad bodyguard. I have a camera lady who follows me during these tours, to record everything — and Beyonce's bodyguard … snatched the camera right out of her hand. I wouldn't stand for it! I told her and her bodyguard to get out, and banned her from the pyramids. Katy Perry came once, and I don't think she was very happy. I didn't recognize her, and didn't realize she was a singer. I only knew that the guy next to her was Orlando Bloom. I think that upset her. NYP: You're claimed to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones. Is that true? ZH: It's absolutely true. 13 Hawass led the team that discovered the mummified remains of Queen Hatsheput. AFP via Getty Images 13 Queen Hatsheput, depicted here as a seated statue from 1473-1458 B.C. Egypt, was one of Egypt's most storied pharaohs. UIG via Getty Images NYP: Like George Lucas said, 'Tell me about your life,' and then turned it into a script? ZH: Yes. That is entirely true. We had dinner in Cairo, and he jokingly told me that my hat is more famous than Harrison Ford's hat from the movie, and I reminded him that my hat is a real archaeological hat and Harrison's is a fake one. NYP: Have you ever watched one of the Indiana Jones movies and thought, 'Yep, that happened to me?' 13 Hawass has led or overseen many of the most significant Egyptian discoveries of the modern era, including the Lost Golden City near Luxor (above). art_of_line – ZH: Of course. All of them … I have seen some real danger. Sometimes when I'm on an excavation, I think, 'This may be it.' There's a great amount of danger. I've scaled ropes down into shafts that haven't been entered in thousands of years, and it isn't lost on me that this isn't entirely safe. I often think, 'Well, if this rope snaps, that's the end of me.' NYP: What about Pharaoh curses? The curse of Tutankhamun apparently killed a few archaeologists. ZH: This is the real story about the curse. When you close a tomb for 3,000 years, and this tomb has mummies in it, there are going to be germs. When you open this tomb, the germs have to come out. There's radiation! In the past, archaeologists would be in a hurry to look inside these tombs. And they would ingest all of this unhealthy air. I realized this just a few months ago, you need to let a new discovery breath. I found a sealed sarcophagus 60 feet under the ground, and when the workmen opened it, I waited for three hours until the bad air was released. And then I put my head inside to investigate. NYP: I'm surprised you haven't made a cameo in any of the Indiana Jones movies. ZH: Well, hopefully Harrison Ford and I will have our moment soon. Leslie Greif, a big Hollywood producer, wants me to do a show with Mr. Beast, but I told him I need Harrison Ford. Can you imagine that? Dr. Zahi Hawass and Mr. Harrison Ford revealing the secrets of the Great Pyramid together. Billions of people would tune in. Who wouldn't want to watch that?
Daily Mirror
23-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
Egyptian Book of the Dead unearthed in cemetery and experts won't say what it contains
A team of archaeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old New Kingdom cemetery in central Egypt, which contains hundreds of ancient Egyptian treasures, including a 43-foot-long papyrus scroll containing part of the 'Book of the Dead' Despite our extensive knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture and practices, there are still many mysteries to unravel. Could we be on the brink of uncovering more ancient wisdom after archaeologists discovered a 3,500 year old New Kingdom cemetery in central Egypt? The team unearthed mummies, amulets, statues, canopic jars for organ storage, and a 43-foot-long papyrus scroll containing part of the 'Book of the Dead'. However, the archaeologists have remained eerily quiet about the contents of this 'Book of the Dead', as reported by Live Science. The term 'Book of the Dead' refers to various texts that served multiple purposes in ancient Egypt, including guiding the deceased through the underworld, reports the Mirror US. This particular scroll, found in 2023, is the first complete text discovered in the Al-Ghuraifa area and is "characterised by being in good condition," according to Mustafa Waziri, the then-secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Experts believe the cemetery dates back to between 1550 BC and 1070 BC. Despite the hundreds of archaeological finds, this ancient text has been hailed as a significant discovery, making the silence surrounding its contents all the more intriguing. Lara Weiss, CEO of the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Germany, is understood to have studied the book extensively and told Live Science: "If it's that long and well-preserved [then it's] certainly a great and interesting find." Multiple coffins and mummies were excavated, including the daughter of a high priest of the ancient god, Amun, linked with air, wind, and fertility. A coffin belonging to a woman thought to have been a singer in the temple of Amun was also discovered. Whilst both represent remarkable discoveries, documenting more of the ancient Egyptian burial text in the 'Book of the Dead' will enable researchers to gain deeper understanding into previously unknown elements of ancient Egypt's religion, beliefs, and afterlife ceremonies, as highlighted by the American Research Center, in Egypt. "The 'Book of the Dead' reveals central aspects of the ancient Egyptians' belief system," the centre reports, "and, like many topics in Egyptology, our theories are constantly changing, growing, and adapting with every new translation of this text." The institute also concluded: "Familiar scenes – like a scale weighing a heart of the deceased against a feather or the eternal destruction of a soul by a deity composed of animal parts – originate from the Book of the Dead. With such impressive narratives, it is clear why Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife are so thoroughly ingrained in our collective memory."
Daily Mail
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Joe Rogan claims ancient Egyptians fled to the moon and the whole timeline of humanity is WRONG
Joe Rogan attempted to rewrite the beginnings of human civilization, adding that ancient Egyptian researchers are trying to hide 30,000 years of history. On the July 15 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the 57-year-old claimed that Egyptologists were 'gate-keeping' information related to ancient cultures that may predate the Egyptians by thousands of years. The podcast host also made the case that there's now evidence to prove Egypt was just another part of a much older society on Earth that may have created modern technology far different than we use today. 'We're told it's 2500 BC for the Great Pyramid, but boy, there's a lot of people that don't agree with that, including geologists,' Rogan said. Rogan cited that today's scientists have all but confirmed that a mysterious civilization built ancient structures like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey up to 12,000 years ago, knowledge that would radically rewrite the story of humanity. However, Rogan accused many scientists and historians of dismissing these discoveries, claiming that they've profited from keeping the Egyptians as the first great civilization. 'Everybody wants to be right and they all have this date that they've been talking about and writing books about and giving lectures about. They never want to revise that,' Rogan claimed during the July 15 podcast. 'They never want to have an open mind and say perhaps there is evidence, of course, that there was a sophisticated civilization there [in] 2500 BC but maybe they were a part of a very old civilization,' he continued. While slamming ancient Egyptian researchers for the alleged suppression, Rogan again took aim at Dr Zahi Hawass, a renowned archaeologist and Egypt's former Minister of Antiquities. Rogan accused Hawass, who he's called the worst guest in his show's history, of being 'totally ignorant' about the ancient Egyptian concept of 'Zep Tepi,' or the 'First Time.' It refers to the idea of the mythical golden age at the beginning of Egyptian history when the gods ruled directly on Earth. Hawass dismissed this concept as nonsense or mythology. Rogan also slammed Hawass and other Egyptologists for dismissing the so-called king's lists, which allegedly chronicle the history of Egyptian rulers for 30,000 years. 'Egyptologists that are conventional thinkers, they they think that it's mythology. They think that's myth. But, you know, you get to about 2500 BC, that's all real. Well, how the f*** do you know, right? They don't. You don't,' Rogan declared. Rogan then began to reveal what the Egyptology community allegedly doesn't want people to consider. This included the theory that the Great Pyramid couldn't possibly be only a few thousand years old, due to all the erosion in the stones. Geologist Robert Schoch, who Rogan referenced, has stated that rainfall data and water erosion patterns in ancient Egypt suggest heavy rainfall last occurred in the Nile Valley around 9,000 years ago. That would mean the Great Pyramid was more than 4,000 years older than what's commonly accepted today. Rogan then delved into the mystery surrounding the site of Göbekli Tepe, which is believed to be an ancient ceremonial or religious site constructed by hunter-gatherers. This archaeological site with massive T-shaped limestone pillars in Upper Mesopotamia is believed to have been inhabited from around 9500 BC to at least 8000 BCE, during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Era. That's over 5,000 years before the Egyptian pyramids were built and roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge. 'If there was an advanced civilization 11,800 years ago that was able to create Göbekli Tepe, which we know now to be true, what else have we not found?' Rogan asked his guest, fellow podcast host Danny Jones. 'Was it a breakaway civilization? Did they escape the Earth and go to the moon? Like they're trying to do now,' Jones added. Rogan followed up on Jones' assumption, suggesting that these lost human civilizations, including the Egyptians, may have taken a very different path in terms of technical innovation. Rogan theorized that instead of moving on to create the internal combustion engine, microchips, and plastics, these ancient societies evolved to construct advanced technology using entirely different engineering principles. 'I think the path that they took involved immense stone structures, cosmology. They probably didn't have internal combustion engines. They probably had a completely different kind of technology that we wouldn't even think of,' Rogan explained. To Rogan's point, Göbekli Tepe is not the only mysterious structure that could soon rewrite everything modern society knows about the ancient world. A sunken 'pyramid' near Taiwan has been sitting just 82 feet below sea level near the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Called the Yonaguni monument, it has stumped and astonished researchers, mainly due to its sharp-angled steps that stand roughly 90 feet tall and appear to be made entirely of stone, leading many to believe it was man-made over 10,000 years ago. Meanwhile, another ancient structure in Indonesia could predate Göbekli Tepe and the Yonaguni monument by a staggering amount of time. Gunung Padang, first re-discovered by Dutch explorers in 1890, is said to be the world's oldest pyramid. Studies have shown that the 98-foot-deep 'megalith' submerged within a hill of lava rock dates back more than 16,000 years.
The National
18-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Monica Hanna's pursuit of an Egyptology free from the legacy of colonialism and racism
Monica Hanna is Egyptology 's equivalent of a rights campaigner. The 42-year-old is feisty, articulate and with a disarming smile; tools she uses to fuel her drive to rid Egyptology from the shackles of a colonial legacy embraced by westerners as well as Egyptians. Her views on where Egyptology should be in the 21st century are meticulously laid out in her first book, The Future of Egyptology, a compelling, 126-page read in English that exposes the murky and dark side of a discipline that has mostly been the exclusive domain of scholars and adventurers of European heritage since its inception in the early years of the 19th century. Ms Hanna's activism to reform Egyptology predates the publication of her book this summer. She has been a key member of campaigns to repatriate two high-profile Egyptian artefacts: The Nefertiti bust that is kept in Berlin's Neues Museum and the Rosetta Stone, on display at the British Museum in London. At home, Ms Hanna is quietly campaigning to rid the field of corruption and neglect along with what she sees as the unjustified and crippling dominance of money-seeking "archaeology celebrities". "My book is not an attempt to address the West. I want to speak to Egypt, our people. We need to decolonise ourselves before we ask the West to decolonise themselves," she told The National in an interview. "We want to make Egyptology more democratic by making it more accessible and by making archaeological knowledge more accessible. There is a lack of Arabic in archaeology and that in turn limits access," she said as she sipped from a cup of coffee at a busy cafe in Cairo's affluent Heliopolis suburb. Already, she explained, Egyptians have become much more aware of their heritage since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, a momentous event that reshaped the mindset of a nation long suppressed by authoritarian regimes. It is a shift of attitude that may have been helped in large part by the danger sensed by many Egyptians when some museums housing ancient artefacts were subjected to looting and vandalism during the months and years of lawlessness that followed the uprising. Visitors to museums and tour operators provide evidence of that new attitude. They report a significant increase in the number of Egyptians frequenting them over the past decade − a far cry from the days when visitors were mostly foreign tourists. But Ms Hanna believes there is still a long way to go before Egyptians can take their rightful place as the legitimate and principal owners of a discipline devoted to their very own civilisation. "What Egyptians, of every social level and identity, have to say about their history remains marginalised, as are they," she laments in The Future of Egyptology, the Arabic edition of which preceded the English translation. "In western European thought that emerged over the 18th century, the modern inhabitants of Egypt were deemed incapable of understanding its ancient past, much less appreciating and caring for it," she continued. "[The book] is not the final word on the topic. Other books will be written in response and a dialogue will be created," mused Ms Hanna, an Egyptology graduate of the prestigious American University in Cairo who went on to obtain a PhD from the University of Pisa at the relatively young age of 27. "Decolonising the discipline is essential, but equally important is calling out officials' post-colonial praxis in current Egyptology," she wrote, arguing that authorities often refuse permits for community and public archaeology projects while favouring western archaeological missions for monetary gains. Stinging and eye-opening, her argument in the book for a more democratic and less colonialised Egyptology is not the only weapon in her arsenal as she seeks a place for Egyptians in a discipline from which they have, to all practical purposes, been sidelined or totally excluded. Many are sceptical of whether the campaign to bring home the Nefertiti bust and the Rosetta Stone will bear fruit − perhaps not for lack of trying as much as the perseverance of the colonial mindset that took them out of Egypt in the first place. Moreover, the pair are viewed as among the major attractions of the museums where they are on display, attracting millions of visitors every year. But to Ms Hanna, there is hope for them to return home. The argument for their return, she insists, is at once both simple and compelling. "There is a realistic hope that we will eventually get them back. Why? Because they are ours," she said emphatically, though with a grin. "I can see a significant shift in opinion with the young generation in the West leading the way," she said. "They see them in their museums as looted and find that unacceptable. The older generations, in contrast, see them as part of their colonial pride," according to Ms Hanna. The bust of Queen Nefertiti − wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten − is more than just an artefact to Ms Hanna. The sculpture, which dates back almost 3,400 years, was taken from Egypt by Ludwig Borchardt, the German archaeologist who unearthed it in 1912 in Minya, the central Egyptian province where Ms Hanna was born, raised and fell in love with Egyptology. Home to some of Egypt's majestic yet infrequently visited ancient Egyptian sites, Minya could benefit from the return of the bust, according to Ms Hanna. 'It should go back to Minya and then it would change the whole face of Minya and the whole area would be open for better tourism," she wrote several years ago in her research paper Contesting the Lonely Queen.
CairoScene
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
The Real Pyramid Scheme: The Colonial Issue at Egyptology's Core
In 2016, two artists walked into Berlin's Neues Museum with a hacked Xbox Kinect sensor concealed in a scarf. They weren't tourists. They weren't researchers. They were there to perform a unique heist. In front of them stood the bust of Queen Nefertiti: serene, ancient, impossibly elegant. She had been excavated from Amarna, her home in Egypt, in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt and exported to Germany through deliberate deception. In official documents, Borchardt described her as a painted plaster head of no significant value. Privately, he called her 'the most beautiful object ever found.' Germany has refused every request for her return ever since - they've never even allowed a brief loan. Al-Badri and Nelles lingered in front of the queen, pretending to gawk at her while the Kinect sensor - originally designed for video games - captured thousands of data points from every angle. This modified sensor, rigged with custom software, allowed them to collect a three-dimensional scan of the sculpture, effectively digitising her form without ever touching her. The artists later released the scan online: a 21-million-polygon model of the bust, open-source and freely downloadable. Anyone in the world could now 3D-print Nefertiti, remix her, replicate her, reclaim her. Soon after, a replica made from the artists' data was unveiled in Cairo. Nefertiti, displaced for over a century, had returned home - if only in likeness. They called their project The Other Nefertiti. It was a counter-archive. A radical gesture aimed at breaking the aura of museum authority and disrupting the fiction of cultural neutrality. A reclamation by simulation. They wanted to activate the artefact, to inspire a critical reassessment of today's conditions and to overcome the colonial notion of grabbing in Germany. And it provoked precisely the kind of questions that Egyptology, for over two centuries, has avoided: Who owns the past? Who controls its images, its language, its circulation? What is more original, an object in glass behind museum walls, or a copy that breathes back into the culture from which it was extracted? To speak of decolonisation, then, is not simply to demand the return of artefacts. It is to reclaim the right to interpret, to narrate, to critique. It is to dismantle the systems, academic, bureaucratic, financial, that continue to privilege foreign voices and frameworks. It is to insist that heritage is not a spectacle, nor a commodity, nor a weapon. It is a relationship. "Not through national branding or a single triumphant repatriation, but through democratising knowledge, restoring agency, and building political coalitions,' Monica Hanna tells CairoScene. As Dr. Monica Hanna, a renowned Egyptian Egyptologist has argued in her paper 'Contesting the Lonely Queen' against the myth of universal museum, the bust is not just removed from place, but from meaning. 'The reality of imperialistic museums,' Hanna argues, 'is that they permanently store decontextualised things of one culture in a museum of another… The experience of the bust of Nefertiti has always been limited to those who could visit her in her confinement in Berlin, decontextualised from the materiality of her background of discovery in the mudbrick workshop of Tuthmosis… and disconnected from the sensoriality of her Indigenous community.' She calls the Neues Museum a heterotopia, a Foucaultian non-place, where a single, highly curated version of the past is staged under the illusion of neutrality. In that dimly lit rotunda, Nefertiti is less a queen than a projection: a European fantasy of ancient Egypt, frozen in plaster, beauty and captivity. The question is not whether Nefertiti belongs to Egypt. It is whether we are ready to acknowledge that she was taken, misrepresented, and used to scaffold Western identity at the expense of her own. And it is the real problem with Egyptology today. Until she returns home, that story remains unfinished. I often return to one page in 'The Future of Egyptology', the most recent book by Dr. Monica Hanna. In it, she recalls the ransacking of the Mallawi Museum in Minya in August 2013, a moment of chaos and erasure that rarely makes its way into national memory. One teenage boy, she writes, was seen running from the looted site with an artefact in his hands. When Hanna stopped him, he told her plainly that it was fine to take it because, he said, 'the museum belongs to the government.' That sentence has stayed with me for its brazenness, and its clarity. Behind it is not malice, but a quiet, inherited disconnection. A belief that heritage is not ours but theirs, that these statues and stelae and fragments of wall text belong to an apparatus of power, not to the people who live in their shadow. Because it reveals the extent to which so many of us Egyptians, through no fault of their own, have been estranged from the very culture others cross continents to study, a culture often depicted as a lost one but in fact still very alive up to this day. 'Many Western scholars audaciously express how Ancient and Modern Egypt are two hermetically sealed entities, where the modern does not identify with the ancient.' Hanna tells CairoScene. Years of colonial power didn't just remove objects, they stripped away the tongue and the knowledge. Those who once held meaning, who passed stories through gesture, ritual, or oral memory, were sidelined until the story of ancient Egypt was no longer told by its descendants, but by foreigners first, in French, German, English. By the time Egyptians were invited back into the narrative, it had already been framed, captioned and curated for someone else. This is not a crisis of patriotism or awareness but the residue of centuries of colonial sediment, of knowledge extracted, names overwritten, meanings translated and retranslated until they no longer land. Egyptology, as a discipline, was not built for Egyptians. It was built on them, around them, and often without them. It catalogued ruins but ignored the living. It preserved history while denying people their relationship to it. So when we speak now of 'decolonising' or 'decentralising' Egyptology, the question is not whether the field can be reformed. It's whether it can be reclaimed. Whether Egyptians, not just scholars and officials, but ordinary people, can once again see themselves not as caretakers of foreign interest, but as inheritors of a complex, living past. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Egypt not only with soldiers, but with scientists. His was not just a military campaign, it was an intellectual invasion. The scholars and savants who accompanied him mapped the Nile, measured temples, copied inscriptions, and compiled what would become 'Description de l'Égypte', a multi-volume monument to European conquest through knowledge. It marked the birth of modern Egyptology, and the beginning of its dislocation. The Egypt they documented was reframed not as a lived, layered land but as the cradle of Western civilisation, frozen in antiquity, severed from its continuities. I call it mythmaking: an origin story curated for the West, built on the erasure of the present and often-times maniac colonial kitsch. Christian Langer, in his essay for Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics, calls this 'epistemic colonisation.' Unlike formal colonialism, which operates through flags and borders, epistemic colonisation exerts its power through knowledge production. It is enacted not by generals, but by scholars and institutions, museums, universities, editorial boards. The archaeologist granted unrestricted access, the foreign mission that dominates excavations, the museum that guards looted artefacts under the pretext of universal heritage. The story of Egyptology is, at heart, a story of dispossession. While pharaonic monuments are scrubbed, lit,and photographed for glossy brochures, the broader texture of Egypt's historical identity, oral traditions, and village memoryscapes, the very structures that can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian civilisation, remains underfunded, unarchived and frequently erased. The result is a curated illusion: a country proud of its ancient grandeur, yet estranged from it, all while Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers confidently discuss the presence of submarines and helicopters on temple walls. It's a form of temporal segregation. Ancient Egypt is treated as a glorious but dead civilisation, valuable only when extracted, classified and displayed. Contemporary Egyptians, in this framework, are not the inheritors of pharaonic legacy but its accidental neighbours. And when Egyptian archaeologists do enter the field, they are too often expected to mimic the tools, citations and tones of Western academia to gain legitimacy. Access is conditional. Voice is conditional. In recent years, the call to decolonise Egyptology has gained momentum. Conferences now feature panels on inclusivity. Grants are allocated for Egyptian scholars. Partnerships are struck between foreign and local institutions. But how much of this is performance? Austrian archaeologist Uroš Matić, in his 2023 paper 'Postcolonialism as a Reverse Discourse in Egyptology', warns that much of this activity reproduces, rather than dismantles, colonial logic. The discipline, he argues, has adopted postcolonial theory like a costume, borrowing terms like 'hybridity,' 'entanglement' and 'third space' without understanding their origins or implications. In postcolonial theory, hybridity is a powerful concept. It's not just about cultural mixing or visual combinations. As theorist Homi Bhabha explains, hybridity is about what happens when the colonised mimic the coloniser, not to become them, but to subtly expose and undermine their authority. It's a kind of resistance that happens in the cracks - an 'in-between' space where power is echoed, exaggerated and sometimes turned against itself. A true example of postcolonial hybridity in Egyptology might look very different. It could be an Egyptian archaeologist working within a major European museum, using the tools, language and authority of that institution not just to fit in, but to challenge how Egypt's past is represented, to call out colonial theft and to push for the return of looted artefacts. That's hybridity as resistance: using the master's tools to dismantle, or at least rattle, the master's house. What Matić warns against is the way Egyptology often borrows postcolonial terms like 'hybridity' but strips them of this meaning. The word becomes aesthetic, something about appearance, rather than political. In doing so, the field gives itself the appearance of being critical or decolonial, while continuing to operate within the same old frameworks. Or consider 'entanglement' - a concept introduced by archaeologist Ian Hodder to describe mutual dependencies between people and things. In theory, it offers a way to trace complex histories of interaction. But in practice, it often becomes a euphemism for occupation. Matić calls this dynamic 'reverse discourse', another Foucauldian term for when the language of liberation is used within the very framework of domination. Postcolonial concepts are deployed not to critique power, but to camouflage it. Reclaiming Egyptology requires more than symbolic gestures, it demands structural transformation across every layer of the field. It begins with reforming excavation labour practices aligned with today's cost of living, offering transparent briefings about the significance of the work, and crediting local labourers in publications. Beyond the site, it means building democratic infrastructure, funding regional libraries and cultural centres in Upper Egypt and the Delta, translating core Egyptological texts into Arabic, and establishing community heritage councils with decision-making power. Central to this vision is the digitisation and repatriation of archives, and training students in digital curation and storytelling. Hanna reframes restitution not merely as the return of objects, but as a return of authorship - insisting that the right to interpret Egypt's past be restored to Egyptians through shared authorship, visible credit and contextualised exhibitions. Finally, she calls for regional political alliances, working alongside nations like Iraq, Greece and Sudan to coordinate diplomatic and legal pressure on European museums, and forming transnational councils to demand accountability and co-create new models of cultural sovereignty. What would a truly Egyptian Egyptology look like? Perhaps it would begin not with tombs, but with testimonies. Not with gold masks, but with memories. It would recognise that the language of the past still lives, in songs, in crafts, in rituals passed between Egyptian grandmothers and grandchildren. It would be less about possession, and more about care. What was taken from us was the authority to remember, to interpret, to feel. And that cannot be returned through loans or replicas. It must be reclaimed, patiently, politically, and with the same quiet insistence that once built this marvellous world.
