eprintid: 5396 rev_number: 17 eprint_status: archive userid: 3 dir: disk0/00/00/53/96 datestamp: 2022-09-13 13:49:20 lastmod: 2022-09-29 06:56:37 status_changed: 2022-09-13 13:49:20 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Jurman, Claus title: Pharaoh’s new clothes. On (post)colonial Egyptology, hypocrisy, and the elephant in the room subjects: ddc-932 divisions: i-209 cterms_swd: Ägypten cterms_swd: Ägyptologie cterms_swd: Geschichte cterms_swd: Forschung abstract: Since the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script by Jean François Champollion 200 years ago Egyptology has seen an impressive evolution from the pastime occupation of a small group of European savants to a globally practiced academic discipline. In recent years, the scholarly debates reflecting on this history have also taken into view the less glorious aspects of Egyptology’s past such as its entanglement with Western colonialism. Strangely absent from these discussions, however, is the fact that Egyptology’s problematic past has not been overcome but has turned into a problematic present, which entails turning a blind eye to the social and political contexts in which its knowledge production is embedded. The implicit contradictions of this present cast a shadow over Egyptological practices at large and threaten to render attempts at the discipline’s decolonisation futile or even hypocritical. As this article highlights, Egyptology’s ‘elephant in the room’ is its continuing cooperation with an autocratic military regime that disregards basic human rights and has proved time and again that it considers academic freedom a dispensable concept. By means of several examples it is argued that Egyptology still finds itself entangled in a mesh of colonial power relations it has helped to create. Therefore, it remains an outrightly political discipline, and its practitioners cannot help but be active protagonists in a game at the intersection of archaeology, politics, and ethics. date: 2022 id_scheme: DOI id_number: 10.11588/propylaeumdok.00005396 ppn_swb: 1817735381 own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-propylaeumdok-53962 language: eng vgwort_code: d7093b898826432eaf780327e269a27f bibsort: JURMANCLAUPHARAOHSNE2022 full_text_status: public place_of_pub: Heidelberg oa_type: gold themen: T930 faecher: FAE laender: R932 citation: Jurman, Claus (2022) Pharaoh’s new clothes. On (post)colonial Egyptology, hypocrisy, and the elephant in the room. document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/5396/1/Jurman_Pharaoh_s_New_Clothes_2022.pdf