The 1850s through early 60s was a transformative period for nascent studies of the remote human past in Britain, across many disciplines. Naturalists and scholars with Egyptological knowledge fashioned themselves as authorities to contend with this divisive topic. In a characteristic case of long-distance fieldwork, British geologist Leonard Horner employed Turkish-born, English-educated, Cairo-based engineer Joseph Hekekyan to measure Nile silt deposits around pharaonic monuments in Egypt to address the chronological gap between the earliest historical and latest geological time. Their conclusion in 1858 that humans had existed in Egypt for exactly 13,371 years was the earliest attempt to apply geological stratigraphy to absolute human dates. The geochronology was particularly threatening to biblical orthodoxy, and the work raised private and public concerns about chronological expertise and methodology, scriptural and scientific authority, and the credibility of Egyptian informants. This essay traces these geo-archaeological investigations; including the movement of paper records, Hekekyan’s role as a go-between, and the publication’s reception in Britain. The diverse reactions to the Egyptian research reveal competing ways of knowing the prehistoric past and highlights mid-Victorian attempts to reshape the porous boundaries between scholarly studies of human antiquity.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Gange, David;
(2013)
Dialogues with the Dead: Egyptology in British Culture and Religion, 1822--1922
(/isis/citation/CBB001450668/)
Book
Buchwald, Jed Z.;
Josefowicz, Diane Greco;
(2010)
The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001020608/)
Thesis
Sheppard, Kathleen L.;
(2010)
The Lady and the Looking Glass: Margaret Murray's Life in Archaeology
(/isis/citation/CBB001561051/)
Book
Pratik Chakrabarti;
(2020)
Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity
(/isis/citation/CBB228017644/)
Book
Kathleen Sheppard;
(2022)
Tea on the terrace: Hotels and Egyptologists’ social networks, 1885–1925
(/isis/citation/CBB937425407/)
Article
Luckhurst, Roger;
(2012)
Science versus Rumour: Artefaction and Counter-Narrative in the Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB001212977/)
Book
Sheppard, Kathleen L.;
(2013)
The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology
(/isis/citation/CBB001200996/)
Book
Zimmerman, Virginia;
(2008)
Excavating Victorians
(/isis/citation/CBB000773722/)
Book
Dorothy U. Seyler;
(2015)
The Obelisk and the Englishman: The Pioneering Discoveries of Egyptologist William Bankes
(/isis/citation/CBB583337184/)
Article
Barany, Michael J.;
(2010)
Great Pyramid Metrology and the Material Politics of Basalt
(/isis/citation/CBB001023790/)
Article
Thomasson, Fredrik;
(2010)
Att läsa egyptiska. J. D. Åkerblad och orientaliska studier under invasion och krig
(/isis/citation/CBB001220306/)
Article
Stevenson, Alice;
(2014)
Artifacts of Excavation the British Collection and Distribution of Egyptian Finds to Museums, 1880--1915
(/isis/citation/CBB001450363/)
Article
Sezgin, Ursula;
(2004-2005)
Ein arabischer Text (4./10. Jahrhundert) über Könige von Ägypten gewährt Einblicke in das spätantike Ägypten, zugleich V. und letzter Teil von Pharaonische Wunderwerke bei Ibn Waṣīf aṣ-Ṣābiʾ und al-Masʿūdī
(/isis/citation/CBB001024026/)
Book
Allen, David Elliston;
(2001)
Naturalists and Society: The Culture of Natural History in Britain, 1700-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000100994/)
Chapter
Doyon, Wendy;
(2014)
On Archaeological Labor in Modern Egypt
(/isis/citation/CBB001510042/)
Article
Moshenska, Gabriel;
(2015)
Michael Faraday's Contributions to Archaeological Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB001553195/)
Article
Roberts, Michael;
(2001)
Just before the Beagle: Charles Darwin's geological fieldwork in Wales, summer 1831
(/isis/citation/CBB000100448/)
Article
Clary, Renee M.;
Wandersee, James H.;
(2014)
The Journey from Elite Society to Government Geologist: Henry De La Beche's (1796--1855) Powerful Impact on the Importance of Observation within an Emerging Professional Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001422085/)
Book
Gene Kritsky;
(2015)
The Tears of RE: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt
(/isis/citation/CBB735293405/)
Article
Nicholson, Paul T.;
Ikram, Salima;
Mills, Steve;
(2015)
The Catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara
(/isis/citation/CBB001422597/)
Be the first to comment!