The Treasury of Ancient Egypt: Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and ArchaeologyWeigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
History
The Treasury of Ancient Egypt: Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology
Weigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
Archaeology; Egypt -- Antiquities
Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding
aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it
possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men. Let
them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of
mental expansion. Let their first desire be to show themselves good,
useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much
to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with
the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the
knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the
diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to
suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere
would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at home in
the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of the
student more considerably than he could imagine. Moreover, the
appearance of the scholar prancing about upon his fiery steed (even
though it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current
belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face
rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over
the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of
those who profess and call themselves Egyptologists.
As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be
distasteful to a large number of archaeologists. I refer to the
narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American
museums, whose desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other
eastern antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in
order that they and the public may have the entertainment of examining
at home the wonders of lands which they make no effort to visit. I have
no hesitation in saying that the craze for recklessly bringing away
unique antiquities from Egypt to be exhibited in western museums for the
satisfaction of the untravelled man, is the most pernicious bit of folly
to be found in the whole broad realm of archaeological misbehaviour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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