One of the greatest powerhouses of Egyptology–the study of the history, language, and culture of ancient Egypt–and other ancient Near Eastern studies is the Oriental Institute, established in 1919 as an arm of the University of Chicago. It’s been a leader in archaeology and epigraphy, the study of inscriptions, and its museum, which is now being expanded and improved, is a major resource for anyone with an interest in the field.
Teeter also has a collection of “Egypto-trash,” kitschy items that demonstrate Egypt’s hold on popular culture: greeting cards, a poster of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra (with some decidedly anachronistic hieroglyphs, including one shaped like a television), “Tuts” chocolate pyramid candies, gummy mummies, and a lurid paperback, The Loins of Amon, that she calls “Egypto-porn.”
In the field there are certain parts of Egyptology which have been aided by new advances–and some which at this point we can’t figure out ways to speed up. For example, mapping techniques for archaeologists have changed in the last few years, and that’s important–more accurate mapping of archaeological sites using global-positioning techniques, ground-penetrating radar and things of that sort for locating potential sites. But there are a lot of things that haven’t been aided by technology, including what the University of Chicago is so famous for, epigraphy, which is the copying of the reliefs and inscriptions on temple walls. Our epigraphic survey has tried to use laser imaging and all sorts of hotshot new things, but some things you simply can’t do better than by having an Egyptologist go to the wall. There’s no substitute for the human eye, for a person who’s trained in the language and the art.
ET: Not much. They learned quite a bit about a minuscule part of society, about this superelite in a very particular time. People are now trying to fill in the gaps. There are whole groups of people who are working on early settlement patterns–the questions of why towns were built where they were, how the patterns changed, and why those first cities began in Egypt, which are fundamental questions having to do with society.
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The work that I’m doing has to do with religion of common people. This is important, because the Egyptians were among the most pious people in the world. There was no separation of religion and the rest of their lives. But the question is, what did these people believe? You’ve got the big temples, which says something about the elite religion. But what were the regular guys doing? And so I’m doing studies of what the common people believed, of how religion fit into their lives, of what their beliefs were. Were these big temples that you see in the pictures relevant at all to the little guy in the village?
SBM: Was there an element of animism?
SBM: How can you tell whether a given clay animal is a worship object or a child’s toy?
