Egyptology
Egyptology is the scholarly study of ancient Egypt, encompassing its history, languages, literature, religion, archaeology, and material culture.
Egyptian hieroglyphs: A writing system used in ancient Egypt, combining logographic, consonantal, and determinative signs. Reading hieroglyphic inscriptions opens access to many historical and religious sources.
Rosetta Stone: A granodiorite decree inscribed in hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek, found in 1799. Its parallel texts provided the decisive evidence for deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Amarna letters: A collection of diplomatic correspondence on clay tablets, mostly written in Akkadian, from the fourteenth century BCE. They reveal Egypt’s diplomacy and international relations during the Amarna period.
Afrocentrism: An intellectual perspective that centers African histories and contributions in interpretations of the past and present. Debates about ancient Egypt’s place in African history often challenge Eurocentric scholarly narratives.
Ancient Egyptian DNA: Genetic material recovered from ancient Egyptian human remains and analyzed to study ancestry and population history. Preservation limits and sampling gaps complicate claims about population continuity and migration.
Demotic: A cursive script used for the Egyptian language from the seventh century BCE into late antiquity. Demotic documents extend Egyptology beyond monumental inscriptions into everyday records and literature.
Jean-François Champollion: A French scholar who established the principles for deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1820s. His decipherment made sustained scholarly reading of ancient Egyptian texts possible.
Pyramid Texts: A corpus of ancient Egyptian funerary spells inscribed inside royal pyramids, beginning in the late Fifth Dynasty. Their inscriptions illuminate royal burial, afterlife beliefs, and the early history of Egyptian religious literature.
Eurocentrism: A perspective that treats European experiences and categories as central standards for interpreting the world. Egyptology’s institutional history has been criticized for imposing European frameworks on Egyptian evidence.
Egyptian radiocarbon dating: The use of radiocarbon measurements to estimate the ages of organic materials from ancient Egypt. New measurements can refine chronologies, though calibration and sample context remain consequential.