Hierarchy, Religion and Race: Nineteenth Century Philology and the Search for the Origins of the Egyptian Language


During the nineteenth century, early Egyptologists were still in the first stages of understanding Egyptian grammar, while at the same time comparative philologists were attempting to reconstruct the historical origins of languages and peoples. These two disciplines intersected and produced various models that situated the Egyptian language into broader world histories. This article explores how early Egyptological scholars during the mid-nineteenth century like Christian Bunsen, Richard Lepsius, and Leo Reinisch, as well as a constellation of figures from comparative philology, drew boundaries around the Egyptian language and speculated about its origins. Their work belonged to a broader intellectual culture where historical language – the nuts and bolts of grammar – became scientific data that revealed biblical truth for some, underpinned the divergent intellectual foundations of civilization for others, and for yet more determined the fate of a people in a manner that prefigured and eventually joined with biological racism.