The position of Belgian Egyptology within the framework of theory building in the human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century.

This research takes place within the framework of the EOS project ‘Pyramids and Progress. Belgian expansionism and the making of Egyptology, 1830-1952’. In close collaboration with other research strands within the project consortium, this research aims to define within which theoretical currents Belgian Egyptology operated, from its institutionalization in the early 20th century onwards. The PhD will be written in co-tutelle under the supervision of Harco Willems (KU Leuven, Egyptologist) and Christophe Verbruggen (UGent, modern historian). Partly based on the data generated by other researchers in the consortium, this research will inventorize which Belgian actors published on Egyptological topics and in which correspondence networks with Egyptologists and their research centres abroad they operated. The hypothesis is that their connections will have led to a sharing of ideas. Moreover, the project will investigate the theoretical orientation of the key players among the individuals isolated through the prosopographic research. Since Belgian Egyptology only reached the level of an academic discipline long after chairs in Egyptology had been established across Europe, and long remained a more collection-oriented field than abroad, it is likely that theoretical developments were more strongly imported into Belgium from abroad than the other way around. The aim is to identify to which theoretical currents Belgian Egyptology was most receptive, both in relation to European Egyptological schools (the Petrie School in the UK, the Berlin School in Germany, and the school of Maspero at the Sorbonne in France) as well as to theorists outside of the field of Egyptology (British social anthropologists and French sociologists and historians of religion, like Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl). Accordingly, the study will attempt to place the identified elements of Egyptological thinking within the broader context of developments in contemporary human sciences.