Click photo to see all photos.
Hungary's leaning towards Egyptian history was sparked by a dawning interest in all things antiquarian that came with the opening up of foreign travel, and reached full maturity in the wake of the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the unfolding of the science of Egyptology. During the last decades of the 19th century, displays of artefacts brought home by Fejérvàry and his fellow contemporary amateurs developed from collections of curiosities into aesthetically appreciated exhibitions of the culture that, they deduced, sprang from the "cradle of civilisation".
In 1898 the first actual step in the long process of establishing Egyptology as an academic discipline in Hungary was pushed forward with the foundation of a chair of Ancient Oriental history, and when Egyptologist Ede Mahler was appointed to the University of Budapest as professor of Egyptian studies. However the first Hungarian archaeological mission to Egypt was not until 1907, when Hungarian amateur Fèlöp Back sponsored excavation work led by Polish Egyptologist Tadeusz Samolenski at Sharuna in Middle Egypt. At that time the mission stumbled upon a so-far unknown Pharaonic tomb and relief blocks from a temple of Ptolemy I. They also discovered an intact cemetery at Gamhud in the modern town of Fashn, on the other side of Al-Hibe where the Graeco-Roman of Ankyronpolis is to be found.
No comments:
Post a Comment