Avant-Garde Egypt

Avant-Garde Egypt is a subproject in the research programme Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe. The project investigates literary interactions between the European historical avant-gardes and the contemporaneous popular interest in Egyptology. The last decade of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw archaeology emerge as a distinct and methodological science proper as compared to its previous status as the realm of treasure hunting and vanity collections. A wave of Egyptmania simultaneously swept across Europe. Discoveries such as Howard Carter’s 1922 excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb were popularised by the media and low to middle brow literature, thereby catalysing literature as a whole to focus on novel ways of viewing, recording, transmitting and producing cultural heritage. Often seen as decidedly anti-passéist, the historical avant-gardes at first glance appear to have spurned the early 20th century’s rampant interest in archaeology. Yet we do find evidence of avant-garde interest in archaeology in general and in Ancient Egypt specifically. This project thus examines how the European avant-garde authors and poets reacted with and against the Egyptian obsession of the beginning of the 20th century as well as how they reflected on the curious temporal confrontations which emerged with material archaeological finds in Egypt and more broadly, the longue durée of history.