Egyptology and cognate disciplines
Egyptology has been described as a discipline ‘tortured by its own source material’. As a field of study, Egyptology depends on archaeological fieldwork as a primary source of data. Yet its theoretical concerns often derive from fields such as literary studies and art history, which assume certain categories of knowledge that are often lacking, or only obliquely attested, for ancient Egypt. This chapter explores these tensions in the development of Egyptology from the decipherment of hieroglyphs to the present day. It is argued that the disciplinary orientation of Egyptology can be usefully considered in terms of its changing relationship to the world of objects, and in terms of its orientation to questions of translation, broadly conceived.