the.com/egyptology
Studying a civilization obsessed with the afterlife, by digging up its leftovers.
means The scholarly study of ancient Egyptian civilization — its language, writing, history, religion, art, and archaeology.
from Built from 'Egypt' plus the Greek-derived suffix '-ology' (from 'logos,' meaning word or study). The field took shape in the early 1800s, galvanized by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and especially by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone's hieroglyphs in the 1820s, which finally let scholars read what the Egyptians had actually written about themselves.
- founding theft
- Napoleon's army accidentally kicked it off in 1798
- key breakthrough
- Rosetta Stone cracked hieroglyphs in 1822
- biggest flex
- Tutankhamun's tomb found almost untouched in 1922
- ongoing irony
- curses are fake, lung-damaging tomb dust is not