Welcome, everyone.
You are the die-hards.
You are the ones who braved
coming out in the rain.
I thank you for doing that.
I think you'll be
rewarded shortly.
So Vanessa Davies
early academic training
was in Islamic studies.
In the early 2000s, though,
she had the epiphany.
And we're glad she did.
She moved backwards in
time to ancient Egypt.
And this happened via
the University of Chicago
where she received
her PhD in Egyptology.
Her work as an epigrapher
at Chicago House
or more formally known as the
Epigraphic Survey in Luxor,
Egypt is indicative
of her approach
to the ancient Egyptian
world in general.
Because she pays close
attention to the intersection
between art and texts.
Vanessa is currently
co-editing a massive tome
called the Oxford Handbook
of Egyptian Epigraphy
and Paleography
with Dimitri Laboury
of the University of Liege.
And I think we're up to,
what is it, 50 articles now?
So this will make
spectacular reading.
She has been a Distinguished
Fellow of the Notre Dame
Institute for Advanced Study, a
Mellon fellow at the University
of California Berkeley.
And she's currently a researcher
at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum
of Anthropology at Berkeley.
That very important
Egyptian collection
has direct ties to us here.
Because it was excavated by the
very same George Reisner who
later founded the
Harvard University Boston
Museum of Fine Arts Expedition.
Vanessa is now working on a 3D
imaging and paleography project
involving scarabs in the
collection of the Hearst
museum.
And with a new grant
she just received
from our own
White-Levy Publications
Program for Archeological
Publications
she's facilitating
a collaboration
between the Hearst museum and
the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
here to publish material from
George Reiser's excavations
at the very important
site of Naga ed-Dair.
And she recently received
yet another grant
from the Rockefeller Archive
Center in New York for research
there on a book which
involves some of the material
that you'll be hearing
about tonight on race
and Egyptology in the
early 20th century.
Please join me in welcoming
Dr. Vanessa Davies.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Jane,
also and thank you
Peter for inviting
me to be here today.
And thank you to the staff
of the Harvard Semitic Museum
who have been so
welcoming to me.
I'm really happy to be
here in Boston and here
on Harvard's campus.
It's been a long time
since I was here.
The last time I was here,
I was in high school.
And I came here with my high
school for a model Congress
convention.
I was in the Supreme
Court division.
And I was a lawyer arguing that
a certain Native American group
should be allowed to use peyote
in their religious rituals.
And so here I am again
today on Harvard's campus
arguing something else.
And that feels really great.
So thank you all
for coming out today
to hear about my research.
I'm really excited to
talk to you about it
here, especially because I feel
like here Du Bois's spirit is
in the air.
There are so many
people here who
work on him and his research.
There's a wonderful
Institute here named for him.
Of course, he was
a student here.
So I'm really happy to
be here today talking
to you about my research.
And I appreciate
you all coming out
on this rainy day for my talk.
I've been thinking a long
time about the impact
that ancient Egypt has on us.
And I pay very
close attention when
I see people, for instance,
wearing earrings that
are ankh signs or
wearing a t-shirt
with the bust of Nefertiti
or the funerary mask
of Tutankhamun.
And I drive around the
East Bay of California
and I take pictures
of murals when
I find ancient Egyptian
iconography in them.
And I think about all of this.
I think about how
for many people
ancient Egyptian culture
factors into our conceptions
of who we are and what
our cultural heritage is.
And in the US this often
has a racial aspect to it.
So I began looking at
receptions of ancient Egypt
in early 20th century America.
And I've uncovered
many conversations
about ancient Egypt among
the scholars and writers
of that time.
And knowing the connections
between W.E.B. Du Bois
and Harvard I thought this
would be an ideal place
to talk to you about a set of
letters that were exchanged
between Du Bois and a
British Egyptologist
by the name of W.M.F.
Petrie who is also
known as Flinders Petrie.
And in these
letters they discuss
matters relating to race, past
and present, and education.
These letters are
important for understanding
the rich and complex history of
the discipline of Egyptology.
And these letters have
important resonances
for us today in relation
to scientific inquiry, how
we address social issues,
and in terms of our humanism,
recognizing the essential
humanity in all people
and broadening our
perspectives to consider
other people's points of view.
So first I want to give you
a little bit about each man's
background and tell you how
they came to know each other.
And then we'll discuss the
actual correspondence itself.
Egyptologists are very
familiar with Petrie
because he invented the
science of archeology
as it's now practiced
in egyptology.
He is a giant in our
field and in the field
of ancient Mediterranean
studies in general.
Petrie was a prolific author.
He wrote many, many
scholarly volumes.
He wrote an autobiography
that was published in 1931.
And a student of his
wrote a biography of him
that came out in 1985.
So we know a tremendous amount
about Petrie, about his work,
about his thoughts,
about the things that
happened to him in his life.
But nowhere in
these sources does
he mentioned the
letters that I will
be talking to you about today.
So most Egyptologists
are unaware
that Petrie and Du Bois had
a friendly, professional
relationship and that in the
first few months of 1912,
they exchanged a series of
very interesting letters.
Petri was born in London.
His first major
archaeological work
involved surveying and measuring
various monuments in England.
In 1880 a London
based organization
called the Egypt Exploration
Fund asked Petrie
to go to Giza to measure and
map the tombs and pyramids
on the Giza Plateau.
The Egypt Exploration Fund still
operates today out of London.
Now they're known as the
Egypt Exploration Society.
Petrie quickly moved from
surveying and measuring to also
excavating ancient sites.
And his careful
methodologies became
the basis of a new
scientific discipline
of Egyptian archeology.
And these included actually
excavating material
as opposed to just ripping
artifacts out of the ground,
but also documenting his work,
drawing and photographing
all of his finds, and publishing
the results of his fieldwork.
Petrie was unusual among
archaeologists of his day
because he cared not just for
the finely carved and painted
statues and stelae that
appealed to wealthy donors
and to collectors, but Petrie
recorded and tracked all finds.
So things like ceramic
cooking dishes and reed mats
and little beads, objects
that other researchers
would discard.
The images you see
here are drawings
that Petrie published in 1890
from one of his excavations.
In the top corner here
where the 18 and 19 are,
those are sinkers made
of limestone or lead.
They would be attached
to fishing nets
to weigh them down.
And then moving across the
slide you have fishing hooks,
you have various
pins and needles.
There are two combs
in the center.
Those long items
are bone needles
that would be used for
weaving and for making nets,
for fishing nets.
In the top corner are
two spindle whorls.
And then of course
there's a large basket.
Over here you have three flints.
And along the bottom are
various types of pottery.
So this is an
example, this slide
is an example of some of
the items of everyday life
that Petrie thought
was important
that other archaeologists
of his day were simply
not paying attention to.
Petrie felt that
histories should
be written based on
objects like these ones
even if those objects
appeared unspectacular
to the untrained eye.
These histories
that Petrie wrote
were the histories
of non-elite people.
These types of people might
be represented in wall scenes
in elite tomb art.
So for instance you
might see a scene of men
in a boat catching fish.
But not much is said
about those men.
The image in the
elite person's tomb
showed only a limited part of
the non-elite person's story.
But when Petrie excavated,
drew, and photographed items
like the ones you
see here, Petrie
could tell much
more of their story.
He could give more depth and
more detail to their histories.
Petrie brought a whole new
segment of the population
more fully into the
historical record.
Besides advocating for
careful scientific excavation,
Petrie also developed
sequence dating.
So using pottery,
like the type you
see at the bottom
of the slide, he
developed a system of
dating that involved
making a stylistic
analysis of pottery
to construct a
relative chronology.
His development of
scientific method
differentiated archeology
from treasure hunting.
Now Petrie did not have
much formal schooling.
When he was four, he nearly
died from a bronchial infection.
A few years later again in the
winter, he became very ill.
And his parents decided that
he would not leave the house
anymore in the wintertime.
His health simply
couldn't take it.
And so this prevented
Petrie from attending
any sort of formal schooling.
He did however,
receive an education
just outside of a
formal structure.
His father taught him the
basics of surveying and mapping.
His mother and his great aunt
had a prolific collection
of books.
And this provided him
with much reading.
When he first went
to Egypt in 1880,
he had done some reading
on the ancient culture.
But he wasn't overly
familiar with it.
He learned much more
working on site,
talking to his colleagues,
most of whom were European,
and reading their publications.
And here's Petrie
that first year
that he was working
in Egypt in 1880.
He's standing outside of a
rock cut tomb that he lived in.
And that bit of fluff
in the front down here.
That's his goat.
So he had a fresh
supply of milk.
So Petrie's scholarly
training as an Egyptologist
was different from his peers.
He taught himself how
to read hieroglyphs.
We know from a Swiss
colleague of his
that his translations were
apparently maddeningly slow,
at least to his Swiss colleague.
But it's OK.
Petrie was doing it at his pace.
Petrie also didn't
know Latin or Greek
as the other scholars
of his day did
nor did he know German well.
So he had some
difficulty translating
the work of his colleagues
who published in German.
All of this put him at a
disadvantage in his own field.
But Petrie maintained
that engineering,
as he put it, the mapping and
surveying skills that he had,
were more useful for an
archaeologist than bookwork
alone.
So keep that in mind.
Because later on we'll see
Petrie talk about bookwork
again.
Despite his lack of
formal education,
in 1893 Petrie was
appointed a professor
at the University of London.
A longtime associate of his
from the Egypt Exploration
Fund, a woman named
Amelia Edwards,
she was one of the founders
of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
And she had supported Petrie
throughout his career.
When she died she had
a fair bit of money
and no immediate family.
And she had endowed a chair
at the University of London
in Egyptian Archeology
in Philology
with the expressed
intent that Petrie
should be the first
person to hold that chair.
So with that position
which he assumed in 1893,
his future was secure.
And he was able to continue his
practice of excavating in Egypt
in the winters and going
back to London in the summers
to write up the results of
his work and to give lectures.
And Petrie had an
incredibly long career
excavating sites in Egypt.
This map is disjointed.
And I know you can't read
all of the names of the sites
but it starts down here in Nubia
and it works its way north,
down the Nile to the
delta and then east
into the Sinai and
then Palestine.
And I've highlighted in
yellow all of the sites
that Petrie worked throughout
the course of his career.
It's nearly 70 different sites
over the course of 57 years.
Also notable is
the scale of work
that he directed at these sites.
These two images are from
Petrie's excavations.
You can see on the left a
large cloud of dust in the air
and under that cloud of dust
is a long line of workers.
They are turning over
the top layer of soil
to prepare the ground for
the initial excavation which
will happen next.
In the picture on
the right, there's
a pit down below, down here.
And that's where the
excavation is happening.
And when a bucket is
filled with sand and dirt
it is passed person by person up
the cliff 41 feet up the cliff
to then dump it out at the top.
Because there's no room
to dump it down below.
So these images give you a
sense of the scale of work
that Petrie directed
on his excavations.
And Petrie cared first
and foremost about this,
about the work of archeology.
From these images you can see
that he directed that work
on a huge scale,
employing large numbers
of the local population,
mostly boys in their teens,
but sometimes also girls and
sometimes older men as well.
And Petrie cared for the
Egyptians who worked for him
but he cared for them from
the point of view of his work.
He tried to give those
who labored for him
protection in the
sense of their work.
So for example,
protection from overseers
who might demand a cut of
their wages, protection
from looters who
might try to tempt
them to turn over
artifacts to them
rather than to turn the
artifacts in to Petrie.
And to protect them from
each other, from theft
and quarreling amongst
the other laborers.
Petrie approached the hiring,
training and oversight
of his workers for a rather
practical perspective.
But it's a perspective
tinged by the views
of the colonialist imperialist
era in which he lived.
He credited well-trained
workers with having
wisdom and important
observations about the work
at hand.
He described them
as personal friends.
But then wrote that
they quote "are
regarded much as old servants
in a good household."
His views on Egyptians
could not escape the fact
that these people worked for
him and he compensated them.
They were paid laborers.
This is one of the main
lenses through which he
views Egyptians.
Another major factor that
influenced Petrie's perspective
on modern Egyptians was
that Petrie subscribed
to the theory of eugenics
and for a period of time
he worked closely
with Francis Galton.
The influence of Galton's
theory on Petrie's Egyptological
research can be
seen, for example,
in Petrie's idea that a
European race migrated
to prehistoric Egypt, conquered
the local people there,
and began Egyptian
history as we know it.
This idea has been
discredited within Egyptology
but in Petrie's day the
idea was given some credence
and Petrie was a
proponent of it.
So the three factors that come
to bear strongly on the ideas
that Petrie discusses in
his letters with Du Bois
are the theory of eugenics and
Petrie's ideas about ancestry,
Petrie's work in Egypt, which
required a lot of workers,
and finally Petrie's own
educational experiences,
which is to say his
lack of formal schooling
and his subsequent successful
career as an archaeologist
and as a professor.
And now Du Bois.
Du Bois had a liberal arts style
of education at Fisk University
and at Harvard.
He had a completely different
perspective on education
than Petrie did.
Dubois had been exposed
to many disciplines
and to different approaches
to both asking and solving
questions.
Petrie left England in his
late 20s to work in Egypt
and lived and worked
there for many years.
Dubois also had a culturally
immersive experience.
But his was in Germany
where he lived and studied
from 1892 to 1894.
There Du Bois
lived a life devoid
of the racial prejudices
and racial discriminations
that he experienced in the US.
He was treated by
Germans in ways
radically different
from what he had
become accustomed to in the US.
And that distance, both
physically and culturally,
led him to see the
US in a new light.
In Germany, he was influenced
by the detailed scientific
research of his professors,
people like the economists
Gustav Schmoller and
Adolph Wagner who devised
and recommended solutions
for social problems
based on statistical
analysis, the accumulation
of historical and contemporary
facts, and questions of ethics.
So let me tell you how
these two men crossed paths.
Early in Dubois's
career he had an idea
to put together an
Encyclopedia Africana.
This would be a
companion or counterpoint
to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
His plan was to assemble
an editorial board
and an advisory board.
And when we look at a
copy of the letterhead
for the Encyclopedia
Africana, who do
we find as the second name
on the board of advisers
but Flinders Petrie.
Du Bois had secured the
assistance of Petrie
on the encyclopedia
project in 1909.
In the last week of
July 1911, Du Bois
attended a conference at
the University of London
called the Universal
Race's Congress.
The Universal Race's Congress
was intended to encourage
understanding, friendship,
and cooperation between people
of the east and
people of the West,
or as the organizers wrote
the quote "so-called white
and so-called colored peoples."
The organizers of
the Congress wanted
to facilitate universal
peace by pointing out
ideas, such as
anti-miscegenation, that
were based on faulty
science and by challenging
what they called the inertia
of the uninformed human mind.
I've assembled images
of some of the speakers
here so you can get a sense of
who attended this conference.
Starting at the top
left you have people
from Haiti and China.
The third man in the top
row here is Gustav Spiller.
He was one of the
organizers of the Congress.
There are two women
on this slide.
There were actually
more than two women
who spoke on the Congress.
But only two made
it to my slide.
We have Sister Nivedita here who
was a social worker and author
living in India.
And here Dr.
Caroline Rhys Davids
who is a specialist
in Buddhist studies.
You have Franz Boaz up here
next to a man from South Africa.
You have these two
gentlemen who I put side
by side, one from
India one from Germany,
and I just thought they looked
so identical to each other
with their long beards.
So you have people from Turkey,
Japan, France, Russia, Egypt,
Brazil, India, Persia
and of course, Du Bois.
Du Bois gave a talk at
the Congress entitled
"The Negro Race in the
United States of America,"
which summarized the
history, demographics,
and social issues of people
of African descent in the US.
Petrie did not give a
talk at the Congress
nor was he listed among the
supporters of the Congress,
which did include a
few Egyptologists.
And also included,
I should note,
F.W. Puttnam of
the Peabody Museum.
So Petrie was not on that
list nor did he give a talk.
But he must have
attended the Congress.
Years later Du Bois wrote a
letter to a professor at Fisk
recounting that he had discussed
the Encyclopedia in 1911
with Petrie and with others
at the Congress in London.
And it makes sense that Petrie
would be at the Congress.
He was, after all, a professor
at the University of London.
And the Congress
happened in July
when Petrie would have
been in England not
excavating in Egypt.
So when they met in
July 1911, Du Bois
must have told
Petrie about or maybe
even given him a
copy of his 1903
book, The Souls of Black Folk.
In November, Petrie
left England to begin
the season of archaeological
work in Egypt.
Soon after he arrived, he was
bothered by recurring pain.
And he went to a
doctor and found out
that he was going to
need a hernia operation.
This, of course, interrupted
his archaeological season
but the subsequent convalescence
gave him some unexpected time
for reading.
It was at that time that
he read Du Bois's book.
And in January 1912 while
still recovering from surgery,
Petrie initiated with
Dubois a conversation
about race and education that
would address contemporary life
in the US and in Egypt.
Petrie wrote Du Bois a
letter on January 3, 1912.
The letter begins with his
appreciation for Du Bois's book
because Petrie
wrote he has quote
"long wanted to grasp
the Negro problem
and your prudent balanced
statement is very helpful."
Petrie went on to
explain his point of view
as an archeologist
and a historian,
as an Englishman who had
been living and working
in Egypt by that time
for over three decades.
Petrie used Du Bois's
metaphor of the veil
to discuss the difference
between, as he put it,
the native and the English.
Petrie reported that
despite dramatic differences
in the social realities
in the US and Egypt,
namely that there was no recent
history of slavery in Egypt
like there was in
the US and that there
was no discrimination in
Egypt based on skin color,
or at least none that
was visible to Petrie.
He wrote that there
was in his experience
still very little social
interaction in Egypt
between educated Egyptians
and educated Europeans.
And in addition, Peter knew
of only three marriages
between an English person
and an Egyptian person.
So Petrie posed to
Du Bois the question,
how could the US achieve an
integrated society when a place
like Egypt cannot even though
Egypt lacks the complex social
factors that are
present in the US?
Petrie wrote that he
himself is not so inclined.
But his conclusion, which again
borrowed Du Bois's metaphor,
was that quote "the
English race all over
the world insists on the veil."
So to illustrate for Dubois the
presence of the veil in Egypt,
Petrie explained in his letter
what he called the Englishman's
objections to the native.
Petrie stereotyped Egyptians
as dishonest cheats
and informed Du Bois that he
adopted a strict disciplinarian
attitude towards
his workers at work
and then was more friendly
to them outside of work.
Regarding education,
he noted that it
was more likely to cause damage
than to benefit Egyptians.
He wrote, "education
of book and memory sort
is an injury in most cases.
It depends on ancestry.
The Arab is generally
spoiled by it.
The copt--" that is
Coptic Christian,
"--with 100 generations of
literary ancestors is generally
benefited.
I should say that some technical
and trade teaching and hygiene
would benefit all.
Not more than 5% would be the
better for reading and writing
just to supply the
minor official staff
but no useless subject
should be taught.
Not more than one in
1,000 would really
benefit by higher education.
To give more only produces
a moral deterioration."
And the letter goes on touching
on a few different issues
and Petrie restated his
position that quote "education
in the formal lines will
no more clear the Negro
problem in the US than
freedom or voting."
At the end of
February 1912, Du Bois
wrote a strongly worded
response to Petrie.
He expressed his regret that
Petrie countered dishonesty
among his workers with an
authoritarian attitude.
And he argued that denying
people an education
does nothing to
combat such issues
but only inhibits
personal development.
Du Bois informed Petrie
that the viewpoints
he described, denying Egyptians
an education based on the idea
that they somehow
can't handle it,
that it somehow would cause
them more harm than good,
those views were
quite similar, Du Bois
wrote, to his own experience.
People who held opinions
similar to Petrie's had
discouraged Du Bois's
parents from educating him.
He wrote, "if your ideas had
been carried out in the United
States, and there are many
people trying to carry them
out, I should not be
having the pleasure
of communicating with you now.
On the contrary
I should probably
be the victim of that
manner which you use
to your underlings in Egypt."
Du Bois then addressed each
of Petrie's major points
about education and about
the situation in the US.
Du Bois asked for
Petrie's permission
to publish these letters,
which Petrie subsequently gave.
By the time that Petrie
would have received
this letter of Du
Bois's in March of 1912,
he had recovered from
the hernia operation
and he was back
at work in Egypt.
Despite facing the demands
of being back in the field,
Petrie felt it imperative
to respond quickly
to Du Bois's letter.
In a letter dated
March 20, 1912,
Petrie wrote of his desire to
assure Du Bois that he did not
agree with the European
attitude towards other races
that he had outlined
in his first letter
nor was he defending it.
He intended, he wrote
"to illustrate for Dubois
that the ill will of
Europeans towards other races
was directed at all other races
and was not just, as he put it,
anti Negro."
And he really meant that comment
to make Du Bois feel better.
Petri clarified for Du
Bois that he did not
desire to deny
people an education.
But he thought
that the education
should be fairly divided
between hard work and bookwork.
Here Petrie makes a distinction
between hard work, by which he
means work involving
physical labor,
and bookwork which he
evidently does not consider
to be very difficult.
Petrie further
explained his position regarding
education and politics,
his desire to not
provoke Du Bois
again on the
subject of education
can be seen in his caveat,
that his opinions apply
to contemporary England.
But he would not claim
that they apply to the US.
So at that time in
1912, Du Bois was
the editor of The Crisis
the magazine of the NAACP.
Petrie had given him
permission to publish
their correspondence.
And in the main 1912 issue of
The Crisis the letters appeared
under the title "Self-righteous
Europe and the World."
correspondence with
Flinders Petrie.
The string of abbreviations
after Petrie's name
stand for Doctor of Civil
Law, Doctor of Letters,
Doctor of Laws, and Fellow
of the Royal Society.
They look like a slew
of earned degrees
but those are honorary degrees.
Why are they here?
There are many reactions that
readers might have to this.
In a reader's mind,
this list of degrees
might lend more authority
to Petrie's voice.
Or perhaps it would read as a
bit of a tongue in cheek move
drawing attention to
a kind of disconnect
between the narrow
scientific world
that Petrie inhabited
and the larger world
view the Du Bois
discussed with him.
A reader might see those
degrees is representative
of different value
systems, a focus on titles
and academic honor
versus a focus on humans.
The first two letters were
reproduced in their entirety
with only a small portion
of the third letter.
The correspondence is
published without commentary
or explanation except for
this title that you see.
So three of the factors that I
identified in Petrie's letters
are his eugenic
ideas about ancestry,
his focus on archaeological
work in Egypt,
and his own educational
experiences.
Petrie's espousal
of a eugenic theory
can be seen in his
letter to Du Bois when
he wrote that education
of book and memory
is an injury in most cases.
And then he elaborated,
it depends on ancestry.
The Arab is generally
spoiled by it.
The Copt is generally benefited.
So here Petrie is making a
distinction based on region.
By Arab he means Muslims
since he's contrasting
that with the Coptic Christian.
And so he favors the
ancestry of Coptic Christians
and thus their abilities
to benefit from education
over that of Muslims.
Petrie's viewpoint that
ancestry determines life
oversimplifies the realities of
life, such as wealth and status
differentials and
the resultant access
or inaccess to
resources of all types.
And it ignores things like
human resourcefulness creativity
and enthusiasm.
But Petrie applied a view
of genetic determinism
to himself as well.
Knowing his background,
we might view
Petrie's great success
as an Egyptologist
as due to a variety of factors.
The fact that his parents
could afford to own books
enabling him to read,
the fact that his father
had leisure time
and could set up
scientific experiments
for his son,
the fact that his mother was
educated and could help him
with his education.
And Petrie's own determination
in pursuing the subjects that
appealed to him, not
to mention the fact
that a wealthy benefactor
with no husband or children
had endowed a position
specifically for him
at the University of London.
Petrie however, had a
different view of the matter.
In line with the theory of
eugenics that he subscribed to,
he wrote in his autobiography
that his success in work
was due to his heritage.
Because he had been born
with all of the talents
that led to his accomplishments.
Petrie's oversimplifications
due to his eugenic viewpoint
gave him an excuse for not
advocating for the broader
education of the workers who
supplied the very material
on which he based his career.
From his perspective
as their employer
Petrie did not see a book
based education of his labors
as a useful effort.
He taught them what they
needed to know in the field.
And the ones who showed
skill and honesty
would be hired again
the following season.
And I should note here
that Petrie's attitude
towards training his workers
is similar to the way
that he educated his own
graduate students, primarily
in the field.
The formal education
for Egyptology students
at the University of London
wasn't developed until 1913
the year after he was
writing to Du Bois.
In his letters to
Du Bois in 1912,
it didn't even occur to
Petrie that the Egyptians who
worked for him might have
reasons to gain knowledge
other than to work for him.
Unlike Du Bois who considered
broader social and cultural
needs, Petrie considered
the education of Egyptians
only as it related to
his own work needs.
And he showed a striking
lack of imagination
for what might be done
with an education.
In the Souls of
Black Folk, Du Bois
explained the purpose
of the university.
That it was to give a broad
multi-faceted perspective
on life.
He wrote, "the function
of the university
is not simply to
teach bread-winning
but to show students
realities of life that
are different from the ones
that they grew up with,
to help them see points of
views other than the ones
that they brought
to university."
Du Bois was completely opposed
to opinions like the ones
that Petrie outlined.
In Du Bois's view, it's
fine for the university
to teach wage-earning skills
but the result of university
training he writes, "the final
product of our training must be
neither a psychologist nor
a brickmason, but a person.
And to make people we must
have ideals, broad, pure,
and inspiring ends of living--
not sordid money-getting."
Du Bois' vision of education and
of broadening one's perspective
was in line with the
German concept of Bildung.
So here again his graduate
education in Germany
and Petrie's lack of exposure
to such concepts played a role.
Petrie created workers with the
field training that he devised.
Du Bois wanted to create people.
Du Bois's concern for people,
for humanity, prompted
Reiland Rabaka to call Du
Bois a radical humanist,
someone who works
with all people
to achieve racial, gender,
economic and social justice
for all people.
Sure Du Bois thought it was
important to teach people
how to make money.
He was a realist and he knew
people needed money to survive.
But what he really
stressed, what he
cared the most about was
that the University help
people to achieve a
concern for other humans.
To help people to
contextualize their backgrounds
and to understand
their fellow humans.
It was an education
of empathy and unity
that trained people
to think outside
of their own needs
and fears and regrets
and to think about
the good of humanity.
Petrie and Du Bois both operated
within the scientific method
of their day which
involved, for example,
ideas about the blood
of various racial types
and different physical features
as being characteristic
of these quote unquote
"racial types."
With Petrie we see this
in his careful measurement
that he made of the skulls
of Egyptian mummies.
He tracked sizes and
shape differences
and he used those
to make assumptions
about social and racial
characteristics of people.
He identified what he
referred to his racial types
in ancient Egyptian
depictions which
were just stereotypical
images of different humans.
But he studied them, he
took photographs of them,
he made plaster casts of them.
Du Bois did not subscribe
to these eugenic theories.
But he was influenced by
the scientific discourse
of his day.
If we carefully parse
Du Bois's statement,
In the Souls of Black
Folk, about the purpose
of the university,
we see that it
contains vocabulary reminiscent
of a eugenic viewpoint.
He wrote that universities must
make people and to make people
we must have ideals.
Those ideals he defined as
broad, pure, and inspiring ends
of living.
Now Du Bois didn't mean
purer from the standpoint
of genetic purity.
But this is the word
that occurred to him.
A word that was floating around
in the science of his day.
A word that resonated
with discussions
of race and eugenics.
This is a good example of the
innocence and power of words.
Du Bois used purity
here in a positive way
but this word has
a latent power.
In someone else's hands
this language of purity
might be wielded like a weapon.
It might become less
innocent, more dangerous.
But I have another
example for you.
The focus on physical
features that
dominated some of Petrie's work
can also be seen in The Crisis.
This is a mast
head of The Crisis
that was adopted
in November 1911.
So just when Petrie was
leaving England for Egypt
only to be shortly interrupted
by the unexpected hernia
operation, this
new visual element
appeared on the front cover.
It is clearly an
Egyptianizing image.
And it's based on the ancient
depiction of the winged sun
disk which you
see at the bottom.
This new masthead
substituted the sun disk
with an image that would be
more meaningful to readers.
The head of a king as
identified by the false beard
and the headdress that he wears.
And look, by focusing
on physical features
in the same way that
Petrie did, this image
assigns the King
a black identity.
The closely drawn vertical lines
on the King's face and neck
give his skin a darker shade
than the surrounding images,
like the feathers with
their internal white space.
The Crisis was billed as the
record of the darker races
and this king is clearly
of a darker race.
There's a lot going
on in this image that
relates to the science and to
the history of Du Bois's day.
This new cover image reflected
the interest of Du Bois
in the history of ancient
Egypt and ancient Nubia.
As Wilson Jeremiah Moses
of Penn State put it,
"Du Bois's interest
in ancient Egypt
stemmed from Du
Bois's recognition
that the ancient culture was
one of power and authority."
And that's what we're seeing
here, power and authority.
Who embodies power
and authority?
The King, and who is that King?
The King is shown through
his physical features
to be a black man.
This image expressed
Du Bois's view
that these ancient
people of Egypt a Nubia
were of African descent and
that people of African descent
had a lineage of power.
This image is representative
of Du Bois's efforts
to write histories of Africa,
to write histories about people,
who at that time
in Du Bois's day
were being told that they
had no history, that Africa
had no history.
But there's more.
Even the type of
image chosen reflects
Du Bois's scientific training.
In searching for a
masthead that would connect
the ancient cultures
of Egypt and Nubia
with people of African
descent in America,
Du Bois didn't pick a
romantic watercolor.
He didn't pick a photograph.
Du Bois bolstered his image
of power and authority
in the hands of an African
King by depicting it
in a scientific drawing,
an epigraphic line
drawing, one dark color
on a light background.
This is a type of scientific
recording of ancient decoration
that by 1911 had been practiced
for over a century by scholars
and travelers who went up
and down the Nile recording
the decoration in ancient
tombs and temples.
And these scientific
epigraphic line drawings
have a special place at
Harvard with Peter Manuealian,
who is a pioneer in
Egyptology in the field
of digital epigraphy.
Besides operating
within the constraints
of the scientific
world of their day,
there was something else that
Du Bois and Petrie shared
and it was central to both
of their personalities.
They were activists.
In the tradition of
his German professors
who sought to address the social
problems of their communities,
Du Bois used his
scientific training
to address the problems of
race relations in the US.
Petrie used the
scientific method
that he devised to
address problems
with the archaeological
practice of his day.
In a piece he wrote on
the ethics of archeology,
Petrie catalogued
behaviors that he
described as a crime, a failing,
and an inexcusable malpractice.
And these included
not making maps
while excavating and not
publishing one's fieldwork.
He railed against damage that
was being done to the decorated
wall scenes, sites that were
just dug up and not properly
conserved, artifacts that
were left to decay in museums
without being preserved,
and museum displays that
were not properly
organized and not labeled.
He argued the
government should enact
laws to protect the
integrity of sites
and to deter the illicit
theft and sale of antiquities.
But within this
ethical framework
Petrie nowhere
mentioned the rights
of archaeological laborers.
In his zeal to protect
the ancient past of Egypt,
he neglected the very workers
who aided him in his work.
Petrie's activism for a
scientific archaeological
method contrasted sharply
with Du Bois's use
of a scientific method to
be an activist for humans.
That's the
overarching difference
that separates the world
views of Petrie and Du
Bois, their focus--
archeology in the
case of Petrie,
other human beings in
the case of Du Bois.
Their diverging
outlooks are clearly
demonstrated when they speak
of the importance of history.
For Petrie, the growing interest
in history and archeology,
as distinguished from
treasure hunting,
signaled that humans had reached
the pinnacle of development.
In his formulation, humans
first showed an interest
in each other, then an
interest in animals.
And finally, by his
day he perceived
that humans had
achieved the highest
point, an interest in the past.
Petrie was quite
complacent about the world
as it was in his day.
You can tell that he was
comfortable in his life.
You can tell that he was a
member of the dominant culture
group.
He doesn't express concerns
about anything related
to the functioning
of the societies
that he lived and worked in.
His was an imperialistic
vision of history expressed
in evolutionary terms.
Du Bois's attitude
towards history
in these early decades
of the 20th century
was quite different.
He wrote the histories
of Africa and of people
of African descent
with an urgency.
Historiography was about
communicating knowledge, yes,
but for Du Bois it was also
empowering, both personally,
on a psycho-emotional
level, and politically.
Dubois was fighting
against those who claimed
that Africans had no history.
In contradiction to
that theory, Du Bois
wrote about Africa
as a locus from which
many histories are launched.
In the case of ancient Egypt,
he discussed its influence
not as the usual Western
story of reception
through ancient Greek
and Roman cultures,
but rather the ancient
Egyptian people
as connecting the people of
Asia and other people in Africa
and Egypt as a connector
zone between those two areas.
Du Bois's innovative
perspective on ancient Egypt
is analogous to Petrie's
radically new consideration
of the detritus of daily life.
At a time when
archaeologists did not
value the items of everyday
life, things like pottery
and reed mats, Petrie
used them to construct
new views of history,
something beyond and different
from the histories
that are recounted
in the carved and painted
texts and art of the elite.
Du Bois also constructed new
views of history, something
different from the culturally
dominant, white historical
perspective in the west.
And where Petrie saw an interest
in the past as important
for the lives of
the dead people who
are studied because scholars
make them live again,
Du Bois saw interest
in the past is
important for living
people, knowledge
of the history of people
of African descent,
their contributions to world
culture, their stories,
their sense of
longevity in the world.
This would give people of
African descent in America
a new perspective
on their lives.
They could see that their
contemporary living conditions
were just one way of
living and that there
were other possibilities,
other lives that people
of African descent had lived.
Du Bois researched and wrote
new visions of African history
to provide people
of African descent
with hope for the present.
Because the past had
potency in the present.
The past gave authority,
purpose, and strength
to those in the
present because it
could give people
a new perspective
on themselves and on the world.
Du Bois was a proponent of a
liberal arts style of education
because he knew that this was
an effective way of seeing life
from perspectives
other than your own.
Du Bois and others of his era
pushed for the recognition
of the historical and
current contributions
that people of
African descent made
and were making in the world.
Because people of
African descent
were being pushed to the side.
They were being marginalized
by some scientists,
by some historians, and
by some Egyptologists.
And so scholars like Du
Bois looked to Egyptology
and to the leading
Egyptologists of their day
to concur with some opinions
and to dissent from others.
Scholars like Du
Bois fought back.
They fought back against
claims that the people
of African descent
had no history
and that the history
of Egypt was not
a part of African history but
was a part of white history.
They fought back and they won.
Those claims have been debunked.
But more needs to be done.
It's vital that we
understand the complexity
and the diversity of the
history of Egyptology
as an academic discipline.
We need to rediscover
and remember stories
like the ones I've
talked about today
we need to incorporate
those into our histories
of Egyptology.
Maghan Keita of Villanova
wrote about a kind
of academic
gate-keeping or as he
put it, who has the right, who
is privileged to participate
in the construction of
both history and knowledge.
I'm here to say that
it is imperative
that when we think of the
history of Egyptology,
when we think of people
like Flinders Petrie,
and George Reisner of
Harvard, James Henry
Breasted of the
University of Chicago,
we should also include with
these individuals scholars
like W.E.B. Du
Bois who challenged
the dominant
discourse of their day
and who provided correctives
to erroneous views
that Egyptologists held.
It took some time for their
alternative perspectives
to be accepted
within Egyptology,
but these are correctives
that are now taken seriously
and that forever changed
the way that the history
of ancient Egypt and
ancient Nubia is understood.
As someone who studies ancient
Egyptian wall decoration,
I understand and agree with
Petrie's concerns regarding
the preservation of
ancient monuments
and the detailed
publication and presentation
of that information
to the public.
I'm also a huge proponent of a
liberal arts style of education
and the tradition of the
arguments made by Du Bois.
And I think here at
Harvard I probably
don't have to do much
convincing a view
of the importance of a liberal
arts style of education.
I'd like to use the
correspondence between Du Bois
and Petrie as a way to
reiterate the importance
of the humanities and to
stress how important it
is to join humanistic and
scientific lines of inquiry
in the way that the German
idea of wissenschaft
encompasses all areas
of systematic research.
Because one way to combat
irrational and fear
based schemes that are
pretending to be science, that
are masquerading as science,
and that show a lack of concern
for other humans is to
marry scientific method
and humanistic thought.
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
recognized this years ago.
He talked about it in
an article in 2007,
which he may not even remember.
But he was interviewed for
it in the Boston Globe.
The article was about
scientists growing abilities
to pinpoint physical
traits in the genetic code.
Gates talked about
quote, "walking
a fine line between
using biology
and allowing it to be abused."
And in that situation
you had a lot
of scientists who
were well-meaning
in their intentions
and who were aware
that their growing
body of knowledge
could, if it lands in the
hands of misguided people,
lead to some incredibly
wrong-headed, distasteful,
and dangerous ideas.
That's the importance
of marrying
scientific and
humanistic inquiry
In these images we see
the passions of Petrie
and of Du Bois we
see their activism
for the causes
that inspired them.
And we also see
the stark contrast
between the focus
of their causes.
On the right is Petrie,
nearly 70 years old,
marching across the
desert long staff
in hand, off to inspect
an archaeological site.
And on the left is
Du Bois in a line
of men dressed in suits
marching peacefully
down Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan calling for an end
to the deaths of people of
African descent by lynching.
Du Bois advocated for
a focus on the good
of our fellow human beings.
He used scientific method to
address and devise answers
to the social
problems of his day
and he paired scientific
and humanistic inquiry.
That is the lesson of his
correspondence with Petrie.
Du Bois knew that understanding
people is hard work.
He knew that it
requires training,
a broadening of perspective,
learning other ways of viewing
the world, and then learning
how to assess one's own view
in light of those views.
When we make it a focus to train
people in humanistic inquiry
and when we demand that
humanistic inquiry be paired
with scientific and
technological inquiry,
then we will be on the
road to making people
in a Du Boisian tradition.
That is the work of education.
That is how we
defend against what
the organizers of the
Universal Races Congress
called faulty science
and the inertia
of the uninformed human mind.
That is how we
defend against fear.
And that is how we
learn to develop
what Du Bois called ideals,
broad and inspiring ends
of living.
Thank you.
