Walter Bryan Emery (1903-1971), who, like his more famous predecessor Flinders Petrie, was Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College London, seems something of a forgotten titan of archaeology. Despite comment upon his death in Antiquity (Reference DanielDaniel 1971), his star has since faded. This lapse in status is perhaps understandable when considering his association with now discredited (and implicitly ethnocentric) theories of a superior 'Dynastic race' (Reference EmeryEmery 1952), responsible, he thought, for the civilisation of Ancient Egypt.

Emery's career should, in retrospect, attract more attention. Of non-elite origins, educated at a Jesuit school in Liverpool, he displayed astonishing perseverance against numerous obstacles, and, as will be discussed below, provides the starting point for explaining the discipline of Egyptology as it stands today. This discussion also illustrates the benefit of viewing the discipline from a non-Egyptological perspective. An elaboration of the context in which Emery worked begins to provide an explanation for these statements.

Emery's work in the field spanned half a century, 50 years which saw major political change in Egypt. Emery carried out his first fieldwork in the country in 1923, a year after it was given nominal independence by the British. He worked at Saqqara, near Cairo, at the time of the Free Officers' revolution in 1952 and the founding of the Egyptian Republic in 1953. Whilst forced to start work in Sudan following the 1956 Suez Crisis, Emery also quickly became a major player during the UNESCO campaign to survey and salvage the archaeology of Nubia during one of the iconic events of the Cold War: the building of the High Dam at Aswan.

Figure 1.

Excavations at Saqqara, 1969-70. The original caption reads: 'Iseum. WBE walks unsuspecting from as yet undiscovered cave entrance to Iseum, L. rear' (photograph courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society).

Within these political contexts, Emery was continuously responsible for, or at the scene of, dramatic finds. In the 1920s, for example, he worked at the iconic site of Tell el-Amarna, spent time with Howard Carter at the tomb of Tutankhamun and was responsible for locating the so-called 'Bucheum' (a major site containing the bodies of sacred bulls) at Armant in Upper Egypt. In the 1930s, Emery located the royal tombs of Ballana and Qustul in Egyptian Nubia; the title of the popular book he published about the tombs - Nubian treasure (Reference EmeryEmery 1948) - is a perhaps rare instance of non-hyperbolic description of finds made in Egypt. From the late 1930s until the end of his career, Emery worked at the monumental fortress of Buhen near the Second Cataract of the Nile in Sudan, and at North Saqqara near Cairo (Figure 1), excavating large Early Dynastic period tombs, the subject of much subsequent debate (e.g. Reference KempKemp 1967).

How did Emery manage to balance his spectacular career with the demands of the political situation? Archival work, amongst other sources, demonstrates succinctly the colonial context in which Emery moved; whether or not he viewed himself as part of a colonial project, Emery was quite clearly embedded in the colonial sphere. For example, a letter from the British Embassy in Cairo dated 30 August 1945 (now held in the archive of the Egypt Exploration Society in London) to the General Headquarters of British forces in the Middle East, contains a request from Miles Lampson, the then British ambassador, that Emery be returned to his former employment with the Egyptian Antiquities Service as soon as possible. Lampson is said, in this letter, to have viewed the maintenance of the British position in Egyptology as crucial to national interests, at a time when Britain had in reality still not relinquished its control over Egypt. In this context, Emery's career seems buttressed, whether implicitly or explicitly, by colonialism. World War II - and the need to maintain the British position in the Middle East - also inevitably aided his rise: by the end of the war he was Director of Military Intelligence of the British Army in Egypt, gaining the rank of Lt. Col.; he continued to work for the British Embassy in Cairo from 1945-51, another critical period for British-Egyptian relations.

It seems therefore unsurprising that Emery's work, despite the occasional magnitude of what he recovered, had little impact on the state of affairs in Egyptology as perceived from outside the discipline. As part of the colonial status quo, Emery hardly had room to manoeuvre, and the circularity of much of his reasoning is, consequently, unremarkable. For example, Egyptology has often - perhaps self-evidently - viewed (Ancient) Egypt, its country of study, as paramount. Discussions of its relationship to other countries tend to emphasise Egypt as a discrete whole, a culture and an identity which remain consistent despite interactions with other areas. Emery was no different: discussing two graves at Abydos in Middle Egypt, he asserts that they must be Nubian due to a lack of fit with known Egyptian types (1923: 35). Emery does not breach the bounds of what it is to be (Ancient) Egyptian.

At least in Emery's case, then, it seems that Egyptology remained within conservative disciplinary bounds to survive. As Emery helped take charge of the UNESCO campaign of the 1960s - a campaign which saw the return en masse of foreign archaeological missions to Egypt after the lean post-revolution years - it seems questionable whether it would have been wise to attempt to move beyond such conservatism. Why challenge the status quo when foreign presence was reliant on the unexpected opportunity provided by the building of the High Dam?

In some cases, but not all, it might be argued that even today the discipline retains this conservative form. Emery's life provides a useful starting point to explain why, and to begin to pick apart the circularity in the bounded concept of Ancient Egypt. I do not view this as an attack on Emery: he is an excellent example of how Egyptology has worked.