A Victorian Gentleman in the Pharaoh’s Court: Christian Egyptosophy and Victorian Egyptology in the Romances of H. Rider Haggard

Abstract

The following article analyses the ways in which the developing field of Egyptology found its way into Victorian culture, more especially via the romances of H. Rider Haggard. It considers the process of acculturation in terms of the Christianizing tendency of a biblical archaeology which was looking for evidence of biblical narratives in opposition to Higher Criticism of the Bible. It focusses on the specific influence of the Egyptologist and Assyriologist E. A. Wallis Budge’s ideas on Haggard’s fiction and also examines how the prominence of excavations at Amarna produced a Victorianization of the household of the pharaoh Akhenaten in the phenomenon of “Amarnamania.”

Keywords

• atenism
• original monotheism
• osiride christology
• egyptosophy
• amarnamania
• egyptian romance