Condemned to the Past: peasants, Orientalists, anthropologists and Egyptologists in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egypt

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the Egyptian peasants – fellahin in Arabic – was repeatedly constructed and represented by the Egyptian cultural and social elite in contrasting ways. On the one hand, they were depicted as backward, ignorant and stagnant; on the other, they were portrayed as symbols of permanence, stability and authenticity. The rural population, often residing in or near archaeological sites, also represented the preferred labour source for numerous foreign archaeological expeditions. Consequently, they soon attracted the interest of Egyptologists and anthropologists, who saw their habits, crafts and beliefs as relics or ‘survivals’ from an ancient past. These stereotypical representations converged to depict Egyptian rural communities as timeless, denying them any potential for change and development, and effectively relegating and condemning them to a loosely constructed Past. This paper provides an overview of the various representations of the ‘Egyptian peasant’ created by Orientalist scholars, anthropologists, nationalist intellectuals and Egyptologists, examining how the idea of the peasant as a ‘living fossil’ from the past has been formulated.