Inaugural Lectures in Egyptology: T. E. Peet and His Pupil W. B. Emery

Abstract

Inaugural lectures (ILs) are often overlooked as academic ephemera, but I believe that they can be used as a powerful historiographical tool, locating the public presentation of academic output with its social and institutional setting. My broader research uses them as a lens through which to examine the development and contingencies of British Egyptology, its self-positioning, and its perception and positioning by others, from the subject’s formal inception into British academia (1892) to the present day. In this paper the focus has, however, been narrowed to the Egyptology inaugural lectures (EILs) given by T.E. Peet (1882–1934) (Figure 1), the second Brunner Professor of Egyptology at Liverpool University (1920–1933), and the second reader / professor designate of Egyptology at Oxford (1933–1934) and W.B. Emery (1903–1971) (Figure 2), the fourth Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at UCL (1951–1970).