Egyptologists, Nazism and Racial “Science”

Abstract Only recently has Egyptology begun to examine ideology and its implications for our self-understanding and our understanding of ancient Egypt, of Egyptology as a discipline, and of the past as a whole. Part of this effort is Thomas Schneider’s important research on Egyptology and Egyptologists in the third Reich. In the present volume, P. Raulwing and T. Gertzen study and document the career and thought of F.W. Freiherr von Bissing; Schneider publishes Georg Steindorff’s letter to John Wilson about Egyptologists in the Third Reich, extensively documenting the scholars mentioned in it and many more besides; and L. Ambridge explores the racial dimension of James H. Breasted Sr.’s historical thought. The continuing influence and relevance of these people and events is shown inter alia by the recent controversy over Steindorff’s collection of Egyptian antiquities.