The first Egyptologists

The first Egyptologists were the ancient Egyptians themselves. Thutmosis IV, then only Prince Thutmosis, restored the Sphinx and had the dream that inspired his restoration carved on the famous Dream Stela. Less than two centuries later, Prince Khaemweset, fourth son of Ramesses II, is famed for identifying and restoring historic buildings, tombs and temples including the pyramid of Unas at Saqqara.

Greek and Roman era

Some of the first historical accounts of Egypt were given by Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and the largely lost work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, during the reign of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II in the 3rd century BC.

Muslim Egyptologists

Progress was made by Muslim historians in Egypt and elsewhere from the 9th century AD. The first known attempts at deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs were made by Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya in the 9th century, who were able to at least partly understand what was written in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in their time. Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, a teacher at Cairo's Al-Azhar University in the 13th century, wrote detailed descriptions on ancient Egyptian monuments.[1] Similarly, the 15th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi wrote detailed accounts of Egyptian antiquities.

European explorers

European exploration and travel writings of ancient Egypt commenced from the 13th century onward, with only occasional detours into a more scientific approach, notably by John Greaves, Claude Sicard, Benoît de Maillet, Frederic Louis Norden and Richard Pococke. In the early 16th century, the Jesuit scientist-priest Athanasius Kircher was the first to identify the phonetic importance of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and he demonstrated Coptic as a vestige of early Egyptian, for which he is considered the "founder" of Egyptology.[2] In the late 18th century, with Napoleon's scholars' recording of Egyptian flora, fauna and history (published as Description de l'Egypte), the study of many aspects of ancient Egypt became more scientifically oriented. The British captured Egypt from the French and gained the Rosetta Stone. Modern Egyptology is generally perceived as beginning about 1822.

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