Orientalist perspective

My colleagues might wonder why an Egyptologist would temporarily abandon his work with mummies to delve into the study of politics. Therefore, I must explain my interest in Egyptian history during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It has finally been definitively established that Egyptians of the past and present are, in fact, one people, and in the humanities, there is no difference between them. It will become clear that neither the Arabs nor any other conquerors have explicitly affected the purity of their blood. They may have suffered a certain decline in their mental state, and perhaps lost some of their initiative and goal-setting; but materially and mentally, I can affirm that Egyptians today are no different from their ancestors in the time of the pharaohs. Lord Cromer once told me that he hoped no statesman would attempt to understand the Egyptian question without first making a diligent effort to study the ancient history of this people. For the same reason, an archaeologist would be unable to fully comprehend and interpret the great past of this nation unless he took a keen interest in the events that shaped and influenced the Egyptians. This was the justification I offered myself when I devoted so much of my free time to the extensive preparation of this book. And this, for me, proved invaluable in explaining and clarifying many past events. It instilled in me a profound confidence in the Egyptian nation's capacity to reclaim its former glory. Arthur Broom Wiggle