Monica Hanna's pursuit of an Egyptology free from the legacy of colonialism and racism

Her book, 'The Future of Egyptology', lays bare the shortcomings of a discipline hijacked by European scholars and adventurers

Egyptologist Monica Hanna says Egyptian artefacts in museums in the West should be returned, 'because they are ours'. Photo: Monica Hanna

Monica Hanna is Egyptology's equivalent of a rights campaigner.

The 42-year-old is feisty, articulate and with a disarming smile; tools she uses to fuel her drive to rid Egyptology from the shackles of a colonial legacy embraced by westerners as well as Egyptians.

Her views on where Egyptology should be in the 21st century are meticulously laid out in her first book, The Future of Egyptology, a compelling, 126-page read in English that exposes the murky and dark side of a discipline that has mostly been the exclusive domain of scholars and adventurers of European heritage since its inception in the early years of the 19th century.

Ms Hanna's activism to reform Egyptology predates the publication of her book this summer.

She has been a key member of campaigns to repatriate two high-profile Egyptian artefacts: The Nefertiti bust that is kept in Berlin's Neues Museum and the Rosetta Stone, on display at the British Museum in London.

At home, Ms Hanna is quietly campaigning to rid the field of corruption and neglect along with what she sees as the unjustified and crippling dominance of money-seeking "archaeology celebrities".

The Nefertiti bust at the Neues Museum in Berlin. Reuters

"My book is not an attempt to address the West. I want to speak to Egypt, our people. We need to decolonise ourselves before we ask the West to decolonise themselves," she told The National in an interview.

"We want to make Egyptology more democratic by making it more accessible and by making archaeological knowledge more accessible. There is a lack of Arabic in archaeology and that in turn limits access," she said as she sipped from a cup of coffee at a busy cafe in Cairo's affluent Heliopolis suburb.

Already, she explained, Egyptians have become much more aware of their heritage since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, a momentous event that reshaped the mindset of a nation long suppressed by authoritarian regimes.

It is a shift of attitude that may have been helped in large part by the danger sensed by many Egyptians when some museums housing ancient artefacts were subjected to looting and vandalism during the months and years of lawlessness that followed the uprising.

Visitors to museums and tour operators provide evidence of that new attitude. They report a significant increase in the number of Egyptians frequenting them over the past decade − a far cry from the days when visitors were mostly foreign tourists.

But Ms Hanna believes there is still a long way to go before Egyptians can take their rightful place as the legitimate and principal owners of a discipline devoted to their very own civilisation.

Egyptologist Monica Hanna researching in a tomb in southern Egypt, for her PhD from the University of Pisa. Photo: Monica Hanna

"What Egyptians, of every social level and identity, have to say about their history remains marginalised, as are they," she laments in The Future of Egyptology, the Arabic edition of which preceded the English translation.

"In western European thought that emerged over the 18th century, the modern inhabitants of Egypt were deemed incapable of understanding its ancient past, much less appreciating and caring for it," she continued.

"[The book] is not the final word on the topic. Other books will be written in response and a dialogue will be created," mused Ms Hanna, an Egyptology graduate of the prestigious American University in Cairo who went on to obtain a PhD from the University of Pisa at the relatively young age of 27.

"Decolonising the discipline is essential, but equally important is calling out officials' post-colonial praxis in current Egyptology," she wrote, arguing that authorities often refuse permits for community and public archaeology projects while favouring western archaeological missions for monetary gains.

Stinging and eye-opening, her argument in the book for a more democratic and less colonialised Egyptology is not the only weapon in her arsenal as she seeks a place for Egyptians in a discipline from which they have, to all practical purposes, been sidelined or totally excluded.

Visitors view the Rosetta Stone at The British Museum in London. Getty Images

Many are sceptical of whether the campaign to bring home the Nefertiti bust and the Rosetta Stone will bear fruit − perhaps not for lack of trying as much as the perseverance of the colonial mindset that took them out of Egypt in the first place.

Moreover, the pair are viewed as among the major attractions of the museums where they are on display, attracting millions of visitors every year.

But to Ms Hanna, there is hope for them to return home. The argument for their return, she insists, is at once both simple and compelling.

"There is a realistic hope that we will eventually get them back. Why? Because they are ours," she said emphatically, though with a grin.

"I can see a significant shift in opinion with the young generation in the West leading the way," she said. "They see them in their museums as looted and find that unacceptable. The older generations, in contrast, see them as part of their colonial pride," according to Ms Hanna.

The bust of Queen Nefertiti − wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten − is more than just an artefact to Ms Hanna. The sculpture, which dates back almost 3,400 years, was taken from Egypt by Ludwig Borchardt, the German archaeologist who unearthed it in 1912 in Minya, the central Egyptian province where Ms Hanna was born, raised and fell in love with Egyptology.

Home to some of Egypt's majestic yet infrequently visited ancient Egyptian sites, Minya could benefit from the return of the bust, according to Ms Hanna.

“It should go back to Minya and then it would change the whole face of Minya and the whole area would be open for better tourism," she wrote several years ago in her research paper Contesting the Lonely Queen.