Cultural Differences In Ancient Egypt

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Kevin DeLapp’s article discusses the cultural differences and reactions that occurred between Europe and ancient Egypt. The author draws examples from the encounters that occurred between European countries such as France and England, and ancient Egypt during the Napoleonic expedition. In this article, he analyzed two models of hermeneutics. These two models are Edward Said’s Orientalism model and John Rawls’ model of reflective equilibrium. DeLapp discovered that, in the example of Napoleon’s exploration of ancient Egypt, both models were not able to portray full range of the cross cultural encounter.
DeLapp states that, to the majority of Europe, ancient Egypt was seen as a familiar but strange and mysterious place. DeLapp goes on to say that Europe considered Egypt to stand as its cultural shadow. The article elaborates that Europeans believed that ancient Egypt would stay in this shadow unless they immersed themselves in Enlightenment just as the majority of Europe. They also believed ancient Egypt’s association with the Ottoman Empire stood in the way of being visible to others.
In a way, I think this sort of reasoning can be seen as a bit condescending. It …show more content…
According to DeLapp, Europe considered ancient Egypt to be generally feminine. The author mentions that the French thought the male Egyptians to be more feminine while the female Egyptians were always women. They believed the males to have ridden themselves of their masculinity by living carelessly and seeking luxury in all ways. Women, on the other hand, had been thought to be representing Egypt authentically (DeLapp 174-177). Perhaps if the Europeans considered their own culture first before making judgments on what was feminine and not, they would have had a better understanding of ancient Egypt’s gender associations. It is possible their reaction toward it would have been

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