Egyptomania in the United States
Egyptomania in the United States was a big wave of interest in ancient Egypt that grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It started after Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian Campaign, when scientists and scholars began documenting Egypt’s ruins. In 1822, Jean-François Champollion cracked the code of hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone, helping people study Egypt in a scientific way.
Most Americans could not travel to Egypt, so they learned about it through books, art, and architecture. Important early works included Vivant Denon’s writings and the Description de l’Égypte. The idea also appeared in music, like Verdi’s opera Aida. In the 1920s, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb revived interest in Egypt, influencing art deco buildings and decorations, such as the Egyptian Theater in Colorado and the Fred F. French Building in New York.
Egyptian culture shaped American literature, art, and architecture. It fed discussions about national identity, race, and slavery. Egyptian symbols—like mummies, Cleopatra, hieroglyphs, and pyramids—captured the imagination. People even hosted “mummy unwrapping parties,” and mummies were sometimes used to make products like paper from linen wrappings, which sparked ethical debates. Authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne used Egyptian imagery in their work. The style of the time, called Egyptian Revival, helped fashion neoclassical and later Art Deco architecture, especially in cemeteries and public buildings.
In the American South, Egyptomania took on a political edge. Some thinkers used ancient Egypt as a model to argue for a slave-based social order, connecting Egypt to the idea of hierarchy and refinement. Egyptian motifs appeared in funerary monuments and public structures in cities like Richmond and Memphis, and in cemeteries with obelisks, pyramids, and sphinxes. The famous Washington Monument is an example of this influence.
Modern film and scholarship keep the idea alive. The Mummy movies, including a 1999 remake, show that ancient Egypt still fascinates Western audiences. Modern scholars like Scott Trafton and M. J. Schueller have studied how Egypt has shaped American culture. Richard White has argued that Egypt sits “everybody’s past” because it doesn’t fit neatly into Africa, Asia, East, or West. People have used Egypt to explore and contest ideas about race, power, and history. Some historians offer different theories about how deeply Egypt influenced Western culture, and the discussion continues today.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:24 (CET).