Like Reisner, Der Manuelian has spent much of his professional life in Giza, in his own version of “Harvard Camp.” The first time he went to Egypt was in 1977, the summer after high school, but he has returned numerous times since and spent 1984-7 in Luxor as an epigrapher on a University of Chicago project.

Egypt has changed between Reisner’s time there and his own. But, Der Manuelian says, “fortunately, the pyramids are still there.”

NEW BEGINNINGS

Despite the 68-year gap between Harvard Egyptologists—and also the long gaps between the College’s sporadic offerings in the field of ancient Egypt—Der Manuelian says that there was not a “dark time” when his field failed to generate interest in the postwar American academy.

“Maybe Harvard looked around and said, ‘Well, [Egyptology] is taught really well at some other places,’” he said. “But I’m delighted and grateful that [this department] was able to come through.”

Even though Egyptologists study the distant past, Der Manuelian says that his field can nevertheless provide important insights into the world of today.

“I think that any time you have a civilization that’s lasted three or four millennia, there’s something worth studying there,” he said. “A belief system, an  ideology that exists for that long—there’s definitely something there to study and to learn. These are all ways of making sense of the world around you.”

—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.