ABSTRACT
Thomas Joseph Pettigrew (1791–1865) has faded into the background of history. A man of many interests and activities, Pettigrew’s extraordinary life and legacy reside in the archives, footnotes, and marginalia to the histories of medicine, science, archaeology, and literature. Only in particular histories of Egyptology does he emerge from the shadows, but even then as little more than comic relief: the showman, the vulgarizer who unrolled Egyptian mummies in front of gawping early Victorian audiences. In the often Whiggish histories of scholarship, it has long been traditional to knife one’s antecedents in the back, even as one professes to stand upon the shoulders of giants. With his humble origins and lack of formal education, his eclectic interests and his propensity for feuds, it is perhaps unsurprising that Pettigrew remains a neglected ancestor. But as this chapter will hopefully demonstrate, Pettigrew made a number of important contributions to the study of Egypt and the popular fascination with the country in the early nineteenth century, and he was part of the scholarly community that included Gardner Wilkinson, Birch, Bunsen, Leemans, and others. My aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of Pettigrew’s work on Egypt and its impact on early nineteenth-century scholarship and culture.
