Treason and “collaboration” of Egyptian dignitaries during the First Persian domination (526-404 B. C.) in international Egyptological research of the 19th-20th centuries

Abstract

The author investigates the origins and development of scholars’ reception of Egyptian officials who cooperated with the Persians during the period of the First Persian domination as “collaborators” and betrayers of Egyptian national interests. This conception was first introduced by E. Revillout, D. Mallet and J. V. Prašek, who treated the figure of Udjahorresnet as a traitor and compared him with different traitorous characters known from Greek sources. Though their views were criticized by different scholars (G. Posener, B. A. Turaev), the perception of Egyptian officials as traitors was revived after World War II by A. Klasens and J. Cooney. The latter one introduced the term “collaborator” to describe the treasonous nature of Egyptian officials’ actions. The use of the above-mentioned term, which implied a negative comparison between Egyptian officials of the First Persian domination and the Axis countries, had become a common practice in Egyptological literature up to the 1980s-1990s, when several works (A. B. Lloyd, G. Godrone, T. Holm-Rasmussen, W. Huss, G. Vittmann) provided a new perspective on the problem of Egyptian officials’ “collaboration” and led to reevaluating the scholars’ reception of the character of Egyptian-Persian interactions.