| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Scott Trafton. Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania. (New Americanists.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2004. Pp. xix, 348. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.

Egypt has held a consistent place in the imagination of Americans. We have imagined our country as a New Canaan, a place meaningful perhaps only in relation to an Old World figured as Egypt. We have also likened America to the Egyptian empire: America's strength and power place us in the pantheon of great civilizations inaugurated by those who inhabited the Nile flood plain so long ago. But Egypt offers another set of imaginings as well. African Americans, too often caught on the underside of the grand national experiment, drew on the trope of Egypt to describe their conditions of living and offered an ironic reading of the young republic as a site of unjust and undemocratic practices. For them, the seat of Pharaoh resided in Washington, D.C. Moreover, Egypt became an avenue for these marginalized peoples to reenter the drama of history, for invocations of black Egypt denied the claim that African-descended people had no recorded past. Obviously, the trope of Egypt has had multiple uses and meanings for Americans.

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