Nuns and Guns: Thoughts on Heritage, Histories, and Egyptology

In March 2017, the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy opened an exhibition called Missione Egitto 1903–1920, exploring the history of the archaeological excavations from which much of the museum's impressive (and impressively displayed) collection derives. Known as the Missione Archeologica Italiana, the excavations were overseen by the museum's then-director, Ernesto Schiaparelli—an esteemed Egyptologist and prominent Catholic philanthropist. “Mission” was one of several terms archaeologists used to identify their work in the colonial Middle East, including Egypt: the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo originated in 1880 as the “Mission archéologique,” to take just one example (Reid 2002, 175).