Recent landscape archaeology projects have assumed that previous generations of Egyptologists eschewed research into environmental change, with the exception of one mid nineteenth century pioneer, Joseph Hekekyan. This article shows that this narrative is mainly a historiographical artefact with little basis in reality: scholars and travellers in Egypt were interested in environmental change, mainly in relation to the River Nile, as far back as the early eighteenth century. Debate about the extent to which Egypt's present-day topography had been shaped by ongoing geomorphological processes on the one hand, and ancient catastrophic events on the other was particularly lively in the early years of the nineteenth century, as was linking such geographical research to historical problems. This article concentrates primarily on the work of one English Egyptologist, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797–1875), in relation to the ancient extent of the Nile Delta, and of the agricultural lands of the Nile valley, at Thebes. Wilkinson followed leading catastrophist geologists, notably Georges Cuvier and Déodat Dolomieu, and investigated alluvial deposition in relation to ancient sites, including the Isle of Pharos, Alexandria, and the Colossi of Memnon, Thebes, in order to reconstruct the ancient landscape, and answer questions relating to Egyptian prehistory and political economy. Although Wilkinson's work may have fallen short of modern standards, it nevertheless demonstrates that early nineteenth century scholars appreciated that Egypt's landscape was dynamic rather than static, and that they used this knowledge to further their understanding of ancient Egyptian history.

最近的景观考古项目假设前几代埃及学家避开了对环境变化的研究，除了 19 世纪中期的一位先驱约瑟夫·赫克基安（Joseph Hekekyan）。本文表明，这种叙述主要是一种史学上的人工制品，几乎没有现实依据：早在 18 世纪初，埃及的学者和旅行者就对环境变化感兴趣，主要与尼罗河有关。一方面，关于埃及今天的地形在多大程度上受到正在进行的地貌过程的影响，另一方面古代灾难性事件在 19 世纪初期特别活跃，将这些地理研究与历史联系起来的争论非常激烈。问题。本文主要关注一位英国埃及古物学家约翰·加德纳·威尔金森爵士（Sir John Gardner Wilkinson，1797-1875 年）关于尼罗河三角洲古代范围和底比斯尼罗河谷农田的研究。威尔金森跟随主要的灾难论地质学家，尤其是乔治·居维叶和德奥达·多洛米厄，研究了与古代遗址相关的冲积沉积，包括法罗斯岛、亚历山大港和门农巨像、底比斯，以重建古代景观并回答问题与埃及史前史和政治经济学有关。尽管威尔金森的作品可能达不到现代标准，但它仍然表明 19 世纪早期的学者们认识到埃及的景观是动态的而不是静态的，