The 1950s were a period of profound changes in Czechoslovak science, both on an institutional level and with respect to its ideologization and indoctrination. These changes also applied to ethnology and ethnography. The reasons for this development are not hard to fi nd: under the new regime, the goal of any investigation of ''the people'' was to legitimise plans for the establishment of a new people’s democracy and to produce a detailed scientifi c report about the society’s historical journey towards communism. In this new environment, a totalitarian regime thus assigned these sciences a specifi c function: its goal was not only to ideologize these sciences, but also, and above all, to indoctrinate the population and to promote atheism. This contribution follows the life and work of some of the leading personages of Czechoslovak post-war ethnology and ethnography, such as Otokar Nahodil, and the careers of these sciences’ main institutional representatives, such as Otokar Pertold, the long-serving departmental head at the Charles University Faculty of Arts. Special attention is paid to the new regime’s popularisation strategies which involved post-war ethnologists and ethnographers. Mention is also made of Antonín Robek, Josef Macek, and Jiří Loukotka. The main objective of this contribution is to use a brief excursion into the development of post-war ethnography and ethnology in order to describe the phenomenon of education towards scientifi c atheism. Special emphasis is on the communication channels which the Communist leadership used to secure for its propaganda the broadest impact possible and on describing the role which scientists played in this effort.
Příspěvek představuje edici korespondence egyptologů Jaroslava Černého a Františka Lexy doplněnou o úvodní studii. Působení Lexy a Černého položilo základy novodobé československé (a tedy též české) egyptologie, jejíž počátky závisely mnohem více na osobním nasazení dějinných aktérů, nežli na formování institucionálního základu. Korespondence, zejména dopisy, které zasílal J. Černý F. Lexovi v meziválečném období, tedy ve 20. a 30 letech, ilustruje dobře úsilí obou mužů, jejichž cílem bylo ustavit seminář, rozvinout metodologické základy oboru a zajistit přístup k archeologické práci v Egyptě. Posledně zmíněný krok se zdařil s pomocí prvního československého vyslance v Egyptě, Cyrilla Duška, a také díky zásadní pomoci a spolupráci Francouzského ústavu orientální archeologie v Káhiře. Černý také vybudoval síť mezinárodního kontaktů a zprostředkoval poznatky a praktiky mezinárodní egyptologie pro okruh Lexových studentů v Praze., This paper contains an edition of letters and an introductory essay concerning Egyptologists Jaroslav Černý and František Lexa. The careers of Egyptologists Lexa and Černý laid foundations for the history of modern Czechoslovak (and by extension Czech) Egyptology, which depended more on personal efforts than on an institutional background. The correspondence sent by Černý to Lexa during the interwar period (the 1920s to 1930s) illustrates well the efforts of the two men to institute a seminar, develop a methodology of their scholarship and establish a fieldwork position in Egypt. The latter was obtained with the help of the first Czechoslovak envoy in Egypt, Cyrill Dušek, and of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, the support of which was decisive. Černý developed a network of international contacts and mediated transmission of knowledge to Lexa and the circle of students in Prague., and Překlad resumé: Hana Navrátilová a Melvyn Clarke
The history of the Aswan High Dam project and the related salvage campaign in Lower and Upper Nubia simultaneously includes a portrait of political and economic strife and the exceptional effort made by archaeologists. As the Cold War and decolonisation impacted the Egyptian political and cultural concepts, institutions and individuals worked in a network of professional and political allegiances that contradict the applicability of a singular guiding narrative, including that of decolonisation or the Cold War, if studied in isolation. A case study of two Egyptologists of Czechoslovak origin attempts to tie the global setting of an international archaeological operation to more localised national and personal perspectives. and Překlad resumé: Hana Navrátilová a Melvyn Clarke