> and it makes you wonder how much of it is actual science
I don't wonder. You can look up egyptian texts with translations and pronunciation guides. We have literally hundreds of thousands of discarded papyri and plenty of papers detailing the archaeological processes of their excavations and interpretations. It's a gold-mine of explicit documentation about their practices and beliefs and logistics over millennia. We know about their diets, their genetics, how their ruling class changed over time, how they interpreted life and death, to the extent where we can draw likely religious transmission among stories with other near-east religions. The extent of evidence we have demonstrating actual knowledge is better than anything else in the ancient world.
Granted, interpretation isn't science, but it's still expected to be presented rationally. The linguistics that yielded the translation itself proved empirically very reliable.
There are many cranks into Egyptian history with many different agendas, though, and I'm sure many of them call themselves egyptologists.
I don't wonder. You can look up egyptian texts with translations and pronunciation guides. We have literally hundreds of thousands of discarded papyri and plenty of papers detailing the archaeological processes of their excavations and interpretations. It's a gold-mine of explicit documentation about their practices and beliefs and logistics over millennia. We know about their diets, their genetics, how their ruling class changed over time, how they interpreted life and death, to the extent where we can draw likely religious transmission among stories with other near-east religions. The extent of evidence we have demonstrating actual knowledge is better than anything else in the ancient world.
Granted, interpretation isn't science, but it's still expected to be presented rationally. The linguistics that yielded the translation itself proved empirically very reliable.
There are many cranks into Egyptian history with many different agendas, though, and I'm sure many of them call themselves egyptologists.