Egyptologist dancers – re-enacting ‘ancient Egyptian’ dances at the beginning of the 20th century

Archaeologists and dance historians face similar challenges in their scientific life: more often than not, they can only work with fragments, from which they try to reconstruct an artefact or a cultural technique. This intense work with missing pieces and links obviously presents great challenges. The question of how near reconstructions come to imitating the originals, or how authentic a technique or a gesture might be, remains a constant preoccupation. It is with historical reconstruction in mind that this article analyses Sent M’Ahesa’s, Nyota Inyoka’s and Irena Lexová’s ‘ancient Egyptian’ dance and costume creations from the first half of the