Egyptology and Social Media: the YouTube Experience Initiative

Ancient Egypt, and Egyptology by extension, have long been popular subjects and field of study. Exhibitions, documentaries, books, artistic productions… Whenever Ancient Egypt is presented, the general public is drawn to it, or at least intrigued by it. From a more positive perspective, we can consider that this popularity is a great way to spread knowledge about Egyptian civilization. Nonetheless, as light means shadow, this popularity has always fostered the emergence of conspiracy theories, fake revelations, ideological fights, and so on. Social media intensified this state of affairs, especially since Egyptologists have been late taking on this new medium, thus allowing people with varying degrees of malicious intent to occupy this space without being challenged or debunked. This paper aims to explain why and how I created a YouTube channel dedicated to Egyptology, and to present the conclusions I drew from this experience, both regarding Egyptology itself, as an academic field, and its relationship with the public. I will discuss the effectiveness of this practice, as well as its limitations, and what we can expect from the future of popularization of science, particularly History.