On the "British generosity" in the light of an egyptological hypothesis

The idea of “generosity” of the British finds a peculiar refraction in their attempt to “renounce” the authorship of a famous hypotheses belonging to a British egyptologist, according to which the ancient Egyptian civilization was founded by a foreign “Dynastic Race”. This diffusionist hypothesis was developed by W.M. Flinders Petrie, influenced by the eugenic doctrine of F. Galton, with whom Petrie collaborated, supplying his anthropometric laboratory in London with human bones from his excavations. Historians have noted the racist views of Petrie, a supporter of eugenics and social Darwinism. In one of his monographs, the British egyptologist Toby Wilkinson attributed the authorship of the “Dynastic Race” hypothesis to the German anthropologist Hans Winkler, who had only an indirect connection with it (he discovered petroglyphs of large boats in the Eastern Desert of Upper Egypt, which served as the basis for the version of the invasion of Petrie’s “civilizers” into the Nile Valley from the Red Sea coast along Wadi Hammamat). Wilkinson also accused Winkler of adherence to nazi ideology and the use of the concept of “master race”, although it never appears in Winkler’s publications. Moreover, in the 1920s, Winkler was a member of the German communist party, what led to his dismissal from the University of Tübingen by the nazis after they came to power. Behind “generosity” of the British in this absurd concession of national scientific priority, accompanied by distortion of facts and outright lies, one can discern a desire to distance themselves from their politically incorrect theories.