People were used to the Germans discovering all sorts of things; most of Mycenaean civilisation had been unearthed by Schliemann and other German scholars in the nineteenth century, and the only reason why the British discovered the Minoans was because they more or less tripped up and fell into a hole, which happened to be filled with elaborate grave goods. There was not much credit in that, at least in von Igelfeld's view. The same could be said of Egyptology, although in that case one had to admit that there had been a minor British contribution, bumbling and amateurish though it was.
Those eccentric English archaeologists who had stumbled into Egyptian tombs had more or less got what they deserved, in von Igelfeld's view, when they were struck down by mysterious curses (probably no more than long dormant microbes sealed into the pyramids). That would never had happened had it been German archaeology that made the discovery; the German professors undoubtedly would have sent their assistants in first.
Source
Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is the madly oblivious (and fictional) academic philologist and hero of several short stories by Alexander McCall Smith.
Alexander McCall Smith. 2003. On being light blue. In At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. Random House
