Egypt has had a legendary image in the Western world through the Greek and Hebrew traditions. Egypt was already ancient to outsiders, and the idea of Egypt has continued to be at least as influential in the history of ideas as the actual historical Egypt itself.[1] All Egyptian culture was transmitted to Roman and post-Roman European culture through the lens of Hellenistic conceptions of it, until the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics by Jean-François Champollion in the 1820s rendered Egyptian texts legible, finally enabling an understanding of Egypt as the Egyptians themselves understood it.
After late antiquity, the Old Testament image of Egypt as the land of enslavement for the Hebrews predominated, and "Pharaoh" became a synonym for despotism and oppression in the 19th century. However, Enlightenment thinking and colonialist explorations in the late 18th century renewed interest in ancient Egypt as both a model for, and an exotic alternative to, Western culture, particularly as a Romantic source for classicizing architecture.
Antiquity
Classical texts
Herodotus, in his Histories, Book II, gives a detailed if selectively coloured and imaginative description of ancient Egypt. He praises peasants' preservation of history through oral tradition, and Egyptians' piety. He lists the many animals to which Egypt is home, including the mythical phoenix and winged serpent, and gives inaccurate descriptions of the hippopotamus and horned viper. Herodotus was quite critical about the stories he heard from the priests (II,123), but Diodorus Siculus, who visited Hellenistic Egypt in the 1st century BCE, gave credit to what he was told by priests: that many famous Greek philosophers had studied in Egypt. Both Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius (3rd century) mention that Thales studied in Egypt, while nothing is really known about Thales from his own time. Iamblichus of Chalcis in the 3rd century CE reports that Pythagoras studied in Egypt for 22 years.
From the classical texts that thus evolved, a mythical Egypt emerges as the mother-country of Religion, Wisdom, Philosophy, and Science.
Among the Romans, an Egypt that had been drawn into the Roman economic and political sphere was still a source of wonders: Ex Africa semper aliquid novi;[2] the exotic fauna of the Nile is embodied in the famous "Nilotic" mosaic from Praeneste, and Romanized iconographies were developed for the "Alexandrian Triad", Isis, who developed a widespread Roman following, Harpocrates, "god of silence", and the Ptolemaic syncretism of Serapis.[3]
The Bible
Egypt is mentioned 611 times in the Bible, between Genesis 12:10 and Revelation 11:8.[4] The Septuagint, through which most Christians knew the Hebrew Bible, was commissioned in Alexandria, it was remembered, with the embellishment that though the seventy scholars set to work upon the texts independently, miraculously each arrived at the same translation.
Joseph in Egypt: costume and setting translate the story to contemporary late-15th-century Ghent
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Following the 7th-century Muslim conquest of Egypt, the West lost direct contact with Egypt and its culture. In Medieval Europe, Egypt was depicted primarily in the illustration and interpretation of the biblical accounts. These illustrations were often quite fanciful, as the iconography and style of ancient Egyptian art, architecture and costume were largely unknown in the West (illustration, right). Dramatic settings of the Finding of Moses, the Plagues of Egypt, the Parting of the Red Sea and the story of Joseph in Egypt, and from the New Testament the Flight into Egypt often figured in medieval illuminated manuscripts. Biblical hermeneutics were primarily theological in nature, and had little to do with historical investigations. Throughout the Middle Ages "Mummia", made, if it were genuine, by pounding mummified bodies, was a standard product of apothecary shops.[5]
During the Renaissance the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher gave an allegorical "decipherment" of hieroglyphs through which Egypt was thought of as a source of ancient mystic or occult wisdom. In alchemist circles, the prestige of "Egyptians" rose. A few scholars, however, remained skeptic:[6] in the 16th century, Isaac Casaubon determined that the Corpus Hermeticum of the great Hermes Trismegistus was actually a Greek work of about the 4th century CE (even though Casaubon's work was also criticized by Ralph Cudworth).
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18th century
Foire du Caire, Paris (1798), with Hathor heads and Egyptianizing frieze
Early in the 18th century, Jean Terrasson had written Life of Sethos, a work of fiction, which launched the notion of Egyptian mysteries. In an atmosphere of antiquarian interest, a sense arose that ancient knowledge was somehow embodied in Egyptian monuments and lore. Egyptian imagery pervaded the European Freemasonry of the time and its imagery, such as the eye on the pyramid. Contemporaneously, the Great Seal of the United States (1782), which appears on the United States one-dollar bill also features this imagery. There are Egyptian references in Mozart's Masonic-themed[citation needed]Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791), and his earlier unfinished "Thamos".[citation needed]
The revival of curiosity about the Antique world, seen through written documents, spurred the publication of a collection of Greek texts that had been assembled in Late Antiquity, which were published as the corpus of works of Hermes Trismegistus. But the broken ruins that sometimes appeared in paintings of the episode of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt were always of Roman character.
With historicism came the first fictions set in the Egypt of the imagination. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra had been set partly in Alexandria, but its protagonists were noble and universal, and Shakespeare had not been concerned to evoke local color.
The rationale for "Egyptomania" rests on a similar concept: Westerners looked to ancient Egyptian motifs because ancient Egypt itself was intrinsically so alluring. The Egyptians used to consider their religion and their government somewhat eternal; they were supported in this thought by the enduring aspect of great public monuments which lasted forever and which appeared to resist the effects of time. Their legislators had judged that this moral impression would contribute to the stability of their empire.[7] The culture of Romanticism embraced every exotic locale, and its rise in the popular imagination coincided with Napoleon's failed Egyptian campaign and the start of modern Egyptology, beginning very much as a competitive enterprise between Britain and France. A modern "Battle of the Nile" could hardly fail to stir renewed curiosity about Egypt beyond the figure of Cleopatra. At about the same moment, the tarot was brought to Europe's attention by the Frenchman Antoine Court de Gebelin as a purported key to the occult knowledge of Egypt. All this gave rise to "Egyptomania" and occult tarot.
This legendary Egypt has been difficult, but not impossible to concile with the 1824 decryption of hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion. Inscriptions that a century earlier had been thought to hold occult wisdom, proved to be nothing more than royal names and titles, funerary formulae, boastful accounts of military campaigns, even though there remains an obscure part that might agree with the mystic vision. The explosion of new knowledge about actual Egyptian religion, wisdom and philosophy has been widely interpreted as exposing the mythical image of Egypt as an illusion that had been created by the Greek and Western imaginations.
In art, the development of Orientalism and the increased possibility of travel produced a large number of depictions, of varying degrees of accuracy. By the late 19th-century, exotic and carefully studied or researched decor was often dominant in depictions of both landscape and human figures, whether ancient or modern.[8]
On the most popular 19th-century level, all of ancient Egypt was reduced in the European imagination to the Nile, the Pyramids and the Great Sphinx in a setting of sand, characterized on a more literary level in the English poet Shelley's "Ozymandias" (1818):
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The well-known Egyptian cult of the dead inspired the Egyptian Revival themes first employed in Highgate Cemetery, near London, which was opened in 1839 by a company founded by the designer-entrepreneur Stephen Geary (1797–1854); its architectural features, which included a 'Gothic Catacomb' as well as an 'Egyptian Avenue', were brought to public attention once more by James Stevens Curl.[9]
Ancient Egypt provided the setting for the Italian composer Verdi's stately 1871 operaAida, commissioned by the Europeanized Khedive for premiere in Cairo.
In 1895, the Polish writer Bolesław Prus completed his only historical novel, Pharaoh, a study of mechanisms of political power, described against the backdrop of the fall of the Twentieth Dynasty and the New Kingdom. It is, at the same time, one of the most compelling literary reconstructions of life at every level of ancient Egyptian society. In 1966, the novel was adapted as a Polish feature film.[10]
In 1912, the discovery of a well-preserved painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, unearthed from its sculptor's workshop near the royal city of Amarna, raised interest in ancient Egypt. The bust, now in Berlin's Egyptian Museum, became well known through the medium of photography and is one of the most copied works of ancient Egyptian sculpture, with Nefertiti's strong-featured profile a notable influence on new ideals of feminine beauty in the 20th century.[11]
The 1922 discovery of the undamaged tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun revived public interest in ancient Egypt, the tomb's treasures influencing popular culture, including fashion and Art-Deco design.[12] The discovery also led to the idea, promoted by the popular press, of a 'curse' that allegedly led to the premature death of those who entered the tomb. These claims were dismissed by Howard Carter who called them 'foolish superstition' and 'tommy-rot'.[13] A more recent study by James Randi showed that expedition members who entered the tomb died at an average age of 73, slightly above the life expectancy of their social class at that time.[14] The idea of a "mummy's curse" inspired films such as The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, which popularized the idea of ancient Egyptian mummies reanimating as monsters. Agatha Christie's 1924 short story The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb also refers to mysterious deaths during an excavation.[15]
In 1978, Tutankhamun was commemorated in the song, "King Tut", by American comedian Steve Martin, and in 1986 the poses in some Egyptian mural art were evoked in the song "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles.
A best-selling series of novels by French author and Egyptologist Christian Jacq was inspired by the life of Pharaoh Ramses II ("the Great").
21st century
HBO's miniseries Rome features several episodes set in Greco-Roman Egypt. The faithful reconstructions of an ancient Egyptian court (as opposed to the historically correct Hellenistic culture) were built in Rome's Cinecittà studios. The series depicts dramatized accounts of the relations among Cleopatra, Ptolemy XIII, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Cleopatra is played by Lyndsey Marshal, and much of the second season is dedicated to events building up to the famous suicides of Cleopatra and her lover Mark Antony in 30 BCE.
La Reine Soleil, a 2007 animated film by Philippe Leclerc, features Akhenaten, Tutankhaten (later Tutankhamun), Akhesa (Ankhesenepaten, later Ankhesenamun), Nefertiti, and Horemheb in a complex struggle pitting the priests of Amun against Akhenaten's intolerant monotheism.
American singer Katy Perry released in 2013 the song Dark Horse and the plot of the music video for the song was set it ancient Memphis. The video features numerous ancient Egyptian symbols and many of the things featured in it are historically accurate even though no egyptologists were consulted during its production. The turquoise makeup worn by Katy Perry in the video would have been used in Ancient Egypt, the dress she wore is similar in style to the Graeco-Roman clothes worn by nobles such as Cleopatra, the video features the Eye of Horus a powerful symbol in Ancient Egypt and the paintings behind the throne that Katy Perry sits on appear to have been made based on real examples from Ancient Egyptian tombs.[16]
The 2017 album, 20s A Difficult Age by recording artist Marcus Orelias one of the songs is titled "Aset" an original spelling of the name "Isis". The music video directed by director Luis Montoya featured a hieroglyph of Isis in its title card.[17]
Notes
↑ Janetta Rebold Benton and"Ancient Egypt in the European imagination" p. 54ff. Robert DiYanni, Arts and Culture: an introduction to the humanities, 1999: "Ancient Egypt in the European imagination", pp 54ff.
↑ An overview is M. J. Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana: nilotic scenes and the Roman views of Egypt, 2002.
↑ Isis: Laurent Bricault, M. J. Versluys, P. G. P. Meyboom, eds. Nile into Tiber: Egypt in the Roman world: proceedings of the IIIrd International Conference of Isis Studies (Leiden), May 11–14, 2005; Harpocrates: Iconography of Harpocrates (PDF-article)Archived April 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine ; Serapis: Anne Roullet, The Egyptian and Egyptianizing monuments of imperial Rome, 1972.
↑ Strong, James (2001). Strong's Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. pp.221–222. ISBN0-7852-4540-5.
↑ Johann Kestler enumerated the contemporary critics of Kircher: "Some critics, Kestler wrote with amazement, believed that Kircher's explanation of the hieroglyphs was simply 'a figment of his own mind'" (Paula Findlen, Athanasius Kircher: the last man who knew everything, 2004:38)
↑ Reprinted in Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac, Fourier et Napoleon: l'Egypte et les cent jours: memoires et documents inedits, Paris, Firmin Didot Freres, 1844, p. 170.
↑ Thompson, Jason, Wonderful Things: A History of Egyptology 1: From Antiquity to 1881, 255, 2015, The American University in Cairo Press, ISBN9774165993, 9789774165993, google books; Tromans, Nicholas, and others, The Lure of the East, British Orientalist Painting, 2008, Tate Publishing, ISBN9781854377333
↑ James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death, 1972, pp. 86-102.
Breasted, James Henry, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, with Illustrations and Maps, New York, Bantam Books, 1967.
Curl, James Stevens, The Egyptian Revival, revised and enlarged edition, New York, Routledge, 2005, ISBN0-415-36119-2 (paperback), ISBN0-415-36118-4 (hardback).
Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who ruled c. 1332 – 1323 BC during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he was likely a son of Akhenaten, thought to be the KV55 mummy. His mother was identified through DNA testing as The Younger Lady buried in KV35; she was a full sister of her husband.
Nefertiti was a queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the great royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for their radical overhaul of state religious policy, in which they promoted the earliest known form of monotheism, Atenism, centered on the sun disc and its direct connection to the royal household. With her husband, she reigned at what was arguably the wealthiest period of ancient Egyptian history. After her husband's death, some scholars believe that Nefertiti ruled briefly as the female king known by the throne name, Neferneferuaten and before the ascension of Tutankhamun, although this identification is a matter of ongoing debate. If Nefertiti did rule as Pharaoh, her reign was marked by the fall of Amarna and relocation of the capital back to the traditional city of Thebes.
Tiye was the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, mother of pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of pharaoh Tutankhamun; her parents were Yuya and Thuya. In 2010, DNA analysis confirmed her as the mummy known as "The Elder Lady" found in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35) in 1898.
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, commonly known as the Egyptian Museum, located in Cairo, Egypt, houses the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. It houses over 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display. Located in Tahrir Square in a building built in 1901, it is the largest museum in Africa. Among its masterpieces are Pharaoh Tutankhamun's treasure, including its iconic gold burial mask, widely considered one of the best-known works of art in the world and a prominent symbol of ancient Egypt.
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Smenkhkare was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of unknown background who lived and ruled during the Amarna Period of the 18th Dynasty. Smenkhkare was husband to Meritaten, the daughter of his likely co-regent, Akhenaten. Since the Amarna period was subject to a large-scale condemnation of memory by later Pharaohs, very little can be said of Smenkhkare with certainty, and he has hence been subject to immense speculation.
Ankhesenamun was a queen who lived during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. Born Ankhesenpaaten, she was the third of six known daughters of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and his Great Royal Wife Nefertiti. She became the Great Royal Wife of Tutankhamun. The change in her name reflects the changes in ancient Egyptian religion during her lifetime after her father's death. Her youth is well documented in the ancient reliefs and paintings of the reign of her parents.
Egypt is a BBC television docudrama serial portraying events in the history of Egyptology from the 18th through early 20th centuries. It originally aired on Sunday nights at 9 pm on BBC1 in 2005. The first two episodes explored the work of Howard Carter and his archaeological quest in Egypt in the early part of the twentieth century. The next two episodes focused on the eccentric explorer "The Great Belzoni" played here by Matthew Kelly. The final two episodes dramatise the discovery and deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion.
Egyptomania refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this campaign, which led to a large interest in the documentation of ancient monuments in Egypt. Thorough documentation of ancient ruins led to an increase in the interest about ancient Egypt. In 1822, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the ancient hieroglyphs by using the Rosetta Stone that was recovered by French troops in 1799, and hence began the scientific study of egyptology.
Joyce Ann Tyldesley is a British archaeologist and Egyptologist, academic, writer and broadcaster who specialises in the women of ancient Egypt. She was interviewed on the TV series 'Cunk on Earth', about Egypt's pyramids, in 2022.
Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank is a BBC Television documentary series in which Dan Cruickshank explores the mysteries of Ancient Egypt.
The question of the race of ancient Egyptians was raised historically as a product of the early racial concepts of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was linked to models of racial hierarchy primarily based on craniometry and anthropometry. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture.
The curse of the pharaohs or the mummy's curse is a curse alleged to be cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an ancient Egyptian, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, is claimed to cause bad luck, illness, or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is 'real' in the sense of having scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria, fungi or radiation. However, the modern origins of Egyptian mummy curse tales, their development primarily in European cultures, the shift from magic to science to explain curses, and their changing uses—from condemning disturbance of the dead to entertaining horror film audiences—suggest that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural, not scientific, phenomenon.
The Younger Lady is the informal name given to an ancient Egyptian mummy discovered within tomb KV35 in the Valley of the Kings by archaeologist Victor Loret in 1898. The mummy also has been given the designation KV35YL and 61072, and currently resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Through recent DNA tests, this mummy has been identified as the mother of the pharaoh Tutankhamun and a daughter of pharaoh Amenhotep III and his Great Royal Wife Tiye. Early speculation that this mummy was the remains of Nefertiti was argued to be incorrect, as nowhere is Nefertiti accorded the title "King's daughter."
The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty spanned the period from 1550/1549 to 1292 BC. This dynasty is also known as the Thutmoside Dynasty) for the four pharaohs named Thutmose.
This page list topics related to ancient Egypt.
The Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre is a department of the Louvre that is responsible for artifacts from the Nile civilizations which date from 4,000 BC to the 4th century. The collection, comprising over 50,000 pieces, is among the world's largest, overviews Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods.
Aidan Mark Dodson is an English Egyptologist and historian. He has been honorary professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol since 1 August 2018.
The Search for Ancient Egypt is a 1986 illustrated monograph on the history of the rediscovery of ancient Egypt and of Egyptology. Written by the French Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter, and published by Éditions Gallimard as the first volume in their pocket collection "Découvertes". The book was awarded a literary prize by the Fondation de France in 1987.
Obeliscus Pamphilius is a 1650 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was published in Rome by Ludovico Grignani and dedicated to Pope Innocent X in his jubilee year. The subject of the work was Kircher's attempt to translate the hieroglyphs on the sides of an obelisk erected in the Piazza Navona.
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