Egyptomania

This year marks two significant anniversaries in the world of Egyptology: the bicentenary of the decipherment of hieroglyphics (by Jean-François Champollion in September 1822) and the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb (by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in November 1922).

Both anniversaries will be celebrated with exhibitions, events and a host of publications: the public appetite for all things ancient Egyptian seems unquenchable. It is an appropriate moment, therefore, to reflect on the phenomenon of ‘Egyptomania’, and how the West’s enduring fascination for the world of the pharaohs reflects our own times and preoccupations.

Egyptomania is nothing new. It started over two thousand years ago. The Romans were fascinated by the civilisation of the pharaohs: its antiquity, exoticism and fabled wealth. First Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony had fallen under Egypt’s particular spell (or, rather, that of its queen, Cleopatra VII). The subsequent absorption of the Nile Valley into the Roman empire in 30 BC sparked an immediate fashion for Egyptian and Egyptianising motifs, objects and traditions. Obelisks were shipped to Rome to adorn the city’s public spaces; the emperor Augustus issued coins bearing the image of a sphinx; a temple to Egyptian deities was established just north of the Capitoline Hill; and at nearby Palestrina a wealthy family decorated their villa with a mosaic depicting the River Nile, complete with crocodiles. It was ‘cultural appropriation’ with a vengeance: declaring to the world that Egypt was now part of Rome.

The Roman fashion for Egyptian and Egyptian-inspired objects reached its zenith in the reign of Hadrian, whose journey up the Nile in AD 130 was one of the defining events of his life. The gardens of his villa at Tivoli were decorated with pharaonic sculpture, and a pair of granite lions, created under one of the last native Egyptian rulers, was installed at the Pantheon.
During the European Renaissance, the Egyptian and Egyptianising monuments dotted around the Eternal City were instrumental in re-igniting scholarly interest in pharaonic civilisation. Later, during the Enlightenment, travellers on the Grand Tour could experience something of the thrill of ancient Egypt vicariously, without leaving the relative safety of European soil.

In the late eighteenth century, European interest in pharaonic culture was piqued by its reputation as a source of esoteric wisdom. Freemasonry consciously adopted Egyptian iconography (compare, for example, the image of a pyramid on the US $1 bill), while Mozart’s operas Zaïde and The Magic Flute are replete with pharaonic symbolism. Egyptomania also found expression in the adoption of Egyptian architectural forms in country houses and landscape gardens. As well as being aesthetically pleasing, they signalled that the owner was a free thinker, open to new and radical ideas.

This philosophical impetus to learn more about ancient Egypt was most keenly felt in revolutionary France, whose leaders looked to ancient Rome as a model. In a memoir of 13 February 1798, the French foreign minister Talleyrand explained his government’s thinking, asserting that ‘Egypt was a province of the Roman Republic; she must become a province of the French Republic’. Geopolitics thus set the stage for the first modern expedition to Egypt, led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. Its twin aims were military and scientific, overlain with a primary political objective: to claim pharaonic civilisation for the greater glory of France.

It was French soldiers under Napoleon’s command who discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799; surrendered to Britain in 1801 following Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of the Nile, the stone, with its inscription in three scripts and two languages, made its way to the British Museum where it would play a key role in the decipherment of hieroglyphics. The Napoleonic adventure was a military disaster for the French, but a scientific triumph. The lavish publication of the expedition’s findings not only asserted French cultural dominance, it also ignited a new wave of Egyptomania across Europe. Elite taste enthusiastically embraced Egyptian motifs, with stone sphinxes set up on the banks of the Seine and gilded pharaonic figures decorating Napoleon’s Empire-style furniture. Egyptianising fixtures and fittings were likewise adopted for the Prince Regent’s orientalising fantasy, the Brighton Pavilion.

In the political arena, too, Europe’s great powers sought to assert their pretensions to pre-eminence by amassing collections of Egyptian objects. In 1818, the British Museum acquired a colossal bust of Ramesses II, dubbed the ‘Young Memnon’; its journey to London inspired Shelley to write his sonnet 'Ozymandias'. Not to be outdone, in 1821 the Louvre acquired the Dendera zodiac, to huge popular acclaim.

While Egyptomania may have subsided in the second half of the nineteenth century, it never entirely disappeared. Monuments from the Nile Valley continued to find their way to Western cities – notably ‘Cleopatra’s Needles’ to London and New York. But these were largely expressions of elite status or pretension. What really catapulted ancient Egyptian culture into the popular imagination was the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922.

The greatest archaeological discovery of all time made headlines around the world, striking a chord with a media weary of endless peace negotiations and a public desperate for escapism following the horrors of the First World War. As one contemporary writer put it, ‘To the Past we must go as a relief from To-day’s harshness’. The uncovering of an intact royal tomb from the golden age of the pharaohs had all the elements to feed the popular imagination, as well as one or two invented by the press to spice up their coverage (notably the story of the ‘pharaoh’s curse’). The discovery also proved a boon for the emerging film industry, cementing the mummy as a stock character in early horror movies.

Egyptian-themed merchandise and memorabilia of every conceivable kind both responded to and fed popular taste. There were Tutankhamun hats, Egyptianising clothing and biscuit-jars, photographs and replicas of objects from the tomb. From high fashion – a series of Cartier jewels inspired by the pharaoh’s treasures – to popular culture – a Tutankhamun ragtime dance – ancient Egypt was the flavour of the day. Architecture followed suit, and throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, across Europe and North America, buildings ranging from cinemas and public baths to factories and zoos were built in ‘neo-pharaonic’ style.
Tutankhamun’s tomb had an equally profound impact on the Egyptians themselves. Coming just eight months after their declaration of independence, the discovery offered proof of their past glory and inspiration for an autonomous future. Interest in the pharaonic past was suddenly propelled into the mainstream of Egyptian cultural and political thought. The teaching of pharaonic history was introduced in government schools, programmes were introduced to train Egyptian Egyptologists, and the Antiquities Service and Museum – for so long bastions of Western influence – were steadily Egyptianised.

The magical allure of ancient Egypt has thus been as powerful a weapon for contesting Western influence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as it was for bolstering it in the nineteenth. And Egyptomania is alive and flourishing, nurtured by a series of blockbuster touring exhibitions of Tutankhamun’s treasures, and by Hollywood, which recognises a long-running, popular franchise when it sees one.