Last week I visited a traveling exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry which displayed, quite beautifully, a replica of the burial chamber of an Egyptian pharaoh, King Tut. When the glare of all that gold subsided, and the wonder, that so many things had survived millennia intact, found by relentless searching of a passionate amateur archeologist, what was left?

Thoughts on looting and attention. The riches of the pharaohs, the sagas of finding their tombs, the mythology around the curses befalling the grave diggers all have been in the spotlight of public attention for more than a century. Academia was fascinated with deciphering the hieroglyphs. Scientists to this day use every tool in the box to determine modes of living and cause of death (as well as consequences of severe incestuous marriage practices) on various mummies. Exhibits of the real thing, as well as of the replicas of the artifacts and relics found, attract literally more visitors than any other exhibitions on earth.

What is the fascination? I remember as a child being dragged to see queen Nefertiti’s bust in Berlin, flying into the city which was walled off by the Iron Curtain in the 60s, my first flight ever. Stumped by my mother’s awe, unmoved by anything I saw and uncomfortable about the fact that I seemingly didn’t get it. Is it the thought that at least some remain unforgotten after death? Admiration of successful sleuthing? Awe at the riches devoted to select individuals?

Pleasure at the object evidence that some ancestral “deities” also had musical instruments, played board games and scratched their backs just as we do? These are not rhetorical questions, I truly wonder.

Here is a reflection from 1818 by romantic poet Percy Bisshe Shelley, about another pharaoh and the vagaries of civilizations.

Ozymandias

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.”

Certainly the Egyptian people have been looted. I am not talking about artifacts being dragged to European museums, either. I am thinking about what it would have taken to accumulate the riches displayed in the tombs, the building of the pyramids, the exploitations of the fellahs, or the victims of internecine conflicts among the families of the anointed in c. 1332–1323 BC when Tutankhaten lived his short life.

More recently, think what the Ottoman Empire, the French, starting with Napoleon and then the British did to the country. The latter occupied Egypt by 1882, stopping short of full annexation because of rival French interests, with endless empty promises that troops would be removed soon. Ostensibly to secure access to the Suez canal, the colonial move was much about marauding the country’s ability to grow lucrative crops.

By 1922, when Tut’s tomb was discovered, the British had eroded the country’s ability to feed itself by installing a mono crop approach on over 80% of all agricultural land: king cotton. Other than growing it and providing the unhealthy work of cleaning the fibers, the cotton processing industry was solely placed in England, depriving the Egyptian people of much needed work and industrial investment, making them dependent on expensive food imports, and prohibited any tariff or tax income from the cotton exports. And don’t get me even started on the Suez Canal…..that requires another full blog.

The people started to revolt in 1919 and by 1922 the British declared a limited independence – it took another 30 years to achieve full independence of the occupying forces – until they bombed the country in 1956 over the ownership of the canal. A great summary of the history can be found here: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/egyptian-independence-1919-22/

Despite life under colonial occupation, the intellectual life flourished – here is one of my favorite examples: surrealism found its local expression around George Henein and his followers .

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/surrealism-egypt-art-et-liberte-1938-1948/exhibition-guide