Artists have looked to Egypt for centuries. For many observers, it is a phenomenon synonymous with the 1920s, when the rediscovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the story of a boy king buried with his riches sparked a ‘Tutmania’ that touched all aspects of popular culture and fashion. The story, however, stretches much further back into history. It runs from antiquity, when the Romans looted monuments to Italy, assimilated Egyptian gods into their pantheon, and made new ‘Egyptianising’ objects; through to the Cleopatra of Shakespeare’s stage and Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’; and even recent decades, where artists like David Hockney and Chris Ofili have continued to reinterpret Egyptian imagery and themes.
Artistic engagements with Egypt are as old as ancient Egypt itself, but the continued fascination is more than just an aesthetic. It is a visual reflection of how Egypt’s ancient heritage has been contested and reinterpreted for different purposes over time, and frequently reflects underlying political motivations. In Europe, for centuries ancient Egypt was seen as part of a Western story, not an African one. Egypt was held as the origin of wisdom and law, and the precursor of the classical civilisations. The great European powers of the 18th and 19th centuries therefore saw themselves as heirs to Egypt’s legacy. It is no coincidence that artistic uses of ancient Egyptian imagery flourished at the same time these powers attempted to physically control Egypt, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. Similarly, the archaeological discoveries that were shipped to European museums in the Victorian era, inspiring artists and designers, were only possible because of ongoing European colonial influence in Egypt. At each of the moments in which Egypt appears in art, it also tells us something about those reusing it. It cannot be understood without highlighting the – often colonial – motivations underlying it. Visions of Ancient Egypt, the Sainsbury Centre’s groundbreaking new exhibition, explores this enduring legacy and unpicks art’s constructed fantasies of ancient Egypt. For the first time, it brings the story – and issues surrounding it – up to the present day.
Ancient Egypt never truly ‘died’; echoes of it were kept alive through both religious stories and the accounts of Greek and Roman authors. The name Egypt was therefore always present in the Western mind, even if it was a distorted vision. Part of Egypt’s appeal is that its iconography is highly mutable, overlaid with different meanings to suit various agendas. In architecture, for example, Egyptian elements can act as a cipher for permanence and stability (and thus Victorian industrial works like the Clifton suspension bridge); the arcane and mysterious (typified by Freemasons’ halls across the world); or the sublime and ideas of death (every cemetery contains obelisks and pyramids as grave markers). Even today, Egypt means wildly different things to different groups; for Hollywood, ancient Egypt evokes discovery and adventure, but in Afrofuturism, it represents the sophistication and great age of African civilisations. There is no ‘one’ Egypt.
Gloucestershire