Hollywood’s ceaseless fascination with Ancient Egypt continues unabated with the recent release of IMAX’s latest film “Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs. The film was shot on location in Egypt, Morocco and the United States and is narrated by horror movie legend Christopher Lee and features his previous adversaries the mummified remains of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.
In fact, Lee was the star of the 1959 British version of “The Mummy made by Hammer films which also co-starred that other legend of the horror world, Peter Cushing. Yet this IMAX mummy feature is not fiction. While appealing to our almost obsessive interest in the world of the Ancient Egyptians, this programme also attempts to understand how the pharaohs lived and how they died.
“Secrets of the Pharaohs uses the now almost obligatory tool of the modern archaeologist, DNA analysis to uncover the identities, the diseases, the family ties and of course the secrets the pharaohs either tried to hide from us or forgot to tell us. It is more related to CSI than the Indiana Jones films.
Writing this, I began to wonder where the media industry’s attraction with the culture of Ancient Egypt originated and when did it all begin? I discovered a long relationship; films bond with the pharaohs began almost with the birth of the moving image.
Back in 1922 when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, the film industry was in its infancy. There had been a handful of movies made before the discovery set in Ancient Egypt, but it would take Tutankhamun and his treasures to kick-start an obsession that continues to the present day.
The media interest in the discovery of the tomb was phenomenal; journalists arrived in Egypt from all over the globe to cover the story. In those days most people got their news via the newspapers, though things were beginning to change.
With the journalists and tourists came a new phenomenon, the news reel teams. For the first time news was being filmed as it happened and shown in some cases only a few days later in cinemas around the world.
However the story goes that Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb, was not fond of the press and struck an exclusive deal with The Times of London to keep the journalists out of his way. The bored journalists from the national newspapers of the world then had nothing better to do than sit around and create the curse of Tutankamun’s tomb. With that, a legend and an obsession was born.
Alexandria may predate Alexandria the Great
As you head off to your summer vacation to Alexandria you might want to think about how you would feel if they had to rename the city Rhakotis. Ok, I admit that is unlikely to happen but maybe it should be if new evidence from archaeologists discovered recently turns out to be right.
The discovery, like almost all the major finds in archaeology, was an accident. I know you will find this hard to believe but many of the greatest finds in archaeology have been made by donkeys, old women and goats.
For instance, The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd and his herd of goats, in 1996 The Valley of the Golden Mummies in Bahareya Oasis was exposed by a donkey slipping its foot into a tomb entrance and the Amarna letters were uncovered by an old woman in Tel Amarna in 1887 while looking for mud bricks to use as fertilizer for her crops. I am afraid that we archaeologists cannot claim all the credit, all the time.
In this recent case archaeologists were searching in Alexandria’s East Bay for Greek and Roman ruins when they uncovered evidence of a city predating Alexandria’s conquest of Egypt by approximately 700 years. Rhakotis had been mentioned in some historical records notably in Book Four of Homer s “Odyssey, but, until now, actual evidence of its existence had not been located. The archaeologists from the Smithsonian Institution s National Museum of Natural History, working alongside the Supreme Council of Antiquities, now hope to uncover more of the life and times of Egypt’s second city Alexandria or should we say Rhakotis?
Returning Egypt’s Heritage?
I recently had the opportunity to meet Sharon Waxman, a journalist from the New York Times who was in Egypt researching her latest book tentatively titled “Stealing from the Pharaohs. Sharon is looking into the murky world of museum purchases and acquisitions made by the Western national museums several dating back some 200 years and the increasing hostile debate over ownership of this cultural heritage.
She has travelled to Egypt, Greece and Turkey to meet those demanding restitution of their cultural property and she also plans to also take the debate full circle with visits to the major museums of London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.
On her visit to Egypt, in meetings with Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, she learnt how Egypt is seeking the recovery of “key items, which he feels are essential to tell the story of Egypt’s history to future generations.
It has been stated by Dr. Zahi that these items will never be seen by the majority of Egyptian people unless they returned to Egypt. Those items being sought are 1) the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in London, 2) the bust of Nefertiti now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, 3) the statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunnu now in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hilesheim, 4) the Dendara Temple Zodiac now in the Louvre in Paris and finally 5) the bust of Kephren’s pyramid builder Ankhaf now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
It should be pointed out that in all of these cases the museums and authorities concerned insist that the objects they have in their possession were obtained legally.
So who owns Egypt’s Heritage? The question is a complex one, Egypt has had many rulers in the last two thousand years, some whom took a deep interest in Egypt’s past and wanted a piece for themselves and others who simply ignored it. On the one hand the stocking of the museums of the world with Egyptian antiquities has been a continuous free advertisement for Egypt’s tourism ministry for centuries and has compelled millions to visit and many more to study, read and watch everything they can about Ancient Egypt.
But the pharaonic past has failed to ignite the same kind of feelings with the youth of Egypt as it has with Western audiences. Perhaps Dr. Zahi hopes the returning of these key pieces would ignite a curiosity for their ancient past in young Egyptians as ultimately it will be them who must protect this rich heritage in the future.
Nigel J Hetheringtonis founder and owner of Past Preservers a heritage consultancy operating out of Cairo, London and the United States.
