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Ancient Egypt Magazine Issue Two - July / August 2000
Editor's Column The young Swiss boy on the Nile cruise seemed to find enough to keep himself occupied for the first few days. He practised his faultless English on anyone who would speak to him and played a good game of scrabble. He haggled like an expert in the boat’s shop, causing the proprietor to clutch his chest and raise his eyes to heaven. Everyone was completely charmed by him and we were even promised a song one evening. By the fourth day, however, the strain was beginning to tell. A frown creased his brow when he heard we were about to disembark for yet another tour of yet another temple. "Colonnes, et colonnes et colonnes," he grumbled with a pout: columns, columns and more columns. A New Zealander "doing" Europe many years earlier commented in similar vein, after being taken on another tour of another brooding Gothic pile, that this was an ABC tour: "Another B***** Cathedral!" The ancient monuments of Egypt have drawn travellers for centuries. By 1500 BC, the Giza Pyramids were so ancient that when the monarchs of the New Kingdom drove around there, exercising their horses in their new-fangled chariots, they exclaimed over the antiquity of it all just as we do. They looked back on the Pyramids as we look back over 1000 years, to the days of the Normans in Britain, or to Byzantium, or to some of the cultures of Meso-America. Who is to say what even more ancient gods were once worshipped at Giza, long before the Pyramids and long before recorded history? Later, much later, came Greek and Roman travellers to wonder over the sites and their builders. Their local guides were the sources of a mixture of tall tales mixed with factual accounts, and, of course, quite a lot was lost in the translation too. Later still came travellers from around the Arab world, bringing with them their own sciences and their own interpretations. The occasional European, too, would venture out into the desert to look at these pagan remnants and to meditate on the passing of time and, in their world, the triumph of Christianity. The enduring appeal of Egypt continued through Dark Age alchemists and Tudor and Stuart playwrights such as Shakespeare and was carried forward by 19th Century Bible scholars and early scientific Egyptologists such as those who travelled with Napoleon’s Expédition. By then, all knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language was long forgotten and myth had accumulated around Egypt much as sand had accumulated around the monuments. The Egyptian connection turned up in some unexpected and far-flung places. One Medieval Scottish legend told that Scota, Pharaoh’s daughter, founded Scotland. 19th Century Bible archaeology sought to prove connections between the tribes of Israel and modern day inhabitants of Britain, until mid-20th century scepticism and scientific rationalism attempted to wipe it out. Modern DNA testing now makes some unexpected connections between ancient and modern populations. As time passes, some old theories are disproved beyond recall and others are suddenly revived, causing as much surprise as a mummy suddenly springing into life when the spell is correctly cast at the appropriate moment in a film. Little has changed over the centuries. Most visitors to Egypt want to see what the ancients saw: the Pyramids, the temples, the tombs and the statues. Except that now there are so many of us that we are in danger of loving them to death. The Egyptian government and tourist office are trying to make visitors aware of Egypt’s other possibilities such as the Red Sea coast, the monasteries of Sinai, and the oases of the Western deserts. To the archaeologist, the greatest gift of Egypt is the hot dry preserving climate. The vast quantity of material that has survived from ancient times there enables us to build up a living portrait of the past. Archaeologists working in less helpful climates struggle harder to obtain this picture. When struggling with the crowds gazing at the "colonnes" at a popular temple, it is as well to remember that a woven sandal, fragment of jewellery or human fingerprint can be more revealing than the Sphinx. Miriam A Bibby |
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