The Fascination for Pharaohs
A new Egyptian museum is being created close to the pyramids and the Sphinx is undergoing a major facelift. Egyptology is contagious. Who cannot be amazed by the monumental architecture, the imagination of the engineers (still not fully understood), the planning and organisation of the reigns of those whose main earthly purpose was to plan their exit from it?
It is normal to observe monarchs with sceptres and sticks in their hands. The long staff, a weapon as much as a useful prop, is omnipresent in Egyptian art, but so is what we would call the cane. Long or short, alone or in each hand and crossed over the chest, the majestic cane lends grandeur and superiority.
It always has done. There is no carved statue or sarcophagus portraying a likeness holding a cane that can lack this element. Dignity and leadership are deposited by the winds of time just as the sands build up the dunes and the desert that engulfs its treasures for thousands of years.
Yet the Pharaohs and their mysteries make excellent reading. Every year new books and travel guides flock onto a thirsty market. Larousse’s Fine-Art edition boasts the following this year, complete with maps and reconstructions.
Le monde des Egyptiens, (The World of The Egyptians) overseen and directed by Marie-Ange Bonhême and Luc Pfirsch. Larousse, 2008, 360 p., 49 €, ISBN: 978-2-03-583311-2
I’d also grab a copy of Fodor’s Five Thousand Years of Civilization to brush up on my Pharaonic Egyptian knowledge and the recently newly edited Cairo Travel Guide from the same publisher and series.
What could be better than to go and see for one’s self? You’d need to take two canes, of course. One for walking in the dessert and another for being elegant and majestic in the best that Cairo’s nightlife can offer!
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Joseph, Overseer of the Pharoah's Granaries' by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1874
