Bob Brier - Egyptomania--Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs

Egyptomania

Egyptomania

Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs

Bob Brier

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EGYPTOMANIA

Copyright Bob Brier, 2013.

All rights reserved.

For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United Statesa division of St. Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN 978-1-137-27860-9

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brier, Bob.

Egyptomania / Bob Brier.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

1. EgyptologyHistory. 2. EgyptAntiquities. 3. EgyptCivilizationTo 332 B.C. 4. Archaeology and historyEgypt. I. Title.

DT60.B749 2013

932.0072dc23

2013016347

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre, Inc.

First edition: November 2013

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

For Rus

Contents

ix

xi

by Zahi Hawass

Acknowledgments

T here are so many people who helped at various stages of this book that it is best to thank them chronologically. Rus Gant haunted the flea markets of London with me, found objects I never knew existed, and then photographed them for me! Pat Remler was of course in on the early formation of the collection, was there for all the adventures, and, as ever, was fearless in acquiring the goodies, even when we didnt have the money. Her cruel-but-fair editing helped immensely. Then, when the book was in its earliest stages, my favorite nit-picker, Judith Turner, caught the errors and helped keep the book on track.

My agent, Liza Dawson, helped tremendously to transform Egyptomania from my fantasy to a real book. Her associate, Anna Olswanger, was right there to help close the deal. Once we had a contract for the book, things really got hectic. Mary Chipman, techie extraordinaire, formatted, styled, edited, photographed, and did almost anything needed to ready the manuscript for the publisher, all the while improving the book. As our deadline approached and some really difficult photographs had to be taken, Brandon Remler stepped in on short notice and did the job. Also, a special thanks to Zahi Hawass for his wonderful introduction.

At Palgrave Macmillan, my first editor, Luba Ostashevsky, wasnt able to see the book through publication but was helpful in the early discussions. Later the manuscript was handed over to Karen Wolny, who was invaluable in determining the final content and form of the book. At the very end, I was delighted to have Elisabeth Dyssegaard as the final editor.

Thank you all. I couldnt have done it without you. I know that sometimes it was frantic, but I think we all had fun, which is what Egyptomania is all about.

Introduction

A ncient Egypt was a unique culture whose magic reaches down the millennia to us through words such as mummies, pyramids, the Sphinx, Tutankhamun, pharaohs, and curses. Few Egyptologists are able to use adventures and secrets from the realm of the pharaohs to capture peoples hearts. Bob Brier is one of them. The wonderful book you are about to read will explain to us the history of Egyptomania since the Greek and Roman period. Bob has done magnificent research and gathered together important information that will be both useful to scholars and interesting to the general public.

Napoleon Bonapartes expedition to Egypt in 1798 initiated the modern era of Egyptomania: We can say that Bonaparte, Vivant Denon (the head of his scientific team), and others discovered ancient Egypt for everyone. The publication of the Description de lgypte and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone can be thought of as the keys that opened the door for the world to understand the land of the pharaohs.

I myself began to witness many aspects of Egyptomania during my travels to give lectures all over the world. I will never forget my first lecture tour to the United States in 1977. During this tour, I gave a public talk in a hotel in Connecticut. To my amazement, the people who sat in the first row were wearing paper pyramids on their heads! This was very strange to me, something I had never seen before. At the end of my lecture, the people with the pyramid hats began to ask me about pyramid power. I told them that I had never heard about this before. They began to explain to me that if you put meat under a pyramid, it will never rot, and razors under a pyramid will stay sharp forever. I could see that some of the audience members were holding books about pyramid power, including a book about the experience of someone who had spent a night inside the Great Pyramid, and many other books that had nothing to do with science.

My second stop was in Santa Barbara, and I will never forget what I saw there. Some people said they slept under pyramid shapes, others talked about reincarnation (all the ladies had been Cleopatra or Nefertiti), and most of them believed that slaves had built the pyramids. I did not have the chance to correct all of these beliefs, but it was good just to laugh and enjoy all of this Egyptomania.

Part of my lecture was about Egyptomania. I talked about early explorers such as Howard Vyse, who used to use dynamite to open pyramidshe even opened a hole in the Great Sphinx with explosives; Waynman Dixon, who found the so-called air shafts in the Great Pyramid; Giovanni Belzoni and his discovery of the tomb of Seti I, and the mysterious tunnel in that tomb. But the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun was the key that opened the floodgates to Egyptomania. November 4, 1922, is a day that will never be forgotten.

The water boy who found the tomb of Tutankhamun for Carter is still remembered in the village of Qurna on the west bank of Luxor. It was very dramatic for this child, who brought his water jars to the Valley of the Kings. It was as he dug a hole in the sand to set up his jars that he found the first step of the tomb. Carter put a beautiful necklace from the tomb around the boys neck and took a photo of him. This photo still hangs in the home of his family, the Abdel Rassouls, and his grandchildren show it with pride to all the journalists and tourists who visit their house.

When I came back from my lecture tour in the States, the words pyramid power had captured my mind. I could imagine the scene of these people putting pyramids on their heads or sleeping under pyramid shapes. My office as Chief Inspector of the Pyramids at Giza was right next to the Great Pyramid. This office is like a monument now, and the inspectors of this area look at it and remember our great days in this place. But here I will mention two stories connected with this office. The first is when I wanted to test pyramid power. I bought a pound of meat and put half of it inside the Great Pyramid and the other half inside my office. I brought a few reporters to see this experiment. The results were just as you would expect, and I told the reporters that the pyramids in the States must have more power than the real pyramid!

The second story connected with my office at Giza concerns a media battle between me and those who believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by some other civilization, not the ancient Egyptians. This debate became hot news in the international press. There were lots of rumors that I was finding evidence of lost civilizations and hiding it. Then one day a young man from California who was spreading all this nonsense on the Internet came to my office. When he came to Giza, he asked to see my bathroom. I asked why, and he told me that people were saying that at 12 noon I went to my bathroom and opened a tunnel and went through to the Great Pyramid to hide evidence of lost civilizations and then came back. I told him to come with me to the bathroom and look for the tunnel, and I even gave him an ax to dig withI wanted to finish this craziness for once and for all.