Season 2 Episode 5: Tombs, Funerals, and Underworlds, Oh My!

Have you ever wanted to explore the old tombs of Ancient Egypt? Ever wonder why they were made? Or what exactly the journey to the underworld looked like? In this episode of Now as Then, we’ll be diving into Ancient Egyptian tombs, the ways they assisted the dead to the underworld, and the ways that the contents found within them still pervade western media to this day. From there, we’ll be touching on the ways media uses tombs to capitalize off of Ancient Egypt, and the ways that Ancient Egypt has continued to be culturally relevant, in part due to tombs.

Featuring: Kylie Thompsen, UCLA PhD Student

Transcript

Section One: Introduction

Musical Intro

SOPHIE NENNINGER: So imagine it’s the 1800s and you’re unexplored traveling into Egypt for the first time. Now you’ve never been and as you’re seeing the grand artifacts and architecture of the ancient kingdom, you’re wondering, Yo, what’s up with all this dead stuff? Hi, welcome to season two episode five of now versus then, I’m Sophie Nenninger and today we’re going to be talking about the tombs of ancient Egypt.

So right off the gate, let me address the idea of death in ancient Egypt that has been perpetrated by the Western world. Because of all the preserved tombs mummies and sarcophagi, Egypt has been branded as an exotic mummy obsessed kingdom. And while that is not entirely untrue, it does depict Egypt in a two dimensional light, which I will be working to uncover within this episode.

Starting off the podcast we’ll explore the original tombs of ancient Egypt, what they look like and the things they were buried with the dead. Moving on to the Victorian era. We’ll be talking about Egyptomania and the 1800s and the ways that the aesthetics of tombs were integrated into the art and architecture of Britain. From there, it’s the roaring 20s and the ways that art deco was inspired by King Tut’s tomb and as well as some of the fashion trends inspired by the sarcophagi. Lastly, we’ll be covering the modern world how fashion has capitalized on some of the Egyptian tomb aesthetics and interpreted the artwork into popular culture.

[Musical Transition]

Section Two: Ancient Egyptian Tombs (00:02:07)

NENNINGER: So the Egyptians had been burying their dead in tombs since the pre dynastic period, which was about 6000 to 3100 BCE. But these tombs are not our traditional idea of what an ancient Egyptian tomb would look like. They were graves lined with brick in the ground, often containing pottery and small in contrast to the pyramids of the Old Kingdom.¹

Our interviewee Kylie Thompson mentioned these kinds of tombs and our conversation about the big tombs of ancient Egypt. And because I messed up the audio, I’ll introduce her here. Kylie is a PhD candidate for Near Eastern language and cultures department at UCLA, and she focuses in Middle Kingdom funerary archaeology, here she was explaining the timeline of tombs that existed in the ancient Egyptian kingdoms.

KYLIE THOMPSEN: You want to start at like the earliest point of what we consider of, you know, Ancient Egypt. You start with tombs that are just directly into the ground. It’s kind of a lot like, you know, our modern cemeteries, you know, buried with, you know, obviously the bodies and maybe some objects really depending on sort of social status. That’s a huge thing, especially in the ancient world, we deduce a lot of information about people through their tombs, and what was in them and how large they were, things like this. Doesn’t always mean the same thing, but it helps us understand more about them as time progressed from the pre dynastic period, and you go into the Old Kingdom, that’s when you get like things called mastaba tombs. So you still have like shafts and chambers and what have you under the ground but then you have this large mud brick structure on top so you can just imagine being an ancient Egyptian walking around and there are these you know, giant superstructures.

Of course, that would be you know, probably quite intense. So you can- and it’s intense for us to even though we don’t have them perfectly preserved, you go to Egypt. Now you can sort of see what these look like. And then you kind of continue on with this. You have these mastaba tombs, but you also get pyramids and these, I kind of touched on this before, but you’re going to get drastically different types of tombs, depending on social status. And so if you’re the king, the Pharaoh, you start to have pyramids built. The upper elite –These things are sort of hard to, you know, when we’re using like our modern day, sort of conceptions of like, what elite is, but suffice it to say upper elites, they have these fill these mastaba tombs. Sometimes rock cut to tombs, so things like into a cliff.

But you know, then you have also massive pyramids with a lot of stuff inside. We don’t know exactly what because that’s another important thing about ancient Egyptian tombs most were looted, objects were taken out to be reused. The tombs themselves were reused, right. So we are missing a lot of information. Pyramids, you know, sort of persisted for a while for, you know, through the Middle Kingdom. That’s the time period that I’m interested in. And then they sort of fall off. And now when we get to the new kingdom, which I think this is another thing people think about when thinking about tombs is for example, King Tut’s tomb. He’s a new kingdom King. And that’s where you have like the Valley of the Kings. This is used for, you know, a couple hundreds of years. And these are, you know, you have sort of this mountainous–that’s probably not the right word, but you have all these different cliff faces and tombs were being dug into this into the rock. And you have all these different chambers and King Tut. So famous not because he did anything super exciting but just because he’s actually the only sort of King that we have his funerary equipment almost completely preserved–we do know that some stuff was looted in antiquity. But so like all these, you know, this idea we have of all the gold and all the different things and the decoration that all comes from King Tut’s tomb and that’s why he’s, you know, captured the imagination of, you know, like almost everybody, right?

And yeah, and that sort of, you know, continues on these rock cut tombs are what are most, you know, it’s what most people are doing, who have the means to have these types of tombs. But yeah, so it’s a long history. It’s a couple thousand years, but that’s sort of like a quick and dirty rundown to styles throughout the ages.

NENNINGER: So like Kylie said, the tombs built to bury the dead actually varied quite a bit. They went from these original cemeteries to mastabas to pyramids to tombs cut out of the sides of mountains, to chambers built in the Valley of the Kings and to the eventual merging of Egyptian burials with Roman and Greek tradition in the Ptolemaic period.

And I know that in our modern perception of tombs, you might just think, oh, we have cemeteries. They’re not too different from tombs, but tombs in cemeteries were relatively uncommon at this time in societies other than Egypt. That’s not to say they didn’t exist, but not to the level of ancient Egypt.²

The tomb that I’m choosing to focus on today was the tomb of Seti I who was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh in the 19th dynasty. His tomb was located in the East Valley of the Kings and is the longest tomb in the valley at 137 meters.³ I’m choosing to use this tomb because the reliefs are incredibly extravagant, and I think the depictions on the walls encapsulate a lot of what we consider today to be cliche Egyptian aesthetics due to the nature of the excavation of the tomb. The function of the tomb itself was to assist the dead to the afterlife. Seti’s tomb was large enough to house the texts of multiple books which were there as a guide for Seti, the Book of the Dead was inscribed on the walls of the tomb to guide the king to the duat, or the underworld. In an essay by Bojana Mosjav, she details the meanings and inscriptions and the artwork on the walls, the secret names of Ra that were invoked for the protection of the pharaoh, his image ingrained on the wall, bringing him back to life with the heavenly cow ready to carry him into the sky. His sarcophagus was laid under the night sky, the sky goddess embracing the tomb sparkled with stars. Thus, the tomb itself functions as a piece of the physical underworld, a space tied between life and death.⁴

So from what we know about all of these kinds of tombs in the interiors of them, how were they supposed to, like, assist the dead to the underworld?

THOMPSEN: So that’s a great question because I think it’s what most people sort of forget about when thinking about tombs that it was a space for the dead to be transformed. And then eventually, you know, make it into the afterlife.

There’s so many different elements that come into play. Again, depending on what type of tool it is, but I’ll just sort of give a generalized answer that can sort of somewhat be applied throughout history to a degree. But you have, you know, for example, you have like the actual burial chamber right, a tomb could be much larger, it has a funerary chapel where people bring offerings to the dead. You have, you know, different sub chambers, like empty chambers, all these different things where objects are going, you have text on the walls and hieroglyphs that have sort of if you’ve ever heard of like the Book of the Dead people, you know, they’ll say like, Book of the Dead spell 117 something like this. So again, I think even just that language, kind of like, you know, captures the imagination. But you know, you have these texts that are supposed to assist the dead to the underworld. Certainly The fact that they’re mummified that they’re in a coffin that they’re in a sarcophagus, the colors that are used, they’re just, it’s so like, every element in a way sort of plays into the ultimate goal of having the deceased person transformed and, you know, go properly to the afterlife, right? Yeah. So yeah, totally.

NENNINGER: So in the tomb of Seti I, we see a lot of the texts and books that Kylie was talking about. Because of the size of the tomb, there was enough wall space to include the book of the afterlife, the Amduat or the Book of the Dead, the Book of the Gates, the Litany of the Sun, the Book of the Heavenly Cow and the ritual Opening of the Mouth, as well as the Judgment of Osiris. Now, I don’t have enough time to explain all of these depictions but the Book of the Heavenly Cow, for example, is an ancient Egyptian text which deals with the rebellion of humanity against Ra and then his destruction of all of the rebels against him through the goddess Hathor. But when Hathor is sent down to earth, she kind of goes on this or bloodlust rampage. So Ra decides to have mercy and gets Hathor drunk so that she turns away from her bad side which is named Sekhmet back into Hathor who is a friend of humanity. But after all of this mess goes down Ra decides that he’s tired of looking over humanity. So he asks the goddess Nun to take him up to the heavens, but Nun doesn’t really know how to do this. So Nut turns Nun into the Heavenly Cow and Ra rides away on her back while the other Gods help her to transport Ra, higher from the earth and away from human beings. I chose this one because I love cows and I could totally get behind a celestial heavenly cow. That sounds kind of amazing.⁵

Anyways, the actual depiction on the wall is a giant cow being held by all of the gods in assisting raw up to the heavens, and this image in a tomb was to assist the pharaoh up into their rightful place in the heavens(Osirisnet). Looking at the tomb of Seti I today, it’s now very dramatically lit, and some of the paint has rubbed off but the small chapel and pillared hallway still have retained their color. In the images I’m seeing of the walls most of them appear to be bas reliefs in the aspect of style of most traditional ancient Egyptian art. A bas relief is when an image is etched out of a wall and the image pops out and the background remains flat. And aspective art style can be described as art that lacks perspective.⁶This doesn’t make it lesser than it just means it serves a different purpose than art with perspective and it’s used to describe the traditional Egyptian style of drawing people in profile. That is commonly associated with ancient Egyptian art now, as you can see, inspired by music like walk like an Egyptian.

So these details about the tomb are important because it’s a lot of what ends up being passed down to modern day society, and things that we commonly associate with ancient Egypt. These walls and the tomb have a sense of timelessness. stillness, like it could last an eternity rather just encapsulating a moment. The walls depict Gods like Horace, Isis, Osiris and Amun and the paint that has lasted is golden, teal, and a rich read. These depictions are what I see most commonly throughout history and pieces inspired by Ancient Egypt, the golden ideal of the kingdom, vibrant, stoic, everlasting and aspective. These images weren’t depicted to capture a moment like impressionists might have, but they were created to immortalize the king. And in doing so they immortalized a society or at least made it last long enough for it to reach modern society.

Also, although this tomb was robbed before archaeologists ever discovered it, it is important to note that it was full of the pharaohs, belongings and pieces of art that were meant to accompany him to the underworld.

I think that this tomb is representative of how the Western world began to see and interpret Ancient Egypt. The beautiful golden art we see on the walls and aspect of style becomes taken on as an aesthetic in the world of the Victorian era and onward, and the fashion of the goddesses in the depictions on the walls became inspiration for later fashion in the 1920s Art Deco movement.

It was discovered in 1817 by Giovanni Belzoni, and parts of the interior were taken to London and Duluth, as well as the sarcophagus which is now in the John Soane’s museum. The tomb was also vandalized by Egyptologists. The tomb was also vandalized by Egyptologists Champollion and Lepsius who cut off two life size reliefs for the Louvre.⁷ Because so much of this tomb was immediately shipped off to Europe, it’s easy to make the claim that Europe became inspired by it.

So now let’s Boogie on down to the Victorian era and see how Europe was shaped by ancient Egypt.

Section Three: Egyptomania in Victorian England (00:15:22)

[Musical Transition]

NENNINGER: So several thousand years go by we all know the drama of Antony and Cleopatra, the Greeks take over Egypt and we skip over to Napoleonic France. When Napoleon enters Egypt, he takes claim over Egyptian artifacts and artwork and begins collecting artifacts to bring back to France.⁸ This triggers the first era of Egyptomania in Europe, and the British get this creepy fascination with ancient Egypt and start incorporating it into everything. So for some context on Victorian England, the era is famous for Queen Victoria who basically sent the country into a 100 year romantic slash emo party.

The era was a juxtaposition between the new industrialism that the country was headed towards and the Gothic era that it was bent on going back to. And one of the big reasons that this time was so dark was because Queen Victoria herself experienced the death of her husband, and was mourning for most of our queenship. Because of this, the entire era is branded by this Gothic and romantic aesthetic for life.⁹

Because of the obsession with death and immortality and the natural ways of living, A lot of the British clung to this idea of ancient Egypt, which they associated with death, but also contradictory with an existence of immortality due to the longevity of its rule.

NENNINGER: So, when we think about it when these objects were starting to be taken out of tombs in the 1800s, what do you think like Europeans clung on to the most as like this idea of ancient Egyptian tombs and the dead and all of this, like, ooh, afterlife business.

THOMPSEN: So it totally kind of, I mean, it’s been brought up already in our short interview so far, but obviously these things just when you look at it, It definitely, again, really captures the imagination, but you sort of get during the 1800s. It’s called like Egyptian revival. And because, you know, I think most people are sort of familiar with, like the Art Deco style and the like 1930s. But even like you mentioned before , when you know, there’s a lot of stuff happening in Egypt, as it relates to like archaeological projects. And so objects were being transported back to the museum, and a lot of stuff is related to what would have been in the tombs or it came from tombs, but they, you know, they’re looted and sold on the art market, things like this. I think what sort of got them the most were, of course, the pyramids, which is a tomb but that was super incorporated into a lot of different things, pyramids themselves. This isn’t necessarily related to the tomb, but I feel like I should bring it up, you know, obelisks like our own. You know, like, we have In Washington, DC, a giant obelisk, things like this were really sort of pervasive within this, you know, visual culture of the 1800s Egyptian revival objects in the tomb like this scarab you know, the little winged beetles.

NENNINGER: Yea!

THOMPSEN: This comes up like on furniture, jewelry, all this different type of stuff. So even though you might see it outside of a tomb context as well, it’s also in the tomb. So they’re kind of you know, I think certainly the like tomb decoration is what really sort of fascinated people. The dress like what people are wearing in, like depictions on the walls, I think, you know, that really lik the jewelry that they’re wearing. I think that also was incorporated. So a lot of these different elements. Definitely in architecture and furniture and probably clothing and jewelry as well, all sorts of, you know.

NENNINGER: So when we talk about the 1800s incorporation of Egypt into the identity of Europe, it’s important to mention Orientalism and the justification of stealing artifacts by European entities. I’ll get more into Orientalism later but in the context of the 1800s Orientalism was basically the depiction of Eastern and Near Eastern countries as inferior to Europe to justify taking their artifacts.¹⁰

Due to the nature of the Gothic era as an artistic movement. Much of Egyptian aesthetics were incorporated into the look of the artistic style. In terms of visual aesthetics, scarab necklaces and rings based off of the amulets found in ancient Egyptian tombs were incorporated into the mourning garments of those mourning the dead. Egyptian scarab amulets were worn by the dead to assist them in the weighing of the heartbeat by Osiris. However, in the Victorian era, widows would wear them after their husbands had died.¹¹ Victorian Englanders took their mourning very seriously. There were a set of rules for how you’re supposed to dress and act after someone important to you died.

Garb wasn’t the only thing inspired by Egyptian tombs. The most literal incorporation of ancient Egyptian tombs was in the West section of the Highgate Cemetery in London, which was nicknamed Egyptian Avenue.¹² Now on first glance, I didn’t really see the Egyptian influence and if it had not been nicknamed Egyptian Avenue, I probably would not have found it. The cemetery is definitely the British ideal of what Egypt look like and not completely accurate. It’s kind of when people used to paint elephants who have never seen an elephant and then the painting ends up looking horrendous and nothing like an elephant. This section of the cemetery has an archway into it, and it is lined with two columns and there’s an obelisk on either side. The actual archway has this kind of rounded upside down V shape, which I don’t believe is an accurate representation of what a real doorway looks like in ancient Egyptian tombs. It seems a little more inspired from indo Islamic architecture, such as the Taj Mahal and they kind of just threw on this style of archway associating it with other exotic quote unquote, countries.¹³ A real Egyptian tomb often had a traditional rectangular shaped archway into the doorway. However, the two columns lining it do look accurate to what a tomb really did look like in ancient Egypt and the novelists are obviously from Egypt, even though they aren’t really at the center entryway into tombs. I think it’s important to note about the cemetery that even though it’s not really an accurate depiction of what ancient Egyptian tombs look like, it does point to the fact that Britain was obsessed with this Egyptian ideal of death, enough to incorporate it into their own funerary rituals. Although it wasn’t a perfect depiction of an ancient Egyptian tomb. The British believe that this Egyptian way of burying their dead is associated with true respect of their dead. Despite this, it does perpetuate the idea that Egypt was this foreign exotic country to the extent that Britain actually kind of grouped together two countries, which are nowhere near each other to create this one theme cemetery.

And more specifically in the realm of art, the Gothic artistic movement incorporated very literally a lot of Egyptian themes. Oscar Wilde published his book The Sphinx, Bram Stoker published the Jewel of the Seven Stars, and I think most popularly, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias.

This poem has stayed relevant since the original publication even being featured in the trailer for the final season of Breaking Bad. Here’s a segment of the poem read by Bryan Cranston.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”¹⁴

So now that Bryan Cranston has not only flexed on us with his impeccable voice, but with the great audio quality compared to my childhood closet bedroom with a blanket over my head, let’s get into what this poem means.

The poem depicts the remnants of the statue of Ramses II, and although it doesn’t give a description of a tomb, the poem is about a once godlike King and one that was determined to have his legacy live on after death. Not only does the sculpture itself speak to the nature of immortality after death in ancient Egypt, but it also speaks to this Gothic fear of death. All of the literature of the period that was written about undead creatures highlights a fascination of the dead, but also a fear of it funneled through a lens of a creature incapable of dying. The irony of this poem is that although Shelley is making a point that no one can survive the test of time, yet he immortalizes Ramses II by writing about him and he is immortalized again through the Breaking Bad reference to him. Shelley also depicts an Egypt different to the romanticized version often seen in other works at the time. While they all depict this golden ideal of Egypt. This one is of the barren desert and the sands that stretch far into the horizon.

Section Four: Tutmania, Art Deco, and the Roaring 20s (00:24:58)

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NENNINGER: Egyptomania never really got the chance to come down as it transitioned to Tutmania at the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen which just revamped the obsession once again. The tomb had been mostly hidden from tomb robbers and maintained its original condition for the most part. For more information on the tomb of tooten common check out season two episode three of now as then, which delves into the boy King and why his legacy has lived on. Because of the discovery of his tomb Egyptologist got an idea of some of the Grand objects that were buried with the pharaohs. And because we had those objects and those objects were taken to museums, the general public became obsessed with the findings of this tomb. This obsession led to another resurgence of the aesthetic within the artistic world. However, Egypt was already popular before the discovery of Tut’s tomb in 1925. Costume designer and artist, Sonia Delaunay, took inspiration from the golden jewelry found in the tombs of the loof and her costumes of Cleopatra in the London Music Hall became hugely popular indicating public popularity before the discovery of Tut.¹⁵

Furthermore, one year before the discovery of Tut, the Sid Gauman’s theater was built in Hollywood. Yet after the discovery of King Tut the obsession boomed. Dresses based on Tut’s sarcophagus became popular, Delaunay herself and designed a dress inspired by Tut’s innermost sarcophagus and French jeweler Cartier made a vanity case shaped as an Egyptian sarcophagus, which was meant to be an homage to the way Egyptians beautified mummies.¹⁶

Okay, um, what do you think is the most common misconception about interiors of ancient Egyptian tombs or the reasons for burying the dead or any of that kind of situation?

THOMPSEN: So I definitely think one of the biggest misconceptions it probably based on like the movies we were talking about, too, is people always bring up like if I, you know, mentioned that I’m an Egyptologist or I work in Egypt or something like this. They want to talk about mummies in particular and they always think mummies were meant to be, like, brought back to life. Like right now, like here, like, no, it’s much more complicated than that. They’re not trying to like wake up and, you know, in 2021 or 2020 and be like, Hello, I’m here. It was to preserve the body. So their spirit could like recognize the body when it was re inhabited. But like, again, always in the afterlife, it’s all about the afterlife. Or a lot of it is about the afterlife, right? So I think that’s one of the big misconceptions. I think one of the other misconceptions is that we have all these like tomb with, like, all this, like gold, and you had these like, giant fancy, like, funerary processions, where it’s just like the most elaborate thing you’ve ever seen. And, and while like, we don’t know exactly what went on, right, we weren’t there and we’re missing a lot of information. I think. People don’t realize that we’re like, again, a lot of that stuff is not in the tombs now. A lot of even, like, the tomb decoration that would be on the walls has fallen off and it’s being restored and things like this. I think people think we have a lot more than we do. It’s not to say we don’t have a ton of stuff. When you’re studying Ancient Egypt, we don’t have like, a lack of information per se, but I think a lot of people think of King Tut’s tomb and his like, golden coffin and sarcophagus and things like this, and they assume we have that, you know, for everybody across history. And yeah, and maybe some– oh, here’s another really good one. And this will be my final point, specifically about the pyramids because these again, were tombs. And I think just all of this pseudo science and like the ancient alien esque type stuff as it relates to pyramids, like you know, like, Oh, we have to go to the top and it’s gonna like all get this like special solar charge or whatever, I’m going to go into the sarcophagus of Khufu in his pyramid, and I’ll whatever. Or just like that the aliens built them when we know exactly how they were built. There’s like a lot of Oh, actually, that’s my final point. The last thing I want to say is we do know a lot more about like, like, you know, people were constructing them, people made these objects. It’s not like this magical mystical thing. I think people kind of forget about the human element that they were made, in fact, by people. And we know a lot about the engineering we know a lot about like the craftspersonship. It’s not just like totally evading us, and we’re like, oh, yeah, must have been aliens, and it was used for grain storage. We know how it was built, and you know, all these things. So, So yeah.

NENNINGER: The 20s also really capitalized on the Egyptian aesthetic, and it would be inaccurate if I didn’t mention that much of these products were being sold by essentially selling the idea of exoticism to rich white people. It allows the buyer to feel as if they were an adventurer on a mission to excavate the next tomb and perpetuates the depiction of ancient Egypt as a one dimensional country.

So I recently had a conversation with my dad about his trip to Egypt and Orientalism came up because what else are you going to talk about during quarantine? I think it’s an important conversation to have right now, especially with the anti racist movement going on. And I think it’s an important topic to be brought to the table as it’s not talked about very often.

BOB NENNINGER: The tombs feel very Indiana Jones, and you can’t help but associate the Hollywood interpretation of something. And your sort of like, sense of adventure is sometimes wrapped up into what Hollywood is feeding you. And then you go and you see it. You’re like, thrilled by the fact that it’s actually like that. Yeah, this cool factor where you feel like you’re–you’re discovering it for the first time.

SOPHIE: Yeah.

BOB NENNINGER: You get that feeling because it feels like you’re on the edges of civilization when you’re there. Yeah.

NENNINGER: So, do you know what Orientalism is?

BOB NENNINGER: Not really. I think if I had to define it, I wouldn’t really be able to. I’ve heard the word and I might be able to patch it together. But no, I should be honest. I don’t know what it is.

NENNINGER: Yeah, no, that’s completely valid. It’s not very, like, used in mainstream–mainstream media. So basically, in 1978, Edward Said published his book, Orientalism, which defines the Europe, European and Western interpretation of the Near East and Eastern cultures as historically patronizing. And he uses this, like, imperialist and colonialist agenda of European countries as evidence for the depiction of these countries as subordinate and also to establish power over these countries and create a caricature of culture in order to capitalize off of them. So if for example like the Movie Aladdin, you wouldn’t really think about the fact that it is kind of a two dimensional picture of the Near East and East, Middle East, because it’s like a Disney movie. And you’re just like,

BOB NENNINGER: Oh, totally.

NENNINGER: and it’s like a fake thing. But if you think about it, like they’re depicting, a lot of like, the villains are darker skinned in the movie. Half of the costumes are kind of not real representations of what those people would be wearing. And then they use a lot of the culture as just like a exotic depiction of what we think it is, and not a reality. So when we’re talking about like the Indiana Jones interpretation,

BOB NENNINGER: That’s totally orientalism.

NENNINGER: yeah, totally, totally. Because it’s like we’re selling this idea to white people that if they go to Egypt, they’ll have this whole fantasy of being the original adventurer, and they continue to use that . Less in the Victorian era, the Victorian era was kind of just like using it as an aesthetic, and as an idea, but during the 20s when people were starting to become Egyptologists and archaeologists, it was kind of selling this idea of going to Egypt and having this very exotic vacation, and then like, going and seeing the pyramids and like I was saying earlier today, like drinking champagne on top of the pyramids ran like that ended up funding like Howard Carter’s original finding of King Tut and then justifying European countries going into Egypt and taking some of their artifacts, to capitalize off of themselves.

BOB NENNINGER: So it’s funny, as far as Orientalism is concerned, it reminds me of a scene in Indiana Jones. That is like one of everybody always comes away saying you know, think it was so cool or whatever, but when he is trying to fight his way out of the, the–that sort of the bizarre the the, the area wherever the you know, sort of like the labyrinth of the city where all the people that people are selling their wares and everything yeah

Throwing baskets over and they’re hiding in baskets and they’re trying to run away from the bad guys. But one of the bad guys comes out to be this big this heavyset guy and he he’s almost like the guy that’s going to stop Indiana Jones and he pulls out his giant machete or it’s this giant sword and he starts throwing it or flipping it around in his hands and everything and he starts doing this elaborate, elaborate display of domination. Yeah, as opposed to you know, Indiana Jones just kind of looks at him and pulls out his gun and shoots them dead.

NENNINGER: Yeah

BOB NENNINGER: walks away like you’re sort of means nothing to me because I’m an American with a gun. And that to me was like, especially viewed in today’s world versus the 1980s when this was made it’s like it’s clearly this whole like you know, our guns are our power, you are less than us. Yeah, cuz we’re so crafty. And we have ultimately this weapon. It just it seemed like a condescending scene. But everybody at the time used to high five and think that was like,wasn’t that great.

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NENNINGER: So I don’t have enough time to include all of my conversation that I had with my dad. But he does highly recommend visiting Egypt, if you ever have the chance, he talks very fondly about the culture, and specifically about Aswan. So if you ever get the chance, apparently visit Aswan.

It’s important that we take a step back from the past and reanalyze some of the problematic mistakes that occurred so that we can be aware of some of them in the future. These aesthetics are so prevalent in our modern day world our past just rubs off on fashion of today, as style is often just a new interpretation of the past. Although the 20s were aesthetically very beautiful, there is still value in acknowledging the origins of some of the aesthetics and why they came from where they were taken. For more on a look on this, let’s see some of the modern day use of tomb iconography.

Part Five: Modern Day (00:35:58)

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Um, so now like transitioning into like modern times now how much of this, like, iconography Do you still see playing out in the modern world today?

THOMPSEN: So I definitely think it may, of course sort of have stemmed in like the 1800s and early 1900s, but we’ll still see it now. The Art Deco, for sure. Even a few years ago, I was driving in Chicago, and just like noticed that on one of the, I think it was like one of the Loyola Marymount in Chicago, I’m not positive, but driving by it and noticing I think, also like the wings scarab or something like this, and different Egyptian elements. and that was when I was earlier in my studies, I was a Masters student then and kind of didn’t know much about, or, didn’t think much about, like Egyptomania and stuff like that. And so it’s sort of, I realized that a lot of stuff we probably don’t even notice, but it was, you know, taken from like, the Egyptian, ancient Egyptian visual culture. A lot of things, a lot of like, national monuments have Egyptian influence, again, things you don’t think about particular architectural styles, you know, in the US and Europe.That is still like something that you would see today.

Sort of outside of like, well, I’m also thinking about film, of course, that’s like something like the Gods of Egypt movie came out a few years ago. The new like, of course, we have the mummy from the 90s with Brendan Fraiser. And even earlier they, you know, the first mummy movie I think was like in the 1930s. But in a lot of movies, you get sort of, of course, they’re using like, you’ll go into an ancient Egyptian tomb and it’s super like hyper stylized and sort of reimagined.

And, but certainly that is still incredibly popular. And they still this is only again sort of tangentially related to just like the physical tomb itself, but I know they have like cults of ISIS like the goddess Isis, and that still I know like even like people are still doing that. So definitely, I think it’s just like in a lot of our visual culture that we don’t even, you know, always think about.

I’m trying to think of anything else in specific. I definitely think jewelry though. Now again, I’ve noticed based off of again, things that you would see within a tomb specifically usually like the Scarab or a Sphynx which you know, might be depicted in a tomb or you’ll have like a physical statue of it. I’ve noticed, like, little jewelry like a necklace and it’ll have like, even if it’s like supposed to not be super ostentatious like they’ll still do the same to learning style, something like that. So yeah.

NENNINGER: I know I totally didn’t notice all of the like Egyptian iconography that’s inspired from just like random popular stores now like during my seminar now I’ve been making eye contact with this, like, triangle shaped statue out in my room forever and it looks like the Eye of Horus.

THOMPSEN: Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s a great one. Like people, I totally missed out on that. I forgot about that. But yeah, people love that. I noticed that on like, like, bracelets, anklets, shirts, things like this, where, you know, you might have seen it, like on a tomb wall. And now it’s like, just like, it’s just manufactured like a like, whatever. Hmm, like, have a shirt with something like that on it. So yeah.

NENNINGER: Um, do you have any final points that you want to make any closing?

THOMPSEN: I guess my only final closing point is if there’s any Egyptologist that ever listened to this. I have over generalized a lot, but I think that it sort of gets the general you know, the main thing points across. Um, and yeah, I have can’t think of any final points. But if you ever get the chance go visit you just and you can go visit a lot of these tombs, so then you can see them in person. Okay.

NENNINGER: It was great talking with you.

THOMPSEN: Thank you so much for having me. It was fun to chat during this global pandemic.

NENNINGER: Definitely!

NENNINGER: So Egyptomania may not be as prevalent as it was in the 20th and 19th centuries, but the remnants of these cultures still remained to this day. In 2018 Chanel’s Metier d’Art show centered around Egyptian iconography specifically inspired by the findings within Tut’s tomb and the Art Deco movement that followed.¹⁷ The show was set around the temple of Dendur in the Met, and the models walked around it on a catwalk. The show got a lot of negative criticism due to some of the Western influence on the show rather than a genuine influence of ancient Egyptian art. It toasts the balance between cultural appropriation and appreciation. On the one hand, it brings to light some of the collections of Egyptian art, yet on the other hand, it shouldn’t be labeled as an Egyptian line. The designer is German and it took place in America, but as inspired by the ancient kingdom.

Looking at most of the show, many of the designs are in head to toe gold and the similar style that idealizes Egypt, others completely neutral and despite the Egyptian influence, most of the silhouettes are not similar to what Egyptians were actually wearing, but rather an interpretation of the themes and colors seen on the reliefs, and in the tombs.

Most of the models have some form of gold earring, headpiece, or collar,

and the clothing pieces feature long dresses, golden boots and blazers with coats that reach the calf. Furthermore, most of the sets look like Gucci two pieces which kind of whitewashes the nature of the show. I believe this show is kind of indicative of the way that Egypt has been accepted into our mainstream culture today. It was so prevalent throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, that the somewhat colonialist depictions of Egypt are what are a part of our culture. We accept the inaccurate media about ancient Egypt that prevails over popular culture because it has been so normalized.

Part Six: Conclusion (00:42:12)

[Musical Transition]

So how do tombs tie this all together? Well, I think that the obsession with Egypt in the Western world is ultimately tied to Egyptian tombs and mythology. The tombs to the Ancient Egyptians contain the secrets to a successful journey to the afterlife. And when Europeans came into Egypt and saw the art and architecture wildly different than their own, they wanted to both be associated with it, as it was such a long lasting kingdom with beautiful art and culture, and also to unlock the so called secrets of these tombs. Also most of our media containing Ancient Egypt can be tied back to the tombs. Pyramids were tombs, fashion and art emulating the aspective style was found in tombs, horror stories traced to mummies are found in tombs, and furniture and jewelry, inspired by the findings of Tut’s tomb is just that inspired by a tomb. Furthermore, there’s this pervading idea that ancient Egypt was this eternal dynasty, a dynasty that seemingly conquered death by immortalizing. Its kings and people in the afterlife, and a dynasty that managed to preserve the homes of their dead.

Also the fact that many of the big monuments within Egypt are tombs contributes to the Association of Egypt with death. When European Egyptologist were travelling into Egypt and the pyramids were literally towering over them it might have been easy to generalize and assume that the Egyptians were obsessed with death. Now the Egyptians were certainly fascinated with death, but it would be wrong to label them in this two dimensional light. Combined with the fact that much of Egyptian history was a mystery at the time, the European fascination may have started from the mysterious facade of ancient Egypt, combined with its association with death. Ultimately, I believe that the orientalist views of ancient Egypt that still pervade modern media can be tied to the initial reactions of Europeans to ancient Egyptian tombs, and the ways that their original view of Egypt was spread across the western world

And on that note, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Now as Then! I hope that I gave you guys some insight into the era and to some of the tombs of ancient Egypt. A special thanks to our interviewee, Kylie Thompson, Deidre Whitmore for helping us figure out all of our recording audio, Martin Brennan for helping us with copyright. Simon Lee, Jet Jacobs, and Katherine Kapsidelis for helping us with research and of course, our wonderful instructor, Robyn Price, for helping us put together this project. I’d also love to remind you to check out the podcasts of my peers for more now as then content and this is Sophie Nenninger signing out! Peace!

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Transcript

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