Scope: In this last lecture, I try to do four things: (1) summarize 3,000 years of Egyptian civilization in five minutes, (2) discuss the legacy of Egypt, (3) survey the lighter side of Egyptology—in film and literature, and (4) suggest how students can continue their interest in Egypt. It doesn’t have to stop here!
Outline
I. After Cleopatra and the end of a long tradition, Egypt suffered a slow death.
A. Cleopatra’s children had quite different fates.
1. Caesarion (age seventeen) had been sent to the Red Sea to sail for India but was betrayed by his tutor and convinced to return to Egypt. He was killed by Octavian.
2. The twins (age ten) and little Ptolemy (age six) were sent to Rome to be raised by Octavia, Antony’s widow. Alexander Helios and Ptolemy disappeared from history.
3. Cleopatra Selene was married at age fourteen to the King of Mauritania, Juba II, who was kind and scholarly. Their son, Ptolemy, was killed by his cousin Caligula in Rome. Their daughter, Drusilla, married Antonius Felix, Procurator of Judea. Cleopatra may have descendants via her children.
B. Egypt under the Romans saw the end of her civilization.
1. The priests were not supported, and the Egyptian language died out, but this decay was a slow process.
2. The great library also disappeared from history.
II. Egypt’s legacy to us is considerable.
A. Our 365-day calendar is an Egyptian creation.
B. Paper is an Egyptian invention that changed the world.
C. Egypt’s religion is central to ours, although this is not generally acknowledged.
1. Monotheism first appeared under Akhenaten.
2. Many Christian rituals and concepts—the trinity, madonna and child, archbishop’s crook, pope’s miter, incense, resurrection—may come from Egypt.
III. Egyptology has a legacy in film and literature.
A. Some of the earliest (and worst) films are Egyptian in theme.
1. Eyes of the Mummy Ma, a silent starring Pola Negri, is so bad you can’t tell who the mummy is!
2. The classic The Mummy (1933), with Boris Karloff, established a tradition and is the best of the lot. Some of the props are replicas from Tutankhamen’s tomb.
3. Without Karloff, Universal Studio’s sequels didn’t develop the mummy’s personality, and they suffer because of it.
4. From Indiana Jones to Stargate, we see the Egyptian tradition again.
5. The Mummy (1999) is not a true mummy film in the Egyptian tradition, but it did have some Egyptomania, with canopic jars (five instead of four) and the presence of the scarab, seen as a destroyer instead of a creator.
6. Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra was a financial disaster—partly because it took such pains to be accurate.
B. Literature also has an Egyptological tradition.
1. Theophile Gautier’s novella Romance of a Mummy presents a mummy as a romantic figure.
2. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ring of Thoth continues the mummy as romantic figure.
3. Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars gives us a killing mummy, but it’s a female!
4. The Amelia Peabody novels, written by Elizabeth Peters, a Ph.D. in Egyptology, are on the lighter side, but contain a lot of the history of Egyptology, especially Flinders Petrie’s excavations.
5. Anne Rice’s The Mummy returns to a romantic mummy and brings us full circle back to the beginning of media images.
6. The nonfiction literature on Egypt is enormous, with primary and secondary sources readily available.
IV. What next? If possible, go to Egypt yourself and walk the land: Cairo, Thebes, Aswan. There are also historical societies to join.
A. The Egypt Exploration Society in England is not just for the British.
The Society publishes The Journal of Egyptian Archeology.
B. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago offers a correspondence course in hieroglyphs, various publications, and plenty more.
C. The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is based in the United States (!) and publishes the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt and holds an annual conference for international Egyptologists.
D. KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt is a popular Egyptology magazine that everyone seems to love.