古埃及人的迷戀 (Ancient Egyptian Obsession)

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Well, good evening everyone.
Thank you for coming.
My name is not Zahi Hawass despite what
you see on the book there.
I'm Peter Manuelian.
I'm Director of the Semitic Museum
and teach Egyptology in the [INAUDIBLE] Anthropology
Department here.
And I'm very, very happy to welcome tonight's special guest
speaker.
Dr. Bob Brier is recognized as one of the world's
foremost experts on mummies.
A Senior Research Fellow at the CW Post Campus of Long Island
University in Brookville, New York,
he conducts pioneering research in mummification practices,
and has investigated-- get this list-- investigated
some of the world's most famous mummies
including King Tut, Vladimir Lenin, Ramses the Great, Eva
Peron, and the Medici family of Renaissance Italy.
I dare you to find someone else in the world who's worked
with all of those people.
Dr. Brier earned his bachelor's degree
from Hunter College of the City University
of New York, and his Ph.D. In philosophy
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He taught philosophy and Egyptology
at CW Post Campus in Long Island for 33 years
before being appointed Senior Research Fellow in 2004.
I think that means you don't have
to teach anymore so I'm curious to learn more about that.
Affectionately known as Mr. Mummy--
and I kid you not-- Dr. Brier was the first person in 2,000
years to mummify a human cadaver using the exact techniques
of the ancient Egyptians.
He's conducted research in pyramids and tombs
in 15 countries, and was the host of several award winning
television specials for The Learning Channel,
and in 2010, National Geographic TV
presented this documentary called "The Secret
of the Great Pyramid."
This discussed a new theory of how the great pyramid was
built. He's the author of several scholarly and popular
books including The Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians,
The Murder of Tutankhamen, Egyptian Mummies,
Unraveling the Secrets of an Ancient Art,
Ancient Egyptian Magic, Encyclopedia of Mummies,
and The Secret of the Great Pyramid
with Jean-Pierre Housing.
Dr. Brier's research has been featured
on CNN, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and Archaeology
Magazine.
In March 2011, the New York Times
ran a feature article about his extensive collection
of Egyptomania that fills three, no less than three, apartments.
This is the subject of his most recent book,
hot off the presses, and I might add available
right after this lecture for a book signing
and reception at the Semitic Museum right next door,
so please join us.
And the book and tonight's lecture
are both entitled Egyptomania, Our 3,000 Year Obsession
with the Land of the Pharaohs.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Bob Brier.
You want to get down first and then I'll turn the lights off.
I can find my way.
Hi.
What I'd like to do tonight, and of course,
I'm going to talk about Egyptomania,
but I'd like to do three things.
One is I'd like to try to explain why we all
have this fascination with Egypt, what
is it about Egypt that draws people in
rather than say what Greece doesn't have.
Then, I'd like to talk about some events that
have fanned the flames of Egyptomania,
trying to show those events that really get people going nuts
over Egypt.
And then I'd like to show some of the collectibles
that those events have spawned.
So let me start with a question though.
What does this have to do with Egyptomania?
Anybody know?
Nobody?
Come on.
Way in the back.
Thought I saw a hand.
No?
OK.
I'll tell you.
The Statue of Liberty was originally intended for Egypt.
True.
It was intended for the opening of the Suez Canal,
and the sculptor Bartholdi had designed a maquette already
of it, but Egypt went bankrupt, and they couldn't afford it.
So Bartholdi went back to France and sold the French government
the idea of buying it and giving it as a present to America.
And so this is what it was supposed to look like.
It was a peasant woman, and it was called "Egypt Enlightening
Asia" and it was supposed to be at the entrance
to the Suez Canal.
So that's a little bit of Egypto-trivia.
But the next time you look at the Statue of Liberty,
think Egypt.
Now, as I said, I'd like to talk about what
is it about Egypt that draws people in.
I did interview two days ago, I think it was, on NPR,
and the fellow who was interviewing me,
John Hockenberry said, is it that Egypt
is the source of civilization, is that what it is?
And he was surprised when I just said, no.
I'm quite sure it isn't, because Greece
is the one that always hypes itself
as the source of Western civilization,
and Greece doesn't quite have the appeal of Egypt.
If young children are put in a museum like the MFA,
they'll go towards Egypt not towards Greece
or the Mayan exhibits or whatever.
And every New Ager who thinks he or she is reincarnated
was an ancient Egyptian in the previous life, never
a Viking or a Maya or whatever.
So there is something about Egypt.
I've been talking a little bit about it
with several friends who collect Egyptomania or the things
that Egypt has produced.
And I came upon one thing that's pretty sure that Egypt
has that other civilizations don't that may be part
of the attraction-- mummies.
There is something special about a mummy.
When you look at it you're looking
at a person who lived 3,000 years ago,
but he hasn't turned to dust.
He's not just a pile of bones.
He's still a recognizable human thing.
And I think maybe we look at it and there's
a little bit of envy.
It's almost as if he's cheated death.
Now, it's appropriate that this mummy is Ramses the Great,
and we're next to the Harvard Semitic Museum,
so we've got the pharaoh of the Exodus.
And this is probably the only face from the Bible
that you will ever see.
But Egypt not only has the monuments,
we've actually got the people who built them.
So mummies are one attraction, I think.
Just one, and there's not a bunch, but it's a big one.
Another one, I think, is hieroglyphs.
There was always a feeling that these hieroglyphs
were mysterious.
Now, for 1,500 years, the ancient Egyptian language
was a dead language.
The last inscription in hieroglyphs
is on Philae Temple.
It's about 394 AD, and that's the last dated inscription
we have, and then it becomes a dead language.
So throughout the Middle Ages, hieroglyphs
are these mysterious characters that no one can translate,
and all kinds of theories pop up about what they are,
and they're mistranslated by people.
This is just a book of the dead and the hieroglyphs, of course,
they were deciphered.
And you usually read towards the mouths of the birds,
right to left, this is a right to left reading text
except over here.
So I think hieroglyphs are part of the draw,
these mysterious things.
I used to teach a course in Middle Egyptian at the New
School for Social Research in New York,
and I had as many as 100 people wanting to do hieroglyphs.
And these were mostly people who were already
in the middle of their careers.
They didn't want to become Egyptologists.
These weren't 20-year-olds.
These were 40 and 50-year-olds.
And there was just something drawing them to hieroglyphs.
There was something, perhaps it was escapism,
perhaps it was just the art of them,
but I would repeatedly get 100 people in a class.
So there is something about hieroglyphs also.
And I think there's one more thing that really draws people
to Egypt.
It's the sense of lost worlds and discovery.
It's like the Indiana Jones syndrome.
And this is, of course, Carter looking at the gold coffin
with Tutankhamen still in it.
And it's a story that people love to hear over and over,
this idea of finding buried treasure.
That's, of course, the gold mask, the icon.
It's probably the most famous object from the ancient world.
I can't think of another one that's more recognizable.
And I think it's this sense of lost world's buried treasure.
Here's another Tutankhamen object that was on his body,
within the wrappings.
So you've got these three things.
You've got mummies that sort of scream immortality.
You've got the mysterious hieroglyphs that just seem
beautiful, but indecipherable.
And you've got the sense of lost worlds waiting
to be discovered.
So I think that's what draws people in.
What I'd like to talk mainly about tonight
is the events that fanned the flames, the things that
really got peoples interested.
Now, this is Bonaparte, age 29.
Napoleon is not yet the emperor, but I
think when he invades Egypt in 1798,
this is going to get people really interested in Egypt.
Now, here's the Gerome painting.
He's in Cairo.
Now, he's not an experienced man yet.
He's coming off of the Italian campaign.
He's undefeated.
He's undefeated, and he comes back to France, to Paris,
and they ask him, will you next invade England please?
And he says, no.
He's not interested in that.
But he suggests Egypt.
He's an Egyptophile.
He wants to go to Egypt to follow
in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, his hero.
And he even says it.
All great men's careers begin in the East.
So he wants to invade Egypt.
Now, this is a painting of Bonaparte on a camel.
It never happened.
Bonaparte came with five of his own horses.
As far as we know he never rode a camel,
but it's part of the Orientalist appeal.
He's going to fight the Mamelukes who
are very colorful.
They are an Eastern fighting force.
They are trained to be fighters.
Each one has a spear.
This guy's got his spear.
He's got a scimitar here, but they've also got two pistols.
Handguns.
And they way they fought, they're all horsemen.
No artillery, no foot soldiers really.
They go in on horses, and what they
do is they have servants running behind them,
and they fire their two pistols, throw them
over their shoulders, and the servants gather them up,
reload, given them back, and they're back, ready to fight.
So Bonaparte is going to fight the Mamelukes.
First big battle is the Battle of the Pyramids.
It is the first time that an Eastern fighting
group like the Mamelukes has come up
against a Western disciplined army.
Bonaparte's men form squares right there.
They have artillery at the corners.
There's five lines of riflemen here, and in the center,
you can see it over here in the foreground, are the cavalry.
So the idea is in case the squares are broken,
the cavalry comes out and saves the day.
The riflemen are going to fire sequentially.
First row, then they bow down, reload, next shot, next row,
and they go on.
So Bonaparte says, hold your fire until the Mamelukes are
right on top of you, right on top of you, and then you fire.
These men are undefeated.
They trust Bonaparte.
They are going to hold their fire.
The Mamelukes are fearless.
They come in on their horses, scimitars, pistols going,
and Bonaparte's men just wait and wait
and wait as they're approaching, and then
when they're right up on them, boom.
They blow the Mamelukes away.
It is over within an hour.
The Mamelukes know they are losing,
and they just ride off, and never come back.
They desert Cairo.
So Bonaparte is in charge of Egypt.
Now, he is not going to win the war, though.
He wins the battle, but not the war.
Nelson sails in and seizes his entire fleet, the fighting
fleet, at Abukir Bay, and blows it up.
It's a night battle, very unusual.
And that ship over there on the left is the L'Orient.
It is the largest fighting ship of its day,
and unfortunately, it was used as their gunpowder
magazine for the entire army.
And when this thing blew, it was the loudest man-made noise
ever heard on earth.
And Bonaparte is now stranded, can't get reinforcements,
and he is stuck.
But he has done one thing that is going to get Egyptomania
going on track.
He has brought with him 155 artists, engineers, architects,
botanists, naturalists, and they are going to describe Egypt.
Imagine the foresight of Bonaparte.
He is a culture vulture.
He is not just a military man.
He is educated.
He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences
and Mathematics Division, and he has
brought all of these savants with them to describe Egypt,
to do a major ethnographic study, and they do.
While the war is raging, while they are losing,
they are struck with the plague, men are dying all over,
and these guys continue their work.
This is one of the savants doing a drawing of Pompeys Pillar.
And the great legacy for us is when they finally
return in 1801-- it's over in 1801--
the savants are repatriated, they come back
with the drawings, and for the first time,
Europe gets an accurate rendering of Egypt's monuments
done by professionals.
Now, remember, most of these guys are not really artists,
they're engineers and architects,
but everyone was taught to draw then,
so they do fabulous things.
So after the really wacky representations
of the Sphinx and the pyramids, you get things like this.
This is one page from their final publication,
the Description de l'Egypte.
It was 1,000 large engravings, 10 large volumes,
and it covered all of Egypt, including
the birds, the plants, everything, including mummies.
A very accurate depiction from the Description de l'Egypte
of a mummy's head, the head of a woman.
This was brought back by Bonaparte
and given to Josephine as a present.
And when she died, it was auctioned off
as part of her estate, and it was
bought by Vivant Denon, the first curator of the Louvre.
But that's how people really saw what mummies look like.
And there was all kinds of legacy of Bonaparte
being in Egypt.
This is a Maurice Orange painting
of Bonaparte examining a mummy.
And it's Orientalist, of course.
You've got this big, muscular Nubian here,
but what's important for us is it shows you the savants.
They are the guys with the umbrellas.
And they're in top hats and waistcoats.
Not a very practical thing, and they got their drawing pads
under their arms.
So these are the guys who are going to open it up,
and show people what Egypt looks like.
And as a result of Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign,
people start wanting Egyptian things, things
that are sort of Egyptian.
Now, we're not in the Industrial Revolution
yet, so these are going to be handmade items.
Bonaparte orders Sevres, the porcelain manufacturer,
to make a dinner service for 44, and each plate,
each dinner plate-- this is one of the dinner plates--
is a different hand-painted scene.
This is one with the Battle of the Pyramids,
of course, with the gods going around there.
It's a huge dinner service, and he gives it
to Josephine as a present.
Now, soon after it's given, they're getting their divorce,
and she decides she doesn't like it.
She'd rather have the money, so it's given back.
And you can see this dinner service today
in England at Apsley House, Wellington's home.
It's there, and the great thing is
they've got the 22 foot long centerpiece, which
is made up of a montage of all the temples in Egypt.
It's really fabulous.
But this is the kind of high-end Egyptomania
that's produced after Bonaparte comes back from Egypt.
Now, the Brits, who won-- Bonaparte lost and look what
he's producing-- the Brits produce their own kind
of Egyptomania.
It's not what you usually think of as Wedgwood
but it's Wedgwood.
The Wedgwood manufacturer creates,
in 1808, an Egyptian tea service complete with crocodile
handles, ersatz hieroglyphs all around,
and every time an English family had
their tea in this Egyptian tea service, they were saying,
we beat Bonaparte, we beat Bonaparte.
So this was very popular.
And this is the upend of Egyptomania
after Bonaparte's return.
Now, another thing that gets people crazy over Egypt
is when the obelisks were moved in the 19th century.
Egypt gave three obelisks away in the 19th century.
Now, an obelisk is a single piece of stone.
All the big ones are quarried at the Aswan quarries.
They're pink granite.
Pink granite.
And this is a big one.
This one weighs about 320 tons.
Obelisk, by the way, is a Greek word.
It is when the Greeks came in, they saw these things,
and they called them obesliskos.
And what it is it's a meat skewer,
like a shish kabob thing, because they look like.
So they called them obelisks.
The Arabs call them masalla, which is needle.
It's a big needle-- the masalla--
the tentmakers' needles.
They were really trophies very early on.
The Romans, you know Rome has more obelisks
than any other city in the world-- 13.
And the Romans brought them back as souvenirs.
But in the 19th century, three of them left Egypt,
and each one created a wave of excitement.
This is Luxor Temple as it was when
Bonaparte's men were there.
This is the drawing by Vivant Denon, first curator
of the Louvre, and what you've got here are two obelisks.
Obelisks almost always came in pairs,
and they were set up in front of the temple,
and they don't have interesting inscriptions.
The inscriptions almost always simply give
the titles of the pharaoh who built
the temple, because he wants everybody
to know that he built it.
So it's got the names of the pharaohs, couple
of accomplishments maybe, but really
nothing really interesting.
But they're two, always in pairs.
One of these left Egypt in 1832.
Given to France.
Champollion, when he visited, he told the French, don't
take the one on the left, it has a crack,
get the one on the right.
And they took it.
And this is a drawing, contemporary drawing,
of the obelisk being lowered by the French.
It's encased in wood, so it won't be damaged,
and it took 3 and 1/2 years from the time
they landed till the time it was erected in the Place de la
Concorde for that obelisk to make its way to Paris.
But that's only one obelisk.
The big ones.
There were two in Alexandria.
The one in the foreground had fallen down in the Middle Ages.
Don't know exactly when.
People say in the earthquake of 1331.
Don't know.
And there's one upright.
Both were given away by the Egyptian government
because they were bankrupt, and they
wanted to curry favor with Western countries.
So one is given to England, and one is given to America.
Now, the Brits are the first one to pick theirs up.
It's 1877 now.
And they have a unique method of transporting it back
to England.
They build a caisson, which is like a large cigar
tube like the fancy cigars come in,
and they are going to put the obelisk inside the tube,
and tow it back to England behind a steamship, which
they do.
But it wasn't all perfect.
Things were going fairly well until they hit gale force
winds in the Bay of Biscay.
Now, let me show you.
This was all followed in the newspapers.
As you can see, this is Illustrated London News.
This is the tube in which the obelisk was placed,
which was named the Cleopatra as in Cleopatra's Needle.
This is the Olga, the steamship, which was towing it.
So they hit gale force.
This thing capsizes.
There are men on it.
There was a crew living inside the Cleopatra.
In the gale, six men are sent in a rowboat
to try to get the guys off the Cleopatra.
They're sent from the Olga.
Big wave comes, capsizes the boat, and all six men
are lost at sea.
So six brave Englishmen lost their lives
trying to rescue the crew.
Eventually, the crew was gotten off.
They throw a line to it, the guys get a boat,
they're pulled in, and they're saved, but six are lost at sea.
Now the Cleopatra is cut loose.
They're afraid it's going to sink,
and take the Olga with it.
So they cut it loose.
The next day, when the gale subsides,
they look for it and it's gone.
They assume that it's sunk, but it hadn't.
About six hours later, a ship called the Fitzmaurice finds it
at sea.
They knew what it was because in the newspapers,
there were chronicles of what was going.
It's over here, it's over here now, we see it here,
so they knew what it was.
And they claimed it as salvage, and they towed it to Ferrol.
And it was theirs.
They owned it.
And the Brits had to go to court,
and discuss how much we have to pay you to buy it back.
And there was two different points of view.
Waynman Dixon, the engineer who designed
the caisson was in court, and he had to give testimony,
and his suggestion since he's got a buy it back,
his suggestion was it should just
be viewed as a piece of granite.
What's a piece of granite worth?
And the captain of the Fitzmaurice
said, well, I think many cities in the world
would pay quite a bit to have an obelisk.
So eventually for 5,000 pounds sterling,
England got its obelisk back and it was erected in London.
Now, many of you know where it is.
It's not there.
It's not by the Houses of Parliament.
When it arrived, they weren't sure where it should go.
So they made a full scale wooden model,
and they set it up in various places in London.
Here it is.
How does it look?
And this is by the Houses of Parliament, and everybody said,
it looks great!
But they couldn't do it, because underneath
is the subway system.
There's a tunnel underneath, and they couldn't do it.
They were afraid it would fall through.
So today, it's on the Thames.
If you want to visit it, just take the tube to the Embankment
stop, and it's right there.
And it's a nice thing to do.
Many of you know that for the ancient Egyptians
there was an expression, to say the name of the dead
is to make them live again.
If you walk behind the obelisk on the base
are the names of the six men who died at sea.
I always read their names when I'm there.
So it's a nice thing to do for them.
But anyway, there's the obelisk on the Thames Embankment.
But England went nuts because they
were following this thing every day
in the Illustrated London News, and they finally
got their obelisks.
So now, though, we're in the Industrial Revolution
and all kinds of tchotchkes can be produced.
Now, sheet music was a major industry.
In those days, everybody had piano lessons and a piano
and you would gather around the piano and sing the latest song,
and this was "Cleopatra's Needle Waltz."
Ladies wore little obelisk pencils.
These are lead pencils, you pull on the ring,
and the lead comes out of the tip.
You had a little obelisk pencil around your neck.
Now, cigarettes-- and everybody smoked in those days--
and cigarettes came in little tins,
and these tins were very often decorated
with Egyptian designs.
This is a Hungarian one.
It's a not very beautiful Cleopatra.
I guess she's about to kill herself,
but she looks pretty relaxed.
She's kind of posing, and she's holding the cobra, which
looks like a DJ hieroglyph.
There's a hieroglyph of the serpent,
looks very much like that.
Cleopatra was always associated with Egypt
as beauty and things like that so people loved to put her
on cigarette tins even.
It's interesting this connection of the tobacco with Egypt.
Egypt didn't grow tobacco.
It's Turkish tobacco.
But it was shipped over to Egypt,
and sometimes it was made into cigarettes in Egypt,
but everybody wanted to make this connection with Egypt
to sell the product.
So this is a Hungarian cigarette with Cleopatra
Egyptian cigarettes.
Now, a company name Sullivan and Powell doesn't
seem to have a shot at making a connection with Egypt,
but they put a couple pyramids and a camel,
and it became Oriental Cigarettes.
My favorite ad is this one.
This is an ad from a magazine.
It's really cool.
They confuse three civilizations at once.
You've got at the top over the lintel the winged solar disk
with the uraei, two snakes.
The cobra is a protective symbol for the pharaoh and queen.
So there's the two snakes, the winged solar disk, that's good.
That's Egyptian.
Now mogul, though, mogul isn't Egypt.
It's Indian.
And then the guys who look like they're
on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City,
they're dressed like Assyrians.
You could see them in the Semitic Museum on the walls.
So they've got Indians, your Assyrians, and it's just
like being in Cairo.
So people really didn't know that much about Egypt
and it worked.
Nobody cares.
Now, other cigarette products jumped on the bandwagon.
For example, if you were a pipe smoker,
you bought your pipe tobacco, and you kept it in a humidor
to keep it moist.
It would have a little pad, you wet it,
and then you close the lid, and it stays moist for your smoking
pleasure.
Now one manufacturer.
This is a humidor, but in the shape of a canopic jar,
in the shape of one of the jars that
was used to hold the internal organs of the mummy
when they were moved.
And it's got deities going across the top, the decans,
the hours of the night from [INAUDIBLE], which is really
quite a nice piece of Egyptomania,
but it's cigarettes.
Another aspect when Britain got their obelisk
was pins for ladies to wear, Victorian jewelry.
And this one's quite nice.
It's a scarab, a winged scarab pin.
Now, the scarab, the beetle, is an important symbol
to the Egyptians for several reasons.
Several reasons.
Now, one is that the beetle, the dung beetle,
it's a dung beetle-- scarabaeus sacer--
the dung beetle lays its eggs in dung, and then rolls it
and then buries it.
And when they saw this thing rolling
this dungball along the ground, they
viewed it as the sun moving across the sky.
So that's one reason it's associated with the gods.
Another reason is they believed that the beetle gave birth
without male and female.
They thought it was the only animal that
did that, because I guess they never caught them at it.
But the female lays the eggs.
So that's another reason, and yet another reason
is that the word for scarab or beetle
is [EGYPTIAN], which also is a word to exist.
So if you were a little beetle you would exist forever.
So the scarab had a lot of meaning,
and ancient Egyptians wore it a lot,
and then Victorian jewelry starts cranking up.
So this is a kind of nice one.
It's got the scarab here, the beetle,
and it's got double uraei, the two snakes, which is good,
and it's got the wings, the protective wings.
So that's pretty good.
But my favorite is this one.
There's the solar disk.
There's the wings.
It's pretty good.
But somebody took a trilobite and put it in there.
This is from about 1880.
It's really kind of cool.
And then another image that was used in jewelry
is the Egyptian vulture.
The Egyptian vulture, again, is a protective bird.
Protective.
You'll even see queens with a vulture headdress,
and I'll show you one in a little while.
So the Egyptian vulture is very good, good protection.
And Egyptian pharaohs wore these addresses,
so Victorian ladies had pins.
But this one looks more like the American Eagle here on top.
This one here.
It's got Egyptian items in its talons.
It's got Lotus flowers.
This one down here has little Maat feathers,
the symbol of truth and order.
And this one down here has the [EGYPTIAN] sign,
which is a word for immortality in ancient Egyptian.
But these are the kinds of things that Victorian ladies
liked to wear.
And England went wild.
So if England had its obelisk in 1877,
America had to have their obelisk.
So we have an obelisk.
That's ours.
The Brits very cleverly since they were given either one
at Alexandria, they took the one that
was downed, because they wouldn't
have to lower the other one.
So they just took it home.
Now, this is our obelisk.
It's actually not America's.
I should specify.
That's a common misconception.
It was not given to America.
It was given to New York, because Vanderbilt,
who was paying for the transportation didn't
want Congress deciding where it goes.
Somethings never change, so he wanted it going to New York,
and he had the Khedive give it to New York.
So it's specifically given to New York.
This is the obelisk as it's about to be lowered.
It's clad in wood, so that it won't be damaged.
And the idea was they built a trunnion, a kind of stand,
that would clamp to the obelisk and they
were going to rotate the obelisk to horizontal to the ground,
and then lower it with hydraulic jacks.
This is the obelisk being lowered.
And what happened, Gorringe, Lieutenant Commander Gorringe,
was afraid that when they lowered it
if something broke the thing would keep going,
so he piled up these-- right here, you can see them,
the timbers-- to stop the fall, and it's
a lucky thing he did, because a cable snapped.
The obelisk went past horizontal,
and it crashed into these timbers, and were saved there.
So it did OK.
It was a very clever move, and now they're
repositioning the obligatory flag
so that it'll be over there.
To give you an idea of scale, that's our obelisk.
They brought it into a ship.
This one wasn't towed.
Everybody knew the difficulty the Brits had.
And this is a retired postal steamer.
Egypt, at this time, it's now 1881, Egypt is bankrupt.
And they had loads of postal steamers,
because they didn't have a postal service.
So they bought this decommissioned postal steamer,
opened the haul, and pushed the obelisk in on cannonballs,
and then closed the haul, and steamed for New York.
This is the obelisk crossing the Hudson River Railroad.
They practiced for the three days,
the men assembling and disassembling
the rails that would take it across so it wouldn't
cause too much disruption.
And it didn't matter much because Vanderbilt
who's paying for the obelisk also owned the railroad,
so he stopped it.
They did it in an hour and 30 minutes.
A remarkable achievement.
An hour and 30 minutes to get her across,
and the railroad could go.
And then it's going to move at the rate of one city block
per day into Central Park.
When it reached Central Park, it was the bitterest winter
in years, and they had two teams of men working 12 hour
shifts through the night, then another shift during the day.
And they build a special trestle to get it through Central Park.
The way they're moving it is a steam engine.
It's attached to the obelisk by an anchor chain,
and the steam engine winches, and the obelisk
moves towards it.
And then they move the steam engine, winches,
and they keep building the trestle,
and it goes into Central Park.
Then in dead of winter, it's erected.
That is the same mechanism that took
it down is going to pivot it upright, and on its pedestal.
Now, imagine if you were a kid in New York,
and the obelisk came by your building.
It comes in at 96th Street, makes a right down what
was called Westway, down West End Avenue,
and this is the obelisk as it is today.
Our obelisk is the only one that has its own pedestal,
its original pedestal.
It was brought over from Egypt, because Gorringe, the man who
brought it was a Mason, a Freemason, and he, when
he moved the obelisk he saw the pedestal,
and underneath it were these white limestone blocks
that were also ancient.
Inside them, he thought, he found a trowel,
and he figured that his fellow masons from ancient Egypt
were sending him a message.
So he brought the base, the pedestal, everything,
and it became a Masonic ceremony,
and 5,000 masons marched down Fifth Avenue
for the inauguration.
Complete regalia.
There's a fabulous bit of Egyptomania
that I just thought it was incredible.
I tracked it down.
It exists today.
The Grand Mason had a special baton made for the inauguration
ceremony.
It is a thing of wonder.
It is gold.
It's a gold obelisk with proper hieroglyphs on it
with an ivory handle and amethyst inlays.
It's just beautiful, and it's at 23rd Street in the Grand
Masonic Lodge.
It's pretty good.
But anyway, that is our New York obelisk.
And once our obelisk comes all kinds of Egyptomania objects
come out of the woodwork.
For example, this is a trade card.
Merchants would give these out as perks, gifts,
advertisements to people who bought things in their stores,
and since the obelisk was called Cleopatra's Needle,
it was just natural for milliners and people who
sold sewing goods to give out these cards.
And this is one which shows Cleopatra
with her needle, which is the obelisk threading it.
There's a few of these.
It was a natural.
Here.
This is Coats, J&P Coats.
I think they're still in existence,
and you've got the obelisk being buoyed up
by these little spools of thread,
and the winch is another spool of thread.
I think my favorite is this one.
They're erecting the obelisk, these little Italian angels,
little putti, using Italian spool silk.
But you've got the sphinxes and stuff.
It's really a cool thing.
Merchants are giving these things out,
but there are other things that happen after the obelisks start
coming.
For example-- and you've got this at Mount Auburn Cemetery--
obelisks, Egypt is associated with immortality,
so many people want obelisks as their headstones.
So you start to get cemeteries loaded with these obelisks.
Now, this is not your cemetery at Mount Auburn.
This is in the Bronx.
Let me show you what an afternoon's
walk through the Bronx Cemetery can do for you.
Got obelisks.
That's the Woolworth crypt, as in F.W., the five
and dime store.
Pretty fancy.
He's got some things right.
He's got the winged solar disk on top with the two uraei,
there are your wings.
But I've never seen sphinxes like that in Egypt.
Mr. Woolworth will be happy for eternity.
And that's the door.
They look a little bit like Native Americans, I know,
but there is the ankh sign, the life sign
so that Woolworth will have life forever.
It's not the only one.
You walk though.
Now, this is Egypt.
Of course, this is Trajan's Kiosk, built by the emperor
Trajan, never finished.
Never finished, but it's in Egypt.
But if you walk through the cemetery in the Bronx,
you'll see its little brother.
There it is.
Just wonderful Egyptomania.
And it's not the only ones, and you can keep going and going.
Again, your winged solar disk over.
You have the ankh sign.
There's your scarab, your winged scarab, with the solar disk.
There's another one.
They're common in the 1880s, but let me show you my favorite.
It's like a hobbit house.
It's a pyramid on top of this little structure.
But cemeteries aren't the only examples of Egyptomania
that pop up after the obelisks are moved.
Now, I showed you one bit of sheet music, the "Cleopatra's
Needle Waltz" after the Brits.
After the Americans come, we have loads of things.
For example, "Mummy Mine."
She's a flapper, almost a flapper.
Rather beautiful.
Now, the sheet music covers aren't the only thing
that's interesting.
Sometimes the lyrics show you something.
Now remember, people didn't know much about Egypt.
Here's a lyric.
"Mummy, a million years you've been sleeping."
Now mummies are between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.
That's geological time.
"Mummy, a million years you've been sleeping.
Mummy, a million years I've used in weeping.
I've waited through the years just sighing.
Oh, can't you hear me again crying, waken?
Your love no more denying.
Mummy, mine, mine."
So it's a million year old mummy,
but it's an object of love.
The 1934 Boris Karloff film has not been made yet.
Mummies are not viewed as these horrible figures
from horror movies.
Let me show you another one.
This is from another song.
"My Egyptian Mummy."
Now the other guy had it off by a million years,
this one has her turning into stone.
"My Egyptian Mummy from the Land of the Pyramids.
We were sweethearts years ago.
That's why I know, though you were turned to stone."
It's a fossil, not a mummy.
"I almost hear you moan.
I am in love with you.
I am in love with you."
So they really didn't get it right.
But they were viewed as kind of fun.
"Mummies Ball."
And there's a great, great refrain from this song.
You open it up and then you'll see this.
"Cleopatra made them stare, vamped each old mummy there.
I do declare, old king Ramses shook himself to pieces.
Dancing at the Mummies Ball."
So mummies were not these scary things.
They were party animals.
Now, the wackiest one I've come across--I've spent hours
at flea markets going through stacks of sheet music--
the wackiest one I've ever seen is this.
I won't even try to explain it.
I won't.
But some of these songs also evoked
Egypt for people who wanted to go there.
This is an era when tourism is opening up.
And that's a rather lovely cover where you
would go down on a dahabiya.
This is a boat that would be suitable for a large family,
and you would rent it, and your excursion
could be six weeks up the Nile.
This is Americans on the Nile.
I don't think it's true what it says at the very top.
Can you read it?
Played by every band and orchestra in the world."
I don't think that's true.
Now, as I say, they didn't know much about it.
This has great iconography.
It's got Horus the falcon, and he's holding in his hands
the symbols of authority.
He's got a crook and flail.
There's a was sceptre, the sign of power for the pharaoh.
And then there's a good sphinx.
There's a sphinx.
But why is it called Aphrodite?
She's Greek.
Got me.
"Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band."
I don't know.
This one I like because it's got a new version-- very Deco--
but it's got a new version of what we call the dead chicken
headdress, the vulture headdress.
She's got a bird on her head.
That's about all she's got there.
Kind of strange.
But Cleopatra was really, there are probably 50 songs
in this period about Cleopatra.
But Cleopatra was this icon of beauty,
and beauty products started to cash in on it.
Palmolive had a major, major, major ad
campaign that started in 1910 and continued into the 1970s.
They still make a soap in Greece that's produced
called Cleopatra Soap.
And it was a natural tie-in, because Palmolive is
made of palm oil and olive oil.
And one of the problems these people were
having was that the soap that they make,
because it had an olive oil base, was green,
and people weren't used to green soap.
So they made this tie-in and stressed the ingredients,
and they tied it into beauty.
And it's beautiful art.
This is just a Saturday Evening Post ad.
I'll show you another.
I have one other.
They're really quite beautiful.
So Palmolive has this big ad campaign.
And they not only do Palmolive soap,
they also do talcum powder.
Cleopatra Rose talcum powder.
So they just want to connect it with Egypt
and they'll sell product.
Same with perfume manufacturers.
They started putting it in.
Nyalis goes with a sphinx and you're
going to sell more of your perfume.
The theater had lots of performances of Egyptian themed
plays.
And this one was kind of cool, because it's a little bit
like the vulture headdress.
Only instead of the wings coming down,
she's got this long ornament that looks like a huge earring,
and instead of the vulture's head,
you've got a snake here or something.
So it still reads as Egyptian.
People would get it, but it's a real stretch
to see it as an Egyptian person.
But of all the things I believe that fanned
the flames of Egyptomania, these two guys
did more for it than anybody else.
Howard Carter, on the left, the discoverer
of Tutankhamen's tomb, and Lord Carnarvon,
the wealthy Englishman who paid for the excavation.
They're an unlikely duo, but they needed each other.
Carter was-- and is this may be redundant-- was
an impoverished archaeologist.
And Carnarvon liked fast things.
He had racehorses, Carnarvon.
And Carnarvon also bought a car, the second car in England.
And he wrapped it around a tree.
One of the first near fatal automobile accidents ever.
And to recover, as the wealthy English did
then, he went to Egypt, and he fell in love with the place,
and thought, wouldn't it be nice to excavate?
So he got permission to excavate,
and Carter was looking for a job,
and Carter became his excavator.
Now, Carter was a very savvy excavator by this time,
and he knew that Tutankhamen's tomb was still missing.
Someone else was excavating in the Valley of the Kings then.
They had to wait, but wait they did.
And then when they got the concession
to excavate in the Valley of the Kings,
they eventually found Tutankhamen's tombs.
1922.
There's a nice connection, by the way, with Carnarvon.
Some of you may know the TV series, Downton Abbey.
That's filmed at Highclere Castle, Carnarvon's castle.
So Howard Carter was a frequent visitor to Downton Abbey.
But anyway, as you all know the story,
they finally found the tomb.
Howard Carter peaks through the wall.
Carnarvon says, what do you see?
Carter says, wondrous things, and sure enough,
they do see wondrous things.
And this is a story that'll be told over and over again,
and people love to hear it.
It's this Indiana Jones syndrome, the discovery
of hidden treasure.
What we're looking at here, these
are couches used in rituals at the mummification
of Tutankhamen.
And on the left are pieces of a chariot.
Tutankhamen actually had three chariots in there.
And this is a folding stool on the right.
That's the excavation proceeding.
That's the chariot, the pieces, being put on a rack
and taken out.
And then, with Tutankhamen being trumpeted
through the newspapers, everybody wants to cash in.
There was a magician named Carter,
and he jumped on the bandwagon.
And his name really was Carter, but he's
jumping on the bandwagon of Howard Carter's name.
And here he is, "Sweeps the secrets of the sphinx
and marvels of the tomb of old King Tut to the modern world."
Songs, of course.
You get this.
Now, this was rushed into print in 1923
before Carter got to the burial chamber,
and they didn't know he was a boy king.
They didn't know Tutankhamen was about 18 or 19 years old,
so you get an old guy with a cigar as old King Tut.
If you were going to Egypt to see Tutankhamen's treasures
being excavated, you could go to Khan el-Khalili bazaar
right there in Cairo, and you could buy Tutankhamen perfume.
One of the nice things about this
is the hieroglyphs are right.
It does say Tutankhamen.
Ladies.
These were manufactured in 1923, so that ladies
could wear these around their necks-- little mummy cases--
but they're mechanical pencils.
The bottom comes out, and you got your mechanical pencil
there.
This one looks more like a medieval knight,
but if you turn it over, it's got hieroglyphs on it.
And then you get this beautiful jewelry being produced
that the flappers could wear.
This lovely deco Egyptian style.
It's probably maybe supposed to be Isis with the wings spread.
Beautiful piece.
Now, that didn't stop.
We still have Tut mania.
In 1970s, when the Tut exhibit came to America,
the gold mask for the first time left Egypt.
And as many of you know, in the '70s,
people lined up for hours and hours
to get a ticket to see the Tutankhamen exhibit that
was traveling through America.
Even Allied Van Lines was the company
that moved all the treasures from museum to museum,
and they had a big logo on the back
of their truck, which said, "We move
the treasures of the King."
But this mask drew people to that exhibit.
And there were products coming out of this.
King Tut's Party Mix, circa 1970s.
And one of the low points of Old Tut mania
is King Tut Cologne with the gold mask at the top.
Now, the mask, as I say, became the icon.
And some of you may remember, Norman Mailer
did a novel set in Egypt called Ancient Evenings.
Dreadful.
But New York Magazine had Mailer has the King Tut mask.
And it doesn't end there.
Of course, Egyptomania is still alive and well today.
When we were in Egypt last time, when Obama was elected,
Egypt went wild.
They were so thrilled to have Obama elected as president.
And here's something you could have gotten.
"Obama the New Tutankhamen of the World."
So Egyptomania is still alive and well.
Thank you.
Do you have time for questions?
Sure do.
We have.
Peter says we do.
We also have a reception right next door,
so I welcome you to join us too.
But I think we have time for a few questions
here for Bob and that fascinating lecture.
Thanks.
Any questions?
Drew?
Is there any Arab equivalent of Western Egyptomania?
Is there any Arab equivalent of Western Egyptomania?
No, there really isn't.
And I can explain it in a simple minded way,
but I think it's right.
We don't have a real passion for Native American things.
It's the same.
Most modern Arabs are not descendants from the pharaohs.
They're descended from the Arabs who come into Egypt.
So it's like us.
It's not their heritage in an important sense.
The closest we have, of course, are Egyptian Egyptologists,
but in general, no.
There's not a parallel.
It's kind of like, you know the Germans go nuts
over the Native Americans.
There are cults of the Native American in Germany.
So it's like that.
We go nuts over that.
In the introduction to my book, Zahi talks about it.
He says, he was amazed.
He came to give a talk in America,
and there were people sitting in the first row
with little pyramid hats on their heads.
He just thought they were nuts.
Another hand up, I saw.
Somebody?
We're good?
That way.
Oh, there you are.
Go ahead.
Is there any record of when the tombs were first
discovered that the tomb excavators were actually
eating the mummies?
That they were eating the mummies?
No.
The closest is in the Middle Ages,
it was believed that mummies had magical properties,
and the alchemist Paracelsus was looking for the elixir of life.
Literally, a liquid that you could drink and would
live forever.
And the most important ingredient
in this elixir of life was mummies, ground up mummies,
so he had it in that portion.
But not the excavators themselves eating mummies.
Also, in apothecaries, up until the 17th century,
mummia-- ground mummia-- was indeed an ingredient,
part of pharmaceuticals, that you could buy
to help you if you were ill.
So there was mummies eaten, but as far as I know,
not by the excavators.
Any other questions?
Yeah, go ahead.
What is, did you get the insides of that song about the Irish
were Egyptians long ago.
I'm really interested in what they had to say in there
to explain this.
Are you Irish?
Ah.
Gotcha.
I'll tell what I think is, what I believe
is the basis for that song.
I don't remember the lyrics.
I really don't.
I don't remember opening it up and reading it.
But I do know there are a group that
believe that the Irish are actually
descended from Egyptians.
They really believe it.
Very small group, but they do believe it.
Other questions?
No?
You're good?
Well, if there aren't, please head out the door
and take a right turn.
The next building is the Semitic Museum, and join us,
and you can grill Bob some more.
Thanks for coming everyone.