REVIVING QUEENS, ANKHS AND MUMMY HORROR
Well what a fabulous January to start what’s already shaping up to be an amazing year! With no fewer than three exhibitions in the mix already, plus all the related study days, lectures and of course our ‘Immortal Egypt’ tour very soon, one of the real highlights was our annual film day for the Horus Egyptology Society.
Held each January and combining films, talks and some top-class socialising (this year attracting an audience from as far afield as Barcelona!), these popular annual events have long raised funds for the Colossi of Memnon Temple Conservation Project https://www.horusegyptology.co.uk/about/colossi-project/ which the society has long supported to help bring more of Amenhotep III’s superb temple back into the world (no bias here of course….).
Previously featuring such epics as the superb Egyptian classic ‘The Night of the Counting of the Years’, the Polish film ‘Pharaoh’ as remastered by Martin Scorsese and Liz Taylor’s sublime ‘Cleopatra’ among many others, it’s always such a joy to be invited to give the preliminary talk setting the scene with some Egyptological background.
At our most recent event hosted by Bolton Museum and focussing on the 1932 classic The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff in the title role, it’s still something of a surprise to discover that this iconic film wasn’t the first to feature themes of Egypt and its mummified dead who’d already appeared in some of the earliest films ever made. For as early as 1899 magician-turned-film-director Georges Méliès had produced the silent short film ‘Cleopatra’s Tomb’ in which the great woman’s mummified body was resurrected. And although lost in the proverbial mists of time, Méliès’ subsequent ‘Misfortunes of an Explorer’ (1900) has the title character vanishing after climbing into an Egyptian coffin- watch a few surviving seconds here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3d37qZS8A0:
All 2 minutes of his 1903 ‘The Monster’ focused on a magician reviving the body of an ancient Egyptian princess - watch here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFK97EStqWw:
And as this obsession with Egypt’s deceased royal women continued with five more early if still silent films again all focussing on Cleopatra, the 1917 version is by far the best known. Starring the silent movie star Theda Bara, the shortened form of her birth name Theodosia plus one of the family surnames Baranger, the film’s publicists claimed it was an anagram of ‘Arab Death’ to play up to her image as the original vamp. And with the press describing her role as Cleopatra announcing ‘Theda Bara to Enact Role of First Vampire’(!), her iconic publicity stills featured a range of not-exactly-accurate costumes ranging from jewelled metal ‘breast armour’ to an antennae-like cow-horn crown accessorised with a rather fetching ankh sceptre.
The film studio were even canny enough to organise a publicity shoot at the Metropolitan Museum, where Bara was shown around their ‘mystic and interesting Egyptian relics’ by curator Albert Lythgoe. Proving especially interested in the museum’s funerary section since her new film apparently had ‘a very tense and dramatic episode with a mummy’ according to the press, it seems we’ll never know.
For despite its success as one of the world’s first blockbusters, the 2 hour-plus film is almost entirely lost with only a couple of very short clips surviving - view below at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LipZWXWAS9Q & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwPZuyF2Th0.
As for film audiences during the Roaring ‘20s, ancient Egypt mainly appeared on the silver screen in a couple of Biblical epics, most famously in Cecil B. DeMille’s famous ‘Ten Commandments’ of 1923 which forever (and most unhelpfully) established the ancient Egyptians as little more than whip-wielding tyrants worshipping the wrong gods.
At least cinemagoers could see the ‘genuine articles’ in newsreels of the time reporting the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and the transfer its contents to Cairo Museum over the subsequent decade, the last shipment arriving into the museum in 1932 which also saw the release of the first ancient Egyptian themed film to have sound: ‘The Mummy’.
Partly set in the very same museum with a screenplay written by one of the press correspondents who’d covered the Tutankhamun discovery some 10 years earlier, the lead role was played by Boris Karloff. And with his iconic look created by makeup artist Jack Pierce who’d studied detailed photographs of Egypt’s royal mummies then housed within Cairo Museum too, Pierce’s extraordinary artistry adds a layer of authenticity which really gives the film its power. And so while there have obviously been far more lavish ‘mummy’ films since then, Karloff’s version, complete with ankh-wielding Isis, obligatory pet cat on a cushion and wonderful sets is for me at least by far the best.
For more about the Horus Egyptology Society visit: Horus Egyptology Wigan – Horus Details of our talks at Beverley's Treasure House in March & April as part of our exhibition 'Resurrecting Ancient Egypt: a Monumental Yorkshire Journey' at: https://www.bridspa.com/event-details/?entry=15-AEY24 & https://www.bridspa.com/event-details/?entry=15-YPTT25 And while our next study day ‘Queens of Egypt’ at Bolton Museum in March is now sold out, do join the waiting list as we will be repeating it https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/boltons-egypt-winter-study-day-queens-of-ancient-egypt-tickets-1107062807659
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