The Egyptian Revival

Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West

James Stevens Curl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134234677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

In this beautifully illustrated and closely argued book, a completely updated and much expanded third edition of his magisterial survey, Curl describes in lively and stimulating prose the numerous revivals of the Egyptian style from Antiquity to the present day. Drawing on a wealth of sources, his pioneering and definitive work analyzes the remarkable and persistent influence of Ancient Egyptian culture on the West.

The author deftly develops his argument that the civilization of Ancient Egypt is central, rather than peripheral, to the development of much of Western architecture, art, design, and religion. Curl examines:

• the persistence of Egyptian motifs in design from Graeco-Roman Antiquity, through the Medieval, Baroque, and Neo-Classical periods
• rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth and twentieth-century manifestations of Egyptianisms prompted by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb
• various aspects of Egyptianizing tendencies in the Art Deco style and afterwards.

For students of art, architectural and ancient history, and those interested in western European culture generally, this book will be an inspiring and invaluable addition to the available literature.

CHAPTER I

Egypt and Europe

The Idea of Egypt in the European Mind; The Isiac Religion; The Absorption of Egyptian Religion into the Græco-Roman World; Obelisks; The Isæum Campense; Pyramids; Epilogue

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands, –
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young earth, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands.

JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT (1784–1859): Sonnet – A Thought of [sic] the Nile, lines 1–8, from The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (London: Edward Moxon, 1832), 211.

I am She that is the natural Mother of all things, Mistress and Governess of all the Elements, the Initial Progeny of Worlds, Chief of the Powers Divine, Queen of Heaven, the Principal of the Gods Celestial, the Light of the Goddesses. At My Will the Planets of the Air, the wholesome Winds of the Seas, and the Silences of Hell be disposed. My Name, My Divinity, is adored throughout all the World, in divers manners, in variable Customs, and in Many Names, for the Phrygians call me the Mother of the Gods; the Athenians, Minerva; the Cyprians, Venus; the Candians, Diana; the Sicilians, Proserpina; the Eleusians, Ceres; some Juno, others Bellona, others Hecate; and principally the Ethiopians who dwell in the Orient, and the Egyptians, who are excellent in all kinds of ancient Doctrine, and by their proper Ceremonies accustom to worship Me, do call Me Queen Isis. Behold, I am come to take pity on thy Fortune and Tribulation! Behold, I am present to favour and aid thee! Leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthful day which is ordained by my Providence. Therefore be ready and attentive to My Commandment …

And know thou this of certainty, that the residue of thy Life until the Hour of thy Death shall be bound and subject to Me … Thou shalt live Blessed in this World, thou shalt live, glorious by My Guidance and Protection … And know thou that I will prolong thy days above the time that the Fates have appointed and the Celestial Planets ordained.

LUCIUS APULEIUS: (c.AD 125–c.170): Metamorphoses, Book XI.
Based on the translation by WILLIAM ADLINGTON of 1566.

The Idea of Egypt in the European Mind

Egyptological collections in museums throughout the Western world have made artefacts of Ancient Egypt familiar to us all. Mummified bodies, coffins, sculptures, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and stylised paintings are immediately recognisable as having derived from the lands of the Nile. Nowadays, with instant communication, ease of travel, and an immense treasury of published works, photographic images, and archæological discoveries readily available, it might be thought that mysterious Egypt – the land of the pharaohs, where strange deities presided over a theology of immense complexity – has become less remote. Yet we find those dried bodies, the staring eyes of the painted masks, the ‘Canopic’ jars with their grisly contents, fascinating and rather terrible, as they await the call to a Resurrection that has never happened. The plundered tombs, the mighty pyramids, the ruined temples, and the weather-beaten Sphinx move us with their antiquity, their curious aura, their gigantic scale, and their brooding, massive solemnity. A realisation that a rich and powerful civilisation, with an enormous legacy of architecture, art, and artefacts, has vanished, and that its meaning and beliefs have ceased, apparently, to impinge on contemporary life, is food for gloomy thoughts.

And yet all is not as it seems. The civilisation of the West that developed from the Græco-Roman world, from the elaborate organisation of the Christian Church and its close connections with secular power and the legitimising of that power, and from the vast cultural stew of the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, drew heavily on the religion of Ancient Egypt, a fact that is often ignored, glossed over, or claimed as ‘exaggerated’ by commentators. Throughout the Græco-Roman world Egyptian deities were worshipped, and they exercised an enormous influence on other faiths, notably Christianity. It may be this that has led historians (who ought to be objective) to shy away from the obvious.

It is well known that trading relations between Egypt and the Greek world were established from the second half of the second millennium BC. Homer (fl. eighth century BC), in the Odyssey, tells us of the visit to Egypt of Menelaus,¹ and Greeks secured settlements in Egypt from around the seventh century BC. Herodotus (c.490–c.425 BC) travelled in Egypt and left us an extremely valuable account in his Histories, which were subsequently regarded as prime sources by later writers, including Diodorus Siculus (fl. c.60–30 BC) and Strabo (64 BC-after AD 24). The Greeks were aware of the antiquity of Egyptian civilisation, and were impressed by its religion, buildings, and customs: even more important, however, was the awe with which Egypt was regarded, for it was seen as the repository of all ancient wisdom. Greek intellectuals visited Egypt at least as early as the seventh century BC: Thales of Miletus (fl. c.600 BC), the famous astronomer and scientist, has been credited with the organisation of geometry after studying Egyptian methods of land-measurement; there were Greek settlements in Egypt, notably at Naukratis; and it is clear from numerous Greek and Latin graffiti that tourists were no strangers to Egypt in Classical Antiquity.

Egyptian architecture developed very early, and evolved certain forms that remained more or less constant in their basic elements throughout the millennia. It was a massive columnar and trabeated architecture, with a limited range of capitals (bud, papyrus, palm-leaf, volute, etc.²), and a simple entablature, usually consisting of a lintel (architrave), torus-moulding, and gorge-cornice³. Ornament featured stylised versions of the lotus (both bud and flower),⁴ papyrus (bud and plant),⁵ and palm (which influenced Greek ornament in turn),⁶ whilst there are columns at Beni-Hasan and Deïr-el-Bahari that suggest a prototypical Greek Doric Order (associated, in the case of the Beni-Hasan tombs, with rock-cut segmental ceilings).⁷ The Ancient Egyptian rock-cut tombs at Beni-Hasan have sixteen-sided columns in antis, slightly tapering towards the top and separated from the lintels by abaci: projecting cornices over have representations of beam-ends carved out of the solid rock. In basic arrangement, rock-cut tombs in Lycia, Arcadia, and Macedonia have similarities to those of Beni-Hasan,⁸ and it is not unlikely that there was some transportation of architectural ideas, although the geometry of formal spaces sheltering a dead body would appear to have been arrived at independently by a number of civilisations.⁹ Perhaps more intriguing is the appearance of Egyptian decorative motifs in Greek art and architecture. Palm-motifs occur in the capitals of the Tower of the Winds in Athens;¹⁰ the Egyptian decorated bell-capital suggests an archaic Corinthian capital; Egyptian wall-paintings and capitals featuring the lotus suggest the essential form of the Ionic capital; the anthemion as a design is not all that far removed from the stylised lotus-flower; antefixa, in Greek architecture, recall some Egyptian painted work; whilst sphinxes and other composite creatures are not uncommon in Hellenistic and Roman designs.¹¹

If some consider Egypt to be the possible source of the Doric Order, the origins of the Ionic Order are more markedly from the Southern Mediterranean area.¹² The characteristic volute or scroll-capital may have been derived from the Egyptian lotus, and there are similarities to Mycenæan scroll-work. Early capitals of the proto-Ionic type in Cyprus, Lesbos, Naukratis, and Neandria¹³ have volutes that are probably derived from vegetation, with palmettes interposed. The Ionic Order was particul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter I Egypt and Europe
• Chapter II Some Manifestations of Egyptianisms from the Time of Trajan to the Early Renaissance Period
• Chapter III Further Manifestations with Egyptian Connotations in Europe from the Renaissance to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century
• Chapter IV Egyptian Elements in Eighteenth-Century Europe to the Time of Piranesi
• Chapter V The Egyptian Revival from the Time of Piranesi until the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
• Chapter VI The Egyptian Revival after the Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt
• Chapter VII Applications of the Egyptian Style
• Chapter VIII The Egyptian Revival in Funerary Architecture
• Chapter IX Aspects of the Egyptian Revival in the Later Part of the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter X The Egyptian Revival in the Twentieth Century
• Chapter XI A Postscript
• Select Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index