diverse objects documenting both the culture of ancient Egypt and the way it has reverberated in the West and in Islam through the ages. Enlarge This Image Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History A gilded mummy mask is among the pieces from the “Echoes of Egypt” exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Related Events in Connecticut (July 7, 2013) Times Topic: Connecticut Arts Connect With NYTMetro Metro Twitter Logo. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. . Enlarge This Image Yale Center for British Art Decoration from the tomb of Seti I. Enlarge This Image Yale University Art Gallery Vessel with nautical motifs. Enlarge This Image Yale University Art Gallery A royal “bookplate.” To give it its full title, “Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharoahs” spans more than 2,000 years of cultural influence, beginning with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who were fascinated by the still-living heritage of the Nile River valley. By the sixth century, the Egyptian language and religion had faded into history, but its magnificent monuments, covered with inscrutable symbols, remained. They tantalized the thriving Muslim world and re-entered the European imagination during the Renaissance, through references in classical texts and art. But it was not until 1798, when Napoleon arrived in Egypt with troops and scientists, that the Western world embarked on its continuing romance with all things Egyptian. Visitors enter “Echoes of Egypt” through a half-scale reproduction of the Egyptian-style gateway designed by Henry Austin in 1839 for the Grove Street Cemetery, a few blocks from the museum. The dim light may feel like a sly (and slightly annoying) tip of the hat to the aura of spookiness that often attends Egyptian antiquities in pop culture. (The squeamish may indeed want to bypass the section featuring an unwrapped mummy.) But it is in fact necessitated by the fragility of so many of the items on display. Some of the ancient writings, on crumbling parchment and papyrus, date back thousands of years. A letter written around 1450 B.C. in the cursive, abbreviated hieroglyphics known as hieratic script details the payment of a debt; a seventh-century-or-so Coptic papyrus mixes Christian and Egyptian imagery in a magical spell meant to secure a woman’s love. Even the 1962 clipping from the New Haven Register announcing the imminent display at the Peabody of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen (admission charge, 50 cents) needs protection from bright light. Any schoolchild could discern which of these yellowing sheets is about Egypt rather than from Egypt. But there are many instances in which this is not so obvious, and the show, curated by Colleen Manassa, employs a clever pair of lotus-like symbols to differentiate the Egyptian from the merely Egyptian-style. Don’t let that “merely” mislead you. There are some eye-popping, utterly fantastic flights of fancy on view: an elaborate Tiffany mantel clock topped by a sphinx and flanked by two obelisks, and an 18th-century copy of a Roman sculpture representing the Nile as a reclining god attended by a sphinx, a crocodile, a mongoose and 16 cherubic children. Several paintings are straightforward Romantic landscapes, like Hermann-David Salomon Corrodi’s atmospheric “Campfire by the River: Kiosk of Trajan at Philae.” But Edwin Longsden Long’s “Love’s Labour Lost,” painted in 1885, offers exotic images of languorous, half-naked women suggestively posed in a meticulously researched Egyptian interior. Artists inclined to research had plenty to draw on by the late 19th century, and “Echoes of Egypt” is rich in examples. As early as 1646, John Greaves’s “Pyramidographia, or, a Description of the Pyramids in Egypt,” was dispelling myths about those mystifying structures. Designers could consult the colorful columns depicted in Owen Jones’s Victorian manual “The Grammar of Ornament” and the lush motifs from the tomb of Seti I, as recorded by the man who discovered it, Giovanni Battista Belzoni. Also on view is a page from Jean-François Champollion’s 1824 summary of his solution to the centuries-old enigma of Egyptian hieroglyphics. As evocative as these “echoes” of Egypt are, they do not quite have the power or the aesthetic appeal of the genuine articles. A dazzling fragment of a stone map of the cosmos — envisioned as a circle around 600 to 300 B.C. — is incised with figures of supreme elegance. A funerary figure from the tomb of Hekanefer, a Nubian official, radiates serene refinement, as do the black-rimmed eyes and subtle smile of a gilded mummy mask. And the swelling curves and bold decoration of a ceramic pot painted with a stylized boat and animals is as alluring today as it must have been 5,000 years ago. Even a thumb-size bit of blue faience, which once served to identify a pharoah’s papyrus scrolls, impresses with its beautiful color and craftsmanship. With so many objects that awe and educate, this exhibit also manages to draw some guffaws. The satirical cartoons by Thomas Nast and Thomas Rowlandson may not
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 09:34:17 +0000
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