November 14, 1999
Looking at Ancient Egypt, Seeing Modern America
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By DEBORAH WEISGALL
OSTON -- "Egypt in Boston" is what five of this city's
cultural institutions call their thematic collaboration this year,
described as a pioneering venture into "cultural tourism" and
"an unprecedented look at Egyptian culture."
"Pharaohs of the Sun: Ikhnaton, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen," at
the Museum of Fine Arts, provides the focus. The result is an
instructive pastiche, one that provides fewer clues to ancient
Egypt than to the tastes and preoccupations of contemporary
America.
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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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A sandstone bust of Amenhotep IV, who became Ikhnaton from Karnak.
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The Boston Lyric Opera, whose general director, Janice Mancini
del Sesto, instigated the collaboration, will perform "Aida" by
Verdi, "Akhnaten" by Philip Glass (in a co-production with the
Lyric Opera of Chicago) and "The Magic Flute" by Mozart.
The Boston Ballet will stage a newly choreographed "Cleopatra"
and the Museum of Science is showing the IMAX film "Mysteries of
Egypt" as well as presenting "Virtual Egypt," a show that
provides computer tours of archaeological sites and tombs.
As a marketing device, Egypt is as old as its mummies; the
exportation of its gods and their physical embodiments as works of
art has been a thriving industry for a couple of millenniums. Even
for the ancient Greeks, Egypt's art, myths and history stretched
back into infinite generations, and despite the 18th century's
pursuit of rationality, Egypt retained its mystical aura;
entertainments with Egyptian themes constituted almost a genre in
themselves.
Both "Flute" and "Aida" continue to influence our
perceptions of ancient Egypt, keeping alive 18th- and 19th-century
notions of that civilization, while "Akhnaten" addresses
20th-century preoccupations.
"In 'The Magic Flute,' Mozart invented a religion with an
Egyptian flair," says Robert Levin, the Dwight P. Robinson Jr.
professor of humanities at Harvard. "It was designed as a smoke
screen for the ideas of freemasonry, with its radical notions of
political equality. Mozart's agenda included magic and low comedy,
along with a sophisticated philosophical program. It was intended
to cross class barriers, and it did."
The earliest sets for "The Magic Flute" made use of drawings
documenting newly explored monuments along the Nile, as European
scholars began to unravel the intricacies of ancient Egyptian
history. Seventy-one years later, the Ottoman ruler of Cairo
commissioned "Aida" to mark the city's entrance into modern
history; the opera was to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal
and inaugurate the Cairo opera house.
Verdi refused the commission twice, dismissing Egypt as a
country with "a civilization I have never been able to admire."
What changed his mind was a hefty sum of money combined with a
compelling scenario -- a modern, historical tale of imperialism and
passion, as opposed to Mozart's enlightenment parable of good and
evil.
"Aida" was concocted by Auguste Mariette, an eminent
Egyptologist, the overseer of research into Egyptian antiquities
and the founder of the Ancient Egyptian Museum in Bulaq, whose
collections formed the basis of the Cairo Museum.
Mariette not only outlined the opera's story but designed the
sets, costumes and jewelry, then went to Paris to oversee their
construction. When the seamstresses could not get the costumes
right, Mariette sewed one himself. The opera's historical accuracy,
he believed, would be crucial to its success.
Mariette's letters describe his efforts to balance his
re-creations of ancient garments with the requirements of
contemporary singers, and he worried about the appearance of the
cast. By contract, French singers had to shave their facial hair to
suit a part.
Italian singers did not, and Mariette fretted about how
ridiculous their goatees and mustaches would appear beneath his
meticulously researched headdresses. All went well, however, and
the opera, its irresistible alloy of historical realism and doomed
love galvanized by great music, scored a huge success in Cairo in
1871.
"Akhnaten," Philip Glass' minimalist opera, also depends on an
aura of historical accuracy for its drama; the work casts the
pharaoh as the founder of monotheistic religion. Whether he was
remains an unanswerable question, yet the connection between
Ikhnaton and Moses, who was raised as an Egyptian prince, remains
tantalizing.
Glass' opera uses letters, poems and decrees from Ikhnaton's
time -- texts written and sung in Akkadian, the language of
Mesopotamia, Egyptian and biblical Hebrew. But its concerns are
ours. Roots, origins, existential questions of belief: Was Ikhnaton
a proto-Jew? And the opera tells its story in a postmodern way, in
fragments "much as we might learn about Akhnaten and his time,"
Glass writes, "from the partially told story revealed in the
exhibition cases of modern museums." We live in an age of
evidence; we crave proof, even of what is beyond proving, even of
faith.
These questions of faith make Egypt, with its grandeur and
confidence, so compelling. In Rome, at the time Christianity was
spreading, cults of Isis also attracted many followers, especially
among the disenfranchised, who were drawn to its myths of
resurrection and life after death.
The mysteries of human existence have not changed since the Old
Kingdom pharaohs planned for eternity inside their pyramids. They
simply didn't believe in endings, in the certainty of dust to dust.
And even 21st-century cultural tourists, who understand that the
sun will die, share that ancient and profound desire for permanence
in the face of all evidence.
