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| (National Geographic - quintessential gold imagery) |
Popular Egyptologist
and book writer Kara Cooney once quipped on social media: “It’s all about the gold.”
She
made a point about the popularity of Egyptian exhibitions, and I agree.
On a certain level, all that shining bullion certainly is a lure for anyone.
And
yet... it’s also about a bit more than the gold, as I am sure she'd be
quick to agree.
What
really compels us, on a deeper, less conscious level, to draw
physically close to Tutankhamun’s golden treasures at an exhibition - or
to the Great
Pyramid at Giza, for that matter?
What
compels us to journey to be in their presence?
It’s
more than the preposterous display of ancient power and riches, although that’s
a large part of it.
It’s
a desire for proximity to this magnificent ancient past.
For
proximity between us now, and Egypt then.
These
artefacts overwhelm our senses, and yet they also engage us with a deeply personal
issue - the ‘first great mystery’ - death.
A
thrall comes over our senses when we, in our modern age, stand in the presence
of the Egyptians’ magnificent obsession with eternity and their monumental rejection
of death.
As Carl Jung asserted: "The
unconscious psyche believes in life after death."
I think that is perhaps why I prefer to concentrate on writing my series of modern, archaeological thrillers that explore this frisson, this brushing together of today against the ancient past, rather than setting my fiction purely in the past.
We want to feel ourselves in its presence.
I think that is perhaps why I prefer to concentrate on writing my series of modern, archaeological thrillers that explore this frisson, this brushing together of today against the ancient past, rather than setting my fiction purely in the past.
We want to feel ourselves in its presence.
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| AMAZON paperback and Kindle |
It’s all about us, people.
