Few
Egyptologists can express in any satisfactory manner why they are smitten by ancient
Egypt, yet almost all felt Egypt’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’ dawn on them while
young.
A noted British
Egyptologist and writer, Dr Barbara Watterson, once confessed her puzzlement to
me while on a River Nile cruise in Egypt: “I
don’t know why I love this place. I have never cried over it, the way I did when
I first set eyes on the Parthenon in Greece.”
I had just confessed
to her that in spite of all my books “I’ve sometimes experienced a more
powerful sense of ancient Egypt as a shaft of sunlight fell through a window onto
the floor at home, than I’ve felt inside a temple in Egypt.
Explain
that.
I love
ancient Egypt’s temples...
Is it
because ancient Egypt is also a ‘concept’ that so satisfies us - endlessly?
And yet...
The
civilization of ancient Egypt gets deep hooks into people’s imaginations.
Young people’s,
in particular.
They ‘get’
ancient Egypt.
But what is
it they get?
After a talk
I gave to schoolchildren about Egypt, one boy told me afterwards, with a beam
on his face: “I was so HAPPY while you were talking about Egypt and mummies!”
Mummies?
Happy?
I’ve written scores of novels over the years, trying to put a lens to that ‘something’ about the
ancient Egypt I love.