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| Are you an ancient Egypt geek? |
Dear ancient Egypt Geek,
Are you really a geek?
According to the popular definition of ‘geek’ that could
mean one of two things, or both.
Are you an ‘unfashionable person’?
Are you a ‘knowledgeable and obsessive enthusiast about a
subject of minority interest’?
First, let’s deal with unfashionable.
To me that means you have the capacity to live outside of
your time, not to be bound by the trappings of the here and now.
How boring to be otherwise, trapped in your own time and
unable to feel the enthralling excitement of a mysterious past.
Are you obsessive about a ‘minority interest’, or, in other
words, seized by a useless passion?
I have come into contact with many young people who ask me
if they should live their dream and study to become an archaeologist.
One was a young policewoman with a strong pull to ancient
Egypt.
‘What are my chances of becoming a career Egyptologist?’ she
wondered.
‘Probably not great,’ I had to admit. ‘After all, there
aren’t that many openings in the field. And yet… every day, somebody is doing it and becoming a
career Egyptologist.’
But this young woman could do something else and still live
her dream, while working as a policewoman serving her community.
She could live a rich, interior life and keep it nourished
through endlessly satisfying study, reading, viewing, thinking, and maybe even
writing about ancient Egypt as I do.
Egypt is not just a slice of our civilization’s history.
It’s pretty much the whole pie.
While other empires lasted a century or so, Egypt’s lasted
for thousands of years. Think how many millions lived and died over Egypt’s
long history. Consider some recent estimates. If you take the average
population of ancient Egypt at around three million and you say the
civilization spanned around three thousand five hundred years, then some five
and a quarter billion people lived and died on the Nile. Many secrets still lie
hidden under the sands (and under the mud, beneath the Nile).
Egypt they say is the gift of the Nile. You could also say
that civilization is the gift of ancient Egypt. That’s what the ancient Greeks
and Romans tell us.
Egypt gave us the first nation state, the twenty-four hours
of the day, the 365 days of the year, the first great buildings in stone,
architecture, astronomy, medicine, paper, writing, even the invention of
fictional dramatic stories recorded in writing…
From a religious stand point, ancient Egypt is front and centre in the Bible. Take away Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat, Moses and The Ten Commandments, The Exodus, the life-saving flight of baby Jesus and the holy family to Egypt and the Bible becomes a novella.
Ancient Egypt also gives us the ultimate symbolic landscape for
dreaming.
It gives us mystery. Mummies. A sense of eternity captured in art and stone.
So the next time somebody tells you that ancient Egypt is a
minority interest, show them the queues going around the block for the latest record-breaking
Tutanhkamun or Gold of the Pharaohs blockbuster exhibition.
Keep on geeking out - and don't ever lose your love of ancient Egypt.
Yours encouragingly,
Roy Lester Pond
