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.
What is it
about Egypt above all other civilizations?
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.
