WRITING INSIDE A “NICHE” GENRE Egypt Archaeology Thrillers - An Insider’s Report.

"NICHE" Reader Appeal? or "MASS APPEAL"?

What is about ancient Egypt’s peculiar appeal for the modern age? USA Egyptologist and book writer Kara Cooney quipped on social media: “It’s all about the gold, folks.” 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 something more than the gold, as I am sure the Egyptologist in the quote would admit. What really compels us, on a deeper, less conscious level, to draw physically close to ancient Egyptian treasures at an exhibition — or to visit the Great Pyramid at Giza, for that matter?

What compels us to journey to be in their presence, to visit Egyptian museums, travel to Egypt itself, to read books about it — and to join the queues of visitors around a city block for say a blockbuster Tutankhamun Egyptian exhibition? Press enter or click to view image in full size

The splendour of ancient Egypt does more than ‘choke us with gold’, though the preposterous display of ancient power and riches is a big part of its appeal. I believe it’s a hunger for mystery, for proximity to this mysterious ancient past, to feel proximity between us now, and Egypt then. These artefacts overwhelm our senses, and yet they also engage us with a deeply personal , yet universal issue — the ‘reality of the first great mystery’ — death and the afterlife. A thrall comes over us 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.” That is why I prefer to concentrate on writing my series of modern, archaeological thrillers that explore this frisson of characters today brushing against the ancient past, rather than setting my fiction purely in the past as costume dramas.

We want to feel ourselves in Egypt’s presence personally — as moderns. It’s the next best thing to being there, since reading is the most personal connections we can make. Ancient Egypt is certainly consuming for the public, and in a book by Michael Rice and Sally MacDonald, called ‘Consuming Egypt’, a research study on consumer attitudes to ancient Egypt reveals many fascinating insights. Most intriguing for me, as I have long suspected, they don’t think of ancient Egypt as a place or a time, but more of a bubble in time, a self-contained concept that is endlessly satisfying to them.

In this bubble float pyramids, Cleopatra, Tutankhamun and of course golden treasures. Consumers, particularly younger ones, believe that tombs were built with tomb traps inside purely as some kind of ‘dare’ to intruders to try to find the pharaoh’s hidden treasure. Rather like a computer game.

Is ancient Egypt a Niche Appeal for readers? Perhaps. But potentially it’s as massive as the Great Pyramid.