Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein
I'M WRITING this week from Cairo where I've spent the past days learning about ancient Egypt. It's been a study tour of temples and tombs, Pharaohs and hieroglyphics from more than 4,000 years ago. Egyptians are very proud of the history of what they consider the world's oldest civilisation which stretched beyond Egypt's current borders in all directions.
That history has been made part of national identity, and symbols from ancient Egypt, such as lotus flower and papyrus designs on building facades, are embedded everywhere. Schoolchildren go on field trips to these sites, learning early so much of what the world should also know.
What stood out is how much history is valued, not just because it fuels a tourist economy nor simply because it's so inescapable across a landscape scattered with monuments, each with its specificity.
One temple could be to goddesses Isis and Hathor, another could be to the gods Sobek and Horus, the first represented as an alligator and the other as falcon. In Edfu, unlike elsewhere, there are images of women giving birth sitting on a birthing stool, one nursing a baby, and instruments including forceps for birth, like a medical textbook carved in stone.
Despite each site's differences, consistent symbols appear throughout such as the sun for the god Ra, the ankh for life and Egypt, and animals such as vultures, beetles and snakes. Commonly, there are combinations of these, such as at the temple in Kom Ombo, which has a falcon-headed crocodile with a serpent head as a tail. All show power.
It's impossible to not be overwhelmed. Every single surface of every tomb or temple, from ceilings to walls, pillars, doorways and obelisks use repeated symbols to tell stories, honour gods and goddesses, name rulers and their lineages, specify rites and rituals, highlight defeated enemies, and mark passage through the afterlife. They were all originally in vibrant colours of reds, yellows, browns, whites and blues, some of which you can still see today.
One can observe thousands of years of constant architectural innovation, as Pharaohs added to older sites or as problems were solved during construction at others.
Artisans mixed colours which were then painted sometimes more than one hundred metres down the tunnel to a tomb. You can still see those colours today. The scale, skill and detail are hypnotising, which almost seems intended.
We no longer build for thousands of years into the future. We certainly do not construct by hand anything the equivalent of the tombs in the Valleys of the Kings or Queens. I do not think we have made anything as intricate, monumental and mesmerising like this since.
Some temples took up to 400 years to complete, boggling the mind about how consistency in design, materials and ambition was maintained. Unexpectedly, I learned that workers were not only slaves, and when their payment in food was late, under Ramses III, they went on the first recorded strike.
Walking alongside walls of hieroglyphics, I could
