Discovery Channel digs 'Egypt' series
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Discovery Channel is giving world civilization series “Out of Egypt” a six-episode run over three Mondays beginning Aug. 17 and airing back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 p.m.
“Egypt” was co-created by archeologist and UCLA professor Kara Cooney with her husband, Neil Crawford. Cooney hosts and serves as lead researcher and writer for the show, which compares and contrasts patterns of far-flung cultures.
Cooney told Daily Variety that the concept for the show sprang from a desire to essentially desensationalize the typical “mysteries of the Pharaohs” approach to ancient Egypt.
“Out of Egypt” represents her formal debut on a TV production.
In a new six-part series scheduled to air this summer on the Discovery Channel, Egyptologist Kara Cooney lays out reasonable explanations for parallels in religious and burial traditions and settlement patterns across a range of cultures with no documented previous contact with each other.
In “Out of Egypt,” she expertly traces themes and variations on six traditions across 12 cultures and 10 countries. In addition to the proliferation of pyramids, Cooney looks at the prevalence of the belief in the devil, intermixing of religion and violence, burial traditions, use of religious relics and certain social repercussions of city life.
“When faced with the same materials on this Earth, the same biological matter and laws of physics, and similar societies based on inequality and the need to demonstrate dominance and power, people will come up with very similar strategies independently of one other,” Cooney explained in “Out of Egypt.” “Humanity seems to create the same patterns again and again.”
Scheduled to air in two-hour blocks on the second, third and fourth Mondays in August, the series is the brainchild of Cooney and her screenwriter husband, Neil Crawford. Crawford created and produced “Out of Egypt,” the couple’s first jointly produced project. Meanwhile, Cooney serves as the host, lead researcher and writer for the show.
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