Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire
Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt (1798–1801) sparked Western interest in the East, particularly the countries of the Ottoman Empire, an area extending from Turkey and Greece through the Middle East and North Africa. European and American artists became fascinated with what was then known as “the Orient” and the art movement known as Orientalism grew out of this preoccupation.
Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire from the Dahesh Museum of Art features more than sixty Orientalist paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, drawings, and books. The exhibition provides important historic and cultural perspectives on the ways in which Western artists depicted, and sometimes distorted, the many cultures of the Ottoman Empire. It also highlights the power these images had, and continue to have, on the Western imagination.
“Reality and fantasy blend in the works on view in this exhibition,” said Margaret Bullock, Curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions. “Orientalist works are full of rich detail and lush colors based on fact but often romanticized or recombined to suit the artist’s fancy.”
Some of the first Orientalist paintings were intended as propaganda in support of French imperialism, depicting the East as a barbaric place enlightened by the French. Others were created as ethnographic records of the clothing and customs of the region. As the movement spread, subjects broadened to include scenes of domestic life and religious piety, re-created historical events, or works that used the region as a backdrop for Christian religious scenes. The potency of Orientalism remained undiminished into the twentieth century. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky all created work inspired by Orientalist themes.
The exhibition is on view Saturday, September 20, 2008 through Sunday, January 4, 2009 at Tacoma Art Museum in Washington.
Cleopatra - How much you know?
If you think Cleopatra was a beautiful Egyptian queen who committed suicide by getting an asp to bite her, well…not much.
According to Karl S. Kruszelnicki, this is what you should know:
First, Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Macedonian.
Second, Cleopatra almost certainly was not beautiful in the physical sense — bearing in mind that the concept of beauty is different for each time period and for each person. Only 10 coins from her reign with representation of her have survived in good condition. They show her as having a fat neck (euphemistically called “Rolls of Venus”), a hooked nose, long ears and a prominent chin.
Cleopatra was, like all the other Ptolemaic women, around 1.5 metres tall. In today’s terms, she was short, dumpy and squat.
Her wisdom and wit are praised in Arabic and Coptic literature.
Cleopatra raised an army, built a fleet to rival Rome’s, made Egypt strong, kept the peace, and successfully played off powerful opponents against each other.
Third, the snake. Shakespeare tells us (in Antony and Cleopatra) that Cleopatra died from the bite of an asp, smuggled into her bedroom in a basket of figs. But that particular species of snake does not live in Egypt. A far more likely contender (if she was killed by a snake) was the cobra.
So even today, we still don’t know how she really died.
Book Reviews: The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West
The author of four previous Cornell University Press volumes on Egyptology, Hornung (emeritus, Univ. of Basel) here focuses on “Egyptosophy.” This concept is defined as “the study of an imaginary Egypt viewed as the profound source of all esoteric lore. This Egypt is a timeless idea bearing only a loose relationship to the historical reality.” Hornung traces the influences of this imaginary Egypt on Western culture from the classical world, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to the present day. He argues that the god Thoth and various Egyptian sages known to the ancient Greeks coalesced into the legendary Hermes Trismegistus, the creator of the art of writing and civilization. Hornung views these mystical and magical “Egyptian” elements as a basis for Gnosticism as well as other secret and metaphysical societies, among them the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and the Theosophists. The text presumes extensive knowledge of Western philosophy, art history, and religion; references are made to “the Madonna Platytera” and the “Gnostic Pistis Sophia,” for example, without any footnotes or explanations. Recommended for academic libraries and specialized collections.
The Sirius lore
Assem Deif is writer is a professor of mathematics at Cairo University and Misr University for Science and Technology. This is a brief excerpt from an article on the star Sirius and its significance to ancient Egyptians and other cultures.
When the star (Sirius) begins to flicker low on the horizon (before sunrise) it marks the beginning of a New Year in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians referred to the heliacal rising and its associated festival as prt spdt, “the going forth of Sepdet”. The star hid for 70 days, and now it has returned from the duat (underworld) to bring welfare to the land and to allow its people to bury their dead.
The 70 days of the star’s invisibility is due to the dominance of sunlight in this period. When it starts its heliacal rise from the east it is ahead of the sun by about 11 degrees, moving across the celestial sphere to set in the west. On subsequent nights, it distances itself from the sun by appearing earlier and spending longer in the night sky until it eventually becomes out of phase with the sun, rising just when the sun is setting over the western horizon. It again approaches the sun on successive nights until it disappears totally from view, obscured by the sun’s brilliance for 70 days before reappearing again for a few minutes just before sunrise — the heliacal rising.
Not only does the star herald the flooding of the Nile, but the shade of the blue-white star is also important. If the star appears bright and clear, the Egyptians expect an abundant harvest. If it is dull and reddish, a poor harvest results. In the second century AD the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy described the star as being red, and the less red it was the better the harvest.
The Arabs too revered the star, which they called “Al-Shi’ra Al-Yamaniyyah”, referring to Yemen, south of Mecca; for it was this star which guided them in this direction. Many nations paid homage to its goddess, Isis. Her fame spread to all corners of the Roman Empire, and the last recorded festival of Isis took place in Rome in 394 AD. There was even a temple of Isis on the River Thames in London. To the Egyptians she was the caring mother and the symbol of fertility. She also owned magical powers; as she restored her husband to life after he was murdered by his brother Set. Some scholars believe the River Nile took its name, Siris, from Sirius. Not only was it the foundation of the Egyptian religious system, but its celestial movement determined the Egyptian calendar.
The hieroglyph of Sirius is a red triangle with a small ben-ben and a five- pointed star near it.
Who’s Scota?
In his Scotichronicon, a nine-volume treatise in Latin, Walter Bower, a medieval Scottish historian, explains that Scotland gained its name not from an Irish tribe, as most modern historians agree, but from an Egyptian princess.
Bower presents as fact the tale of an Egyptian princess, called Scota, a sister of Tutankhamen, who fell out with her pharaoh father and fled his wrath sailing north with her sons to a group of windswept islands off the northwest coast of Europe. Princess Scota brought with her the Stone of Destiny to this new country and, on her death, Scotland was named in her honor.
To most academics, this is, of course a tall tale. But for Harrods billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, this is proof enough that Scotland was founded by Egyptians. And Mr Al Fayed has funded a print run of the book - last printed for public consumption in 1998 - which is now stocked in his Knightsbridge store.
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By N2H
