Of Geese and Kings

The Egyptian Museum, officially the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, lies at the northern end of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.  During the chaotic few days after Mubarak’s resignation, it was looted, but according to our guide, the thieves took relatively unimportant pieces.  They must have been in a hurry, because despite its poor lighting and even poorer labeling, it is one of the great museums of the world, containing 136,000 Pharaonic exhibits.  As large as it is, however, it does not have sufficient space to exhibit the remaining  40,000 items now crated in its basement.

We were thankful for our knowledgeable guide, who helped us navigate the bewildering mass of exhibits and who pointed out to us some of the most important pieces.  These included a 4,500-year-old painting of three pairs of geese, their colors as fresh as if they had been recently painted.  Our guide told us that grinding stones, such as lapis lazuli, and then mixing the powder with egg white and honey produced the paint.  As I recall, four of the geese are eating or drinking something, two on the right and two on the left, with a third goose standing behind each of these pairs, waiting, perhaps, for its turn.  The scene, in its naturalness, simplicity, and symmetry, is exceptionally charming.

We saw, of course, the magnificent burial treasure of the boy king Tutankhamun, with its staggering use of gold, enamel, and precious stones.  Presumably the burial treasures of more important, longer-lived kings must have been even more stupendous.  The most celebrated of these pharaohs was Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, longer than any other pharaoh, who, in the 30^th year of his 66-year-long reign, was deified.  He built cities, temples and monuments to himself all over Egypt, including the four colossal seated statues of himself that we saw at the temple of Abu Simbel, and when he died at the age of about 90, he left a rich, prosperous, and powerful kingdom.  His burial treasures must have been prodigious.  

I looked at his body in the museum’s mummy room.  No golden burial mask hides his thin, hook-nosed face or his wispy gray hair.  And of course I thought of Shelley’s sonnet, “Ozymandias” (the Greek name for Ramesses II): “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”  This great warrior king, absolute ruler of a great empire, lies as dead as any dog in the road, subjected to the stares of strangers, who have paid an additional fee for the privilege, as though he were an exhibit in a freak show.  Yes, his monuments still stand and yes, he will be remembered as long as Egyptian history is read, but the kingdom that he worked so hard to extend and preserve fell 150 years later, and he remains as dead as his most degraded subject, as dead as the painter of the six geese. 

That simple painting has lasted as long as the awe-inspiring stone monuments Ramesses II built to aggrandize himself and it has probably given more pleasure as well.

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