An Egyptological Outing..

Just because I have completed my Egyptological Embroideries (possibly not for ever…!) and have moved on to the early Roman period (Placidus) and the Early Medieval period (Aethelflaed), it should not be taken to mean that my interest in Egyptology has waned..

In fact, I heard of this Immersive experience from Alan Murphy, who helped me turn my manuscript and pictures in to a book, on behalf of the Embroiderers Guild. He and his wife saw the exhibition – Experience? – in London, and loved it. But they were there on the last day, and the next venue was to be the Glasgow Exhibition Campus. Well, that’s ok, there’s a train up the west coast that goes to Glasgow, and the Exhibition Campus has its own station on the local rail network. So off I went…

Like most of the major travelling exhibitions of this type, it began with a sequence of huge information boards, establishing context and ensuring that everyone has some similar understanding of the subject of the exhibition. In this case, that covered a canter through the history of Ancient Egypt, and the Eighteenth Dynasty in particular, and then a further exposition of Howard Carter’s career. Then, guarded by a spectacularly moody six-foot animated Anubis, pacing between a pair of mirrors, there were two rooms of reproductions of a variety of finds from Tutankhamun’s tomb, as well as some of the drawing and reports made by Carter at the time. All interesting, nothing I’ve not seen before in one or other exhibition over the last twenty years.

However, the finds were not really the point of this exhibition. That came from a huge hall on the walls and floor of which were projected a whole series of images and realisations, some relating to the excavation, some to the buildings and geography of Egypt, and some to Tutankhamun hiself.

These were surprisingly magical, in spite of the occasionally rather overblown script and very tremendous music, and I happily sat through it all twice, before moving on to the next section, which I can’t show you, because it involved Virtual Reality headsets. Again, these mixed realisations of ancient Egyptian belief – the journey of the pharoah’s soul from his tomb to his judgment before the gods – with a tour of the camp where the Egyptologists were based.

Now, I’m not automatically an enthusiast for technological presentations, because it can be very hard to balance the technology and the story. The idea of the immersion in this created world is wonderful, but it’s easy to jolt the viewer out of it with anything slightly out of whack. By and large, that didn’t happen to me. I was enchanted by much of what I saw, entertained by almost all of it, and delighted to find myself able to raise a lantern in my hand as I toured the excavators’ camp.

And it gave me some more sources for the Lotus Coat, when I get around it, so you will probably see more of my Pictures From The Exhibition…