Ancient Egypt in the Popular Imagination: Building a Fantasy in Film, Literature, Music and Art

255 Pages·2012·20.341 MB·English

by  David Huckvale

Ancient Egypt
in the Popular Imagination
ALSO BY DAVID HUCKVALE
AND FROM MCFARLAND
Visconti and the German Dream: Romanticism, Wagner
and the Nazi Castastrophe in Film (2012)
Touchstones of Gothic Horror: A Film Genealogy
of Eleven Motifs and Images(2010)
Hammer Film Scores and the Musical Avant-Garde (2008)
James Bernard, Composer to Count Dracula:
A Critical Biography(2006; paperback 2012)
Ancient Egypt in
the Popular Imagination
Building a Fantasy in Film,
Literature, Music and Art
D H
AVID UCKVALE
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Huckvale, David.
Ancient Egypt in the popular imagination : building a fantasy in film,
literature, music and art / David Huckvale.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-6577-4
softcover : acid free paper
1. Egypt—In motion pictures. 2. Egypt—In mass media.
I. Title.
PN1995.9.E32H84 2012 700'.45832—dc23 2012009362
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2012 David Huckvale. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without p ermission in writing from the p ublisher.
On the cover: Boris Karloff in The Mummy, ¡932
(Universal Pictures/Photofest); background © 20¡2 Shutterstock
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To Anthony Sellors
Acknowledgments
All the photographs are by the author unless otherwise
stated. I would like to thank Marcus Hearn for providing many
of the Hammer film stills, Dave Hawley for allowing me to
use his photographs of Egypt, Simon Harvey Williams for his
photograph of the Egyptian House in Penzance, Dez Skinn for
the illustrations from House of Hammer magazine (courtesy of
House of Hammer © Quality Communications 2011, http://
dezs kinn.com/w arner-w illiams/), and the Ministero per i Beni
e le Attività Culturali in Rome for granting permission to
reproduce the etching by Piranesi. My thanks in general are
also extended once again to Gail-Nina Anderson for invaluable
help and encouragement.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
ONE • Films 7
TWO • Egyptology 59
THREE • Myth and Magic 86
FOUR • Art 107
FIVE • Fiction and Fantasy, Part 1 132
SIX • Fiction and Fantasy, Part 2 159
SEVEN • Music 188
Conclusion 218
Filmography 223
Chapter Notes 225
Bibliography 235
Index 239
vii
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Introduction
Imagine that you are walking through a wood, surrounded by tall trees, lush bracken,
ferns and birdsong. It’s a familiar scene: the babbling stream that runs from the lake on the
grounds of a large house in the adjoining park. We might allow ourselves to think of the
house as slightly sinister, perhaps. Hasn’t it just been occupied by a foreign gentlemen who
wears a fez? You recall something to that effect. The meandering path that threads its way
through the overhanging branches leads you to the dark waters of a somber little pond sur-
rounded by bullrushes. A breeze ripples its silent waters as you pause to watch a couple of
startled Mallard ducks fly off. Bubbles rise to the surface as though something is stirring in
the depths. With a shudder, you don’t wait to find out what has caused them. You move
swiftly on. Shafts of light pierce the canopy of leaves overhead, the fresh smell of recent rain
rises from the loam at your feet.
But into this sylvan scene, you now perceive a human shape in the distance—a stum-
bling silhouette emerging from behind a screen of silver birches—an alien presence, band-
aged from head to foot, its eyes glaring with demonic malevolence. Perhaps you are one of
those people who always laugh at the actors who play such terrors from the tomb in the
movies, but you are not laughing now. You are alone in an otherwise tranquil forest with
a lumbering, unstoppable horror advancing upon you, dripping water and slime from the
dark pond you have just passed. Part of you—the rational part—might think yourself the
victim of a grotesque practical joke, but as the figure advances, thrashing the undergrowth
from its path with a bandaged hand, your irrational instinct doesn’t allow you to wait and
see. Frightening though an encounter with a living mummy in an Egyptian tomb would
be, it is even more unnerving in this context—a familiar scene, far from the origin of this
monster from the ancient, alien past.
The reason for starting our journey in this manner is to stress that mummy movies
and the stories that inspired them are motivated by a fear of what we might term “the other.”
Every mummy movie ever made pits East against West. Either a mummy is reanimated in
England or America, or an Englishman or American encounters an ancient evil in Egypt.
Frequently, both these things happen. With the exception of The Night of Counting the Years
(a.k.a. The Mummy, dir. Shadi Abdel-Salam, 1969), which is hardly a mummy movie in
the accepted sense of the term, a mummy film with a cast consisting entirely of Egyptians
has yet to be made. This suggests that mummy movies are a fundamentally racist form of
entertainment. According to this view, such films express a fear of religious conflict, cultural
infiltration and even invasion. They also express the imperialist desire to dominate and
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