Lessons in legacy-building – from history’s most tenacious rulers

The NGV’s winter blockbuster will take a deep dive into what it meant to be pharaoh – and the complex power systems they needed to maintain their supremacy.

John McDonaldFilm reviewer

May 29, 2024 – 5.00am

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In terms of sheer longevity, writes Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson, the 3000-year reign of the pharaohs represents “the greatest political and religious system the world has ever known”. It was, however, a fiercely hierarchical affair that bestowed wealth and luxury on the king and the elites, while condemning the poor to a life of drudgery.

Ramses II lived into his 90s, while one of his predecessors, Pepi II, reached his century. The average life span for commoners was 35, with half the population dying in their late teens.

Marie Vandenbeusch, curator: funerary culture of the Nile Valley for the British Museum. Some of the larger pieces coming to the NGV weigh more than 2½ tonnes. Josh Caius

The pharaohs were buried in resplendent tombs, along with all the goods and treasures they would need in the afterlife. The poor were dumped in a hole in the ground. We don’t know what hopes the average Egyptian held for a life after death because almost everything we have gleaned from the papyrus records and inscriptions on tombs and artefacts was written from the perspective of the ruling classes.

Pharaoh, this year’s winter blockbuster showing at the National Gallery of Victoria from June 14, is drawn from the holdings of the British Museum. Comprising more than 500 items, this is one of the largest loan exhibitions in the museum’s history.

The head of Pharaoh Thutmose III wearing a crown, from Karnak in Thebes, 18th Dynasty. © The Trustees of the British Museum

It continues Australia’s 2024 infatuation with all things Egyptian, which has already seen Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs draw more than 500,000 visitors to the Australian Museum; while Discovering Ancient Egypt, a loan exhibition from the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, is on at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, until September 8.

In consultation with the NGV, the British Museum has taken the theme of a small touring exhibition created for Spain and expanded it into a comprehensive overview of ancient Egypt, seen through the lens of its all-powerful monarchs.

As it is conventional to divide up the long history of Egyptian civilisation by dynasties, it makes perfect sense to focus on the pharaohs. The First Dynasty dates back to 2950 BCE, when Narmer, the first pharaoh, united the country’s warring tribes into a single nation. The story continues until 30 BCE, when a weakened and colonised Egypt is incorporated into the Roman Empire, following the death of Cleopatra.

For Marie Vandenbeusch, the British Museum’s curator of funerary culture of the Nile Valley, and chief curator of Pharaoh, it’s incredible that some of the motifs used by the Egyptians seem to have lasted the entire 3000 years. “The image of a giant king smiting his tiny enemies appears on one of the first items in the show, and it’s still there on the pillars of Greco-Roman temples at the end of the Pharaonic period.”

“I always like to remind myself,” she adds, “that we are closer to Cleopatra in time than she was from Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid.”

A gold finger ring depicts Thutmose III as a sphinx trampling over his enemy, 18th Dynasty. © The Trustees of the British Museum

We’re sitting in the collections room at the museum, looking at three tiny objects that by now will have travelled to Melbourne. The large objects, some weighing more than 2½ tonnes, have already been dispatched. One of the pieces on the tabletop is a granite statue of a figure kneeling before a rostrum, presenting the name of Ramses II. Next is a bronze incense burner (c. 664-332 BCE) featuring the figure of the king kneeling in obeisance to the god. The third is a bronze statuette, in which the king pays homage to a sacred Apis bull, seen as a manifestation of the god Ra.

Seated statue of Pharaoh Sety II from the Temple of Mut in Karnak, Thebes, 19th Dynasty. © Trustees of the British Museum

These three objects remind us of the way religion and ceremony permeated all aspects of ancient Egyptian life. The pharaoh was the intermediary between the gods and his people, although more than one ruler succumbed to the megalomaniac temptation to be worshipped as a deity. Only the most successful, such as Ramses II, were able to get away with it.

A 12th-Dynasty girdle with gold amulets, and beads and pendants comprising electrum, silver, lapis lazuli, feldspar, amethyst, cornelian and glass. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Vandenbeusch says the show will reveal how the kings wanted to be depicted, and how these images evolved over time. What’s most interesting is how little they seem to have changed, as a new pharaoh would strive to associate himself with the heroes of the past. One sees it in their adoption of celebrated names such as Ramses, Amenhotep and Thutmose.

“The aim of the show,” she says, “is not to narrate the history of ancient Egypt but to try to understand what it meant to be a pharaoh – the different aspects of monarchy, and the challenges it created. This allows us to bring in all the other roles, all the different individuals who formed the big machinery it required to rule a country like ancient Egypt.”

The art is fascinating, but Vandenbeusch readily admits it’s all propaganda. “The pharaohs wanted to pass on a message of power and control, and we need to look at everything with that thought in mind. We also need to remember we are seeing only the surface of what they wanted to communicate. We don’t know much about them as individuals. The large ears on one statue shouldn’t be taken as a record of what the pharoah looked like, but as a sign that he was listening to his people.”

Amid the formality, there are surprisingly intimate moments. Daniel Antoine, the British Museum’s keeper of the department of Egypt and Sudan, points to a limestone statue of Horemheb and his wife (c. 1336-1323 BCE), in which she cradles his hand in her lap. He also suggests that the jewellery in the show provides a more personal view of these ancient societies, through its symbolism and the sheer sense of having been worn in everyday life.

Antoine, who says he is “one hundred per cent a scientist”, is thrilled by the amount of information being revealed by new technology such as CT scans. Amulets buried under the layers of a mummy’s bandages can be detected, scanned, and reproduced with 3D printing, leaving the body unmolested. “Unwrapping a mummy is a one-time event,” he says, feeling grateful that generations of curators at the museum managed to avoid the temptation.

The throwstick of Pharoah Akhenaten, recovered from the Royal Tomb in Amarna, Egypt, 18th Dynasty. © The Trustees of the British Museum

One important strand of Antoine’s research is mapping the history of disease. “We have mummies that have suffered from cancer, from cardiovascular complaints, terrible dental disease. We think these things are modern problems, but no, they go back far into the distant past. It reminds us that although we’re separated by thousands of years, we share the same concerns and issues.”

There are no mummies in the NGV show, partly due to the sensitivities of treating human remains as artefacts, partly because they are a huge distraction for audiences who become fixated on these bandaged cadavres.

Remains of a statue of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, thought to be from Thebes, 18th Dynasty. He reigned from about 1336-1327 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Instead, visitors will have to be content with items such as a “mindblowing” sandstone statue of Sety II (1200-1194 BCE) that is almost constantly out on loan; the elaborately painted coffin of Ahmose (c. 900 BCE); no fewer that 10 statues of Sekhmet, the lion goddess; and the entire wall of a mastaba – an underground burial chamber from the 5th Dynasty (2494 -2345 BCE) – covered in relief sculptures.

Stephanie Vasiliou, the British Museum’s senior conservator, stone, wall paintings and mosaics, says the mastaba was by far the most difficult piece to prepare for the show, as 15 fragments had to be handled by different conservators and brought together to form a unified whole.

“It’s important,” she says, “that when these fragments get put together on a wall, you haven’t got 15 fragments, you’ve got a wall.”

The curators believe the show in Melbourne offers a unique opportunity to see how another major institution displays and interprets these objects that have become so familiar to them. The NGV has established a worldwide reputation for the quality of its exhibition design, and Antoine says he is looking forward to picking up useful ideas to assist with the museum’s own displays, which are due for a major revamp.

If the main aim of Pharaoh is to unlock the distant past for Australian audiences, the curators of the British Museum are hoping for a glimpse of the future.

The writer travelled to London with assistance from the National Gallery of Victoria.