Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs

by Colleen Manassa Darnell

Echoes of Egypt is a catalog accompanying an exhibit at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. Edited by Colleen Manassa, the catalog also includes entries by international experts. Documenting two thousand years of the reception of ancient Egypt throughout the world, Echoes of Egypt transcends the typical account on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 'Egyptomania'. The first chapter includes a chronological overview of the exhibit, ranging from ancient Meroe, Greece and Rome, and medieval Arab-Islamic fascination with hieroglyphs to Piranesi's interior designs and the impact of Napoleon's invasion. Additional chapters focus on the meaning and changing uses of hieroglyphs, 'mummy mania', and Egyptosophy. Full color images complement the text.

100 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2013

About the author

Also credited as: Colleen Manassa, Colleen Darnell, John and Colleen Darnell

Dr. Colleen Darnell is an American Egyptologist known for her Instagram account Vintage Egyptologist as well as a YouTube channel of the same name that she runs with her husband and fellow Egyptologist John Darnell.

She has made numerous contributions and discoveries to the study of Egyptian history and has appeared in documentaries as an expert of the field, including on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, the Science Channel, and Smithsonian, as well as appeared in National Geographic’s “Lost Treasures of Egypt.”

Colleen teaches art history at the University of Hartford and Naugatuck Valley Community College; she has curated a major museum exhibit on Egyptian revival art and design at the Yale Peabody Museum.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a serious letdown. Manassa and others try to paint a picture of how the Egyptian legacy lived on in later times. Very interesting in itself, but this booklet accompanying an exhibition at Yale University in 2013-2014, really doesn't dig deep. Especially the Egyptomania from the mid-19th century remains very underexposed. A missed opportunity. More in my History Account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

The fact that Ancient Egypt appealed to the imagination very early on is evident from the enormous influence that civilization had on, for example, the Roman emperors and culture. The worship of the mother goddess Isis, or the Antinous cult established by the emperor Hadrian, are just a few examples (and we're not talking about Mark Antony and Caesar). Later Persian and Arab cultures also drew freely from the imaginative inheritance of the Ancient Egyptians. And at the end of the 18th century, emerging Europe discovered the Egyptian legacy after General Bonaparte's campaign/expedition. Egyptomania reached a peak in the 19th century when it even started a separate art style. This booklet is only a pioneering study, I know, but it still disappointed me because of the very selective way it deals with this phenomenon.