Paris: Marseille and Lens, pharaonic exhibitions

The themes on the pharaohs, accessible to all and sometimes even very pop, never fail to attract a large audience in museums. The Louvre, the Mucem and the Louvre-Lens all devote an exhibition there by the end of the year.

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In the VIII e century BC, the Ramses dynasty ends. Nubia, long dominated by Egypt, takes its independence and the kingdom of Kouch is formed there. “But the kings of Kouch prove to be more pharaohs than the Pharaohs, they are the champions of orthodoxy and pharaonic aesthetics,” says conservative Vincent Rondot, the scholarship of the exhibition “Pharaoh of the two Land “, which is held until July 25 at the Louvre.

In June, it is the turn of the Mucem, in Marseille, to celebrate eternal Egypt, that of Kheops and Nefertiti, Cleopatra and Tounkhamon, in the exhibition “Pharaohs Superstars”. A year earlier, already, the Granet museum brave the pandemic with “Pharaoh, Osiris and the Mummy”, bringing together more than 250 archaeological treasures. That is to say if France dedicates a passion to ancient Egypt.

exotic and attractive

Slide “Pharaoh” in the wording of an exhibition, and it is the guaranteed jackpot. In 1967, more than a million visitors had rushed to the Petit Palais, in Paris, to admire the treasures of Touânkhamon.

Fifty-two years later, at La Villette, the Egyptian monarch was full again: 1.4 million admissions, unheard of! More than any other civilization, Egypt fascinates crowds. And that for millennia. Greeks and Romans already venerated this kingdom, which they never ceased to want to conquer.

In the 18th century ^e century, the first archaeological discoveries and the Napoleonic countryside conducted in Egypt from 1798 to 1801 rekindled Egyptomania. The return style of Egypt, which spreads throughout Europe, wins the decorative arts. Egypt is part of the Parisian architecture, from the Concorde obelisk, whose restoration began in January, at the four small sphinxes surrounding the Palm Fountain, Place du Châtelet.

The deciphering, by Champollion in 1822, of the first hieroglyphs, of which the Louvre-Lens will celebrate, in September, the bicentenary, excites the curious. The discovery, a century later, of the tomb of Tounkhamon by the British archaeologist Howard Carter, maintains the lively flame until today.

mysteries and curses

Exotic and attractive with its monarchs and deities, mysteries and curses, this civilization remains familiar and accessible, in a word, “pop”. “No need to be learned to appreciate it,” sums up Guillemette Andreu-Lanoë, former director of the Egyptian Antiquities Department in the Louvre. Not an area that has not given way to Egyptomania: comics (Pharaoh’s cigars, Immortals Fair), Video Games, Opera (AIDA).

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