Back to The Egyptian Museum in Munich. It sits underground - under the grass outside the School for Film and Television - in the 163 acre Kunstareal (Arts Precinct). The scale of this area and its ambitions and realisations belittles many other cities, and our (Sydney) puny attempts especially. No, we don't have the traditions, and certainly not the collections, but we seem to have neither the will nor the resistance to the false gods of crass commercialism.
Each visit brings a new focus. This caught my attention today ...
... high on the wall at the bottom of the entrance walkway. And you start to wonder what's new. And think nothing. All art is contemporary becomes has been becomes is.
And so to the head of the pharaoh Echnaton/Akhenaten (c 1330 BC) ...
... whose Queen was Nefertiti, whose legend is ever expanding, whose body is the subject of some fascinating medical speculations, and most of all who was inspired to attempt, albeit in vain, to instil in his people the radical concept of monotheism. (*)
H was with me and we stood for ages as he told me Echnaton's story as the ancient head looked beyond time above us. For these moments every hint of the hardship's of travel vanish.
Not to mention the incredibly handsome Antinous, Hadrian's favourite.
(*) Here is the beginning of some links to the Philip Glass opera of the same name.
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