Apples and pears

Information or imitation art, examination or exhilaration? Gamal Nkrumah tastes unforbidden fruit

Every depiction of an ancient portrait has the capacity to change interpretive history. It is mid-February and the Temple of Edfu looks a shadow of its usual self. Instead of picture-postcard columns, the colossal figures etched on its walls and the spirit of the late summer inundation, the ghostly outlines of high-priests look like they are under the spell of a sorcerer of the ancients.



It is not the dead bodies, decomposing mummies, powerful memories of a lost world that entrance the viewer. It is the very image of Ippolito Rosellini, the father of Italian Egyptology and colleague of Jean- François Champollion at work in Upper Egypt that captures the imagination of the visitor to "Ippolito Rosellini and the Dawn of Egyptology" at the Egyptian Museum. It takes some time to come to terms with the imposition imported, or rather on loan, from the Rosellini Archives in the University Library of Pisa, the home town of Italy's "Father of Egyptology".

It is difficult not to notice that his eyes are still glistening with excitement. Rosellini is very much alive, his expression and posture reminiscent of the realistic nature of the Renaissance. His subjects in sharp contrast are highly stylised Egyptian. Eyes and eyebrows, and full-view shoulders squarely face the viewer. Ippolito Rosellini, after all, was a master of concision.

His own illustrations, like those of the ancient Egyptians, lacked shading or the least suggestion of light. His subjects are very different from him. Their physique is unique. Waist, buttocks, flat tummies and graceful limbs are shown in portrait. What did the 28-year-old professor of Oriental languages at Pisa University make of them when he disembarked at Alexandria? Perhaps he understood their determination to survive throughout Eternity, their right to live forever, and their refusal to die. The afterlife was the brainchild of their desire to have close friends over for the occasional dinner. Their retainers were there to ensure that on such occasions they made up and dressed to impress onlookers.

Little did they know that the spectators would be some four millennia younger. The 1828-29 Franco-Tuscan team of artists, architects, engineers and naturalists headed by French Egyptologist and decipherer of hieroglyphs Champollion in collaboration with Rosellini beheld the charms of the ancients and were enthralled.

The current exhibition is organised by the University of Pisa, the Italian Archaeological Centre in Cairo and the Supreme Council of Antiquities. So it came to pass that Rosellini's illustrations today grace the walls of the Egyptian Museum.

Rosellini did not have the liberty to release into abstractions the images he came across, an art that is utterly euphoric. Yet there is so much exhilaration here.

Rosellini's illustrations drift off. A banquet ensemble parades here, and the garden of paradise posits there. Somewhat confusingly they share space not only with the permanent exhibits -- colossal monuments from an age bygone, but by the works of two Spanish artists brought over courtesy of the Cervantes Institute in Cairo and the University of Granada, Spain. The two Granada artists Ricardo Marin Viade and Asuncion Jodar Minarro, too, are obviously fascinated by the ancients. Their 400 drawings and sketches between 2005 and 2010 share the same space with the 50 original drawings of the Tuscan Literary Expedition to Egypt by Rosellini.

The works of the Spanish artists, however, are exclusively inspired by the Ptolomaic Temple of Horus at Edfu begun in 237 BC and completed in 57 BC. As excursions into diversity go, you could say that Rosellini's illustrations are apples and the art of the Spanish duo are special pears. Few of the 1,400 drawings and watercolours of Rosellini's original paper portfolio published in five gigantic volumes visited Cairo this winter to be displayed before the public.

Unlike the Spanish artists, Rosellini did not have the luxury to get such cold colours to thaw. The revelation of Rosellini's show is the astonishing atmosphere his paintings exude.

But whatever the paintings absorb from the lives of the ancients, they also transcend the antiquated visions of the afterlife.

It is a cliché. I cannot say in all honesty that the paintings add colour to the drab slabs of stone deposited in the dimly lit halls of the Graeco-Roman corner of the Egyptian Museum in the heart of Cairo. This, after all, is the first exhibition of contemporary art hosted by the Egyptian Museum. The journey that these Rosellini illustrations undertook must be one of mixed emotions.

Still, Rosellini is precise. He leaves no room for the imagination. Or does he? Princess Ranofri, a daughter of the famous warrior Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, is depicted as a blonde in a wall painting presumably meticulously recorded by Rosellini. The Spaniards are even less accurate. The shape of the heads of their subjects are curious, to say the least. Their Adam apples, like undeletable lumps of anguish, are even more expressive than their almond-shaped Egyptian eyes.

Disdain leaves little for discussion or debate. These portraits are reminiscent of philosopher Pharaohs who grit their teeth and stay on course. Their full lips are protruding. Their noses are aquiline. The shapes of their heads differ ever so slightly from one individual to another. They are variations on a theme.

But back to Rosellini: harp on the left with the red crown of Lower Egypt, and harp on the right with the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The colours are bold and vibrant. The juxtaposition of Rosellini and the Spanish artists is reminiscent of a retrospect of organised chaos. But, then the Egyptian Museum itself is the very embodiment of Pandemonium.

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