Visions of Ancient Egypt

I went with G and M today to the very interesting Visions of Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Sainsburys Centre in Norwich. This exhibition ‘examines how ancient Egypt has shaped our cultural imagination. From antiquity, when the Great Pyramid was revered as a wonder of the ancient world, to the Cleopatra of Shakespeare’s stage, this ground-breaking exhibition explores this ongoing engagement with ancient Egypt and charts its many forms across centuries of art and design.’ My thumbnail is of one of the fabulous lithographs (this is of The Great Temple at Abu Simbel) produced by David Roberts from his sketches after his tour to Egypt in 1838-9 (I have a book reproducing some of his lithographs which I bought after a holiday to Cairo, Luxor and a Nile cruise). I also included two P&O Egypt tour brochures which interested me having done the Nile cruise and many P&O Cruises. The final image is ‘The Other Nefertiti’ by Al-Bahri and Nelles who ‘covertly scanned the original and released a free digital model online’. This model was then 3D-printed by the University of East Anglia. We did the free tour, scheduled for 45 mins, but which lasted 90 mins. The content of the guide’s tour was excellent and included a lot of information not on the information panels (although his delivery was rather slow). I also had a walk around the sculpture park. A very enjoyable day, many thanks to G for organising and M for driving.