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What the text explains, the images reveal: their numinous beauty stems from the nature of the ancient Egyptians’ relationship with the world around them. Unlike the cosmolANE BOSTON A Glorious Menagerie ‘Of all the civilizations of the ancient world, none enjoyed such a close and significant relationship with the animal realm as that of the ancient Egyptians.’ So Philippe Germond, an Egyptologist at the University of Geneva, plunges into his subject in An Egyptian Bestiary (2001). But already he is outflanked on the facing page by the regal profile of a leopard’s head carved in sunken relief, the sharply incised contour framing it with a powerful line of shadow. Which is fitting, for this is above all a picture book, led by 280 spectacular photographs (mostly credited to his co-author Jacques Livet) of artworks that speak across the millennia and challenge the imagination. The book is subtitled Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharaohs. Gazing at the familiar, fabulous and mythical beasts haunting its pages – painted, engraved, sculpted and written as hieroglyphs – feels like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole or peering through a long telescope that carries you far back in time. These beings were worshipped, feared, hunted, tamed, herded, fed, eaten and pampered by our distant ancestors when the pharaohs came to rule over the world’s first nation state. Philippe Germond and Jacques Livet, An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharaohs (2001), is out of print but we can obtain second-hand copies. 19
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A Glorious Menagerie ogy of the Bible, in the Egyptian cosmos the birds and beasts of this world and the next all find their place alongside human beings: equal if not superior in status to their human counterparts. At the dawn of the world there was no hierarchy within the universe: ‘Humankind was not the final crowning achievement of creation, but was simply one of its elements, on a par with stones, plants and animals.’ I found this credo strangely comforting during the long months of lockdown, when the non-human world acquired extra significance. In the city bursts of birdsong, foxes patrolling darkened streets, seeds sprouting on windowsills were proof of the natural world’s turning seasons regardless of human crisis. More crucially, clean air and clear skies brought pressing issues of climate change, pollution and destruction of wild habitats into sharper focus. All this would have been recognized by the people of ancient Egypt, who believed that the natural balance must be preserved at all costs to fend off drought, flood, famine and plague. Ancient Egypt didn’t impinge on my childhood; it wasn’t even in my sights as I dawdled in a local second-hand bookshop one Sunday a couple of years ago. I was interested in the country’s colonial and post-colonial history, for purely personal reasons: I wanted to learn more about Egypt at the turn of the twentieth century when my maternal grandfather, about whom I knew almost nothing, was posted to Cairo to teach in the new veterinary college. He stayed in Egypt for twenty years until his sudden death, rising to become Chief Veterinary Inspector of Lower Egypt and being awarded medals by the Khedive and the Protectorate’s Sultan for his pioneering work deploying a vaccine against the cattle plague then ravaging Africa. Why did he choose to make his life in that sweltering land of river and sand so far from his native Derbyshire? Somewhere in the literature I thought I might find clues. Instead, I came face to face with a black-muzzled jackal god wearing a striped headdress, gazing out from a dustjacket. Enthralled, I paid up and struggled home with my prize – An Egyptian Bestiary weighs in at 2.25 kilos. 20

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What the text explains, the images reveal: their numinous beauty stems from the nature of the ancient Egyptians’ relationship with the world around them. Unlike the cosmolANE BOSTON A Glorious Menagerie

‘Of all the civilizations of the ancient world, none enjoyed such a close and significant relationship with the animal realm as that of the ancient Egyptians.’ So Philippe Germond, an Egyptologist at the University of Geneva, plunges into his subject in An Egyptian Bestiary (2001). But already he is outflanked on the facing page by the regal profile of a leopard’s head carved in sunken relief, the sharply incised contour framing it with a powerful line of shadow. Which is fitting, for this is above all a picture book, led by 280 spectacular photographs (mostly credited to his co-author Jacques Livet) of artworks that speak across the millennia and challenge the imagination.

The book is subtitled Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharaohs. Gazing at the familiar, fabulous and mythical beasts haunting its pages – painted, engraved, sculpted and written as hieroglyphs – feels like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole or peering through a long telescope that carries you far back in time. These beings were worshipped, feared, hunted, tamed, herded, fed, eaten and pampered by our distant ancestors when the pharaohs came to rule over the world’s first nation state.

Philippe Germond and Jacques Livet, An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharaohs (2001), is out of print but we can obtain second-hand copies.

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