Wednesday, November 22, 2023

How Pharaohs Became Media Stars: Ancient Egypt and Popular Culture

book cover 

Archaeopress Egyptology 48

The appearance of new media and its enormous diffusion in the last decades of the 20th century and up to the present has greatly increased and diversified the reception of Egyptian themes and motifs and Egyptian influence in various cultural spheres. So-called ‘popular’ or ‘pop’ culture (cinema, genre fiction, TV-series, comics, graffiti, computer and video games, rock and heavy music, radio serials, among others) often makes use of narratives and motifs drawn from the observation and study of ancient Egypt, updated and reinterpreted in various ways, and which is now the subject of study by scholars of Egyptology.

The present monograph seeks to provide new evidence of this interdisciplinarity between Egyptology and popular culture. It explores the conscious reinterpretation of the past in the work of contemporary authors, who shape an image of the Egyptian reality that in each case is determined by their own circumstances and contexts.

H 245 x W 174 mm

260 pages

40 figures, 20 tables (colour throughout)

Published Nov 2023

Archaeopress Archaeology

ISBN

Paperback: 9781803276267

Digital: 9781803276274

DOI 10.32028/9781803276267

Contents

Preface


Introduction: “Ich mache mir die (ägyptische) Welt, wie sie mir gefällt” (Egypopcult Project) – Abraham I. Fernández Pichel


Theories on Pop Culture and Egyptology – José das Candeias Sales


The Portrayal of Ancient Egypt in Sir Terry Pratchett’s PyramidsFilip Taterka


Pauline Gedge’s Hatshepsut: Child of the MorningMaiken Mosleth King


The Persistent Pyramid: Exploring the Creation of Egypt as Religious Foil in Marie Corelli’s ZiskaSara Woodward


Stephen Sommers’s The Mummy (1999): Modern Legacies of the Tutankhamun Excavations – Eleanor Dobson


Josephus as source of the Egyptian sequences in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) – Nuno Simões Rodrigues


From Alma-Tadema to Cecil B. DeMille: The Influence of Nineteenth-Century Painting on Classical Hollywood Films Set in Ancient Egypt – Guillermo Juberías Gracia


Sex, Gender and Sexualisation: Ancient Egypt in Contemporary Popular Culture – Abraham I. Fernández Pichel and Marc Orriols-Llonch


Eternally Maligned as the Power-hungry Femme Fatale: Kleopatra VII in Assassin’s Creed Origins and Other Video Games – Tara Sewell-Lasater


Egypt and Role-Playing Games. Does the World of Darkness Universe Use Ancient Egyptian Sources? – Abraham I. Fernández Pichel and Víctor Sánchez Domínguez


Of Mummies and Memes: A Digital Ethnographic Approach to ‘Vernacular Egyptology’ on TikTok – Samuel Fernández-Pichel


The Road to El ojo de Nefertiti: Representing Egyptian Mythology for Middle-grade Readers – Jesús Cañadas

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