Archaeological wonders of ancient Egypt appear in the news. At the beginning of the month, the Grand Egyptian Museum was opened in Cairo, near the Giza Pyramids. The construction of the 24,000 square meter complex took 20 years and required an investment of more than $1 billion. Some 100,000 statues and historical relics of this vanished civilization are on display inside, although the biggest attraction is Tutankhamun’s treasure: 5,000 priceless objects collected for the first time in more than a century under one roof.
Less well-known (although no less impressive) is the Colossal Statue of Ramesses II, a colossal 11-meter-high statue weighing 83 tons that greets tourists and visitors with its blinding eyes and a beautiful granite half-smile.
Twelve thousand kilometers away, in Buenos Aires, the National Museum of Fine Arts opened its own temporary exhibition on the subject last week. The exhibition, titled “Science and Imagination: Egyptology and Egyptology in Argentina,” seeks to explore the fascination of this ancient culture in our country over the years. It consists of nearly 200 objects – sarcophagi, funerary masks, papyri, stones carved with hieroglyphics – as well as archival materials, photographs, and works by Xul Solar, Oliverio Girondo, Manuel Mujica Láinez, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others, from some twenty public and private institutions.
It is not difficult to understand the enduring fascination that Egyptian civilization continues to arouse in the West. His idea of death as an interruption rather than an end to life illuminated a legacy that still amazes us today.: Huge funerary temples in the shape of pyramids, amazingly preserved mummies, and an afterlife ruled by gods with the heads of a jackal, eagle, or crocodile. So different from us, with our absolute terror of death, our little niches, our only bearded God.
One of the most revealing discoveries from the Egyptian past — which is not included in either of these exhibitions — highlights not so much the differences as the similarities between that civilization and our own. These are not amulets of gold and precious stones, but of Fragments of papyrus were found at the beginning of the last century in Deir el-Medina, a thriving settlement of craftsmen and workers dedicated to the construction of funerary monuments. -Including Tutankhamun and Ramses II-. In these parts appeared love poems written about 3,000 years ago, during the period known as the New Kingdom.
The poems are written in hieratic – the cursive form of hieroglyphs – and do not bear any signature. It is believed to have been set to music and reveals the remarkable level of literary refinement attained by a portion of the Egyptian population. For example, these Verses dating back 25 centuries that could have been written yesterday, due to their combination of longing and humor.: “I’ll lie at home / And pretend I’m dying. / Then the neighbors will come / To look at me curiously / And maybe you’ll go with them. / When she gets there, I won’t need a doctor: / She knows why I’m like this.”
Among those papers, purchased by the American businessman and collector Sir Alfred Chester Beatty and later collected in his vast library, are verses that are happy (“My one and only love, my matchless love, / Fairest of all. / Like a morning star that shines / At the start of a happy year”) and sad (“Lost! Lost! Lost! Oh, I’ve lost my love! / He passes by my house, and he doesn’t turn his head. / I prepare myself carefully; he does.” He doesn’t see me / Love doesn’t see me.
But what abounds most is the intense humanity of the film’s heroes.whose names are lost forever. Women and men who devoted themselves to other jobs, and one day decided to pour out their joys and misfortunes on papyrus rolls. They found, perhaps without expecting it, a treasure that still shines for us today.