Criticism and Theory
Saddik Gouhar
201200350
Haifa Abdulla
Report Summary
Introduction
In 1798 when Napoleon invaded Egypt opened the door to the western cities such as Britain and France, sparked of the beginnings of Egyptomania, the innovative modern scholarship on ancient Egypt, Jean François and the birth of the science of Egyptology. The best period for Egypt extended beyond the nineteenth century and it retched to the 1922 with the discovery of the tomb Tutankhamun. The text above offers an analysis of literary culture of the ancient Egypt at that time the people where interested in science and magic. In the ancient Egypt during the late popular cultures the Victorian and Edwardian had a strong influence on various of literary…show more content… The artefact in Cleopatra is the text itself; the original, we learn in the introduction (another of Haggard’s frame narratives), was written on ‘papyrus rolls’ discovered in a tomb. Also, Haggard constructs a persona, who narrates how the folk/public script is translated by a London Egyptologist. Like She, this text is explicitly labelled a ‘history’. The importance of the ancient Egyptian artefacts and artifice of London is evident in their works. It influenced Haggard’s desire to draw inspiration from real relics that were part of his experiences in the city, to publish his early ancient Egyptian narratives in London newspapers, and to masquerade as his own characters while travelling on the underground…show more content… At the same time, Egyptians seem to have been just as influenced by beauty, if not more so, than we are in our modern world. Indeed, it seems at time that beauty may have even been a part concept related to ma'at, the order that Egyptian's saw in their world.
Haggard’s ancient Egyptian queen in Cleopatra is one such example. Initially clad in the robes of Isis in a demonstration of her ethereal authority, her body is partly exposed and partly tantalizingly concealed beneath a transparent ‘garment that [glistens] like the scaly covering of a snake’.64 Drawing upon the rich tradition of ancient Egyptian women associated with serpents, Cleopatra exhibits both her supernatural sympathies and destructive allure. Like the biblical character of Joseph, she too has prophetic dreams, and yet it is her body and not her mind which can ‘match’ the magical prowess of sorcerers.65 Terrence Rodgers perceives something supernatural in her voluptuousness, labelling her ‘a sexual vampire’ and in doing so, likening her to a typical fin de siècle mesmeric