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"The Pharaohs' Golden Parade": Show, Ritual, Symbol

"The Pharaohs' Golden Parade": Show, Ritual, Symbol

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Keywords: Ancient Egypt, mummies, "the Pharaohs' Golden Parade", organization of performances, branding, cultural memory, political rhetoric

Available in the on-line version with: 30.03.2025

To cite this article

Lavrenteva N.V., Kononenko, E. I. "The Pharaohs' Golden Parade": Show, Ritual, Symbol. // Theory and History of Art. 2025. N 1, p.70–97 https://doi.org/10.24412/2411-0795-2025-1-70-97.

Сreative Commons Atribiution - NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
This work is licensed under a Сreative Commons Atribiution - NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
N 1, 2025

Abstract

"The Pharaohs' Golden Parade" is a colorful large-scale performance organized in Cairo in 2021; its "plot" was the movement of the mummies of Egyptian rulers from the old Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the new building of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat district. This event is rightly regarded as a spectacular tourist attraction and another exploitation of the "image of Ancient Egypt" as a replicated cultural brand; but at the same time, the organizers made perhaps the most serious attempt to date to reconstruct an ancient funeral ritual, demonstrating respect for the memory of their ancestors. Despite all the "glossyness" of the festival, a number of elements of the performance turn out to be well thought out and originally designed in accordance with scientific knowledge about the fundamental foundations of Ancient Egyptian civilization.

Such a change in the axiological status of objects from "museum artifacts" to "an object of national pride", necessarily framed as a kind of initiation, is accompanied by a demonstration to the outside world of respect for one's cultural heritage, which is recognized and presented as part of contemporary cultural strategy and state ideology.

This same demonstration is perceived as an act of political rhetoric, proclaiming the continuity of modern Egypt in the chain of civilizations of the Nile Valley and the state's concern for the formation of cultural memory.

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