Following up on that exhibition of Ghanaian coffins I went to the British Museum the other day and tracked down the two examples they have there. They're in the Living and Dying Room - one was a big eagle very similar to one of those at the exhibition but it was the other one, in the shape of a giant Nikon camera, that was really worth seeing. It was, for reasons of space I suppose, very high up though, so you couldn't get a brilliant look at it. Anyway, having seen that I thought I might as well have a wander.Over the years I must have been in the museum literally umpteen times and out of all the monumental bits of Egyptian sculpture there this is easily my favourite - it looks exactly like an illustration by Moebius. There's something so satisfying about it, the shape of the hair (a Hathor wig according to this). I looked her up when I got home and found her in my copy of Faces of Pharaohs. I find it slightly mindblowing that, should I travel to Cairo, I could go to the museum there and gaze upon the actual (highly mummified) face of the woman whose three and a half thousand year old portrait this is.
Good post Sir. Nothing wrong with some history in a music blog. Good labelling also.
ReplyDeleteCheers SA, I also consider greasy spoons, footwear, comics and funny looking buildings to be legitimate topics on which to blog.
ReplyDeleteCan't help thinking that H R Giger was influenced in some way by it when he was called upon to design ELP's Brain Salad Surgery cover.
ReplyDeleteHmm, quite possibly - co-incidentally, when I was googling around Moebius I was surprised to see that he had worked on Alien.
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