What makes Ancient Egypt so attractive?

An "egyptomaniac" from the beginning

Since I was a kid I was impressed by the Ancient Egyptians, their monuments and of course their enigmatic language. It never went out of my mind, although my parents „kindly suggested“ to me to learn something „correct“ (with the loving pressure of parents caring about their kids…you know). So I became a lawyer, but I never felt familiar with that profession. After university I worked almost 15 years as a freelance graphic designer …and then I decided to study again: I enrolled for courses at the university in the subjects „Egyptology“ and „Ancient Near Eastern Studies“. Years from that I am still thrilled by Ancient Egypt, although the reality of working as an Egyptologist is not always so „romantic“ as you might percept it in documentaries. But this is probably the case in most professions and nothing to worry about. Sometimes it is just hard work, like everywhere else.

I studied hieroglyphs in several language levels: middle-egyptian language (the most common language of antiquity in Egypt), late-egyptian, coptic, ptolemaic and so on. I also learned basics of the akkadian language and a bit of sumerian (cuneiform = the written language in ancient Mesopotamia). And, of course, due to this many things lost their „mystery“. But I never lost that feeling of adventure, of being at the beginning of a great discovery that will re-write our history. And it does, all the time when we excavate something new – even if it is just a very small piece that adds a detail to an existing story.

Photo: This is the so called "bent pyramid"in Dahshur, not far away from Giza – one of the earlier tries to build a pyramid before it worked fine. It was probably abandoned because of a construction error in 2650 B.C.

There is still so much unknown

Zahi Hawass once said, that there are still about 70% of the artifacts laying under the sand. I am convinced he was right. This secrets are waiting to be discovered by following generations. But what many people don’t know: there is also a lot of work in the basement of museums all over the world. Because in the earlier times, when the first Egyptologists came to Egypt from Europe and America, they filled their „bags“ with huge amounts of objects from their expeditions. They put them into boxes and left them in the archives for further working on. And then they were forgotten… Some artifacts were not moved by human hands since decades!

But to turn over to my question from the beginning: what makes Ancient Egypt so attractive to the people of today? Why are there still so many documentaries on TV about the pyramids, Tutanchamun, Nefertiti & Co.? Even forums on the internet are full of countless open questions and even conspiracy theories are growing. From my perspective it is the attraction of an „unsolved riddle“ which is concerning the heritage of humanity altogether. Yes, there are similar traces of ancient history in Mexico and elsewhere. Their pyramids are fascinating to people almost in the same intensity as the egyptian pyramids do. But no culture reached this perfection in execution like the ancient egyptian culture. So not only the meaning behind the legacy is a secret (why they did it), but also how they could realize (for example) such fine, precise stone working.

---

Image-Sources
Photo of the bent pyramid: own photo
Comic: http://alfa-img.com/show/sphinx-humor.html