Egypt - Eternal passion.

This catalog accompanies the exhibition Egypt. Eternal Passion presented at the Royal Museum of Mariemont from September 24, 2022 to April 16, 2023. Written by some twenty specialists, its objective is to reveal to as many people as possible how Pharaonic Egypt has perpetuated itself through philosophy, literature, and the arts, from ancient Rome to the present day. Divided into four periods—that of the gods, scholars, passions, and icons—the journey presented here, accompanied by high-quality illustrations, considers the highlights and major artistic productions of this centuries-old persistence. In Roman Italy, it focuses on the popularity of the art and religion of Pharaonic Egypt and shows how the Roman emperors enabled their transmission to the West. It examines ancient authors and works of art from antiquity rediscovered in Italy from the Renaissance onwards, and explains how, during the Modern Age, a powerful European mysticism arose around Pharaonic Egypt. In the 19th century, it shows how the publication of the 23 volumes of the famous Description of Egypt on the orders of Napoleon constituted a turning point in Western attitudes towards Egypt. It questions the foundations of Egyptological science and, in the arts, those of "Egyptomania," analyzing the productions of painters, ceramists, filmmakers, tattooists, and other contemporary artists. From Roman emperors to tourists on Thomas Cook voyages, from Renaissance scholars to Egyptologists, from Champollion to the jeweler Cartier, from Giacometti to Rihanna, or simply from us to you, let us examine the ways and reasons that lead us to give in to this eternal passion.