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We recently had a Q&A session with noted archaeologist, Dr. Kara Cooney. Aside from hosting the Discovery Channel program, Out of Egypt, she also wrote part of the catalog for our current show, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum.
When did you first realize you were interested in Egypt? What sparked this interest?
I was about seven or eight years old, and my mother came back from a business trip to London with my dad. She went to the British Museum and brought back a number of books about the ancient world - about the Romans, Vikings, Medieval Europe, and a few about ancient Egypt. These books were all about the daily lives of ancient peoples - how they cooked their food, how they built their houses, and how they buried their dead. I especially remember one of the books that had dozens of pictures of unwrapped mummies and coffins, and I thought that was pretty amazing. But I don't know what the real spark of interest was. Long story short, I have always been interested in cultures that are long dead. I want to know what they were really like. I still love the ancient Romans and Vikings, but Egypt won.
2. For a field so deeply rooted in the past, how has modern technology changed the role of the Egyptologist?
When I was working on my dissertation and traveling to museums throughout Europe, I had to cart a suitcase of books with me. Now I just bring an extra hard drive with PDF scans on them of the reference books I will need. I used to send letters and faxes to set up appointments at foreign museums. Obviously, now you can contact just about anyone in the world through email. And most importantly, digital photos have changed the lives of art historians and archaeologists everywhere. The first couple of years that I taught, I used slides with all of the fiddly carousels and expensive processing fees. What a wonderful invention PowerPoint and digital projectors are. I even remember that I was the only graduate student at the National Gallery who wanted to use digital images, and I had to get them made into slides, which was a bit backwards... Things have changed a lot since the year 2000. I've just started a database on Egyptian coffins, and I'm able to store and organize literally tens of thousands of images of these complicated funerary arts. With slides, that would have been impossible.
3. What is the question you are most commonly asked? And what is the biggest misconception about your job?
I'm most commonly asked why I decided to become an Egyptologist, and strangely I have a very hard time answering this question. It's almost too personal. Or the answer is too emotional. I don't think most people understand how much sacrifice there is in this profession. And so I think the decision was really a calling, of sorts, at least for me. We Egyptologists, and academics like us, choose to have almost zero chance of getting a job after the PhD. We choose to spend 8 to 10 years in graduate school, scraping together funds from stipends, part-time jobs in the library, and the odd student loan. We choose to move from one short-term post doc after another when we get the PhD, and that's if we are very lucky. We choose to measure our worth by the articles and books that we write. So, in the end, you have to be REALLY devoted to the lifetime pursuit of a dead culture. Don't get me wrong: I'm rewarded every day with my job. Unlike most people, I actually get to do what I love. But the choices that led to this happy ending were all rather insane because the chances of any of them working out was pretty low.
4. If you only had the opportunity for one more trip to Egypt, which two or three places would be on your must-visit list?
Well that's a hard question! First, I would have to head to Luxor, because it's one of the best preserved ancient cities in the world - with Karnak temple, Luxor temple, dozens of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and the mortuary temples on the west bank. Second, I would go to Cairo and just hang out every single day in the Egyptian Museum. The treasures in that museum are insane, and I'm not just talking about King Tut. Third, I would head to Abydos and visit my favorite temple - the Osiris temple of Seti I which has some of the most delicately cut and beautifully painted limestone relief anywhere in Egypt.
5. Name one thing about ancient Egypt that everyone should know, but hardly anybody does.
Slaves did not build the pyramids! And Egyptian culture was not built by slave labor. The pyramids were built by draft labor, which pulled Egyptian peasants from their lands into service for the king. It was the same situation for temples like Karnak or Luxor in ancient Thebes. I think most people think that Egypt is largely the product of foreign slaves, like ancient Rome was. But in reality, ancient Egypt was able to support such a high population that it was able to exploit its OWN PEOPLE to great effect. Unlike the Persians, Macedonians, or Romans, they didn't need to built a massive empire that built wealth on the backs of slaves. They had more than enough people in their own land who needed work so badly they were willing to work for daily bread.
SAVE THE DATE: Dr. Cooney will be our guest for the August 3rd Thursday event on August 19th.
