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The Egyptian
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by 20th Century Fox
Sales Rank: 8133
Price: $19.98
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I like getting a good laugh at observing how Hollywood distorts history in order to create what will hopefully be a box office hit. <br /> <br />The Egyptian is billed as "The Stunning Story of an Ancient Empire Rocked by a New Religion". Since it is supposedly set in 1,300 B.C.E., I thought it would be about an Egyptian who discovers the wonderful religion of Judaism. <br /> <br />I was wrong. The film makers mixed some "Christian" virtues with the ancient Egyptian symbol of the ankh and some unrelated historical facts. <br /> <br />The ankh is a symbol that looks like a Christian cross, except that the part above the horizontal line forms a loop. <br /> <br />It was a symbol for the power to give and sustain life and typically associated with material things such as water(which was believed by Egyptians to regenerate life), air, sun, as well as with the Gods, who were frequently pictured carrying an Ankh. <br /> <br />But in the film, of course, it is supposed to represent something else - worship of the sun god. This sun god is the only god, so said the pharoah in the film who tries to get his people to convert - monotheism nicely introduced. <br /> <br />There was an eccentric pharoah, Akhenaten, at that time who tried to get his people to convert to worshipping only the sun god. He also insisted that artists represent him realistically, rather than stylistically. He even tried to get the capital of Egypt changed. <br /> <br />Not long after he died, all his efforts to change religion and art in Egypt were undone. <br /> <br />He did not give any special new meaning to the ankh. Also, there is no evidence that he tried to make non-violence and mercy tenets of this new religion. <br /> <br />Of course the film says he did in order to create parallels with Christianity. <br /> <br />It is a beautiful film with fabulous sets and Peter Ustinov as the hero's servant is terrific as usual. The hero is a physician who starts out idealistic, becomes bitter and then eventually discovers true love and new meaning for his life. But Well, you will have to see the film to discover what happens next. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
Viewer Reviews
This film is fondly remembered from my childhood (Egypt was a terrific craze at the time - King Tut exhibit, Elizabeth Taylor's movie, the Mummy) and I still enjoyed it. But ... its very sexist. All Mika Waltari's (the author of the novel the script is derived form) work has a masochistic woman as the terrible, unattainable, irresistible and finally destroyed woman. Most of his novels have the woman being beaten. This one only dies of a disease (however in poverty and disgrace). So, yes, I still liked it (especially the references to Tutankhamen - see Velikovsky's analogy to the Oedipal myth) but I really look forward to the day when woman writers/directors get together to create these huge romantic epics with women who aren't either doormats for the hero or die.
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The Egyptian
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