Plate 3.5 Cigarette cards of Akhenaten and Tiye issued by John Player & Sons, 1912. The legend on the back of Tiye's is 'Queen Amenophis, wife of King Amenophis III, daughter of Juas and Tuaa, was of Asiatic origin. She was the most beautiful of all the women depicted on the monuments. She is represented more frequently there than is usually the case. She was blue-eyed, and of very fair complexion, and tenderly loved by her husband.' Author's collection.
They embody a rich, beautiful, leisured couplc, not rulers bestowing tokens of their appreciation on dutiful subjects.
QUEEhT AMENOPH IS j
The appearance of Akhenaten and Nefertiti on fashion accessories like evening bags and cigarette-cases suggests to me that in the 1920s and 1930s they had again found a perfect cultural moment to be rediscovered, bccause they seemed so up to date. In 1912 when Nefertiti and the Amarna royal women were first discovered, their fashion value would have been negligible: smart women were wearing elaborate corsets and huge cartwheel hats adorned with birds' wings. Ten or fifteen years later, though, the untailored, figure-hugging draperies and skull-sculptured head-dresses of the Amarna royal women perfectly suited the generation which had abandoned the corset and picture hat in favour of clinging garments cut on the bias and neat felt cloches (see Plate 3.7). It also fits
Plate 3.6 1920s beaded evening bag, based on a scene of Akhenaten and Nefertiti distributing gold, from the tomb of Parennefer at Amarna. Height 22 cm, width 12 cm. From the collection of Monique Bell, New York.
into art deco's enthusiastic and promiscuous adoption of Egyptian motifs and images.
The archaeology of Amarna influenced architecture as well as fashion accessories and decorative arts. If John Pendlebury's Amarna was really a version of suburban London, it was only logical that Amarna architecture would eventually appear in the London built environment. Quite a number of London buildings in the late 1920s and early 1930s used Egyptian themes and architectural elements.32 This fashion is generally ascribed to 'Tutmania', the cultural fall-out of the
Plate 3.7 Unidentified woman at an exhibition of Amarna objects in Manchester, 1931. Reproduced by courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.
discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and its effect on the decorative arts. '1 In fact, press coverage of the discoveries at Amarna probably played a greater part in the creation of Egyptianising architecture, because the site was presented so architecturally by its excavators, through isometric drawings, reconstructions and so on (see Plate 3.1). The site was also written up for the Architectural Association
Plate 3.8 The Mecca Social Club (formerly the Carlton Cinema), Essex Road, London Nl, 1929-30.
Journal by one of Pendlebury's team, Ralph Lavcrs (see Plate 3.3d). Unlike Amarna, Tutankhamun's tomb offered little in the way of specifically architectural inspiration, though it did offer plenty of plagiarisable motifs. Architecturally, then, one should perhaps talk of'Amarnamania' instead of Tutmania. Certain kinds of public buildings tended to be designed in Egyptianising style, particularly libraries, cemeteries, factories and cinemas - the last still an uncanon- ical architectural type in the 1920s and 1930s and therefore perhaps open to a wider range of stylistic influences. In fact, a cinema is the best surviving example of Amarna-inspircd decor in London: the former Carlton Cinema, Essex Road. It now masquerades under a different but still appropriate Orientalist guise as the Mecca bingo hall (see Plate 3.8). Designed by George Rose for the Clavering and Rose Theatres chain in 1929, and opened in September 1930, its facade has a number of features which seem to me Amarna-esque rather than generically Egyptianising. The papyriform columns are of a type very common in Amarna tombs: they arc most reminiscent in style of those from the tomb of Meryre', though their slender proportions are closer to those depicted in tomb 16 and the tomb of Panehesy (see Figure 3.6). Most distinctively Amarna-styled are the cartouche emplacements above the capitals, left empty on the London columns. The brilliant yellow, white, red and blue of the glazed tiles used on the exterior could
Figure 3.6 Columns from tomb 16 (left) and the tomb of Panehesy at Amarna (right).
well reflect tiling from Amarna exhibited in London in 1929. The frieze's stylised blue floral and vegetal motifs are reminiscent of the wall-paintings from the so- called harem area of the North Palace at Amarna, discovered during the 1927 season and thus easily available to George Rose through Frankfort's enthusiastic articles in The Illustrated London Mews, The Burlington Magazine, and elsewhere (see Figure 2.7).54
A few years earlier, in 1922, the pharamaceutical industry magnate Henry Wellcome had been planning a new symbol for his Museum of Medical History at 54 Wigmore Street in the exclusive Marble Arch district, only three miles away from where the Essex Road cinema would eventually stand. This symbol was to appear not only over the door of the institution but also on its letterheads, tickets, invitations and on the covers of its publications. Instead of the conventional classical motifs used earlier, he chose a winged Aten-disc with the characteristic rays terminating in hands, but made an interesting addition: an eye of Horus in the centre of the disc. A large bronze and enamel version was commissioned for the portal of the Wigmore Street building, and when it moved to its present site in Euston Road in 1932, the Aten-disc moved with it. It can still be seen there, striking an incongruous note in the otherwise severe Greek facade. The reason for Wellcome's choice of this motif is unclear. It may be connected with the symbolism of the eye of the hawk in Masonic lore (Wellcome himself had been a Freemason but had long since cut his ties with Masonry by 1922). In the context of the history of medicine, it is more likely to have something to do with the (mistaken) belief that the eye of Horus was the precursor of the medical abbreviation for prescription, Rc. Wellcome was certainly interested in Amarna and had close links with the Egypt Exploration Society's digs there. In its Wigmore Street premises, his museum hosted the Society's annual exhibitions of finds from Amarna. This was in the later 1920s, after the composite Aten-disc/eye of Horus symbol had been adopted. It must have seemed appropriate to walk under the Aten-disc on one's way to visit the show of Amarna finds. At the Wellcome exhibitions, Amarna was packaged in a way that seems strikingly up to date, in the hope of making money for the Egypt Exploration Society. A set of postcards was produced, showing exciting moments in the dig and picturesque scenes on site, with captions such as 'Christmas Day, A Trick Rider (Tell el Amarna 1931— 1932)' (number 9 in the series) or 'Reconstructing a Doorway in Hatiay's House' (number 6). There were even plaster casts of the more attractive pieces of sculpture for sale, bringing a little piece of the glamour that was Amarna within the reach of ordinary Londoners.