Egyptology
PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS Egyptologists John & Colleen Darnell examine the connection between ancient Egypt and the fashion and interiors styles of the 1920s
Photos of John and Colleen at the Armour-Stiner Octagon House by Rose Callahan
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leopatra VII Philopator, the last scion of an ultimately bloody and incestuous dynasty that began with Alexander the Great’s invasion of Egypt, committed suicide in 30 BCE, so ancient historians claimed, with the bite of an asp. Yet prior to her death she was both an astute and capable queen – her Egyptian Horus Name was ‘Great One, Lady of Perfection, She who is Effective of Council’ – and a woman who truly knew how to party. Were she to be transported two millennia into the future, she would have felt at home among the strong-willed, boundary destroying, flamboyant flappers of the 1920s, and perhaps have enjoyed dancing along to her eponymous 1917 tune Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band. Five years before Howard Carter made the sensational discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamun, Cleopatra’s ‘Jazz Band’ in her castle on the Nile was winning over Mark Anthony with
“The treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb – “gold, everywhere the glint of gold”—defied description, while the New York Times reported: “There are no figures that can estimate it. There are few minds that can conceive it.” But that didn’t stop everyone from trying to capitalize on it” her syncopated harmony. But such wild imaginings of the early jazz age may not have happened, were it not for another outsized historical character: Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1798, Napoleon led a
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