A History of the World by Andrew Marr Page B

scare their subjects, but because they have a special link with the gods. They can have a quiet word and help end the famine, or stop the rains. So the great leaps forward in Chinese art and technology are closely related to religious rites. Ever more ingeniously cast and elaborately carved bronze vessels, musical instruments and animal bones, baked then broken to read the future, turn up in Chinese archaeological sites. Great squat tripods and bronze drinking vessels whose sides are as mazed and rippled as coral reefs may seem strange things for early cultures to invest so much energy in. In fact they are ruthlessly political: they are about power.
    Nile Nightmares
     
    Ancient Egypt, our third river civilization, often seems a culture to gape at, not to love. It touches the modern world hardly at all. Sphinxes and pyramids have become globalized visual kitsch. Museum audiences queue around the world to stare at gold or painted relics. Cultural tourists descend by the planeload to see the temples and funeral complexes of the Valley of the Kings. But for such a long-lasting and successful culture, the Egyptians have left relatively few marks on later ways of thinking. The religion of Horus and Osiris enjoyed a brief revival of interest during the twentieth century among occult dabblers and circus-tent crooks. Pharaonic mysteries have briefly enthused the makers of movie mystery capers. But compared with the deep influence of Judaism and its later developments, or the power of Greek thought, or Roman politics – or even, across Asia, the continuing influence of early Chinese and Indian thinkers – ancientEgypt has little left alive. The Mesopotamians’ stumpy relics of powdered brick are pathetic compared with the physical remains of the Egyptians, but they produced more in the way of science, mathematics and technology to pass on than the creators of this great death cult on the edge of the desert.
    Egyptologists (not to mention Egyptians) would say that this impression is ignorant and unfair. The people of ancient Egypt were formidable artists and builders, and they developed a complex religion, sustaining them for millennia. Many humbler grave-sites than those of the rulers show evidence of a colourful culture that had more respect for women than had its rivals and whose people loved life, revelling in the natural world, enjoying beer, food, sex and gossip. Their obsession with the afterlife came about because they liked this one so much, believing that with proper preparation they could have more of the same.
    And yet we are left with those forbidding bird- or dog-headed deities, the scarabs and the blank stares of superkings whose vast monuments still insist on awe, but nothing more. Why is this? The culture’s lack of portability through time and space seems to be linked with its relative absence of physical movement in its own time – it was just remarkably self-sufficient. Ancient Egypt proper lasted for more than three thousand years, from the pre-dynastic kingdoms to the final disappearance of the Greek pharaohs in Roman times. Very early art from the Nile has an earthy directness that sets it apart; some of the simple clay models of farmers and animals are similar to the attractively human early art of Mesoamerican people. But quite soon an Egyptian style becomes fixed and hardened, and although a practised eye can distinguish between dynasties and even reigns, it barely evolves for two millennia.
    There is a well made sculpture of a king (Khasakhemwy) from 2675 BC which would not look out of place among those of his successors fifteen hundred years later. 23 In the great temple of Luxor is a little inner temple built to celebrate Alexander the Great being declared pharaoh in 332 BC . The artwork on one wall faces images from the early so-called New Kingdom of more than a thousand years before; and the two look very similar, though there has been a certain falling-off in subtlety. One obvious reason is that, for