Colnaghi London presents Out of the Sand: Ancient Egypt Rediscovered, a major exhibition bringing together ancient Egyptian artefacts with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, drawings, rare books and photographs to examine how Egypt was made, buried, recovered and repeatedly reimagined.
The exhibition spans some four millennia and sets objects made by ancient Egyptian hands beside the works produced by later artists, travellers, scholars and photographers who sought to record and interpret the civilisation they encountered. The exhibition takes its title from the recurring history of Egypt's rediscovery. Egypt was never lost to the Egyptians, yet for successive outside cultures it was found and found again: by Rome after the conquest of Cleopatra's kingdom; by Napoleon's scholars and engineers following the campaign of 1798; by nineteenth-century excavators, painters and photographers; and by the modern museum. Each generation claimed access to the ‘real’ Egypt while revealing its own ideals, ambitions and ways of seeing.