Treasures of Ancient Egypt | show | 2014 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

Alastair Sooke tells the story of Ancient Egyptian art through 30 extraordinary masterpieces. | dHNfZjlmVHY4TjMzTUk

Transcript

00:00I'm in Dorset, seeking a little bit of Egypt in the English countryside.

00:15It seems unlikely, but this is where I had my first taste

00:18of the magical and exotic world of ancient Egypt.

00:21I remember first coming here to Kingston Lacey with my family

00:24when I was a child, and I was fascinated, like millions of others,

00:28by what I found.

00:41This pink granite obelisk is well over 2,000 years old,

00:45and today it's spotted with lichen and moss

00:47as a result of the damp English climate.

00:50But it once stood in front of the sun-baked Temple of Isis

00:54on the island of Philae in southern Egypt,

00:56where in 1815 it caught the eye of the owner of Kingston Lacey,

01:00William Banks.

01:02He was a traveller, he was an amateur archaeologist,

01:05an aesthete and a connoisseur, and he spent years

01:08endeavouring to bring this obelisk from Egypt to his Dorset lawn.

01:17As well as the obelisk, Banks amassed the largest private collection

01:21of Egyptian art in Britain.

01:27Most of the Egyptian antiquities that Banks collected

01:30are on display here in the Billiards Room,

01:33but I suspect that most people would consider these objects

01:36more as curious artefacts than works of art.

01:39And it's true that the ancient Egyptians didn't have a word for art,

01:42but they didn't have a word for religion either,

01:45and they are among the most religious peoples in history.

01:49This enormous tome is the first volume of The Description of Egypt,

01:53which began to appear in 1809, and it is beautiful.

01:58It's filled with hand-coloured illustrations and maps,

02:02and these crisp, really immaculate engravings

02:05that record the monuments of ancient Egypt.

02:08You can readily understand why William Banks became so besotted

02:12as he started to look at these objects.

02:15You can understand why William Banks became so besotted

02:18as he sat in this very library and leafed through these pages.

02:28I want to follow in the footsteps of Banks and his contemporaries

02:32and explore ancient Egypt for myself.

02:38In this series, over three programmes,

02:41I'll travel the length of the country

02:44in search of 30 treasures that tell the bewitching story of Egyptian art.

02:54But above all, I want to look at the treasures of Egypt

02:57not through the eyes of an archaeologist,

02:59but through the eyes of an art lover.