EGYPT. Journey to Immortality - An Intriguing Day Trip from Venice to Conegliano

EGYPT. Journey to Immortality - Photo: Cat Bauer

 

(Venice, Italy) Thought-provoking. That is how I would describe the EGYPT. Journey to Immortality exhibition at Palazzo Sarcinelli in the town of Conegliano. I was fascinated by how focused the ancient Egyptian culture was on preparing for the afterlife. And that provoked many thoughts.

The Field of Aaru, also called the Field of Reeds, was the Egyptian heavenly paradise ruled over by the god Osiris, full of lush fields, waterfalls, and eternal peace. 

As I wandered through the exhibition and absorbed the sacred artifacts, I tried to get myself into the heads of the ancient Egyptians and their mysterious culture. If you truly believed that you had the capacity to become immortal, living in the same paradise as the gods, eating the same food, hunting in the same fields, it would make sense to do everything you could to prepare for the journey to the afterlife. And from what the ancient Egyptians have left behind for us to witness, it is clear they took the voyage to immortality very seriously. 

The Egyptians believed the soul resided in the heart. After death, the deceased had to complete a long and perilous journey through Duat, passing tests to enter through gates and portals guarded by deities. At the end of the voyage, the heart was weighed on a scale balanced by an ostrich feather. Hearts that balanced the scale would be allowed to enter paradise. Hearts that were heavy with evil would tumble off the scale and into the jaws of Ammit, a fearful female demon. 

EGITTO. Viaggio Verso L'Immortalità gives the public an opportunity to explore the history and spirituality of this mystifying culture.  There are over 100 artifacts, including sarcophagi, mummies, statues, amulets, and objects of everyday life. 

Eyes for a funerary Mask (664-332 BCE)
Museo Arcaologico Nazionale di Firenze

I saw many ancient artifacts that I didn't understand. I had many questions that weren't answered. So I decided that I would experiment with Gemini AI, and ask it a bunch of questions. Here's how that went.

Gemini, are the souls of the ancient Egyptians tied to the earth?

That's a fascinating question. While the ancient Egyptians believed that the soul needed a physical body to exist in the afterlife, they didn't necessarily believe that the soul was tied to the Earth in the same way we might think of a ghost being tied to a specific location.

Here's a breakdown of their beliefs:

• Afterlife: The Egyptians believed that after death, the soul would embark on a journey to the afterlife. This afterlife was a spiritual realm, not a physical place on Earth.
  
  
• Judgment: The soul would be judged by the gods to determine its fate in the afterlife. If the soul was deemed worthy, it would be allowed to enter the Field of Reeds, a paradise-like place.
  
  
• Eternal Existence: The soul was believed to exist eternally, even after leaving the body. However, its experiences and quality of life in the afterlife depended on its actions and behavior during life.

While the soul might need a physical body to exist in the afterlife, it wasn't necessarily tied to a specific location on Earth. The Egyptians believed that the soul could move freely and experience the afterlife without being confined to a particular place.

Thank you, Gemini, but I am still not clear. The body is mummified and stationary. It is wrapped in linen and placed inside a sarcophagus. The soul is free and wandering around. Why was the body mummified? Does the mummy come back to life?

That's a great point! The Egyptians didn't believe that the mummy would come back to life in the physical sense. The mummification process wasn't intended to resurrect the body.

Instead, they believed that the soul would use the preserved body as a kind of "spiritual vehicle" in the afterlife. It was like a spiritual body that the soul could inhabit and use to interact with the spiritual world.

Think of it like a car. The car itself doesn't move, but it's a vehicle that allows someone to travel. In the same way, the mummified body was a vehicle that allowed the soul to "travel" and experience the afterlife.

So, while the body was immobile, it was still considered essential for the soul's existence and activities in the spiritual realm.

So, the body was like a home?

Exactly. The ancient Egyptians believed that the body was like a home for the soul, providing a place for it to reside and interact with the spiritual world. It was a crucial part of their understanding of the afterlife and their beliefs about the soul's journey.

OK. But I still don’t quite get it. You die. You have a soul. But why do you need the body? Can you please delve deeper?

That's a great question! The ancient Egyptians had a unique belief about the afterlife that might seem different from our modern understanding.

They believed that the soul, or "ka," needed a physical body to exist in the afterlife. This body wasn't just for appearances; it was thought to be essential for the soul's activities and interactions in the spiritual realm.

Here are a few reasons why they believed the physical body was so important:

• A Home for the Soul: The body was seen as a kind of vessel or home for the soul. Without it, the soul might wander aimlessly or be unable to perform certain tasks.
  
  
• Interaction with the Afterlife: The Egyptians believed that the soul needed a physical body to interact with the gods, ancestors, and other beings in the afterlife. It was like having a physical form to communicate and participate in the spiritual world.
  
  
• Preservation of Identity: The body was seen as a unique identifier of the individual. It was believed that the soul would recognize its body in the afterlife, helping to maintain a sense of identity and continuity.

While this belief might seem strange to us today, it was a central part of ancient Egyptian culture and religion. It helps us understand why they went to such great lengths to preserve their bodies through mummification.

Mummy of a Baby with Sarcophagus (1st-2nd century CE)
Museo Arcaologico Nazionale di Firenze

I then said adieu to Gemini, which is renowned for its inaccuracies, and consulted the PBS.org site NOVA: 

"The ancient Egyptians believed that a person's Ka (vital force) and Ba (personality) left the body at the time of death. But they also believed that Ka and Ba could be lured back if an idealized re-creation of the body was offered. This re-unification of body and spirit was the ticket to the nether world....

Egyptians stopped making mummies beteen the fourth and seventh century AD, when many Egyptians became Christian. But it's estimated that, over a 3000-year period, more than 70 million mummies were made in Egypt."

Canopic Chest (1550-664 BCE)
Museo Arcaologico Nazionale di Firenze

That is a very brief overview. EGYPT. Journey to Immortality has got some fascinating artifacts, and is an excellent introduction to the spirituality of ancient Egypt. But, to me, it did not provide enough detail and explanation of what we are witnessing. The ancient Egyptians left us so many astonishing physical realities about their version of the Afterlife to ponder. After all, there is a pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar bill!

If you are thinking of taking a day trip to Conegliano to visit the exhibition, I would suggest first playing some Egyptian kid games on the British Museum website, a fun and easy introduction to the culture, so that you will better appreciate the precious objects you are seeing in real life. Thankfully, the descriptions of the actual artifacts inside the museum are in both English and Italian.

I was curious as to how an Egyptian exhibition with actual mummies and ancient artifacts had made its way to Conegliano. It turns out that the curator, Egyptologist Maria Cristina Guidotti, was the former head of the Egyptian section of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence. 

The Florence collection is second in Italy only to the Egyptian Museum of Turin. It was mainly formed during the 19th century thanks to Grand Duke Leopoldo II of Tuscany, who, together with King Charles X of France, financed an expedition to Egypt in 1828. They split the loot between Paris and Florence. 

Amulets in the Shape of the Wdjat Eye
Museo Arcaologico Nazionale di Firenze

It's simple to get to Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano from Venice, about an hour by train. When you arrive, walk outside the front of the station. Cross the street, staying to the right. Head toward the great stone staircase. At the top, turn right, walking under the promenade until you arrive at Palazzo Sarcinelli. The museum is less than 10 minutes from the station. 

EGYPT. Journey to Immortality runs until April 6, 2025, and has funky, old-fashioned Italian hours with lunch figured in. From Wednesday to Friday, it's open from 10am to 1pm, and then from 2pm to 7pm. On Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays it runs from 10am to 7pm. 

Go to the Visit Conegliano website to make a day of it, and plan your adventure away from the crowds of Venice. 

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Imagine! Never-Before-Seen-Footage of John Lennon -- "One to One: John & Yoko" - Venice Film Festival World Premiere

One to One: John & Yoko - Directed by Kevin Macdonald

(Venice, Italy) I am always amazed at how many people's lives John Lennon impacted, mine included. His talent, courage, and raw honesty made such an impression on me when I was coming of age in the 1970s that he influenced my entire life and career. John Lennon is one of those rare human beings who has morphed into a myth.

My first novel, Harley, Life a Person, is about a 14-year-old artist living in the New Jersey suburbs who thinks she's adopted. She has three goals: to find her real father, get to the Imagine Circle in Central Park, and to finish her painting for her high school play. Harley was born on the anniversary of John Lennon's death, in the same hospital, when her mother went into labor at a Lennon memorial concert in New York City. 

Harley's Ninth continues the story. It takes place all on one day, October 9th, the day John Lennon was born. Harley has her first art exhibition opening in a gallery in New York City. Harley's Ninth includes a fictionalized version of an actual art exhibition in New York City that I went to presented by Yoko Ono in 2004 to celebrate what would have been Lennon's 64th birthday.

From the One to One concert in New York City in 1972 - Photo: John Skelson

Now, the Scottish filmaker Kevin Macdonald has made a spectacular documentary about the first 18 months that John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent living in Greenwich Village in the 1970s. The film culminates on August 30, 1972 when John Lennon performed in the One to One Benefit Concert, his only full-lenth show after leaving the Beatles. The film premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2024, exactly fifty-two years ago.

Kevin Macdonald is more than a decade younger than me. While I was growing up in New Jersey about 45 minutes outside of Manhattan, he was growing up in Scotland. When asked what drew him to make One to One, he said, "I had been, and continue to be, a big Lennon fan. ... I got into the Beatles very young, when I was ten or eleven. I must have heard them on the radio. I asked my parents for a Beatles record for my birthday... I listened to them obsessively and became a fan. And when Lennon was shot in 1980, it was the first star I felt a personal connection with who died in that way. I actually felt it."

By the time John Lennon was shot on December 8, 1980, I was living in New York City. By coincidence, my apartment on West 11th Street was right around the corner of their first tiny apartment on Bank Street. 

I, along with the rest of Manhattan, actually felt it, too: 

Remembering John Lennon on the 40th Anniversary of his Death

Imagine Circle in Central Park, NYC

What is genius about the film is the innovative format used by Macdonald and co-director & editor Sam Rice-Edwards: rapid clips of TV shows and commercials of that moment in time in the United States, from the Vietnam War to The Price is Right game show to ads for Coca-Cola. And they sprinkle never-before-seen-or-heard before recordings from the Lennon Estate throughout the film -- as if someone was flipping through channels on a television while talking on the phone. 

It is not only a film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It is a riveting history lesson that brings all the turmoil and innocence of the 70s alive. 

Recreation of John & Yoko's tiny one-room apartment on Bank Street - Photo: Mercury Studios

In 1971, Yoko convinced John to leave their estate in England and move to a tiny one-room apartment in on Bank Street in Greenwich Village, where they lived before moving uptown into grander digs in the Dakota on the Upper West Side. 

 

At the foot of the bed was a large TV set that they watched obsessively, which becomes a character in the story. One day, they watched an exposé by Geraldo Rivera about the horrific conditions in the Willowbrook children's home, which was the impetus for the One to One Concert at Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972.

Kevin Macdonald's wife, Tatiana, is an Oscar-nominated set decorator who recreated the apartment exactly as it would have been when John and Yoko lived there, down to the quilt on the bed. The apartment is the only element of the film that wasn't created by the film and audio recordings of John and Yoko themselves. Both John and Yoko had their own cameras, or they had other people filming, and they recorded much of their lives. 

John Lennon’s move to New York City was like the arrival of a hurricane. He soon became involved in anti-war and protest movements. He associated with radicals like the Black Panthers and Jerry Rubin and Allen Ginsberg, who delivers a poem about toilet paper in the film that not even his estate knew existed.

John and Yoko suspected that their phone was being tapped (it was), so they started recording their phone calls. Six months into the project, Kevin Macdonald was sent a bunch of recordings of those phone calls. They were old-fashioned tapes from the 1970s that had been sitting in a box somewhere. Sean and Yoko had never even heard them before because they had never been digitized. Some of them are hilarious, like the ongoing quest of trying to find thousands of flies for an art project that Yoko was working on.

The most chilling part of the phone calls was when Jim Keltner, the renowned drummer from Elephant's Memory, the band who backed-up Lennon at the One to One concert asks: "You're not frightened that this might lead to an assassination?" And John says, "Don't worry. I don't aim to get shot. I'm an artist. I'm not a politician."

What is especially haunting on a personal level is that Jim Keltner was my neighbor in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. In fact, his wife, Cynthia Keltner, is in the acknowledgments of Harley, Like a Person because she was an early reader and helped me get the tone right. Jim has a recording studio in his back yard, and the Beatles and John Lennon would drop by. I was stunned to hear Jim ask that question...

Sean Ono Lennon is the music producer -- and it's great. I just loved the entire film. I wish I could tell you when you can see it, but right now it's still only being shown at film festivals.

Kevin Macdonald at One to One: John & Yoko premiere
Venice Film Festival, August 30, 2024
Photo: Cat Bauer

One to One: John & Yoko premiered on August 30, 2024 at the Venice Film Festival on the 52nd anniversary of the original concert. Whenever and wherever you get the chance to watch it, no matter how old or young you are, make every effort to see it.

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog