What art history can teach us, Part II

The ancient Egyptians’ world seemed unchanging for centuries.  As Deborah Pilla, a docent with the MET who gives tours through the museum’s Ancient Egypt galleries, tells her visitors, the Egyptians were completely focused on the afterlife.  They probably thought their world and their monumental temples would stand forever.  Deborah, who completed the MET’s rigorous docent program after a 33-year career as a dentist, spoke to me from her home, where she had hanging on her wall a 19th century print of the ruins of the great temple of Karnak at Thebes by Scottish painter David Roberts.  These massive columns provoke wonder at the civilization that built it.  And, in their ruins, they perhaps whisper astonishment that they could ever fall, or perhaps tell us a lesson that if these could fall, anything can.