Analyzing Symbols in Artifacts: The Souvenir of Egypt

In defining our first symbol, let’s stop for a moment and think about how we understand the meaning of symbols. Imagine that you are examining a symbol from some ancient culture, long past and from some distant region. The simplicity of the white ribbon is perfect for this kind of consideration. If the symbol has a defined meaning in our culture, what is the possibility that it means the same thing here, or the possibility that it has a very different meaning, even opposite of the one we would intuitively attach to it? What symbols mean is determined by their cultural context.

Consider the color. White is commonly associated with peace or innocence. Think of the color of a bride’s dress or the flag of surrender. But, why do we associate such meanings to that color? Do other cultures associate the same meaning?

The ribbon clearly connects the two flag poles in the silk. Does this signify a peaceful alliance or a symbolic shackle of some kind?

Defining the meaning of the white ribbon is the most elusive of our symbols so far. The sources we will scour below provide no clear definition of its symbolic meaning. And yet, it is the easiest of the symbols for us to understand on its surface. It seems to suggest a spirit of cooperation and unity between the two flags (and therefore nations) bound together by the ribbon: Egypt and the United Kingdom. But we are unable to corroborate that interpretation with any reference source.

For our purposes here, our first symbol will serve to point to the assumptions we may be inclined to make about what we see in the silk. The fact that we do not easily locate a reference source for the meaning of this symbol despite its common interpretation should highlight for us some of the difficulties of research. We need to base our interpretations on evidence such as expert analysis and historical facts such as dates and names. We may be able to advance a plausible argument that the flags joined by white ribbon does indeed represent unity by analyzing the history of the relationship between Britain and Egypt as well as the common cultural connotations of the imagery, but we should be aware that culture helps to determine meaning.

A deeper readingIn order to understand the meaning of this symbol in the silk we will have to take a look at some of the surrounding imagery and understand the social and political contexts informing the images. What the ribbon serves to connect is an obvious point of departure: the national flags of Egypt and Britain. Let’s take a look at British-Egyptian relations. There are a number of ways to approach this. Here are just a few.

You could locate any general work of history on either Egypt or Britain in the library and scan the index in the back of the book for words relating to the other nation. You're likely to find thousands of works on Britain and on Egypt, so you may want to narrow your search to a particular time period (such as the twentieth century) or topic (such as colonial policy).

You could also perform a subject search on your library's catalog for the words Egypt and Britain to see what is listed under both. Be sure to also try variations of the words, such as Egyptian and British. Our search at Fondren Library produced around eighty works in this subject category.

You could also work from the dates we have established already through our research on the flags and portraits and look for works of history on the period we are dealing with, or for biographies of the political figures.

Should you need a quick, but necessarily limited glimpse into your subject, there is no faster way to get a general view of something than the electronic reference sources. If your institution has a subscription and you are connected to its network, you should be able to access a wealth of information. You can probably find a listing of all of the reference tools available from your library's home page. We will begin with Britannica Online, which is the web edition of the preeminent encyclopedia in English.

After attempting a variety of search options (Egypt Britain, british Egypt, Egyptian Britain, british egyptian, etc.), we find quite a variety of information.Notice that in the articles we view, the words we entered are in bold, which helps us to quickly scan the text to determine its relevance. Here is an example from one entry that explains one aspect of British-Egyptian relations: "The British occupation [in 1882] marked the culmination of developments that had been at work since 1798: the de facto separation of Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, the attempt of European powers to influence or control the country, and the rivalry of France and Britain for ascendancy in the country. Through the last minute withdrawal of the French, the British had secured the sole domination of Egypt. W.E. Gladstone's Liberal government was, however, reluctant to prolong the occupation or to establish formal political control, which it feared would antagonize both the Sultan and the other European powers; but the British were unwilling to evacuate Egypt without securing their strategic interests, and this never seemed possible without maintaining a military presence there." ( "Egypt." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 7 Oct. 2006 http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-22392).The history of British-Egyptian relations is much more complex than a single paragraph from an entry in Britannica can convey. However, here it is sufficient to demonstrate how a short, broad overview can illuminate aspects of a complex relationship that may open new avenues for your research. We now have a much better idea of why a Briton would be in possession of a Souvenir of Egypt in the first place. We also can see how a symbolic representation of alliance or of peaceful relations between the two nations could have been popular among the British.

Symbol 2 is obviously some sort of plant, one with elliptical leaves and yellowish berries. It is also presented in a circular shape that provides the border for the images of the silk, resembling both a wreath and a laurel. In our earlier work on dictionaries of symbolism, we found a book that may help here: Nature and its symbols. We find Laurel listed in the index.The summary is accompanied by a brief description of the use of the laurel as a symbol throughout history. Here is just a paragraph: "In ancient Rome, the laurel tree was sacred to Jove, and victorious generals used to send messengers ahead to offer laurel branches to the god's statue on the Capitol in Rome. The general would then enter the city carrying laurel branches as emblems of his victory." Let's look in another source found in our thread that seems even more likely to be an indexed reference work: James Hall's Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art (1994).Once we have the hard copy in our hands, we can look up our symbol alphabetically: "Laurel. Once believed to be a protection against disease, the bay laurel was sacred to APOLLO, one of whose roles was that of healer and patron of medicine. It featured in Greek and Roman festivals in honour of the god; victors in his Pythian games of Delphi, which included contests of poetry and music, were awarded a laurel crown.... It was worn by Roman emperors when celebrating a triumph..." In a third source, Rupert Shepherd's 1000 Symbols: What Shapes Mean in Art and Myth (2002), found in close proximity to the others on the shelves, we find another way to approach the meaning of our symbol: "Wreath. Since classical times wreaths have symbolized victory and have been held by personifications of VICTORY.... In Ancient Egypt, 'wreaths of justification' made of OLIVE leaves were associated with the dead and with OSIRIS--the ruler of the next world--symbolizing the proven innocence of the deceased in the Hall of Judgement."Let's look in a final source suggested by our experts, Meyer's A Handbook of Ornament. We find the Laurel associated with the olive: "The Laurel and the Olive owe their introduction into ornamentation to their symbolic significance.... The Laurel was sacred to Apollo. It was the symbol of atonement; singers and conquering heroes were crowned with it; and in a similar sense it is still used as a symbol of glory. The Olive was sacred to Athens; Olive branches were the prize of victory at the Olympian games. In Rome the victorious, Laurel-crowned heroes were met on their return home by slaves bearing wreaths of Olive boughs. The Olive branch is the symbol of peace."We also find a few familiar images: Let's review what we have learned so far.

We have found repeated mention of victory, associations with Apollo (the god of war), and celebrations of a triumph by the Romans. The laurel is linked with the olive branch, which is associated with both victory and peace. The wreath is a symbol of victory and imperial majesty and, in Egypt, the proof of innocence worn by the worthy in the Hall of Judgment after their death. The themes here seems relatively consistent: victory, peace, justification of actions and defense of innocence, and war. Let’s move on to the next symbol.

What do we notice about the pyramids depicted in the silk? There are three of them, and they are beside a river. Let's begin by seeing what we can find out about pyramids in Britannica Online. (To access the full version, you or your institution need to be a subscriber.)

We immediately see a familiar image as well as a brief explanation: "In its most common form, a pyramid is a massive stone or brick structure with a square base and four sloping triangular sides that meet in a point at the top. Pyramids have been built by different peoples at various times in history. Probably the best-known pyramids are those of ancient Egypt, which were built to protect the tombs of rulers or other important persons." It does not take long to identify the three riverside pyramids in the silk as those of Giza in Egypt. Nor does it take long to find a source in our library for information and images relating to them once we have the right information: Alain D'Hooghe and Marie-cecile Bruwier, The great pyramids of Giza (2000). These look like our pyramids reflected in the nearby river.We can identify our pyramids as either those at Giza in Egypt or just some random artistic representation that coincidentally resembles them. The sources we have used to procure this information will be valuable later, but for now the information we needed has been found.

The palm trees in this image have also appeared in photographs we have found of the pyramids themselves.Let's look for some additional meaning in one of the sources we have found on plants as symbols: "The palm was the TREE OF LIFE in Assyrian art. As its leave never fell it symbolized everlasting life and eternity for the Akan people of Ghana. In Ancient Egypt it was sacred to ISHTAR and ASHBART, and HATHOR and NUT, who nourished the dead from a palm tree before the tribunal of gods decided their destiny... Palm fronds were a classical symbol of victory.Here we again have references to victory and the honoring of the victors. In addition, the palm seems to have symbolic value in the regions of Egypt and ancient Rome. Which associations are being evoked in the silk--the classical reference to victory or the Egyptian link to everlasting life?

These symbols are grouped together because they are related as depictions of daily life or labor. They are distinguished from each other, however, because of some unique qualities about them specifically. We have three figures, one clearly younger than the rest and actively laboring by handling a large basket in the river, one seemingly older and possibly aiding or observing the labor of the figure in the water, and one atop a camel.

The imagery has been referred to as “orientalist” by more than one of our consulted experts. But, what exactly does orientalist mean? Here we will need to consult some reference materials to get a handle on this term and its significance to our research. We will locate these resources through the online reference page at our university’s library, Fondren Library, but you can use a similar process at your library.

The Oxford Reference Online CoreThe Oxford Reference Online Core Collection is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of over a hundred dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. To access these resources, you or your institution must have a subscription. You can either access them directly, or find them via your library's listing of online reference tools. (Note that you can get to the Oxford Reference Online Core Collection via any work that is part of the collection, such as The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs.)

Let's enter the word "orientalist" in the quick search box. We have several results to choose from, all found in different works. The first, from the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, seems most related to our research project: "Orientalists: Term designating those who study classical texts in Asian languages (Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Sanskrit, etc.), requiring rigorous specialized training. Flourished in Western scholarship from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Sought to uncover allegedly essential features of Asian civilizations through the critical philological study of cultural texts. Became associated with the romantic, exoticizing impulse of nineteenth-century European culture, influenced by ethnocentrism and imperialism. Because of the negative connotations of this association, developed in the late twentieth century, scholars no longer use the term." ("Orientalists." Oxford Dictionary of Islam. John L. Esposito, ed. Oxford University Press Inc. 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Rice University. 28 August 2005. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t125.e1797)

Let’s explore this term a little as it relates to our project with a search for orientalist art or imagery, as we did in our Following a Subject Thread section.

Our search provides many interesting results, such as Roger Benjamin's Orientalist Aesthetics (2003) and Jill Beaulieu's Orientalism's Interlocutors (2002). By scanning the indices of these and related works, we also find that one of the most referenced critical works in the study of Orientalism is Edward Said's Orientalism (1978).

Depictions of the “Orient,” or that which is to the East of Europe, as exotic and corrupt by “Western” artists date back to Medieval and Renaissance art. In the nineteenth century "Orientalism" in the arts became an established genre. In our works that deal specifically with this genre we find numerous depictions of the pyramids, including many of those we discovered in our section on the pyramid symbol in the Souvenir of Egypt. We also discover that laboring figures along the river in the foreground of the pyramids appear quite often in the paintings and photographs. Here are just a few. We find evidence of Orientalism--connotations of “otherness” or the exotic and unfamiliar-- in the Souvenir of Egypt, so a potentially fruitful area for further study would be to use critical and historical works on Orientalism to explore this artifact. The Souvenir of Egypt is, among other things, a representation of that which does not exist at home--the strange and exotic “others” in far away Egypt. We might also investigate further the social structures that are suggested by the three figures.