Egypt: Lost Civilizations

I n the early twenty-first century we owe many of our ideas about memory – and the apparent loss of memory – to the century- old work of Sigmund Freud. From the consulting room of his flat in Vienna, Freud formulated ideas that would lead to a signi- ficant shift in thinking about the human mind. Freud proposed that the mind divided into conscious and unconscious operations. In the unconscious, memories of the past lie buried, not so much forgotten as suppressed. They motivate our actions, urges and fears in the present, often in unhelpful ways that could only be over- come by analysing these buried drives. ‘Buried’ is an apt word here, because Freud also had a lifelong passion for archaeology – and that same consulting room was full of images and antiquities from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.1 Patients like the poet H. D. reclined on the famous couch beneath a photogravure depicting the temple of Ramses ii at Abu Simbel by moonlight. On Freud’s desk stood almost three dozen statuettes from ancient cultures, most of which were cast bronze or carved stone images of ancient Egyptian gods – like the baboon of Thoth, god of wisdom, writing and record-keeping. Freud’s housekeeper recalled that he often stroked the smooth head of the stone baboon, like a favourite pet.