Akhenaten

The archaeology of Amarna influenced architecture as well as fashion acces­sories and decorative arts. If John Pendlebury's Amarna was really a version of suburban London, it was only logical that Amarna architecture would eventually appear in the London built environment. Quite a number of London buildings in the late 1920s and early 1930s used Egyptian themes and architectural elem­ents.³² This fashion is generally ascribed to 'Tutmania', the cultural fall-out of the

Plate 3.7 Unidentified woman at an exhibition of Amarna objects in Manchester, 1931. Reproduced by courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.

discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and its effect on the decorative arts. '¹

In fact, press coverage of the discoveries at Amarna probably played a greater part in the creation of Egyptianising architecture, because the site was presented so archi­tecturally by its excavators, through isometric drawings, reconstructions and so on (see Plate 3.1). The site was also written up for the Architectural Association

Plate 3.8 The Mecca Social Club (formerly the Carlton Cinema), Essex Road, London Nl, 1929-30.

Journal by one of Pendlebury's team, Ralph Lavcrs (see Plate 3.3d). Unlike Amarna, Tutankhamun's tomb offered little in the way of specifically archi­tectural inspiration, though it did offer plenty of plagiarisable motifs. Archi­tecturally, then, one should perhaps talk of'Amarnamania' instead of Tutmania. Certain kinds of public buildings tended to be designed in Egyptianising style, particularly libraries, cemeteries, factories and cinemas - the last still an uncanon- ical architectural type in the 1920s and 1930s and therefore perhaps open to a wider range of stylistic influences. In fact, a cinema is the best surviving example of Amarna-inspircd decor in London: the former Carlton Cinema, Essex Road. It now masquerades under a different but still appropriate Orientalist guise as the Mecca

bingo hall (see Plate 3.8). Designed by George Rose for the Clavering and Rose Theatres chain in 1929, and opened in September 1930, its facade has a number of features which seem to me Amarna-esque rather than generically Egyptianising. The papyriform columns are of a type very common in Amarna tombs: they arc most reminiscent in style of those from the tomb of Meryre', though their slender proportions are closer to those depicted in tomb 16 and the tomb of Panehesy (see Figure 3.6). Most distinctively Amarna-styled are the car­touche emplacements above the capitals, left empty on the London columns. The brilliant yellow, white, red and blue of the glazed tiles used on the exterior could

Figure 3.6 Columns from tomb 16 (left) and the tomb of Panehesy at Amarna (right).

well reflect tiling from Amarna exhibited in London in 1929. The frieze's stylised blue floral and vegetal motifs are reminiscent of the wall-paintings from the so- called harem area of the North Palace at Amarna, discovered during the 1927 season and thus easily available to George Rose through Frankfort's enthusiastic articles in The Illustrated London Mews, The Burlington Magazine, and elsewhere (see Figure 2.7).⁵⁴