Pharaoh (FARAON) opens with Egypt’s young heir chafing under the institutional shackles of the priests. Bald old men who divert the army to avoid stepping on some sacred beetles, sign humiliating treaties to avoid war with Assyria, and withhold their temple gold from the national interest. They claim to be holders of arcane knowledge, and yet all their wisdom seems to amount to superstition and soothsaying.
So when the heir becomes Pharaoh Rameses XIII, he plots to take the temple treasury by force. He feeds the flames of angry mobs with food and booze and sets up his army to arrest the head priests. But it isn’t until the mob and army begin their assault that we see the true power of wisdom.
They knew the eclipse was coming, and they used the freak weather to control the narrative. They turned an angry mob into a fearful one. You might say that they manipulated the people. But here’s another way to look at it: when things occur which people don’t understand, they look to those who might know. When a society turns against knowledge, tradition, and wisdom, the result is always catastrophic. The priests can’t say this directly, because the mob is too angry to be consoled. So they needed a demonstration.
Eclipses are symbolic of the unpredictable and unknown. The heavens covering up the light. Today we know it’s only temporary, and not reflective of the displeasure of any sentient superbeings. But freak occurrences do happen. To avoid triggering calamities, it helps to know the lay of the land, i.e. to understand the patterns of nature, ourselves, and our history. We are going to need those who understand the past to explain our present and forecast the future: the priests.
But interpreters of reality don’t make sense to those who haven’t seen enough reality. What the young pharaoh saw as idiocy marching around beetles in the desert, the priests understood as prudence, the omen of the beetles are just a theatrical excuse. Where the pharaoh wants war with Assyria, the priests—recognizing that Egypt’s mercenary army belongs to an empire on the wane—see peace as the only way to hold onto what they have. Where the pharaoh sees the priests’ refusal to open the treasury as avarice during an Egyptian crisis, the priests have seen such times before, and know there will be worse times still that will actually require their gold reserves. Finally, what the pharaoh sees as little more than an astronomical phenomenon—one which has little to do with his temple attack—the priests turn into a teachable moment that changes everything.
The priests know that “knowledge is power” is only partly right. “Knowing how to use knowledge is true power”.
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There’s much to like about the 1966 film, Pharaoh (Faraon), which is why it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s favorites. You feel like you’re in Ancient Egypt. Not because the set and costume designers went in for all that high Hollywood spectacle effects crap to try to impress jaded modern audiences with grandeur that could never exist even with modern cranes and bulldozers, but because they kept it fittingly small.
The result is historical fiction that feels like Literature and not like Fantasy. All of these choices are deliberate because the filmmakers are driving at something real. A message as relevant 3,000 years ago as it is today.
Highly worth checking out.