Ancient Egyptian theater?

[Crispina]

I saw a snippet, one of those "interesting facts" they sometimes throw up on the screen before commercials during a show on Rome, that stated the "first theatrical performance was recorded in ancient Egypt in 2500BC". This is something I never thought about before - did the ancient Egyptians build theaters? or were the temples considered theaters and religious rites of festivals considered the entertainment? Was it ever recorded on monuments (plays,that is)?

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

Hi don't know where they took their information from (maybe the Sinoue story ?), Wikipedia mentions Stanton, Sarah; Banham, Martin (1996). "Middle East and North Africa". Cambridge paperback guide to theatre. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 241, but I've never seen any reference to theater as we understand it in Egypt in pre-greek times.

 

We do have mentions of junglers, dancers, musicians, but from what I've seen no play has been kept and certainly no purpose built place we can recognize as a theater has ever been found.

 

Spectacles seems to have been mainly staged for religious events or the pleasure of the court, and one could say that the religious processions might be likened to performances... Especially when taking place in a monumentalized area like the Sphynxs alley between Luxor and Karnak.

 

Stanton and Banham speak of a representation of the Osirian myth that would have been the first play and would have taken place at the yearly celebration, but I have not been able to read the book and thus I don't know if it was a spoken or silent representation, which might also influence the answer to your question depending on what you characterise as theater...

[Ursus]

As BH mentions, there were religious rites for the death and resurrection of Osiris that bordered on the theatrical. This basically amounted to priestesses playing the emotional roles of the goddesses Isis and Nepthys and they watch mournfully over the remnants of Osiris that were scattered by Seth. It seems to have originated in the Old Kingdom at the city of Busiris and became quite popular throughout Egypt.

 

(During Roman times these passion plays about the death and resurrection of Osiris [now called Serapis by the Greco-Roman crowds] would be a public feature of Isian religious cult, inciting the mockery of Roman conservatives).

 

But I'm not aware of any theater in proper terms from ancient Egypt. Theater as we know it originated in Ancient Greece ... but that too ultimately derived from a religious cult acting out the death and resurrection of its god ... in this case, Dionysus.

Edited November 8, 2010 by Ursus