The Eloquent Peasant

I was recently in Los Angeles and decided to go have a quick look at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, an important building in the Egyptian Revival style constructed in 1922, which I wrote about in my last post. I assumed that even though it wouldn’t be open, I would be able to look around the outside, but unfortunately the whole complex is gated so I could only glimpse through the bars at the outermost courtyard. Nevertheless, I managed to take some photos (of dubious quality, though I blame the gate) and thought I’d post them here. A lot of Egyptian-inspired buildings only give the slightest nod to actual Egyptian design so its quite nice to see that the facade is reminiscent of temple pylons and even the palm trees could be interpreted as real-life versions of palmiform columns. It’s a shame that it’s not generally open to the public though, since perhaps more people would take the time to appreciate it. You’d hardly notice the building if you were just walking past, and while there were swarms of tourists around Grauman’s other more famous cinema, the Chinese Theater, no one was looking at the Egyptian Theatre. Still, American Cinematheque have done a great job restoring it and hopefully I’ll get the chance to go back and look around properly one day.

The Egyptian Theater exterior, now the American Cinematheque

The Courtyard

The Egyptian sign

Deity parade

Amun-Re

A king

Sekhmet

Winged guardians
(presumable inspired by Isis & Nephthys but someone wasn’t sure about their headdresses)

A slightly bizarre looking scene that I couldn’t get close enough to, involving amongst other things a lot of free-floating objects or hieroglyphs (sort of à la First Intermediate Period) and a figure that could be interpreted as Seth wearing a pot on his head. Though it might not be.

One last view of Grauman’s