It would seem that the mustachioed fez look was a popular one
in early twentieth-century Egypt, but it also seems clear that Hussein Kamel's portraitcomes the closest to our man. When we look to the details it is further
confirmed. Notice the similarities in dress, particularly the sash, large buttonand medal combination in both images. It appears that we have identified the
first face as Hussein Kamel, who we quickly discover in our encyclopedias was theSultan of Egypt from 1914 until 1917.
Face 2
Face 2 What do we know about this portrait so far? It sits beside the national
flag of the United Kingdom. Our loose dating of this piece is, for the moment,somewhere between 1915-1920. Face 1 turned our to be the Sultan of his region.
Let's see who was on the throne or in power in the UK during our period. Thefirst place to look for this kind of information is Who's Who.
Who's who
Who's Who is an annual British publication by A&C Black of
very short biographies of about 30,000 famous and/or important Britons,published since 1849. Their lists include political figures, judges and leaders
as well as journalists, actors, lawyers, researchers, and artists. In the firstfew pages Who's who also lists a plethora of information about the United
Kingdom in the year of that particular publication, including who is on thethrone. Based on our library's holdings, as close as we can get to our period is either 1911 or
192. Let'sovershoot first. The information on the Royal Family lists His Majesty King George V as being
the king since 1910, placing him within ourperiod.
Let's try to find out what he looks like.
Oxford dictionary of national biography
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is an illustrated
collection of more than 50,000 specially written biographies of the men andwomen who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to
the year 2001. If you have the name of the individual you are searching forinformation about (and not simply a picture and no identification) then this
would be the place to start.
Under the alphabetically listed entry George V we find this face
looking back at us.
George V in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography We see similarities, but is it an exact match? Let's try an internet
search for George V for a closer look.
There is a close similarity in the eyes, part of hair and beard and
mustache. Also there appears to be some consistency with the arrangement of andtype of medals on his chest. It would appear that we have our Face 2, George V,
King of the United Kingdom from 1910 until 1936.
Face 3
Face 3 What do we know about this portrait from our research so far? The Flag
behind it was in use as the national flag of Italy from 1848 until thedisagreement with Mexico over the rights to use the image of the Savoy shield
beneath the crown, but that date is not given in any of our sources. We know,however, that the flag with just the Savoy shield was in use until 1946. So far
we have found a King and a Sultan. Let's look to see who was the leading Italianleader in our period.
Receive real-time job alerts and never miss the right job again
Source:
OpenStax, Understanding material culture: deciphering the imagery of the "souvenir of egypt". OpenStax CNX. Oct 08, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10301/1.7
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.
Notification Switch
Would you like to follow the 'Understanding material culture: deciphering the imagery of the "souvenir of egypt"' conversation and receive update notifications?
