Her quest to get a new angle on the architectural wonders of ancient Egypt took photographer Marilyn Bridges to new heights -- to the skies, in fact, where she shot the monuments while hanging from a single-engine aircraft.
"Suspended in space in an old Russian helicopter with a gunman's belt around my body, I flew over the solemn expanse of the Valley of Kings and continued up the Nile, finally reaching Abu Simbel," recalls Ms. Bridges. "Here, the light was glorious. The great stone temples radiated. Shadows flanked and outlined their breadth."
Ms. Bridges' aerial photographs of these ancient edifices are now on display in the exhibit "Egypt: Antiquities from Above" at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. The exhibit, which will continue through Nov. 30, features 52 black-and-white photographs of monuments and temples along the Nile from Cairo to Abu Simbel, where a number of ancient structures were moved and rebuilt to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s.
Ms. Bridges is the first person to have made such an expansive aerial study of the antiquities of Egypt. "I'm trying to show something people never get to see," she says, "the world from God's eye view."
The Egyptian antiquities she photographed span more than 4,000 years. They include the Lower Egypt pyramids and great mortuary complexes at Giza, Saqqara, Abusir, Dahshur, el-Lisht and Maidum, as well as the temple complexes at Dendara, Esna, Edfus, Kom Ombo and Philae in Upper Egypt. Also pictured are the rock-cut tombs at Beni Hasan, antiquities around Aswan and the structures surrounding ancient Thebes, particularly the Valley of the Kings.
Ms. Bridges is a renowned aerial photographer, whose works have been exhibited widely in the United States, Europe and Asia, and are included in more than 50 collections. She is the author of five books of photographs, the most recent of which, "Egypt: Antiquities from Above," inspired the exhibit.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History is located at 170 Whitney Ave. It is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults; $3 for children ages 3-15 and senior citizens over age 65. Yale community members with a valid I.D. are admitted free. For further details, call the InfoTape at 432-5050.