More than a decade after starring as a playboy archaeologist in Egyptian lands in Valley of the Kings (1954), Robert Taylor returns as just another, but more veteran, playboy archaeologist in the Italian-Spanish co-production La sfige d'oro. Taylor now plays Professor Karl Nichols, a Texan millionaire resolved to find the lost tomb of the pharaoh Apophis (very loosely inspired by the Hyksos ruler of Lower Egypt at the end of the Second Intermediate Period). The promotion of the archaeological expedition led by Nichols in Egypt stems from his intuition about the existence of an elixir that would explain the long-lived reign of Apophis. As in other cultural products informed by the “mysterious" and “alternative Egypt", the film locations and the Egyptian cultural and architectural heritage are reduced to mere backdrop onto which Western fantasies of heroism, conquest and oriental exoticism can be projected. Thus, La sfige d'oro reproduces many well-known tropes from cinema and literature inspired by ancient Egypt, such as: the idea of the archaeological expedition as a hybrid between adventure and tourism; the linking of ancient Egypt with the occult and the secret (here represented in a staging of the discovery of the tomb of Apophis that replicates, in narrative and visual terms, the Western cultural myth about the discovery of Tutankhamun's treasures); and the representation of Egyptian cultural space against which romantic dreams can be fulfilled (captured in the subplots starring actresses Anita Ekberg and Gianna Serra).
Perhaps due to its production at a time of marked political conflict, La sfige d'oro also introduces an implicit anti-colonial discourse. This idea is suggested, never fully manifest, by the intrigues that hinder Nichols's expedition – intrigues that ultimately stem from the dark purposes and unrestrained greed of the Western expeditions in Egypt. This explains the scenes in which tension arises between the expedition leaders and the Egyptian workers in the archaeological camps. Additionally, the social and political conflict of the time of production of Luigi Scattini's work is symptomatically staged at the very end of the film, set at the Suez Canal. This node of commercial transit and international strategic interests also serves as a symbolic space to explain the interrelated dynamics of fascination and material and cultural exploitation associated with the phenomenon of Egyptomania.

Author: Samuel Fernández-Pichel