The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and the afterlife, as evidenced in their construction of pyramids and other types of tombs, and in the universal practice of mummification. The preservation of the body as a host for the soul ensured successful passage into the afterlife. Egyptian temples functioned not as places where ordinary people gathered to worship, but as restricted mortuaries where representations of deceased pharaohs and of gods were provided with material offerings to sustain them in the afterlife.
The Downtown Presbyterian Church of Nashville, Tennessee, completed in 1851, was designed by the eminent American architect William Strickland in the style of an Egyptian temple. Moreover, its striking interior, which was rendered 30 years later, evokes Karnak with its Egyptian design elements, death motifs, and afterlife symbology. In this paper, I will trace the architectural history of The Downtown Presbyterian Church—one of the surviving but, sadly, neglected Egyptian Revival structures in the United States—and the ambivalent reception of its exterior and interior from its inception in 1848 to the present.
About the presenterPatricia M. Radecki
Patricia Radecki is Professor of English at Nassau College, SUNY, where she teaches composition, applied linguistics, and folklore—as well as helps coordinate ESL curriculum. In addition to the topic of death in American culture, her research interests include Old Regular Baptist hymnody and the Bible as literature.