Timothy Ely

The Flight into Egypt

56 páginas, 36 x 28,5 cm.

First Edition, published in 1995 by Chronicle Books as a facsimile of a unique manuscript book by Timothy C. Ely. Full color throughout. Includes Foreword by Terence McKenna, Introduction by Timothy C. Ely, and an interview of Ely by Steven Clay of Granary Books in New York City.

In his introduction, Ely reveals that his primary inspiration for the book came from a notebook of his grandfather’s that contained a fragmentary record of the latter’s trip to Egypt: ‘Between the two world wars, for some sixteen weeks, my grandfather had journeyed on a solo mission of undetermined logic to a land difficult to reach’. Puzzlingly, Ely writes, the notebook gave neither the exact year when the trip was made, nor its purpose. Over this background, Ely has superimposed his own perceptions of ancient Egypt, fused with his experiences as a book-maker: several of the book’s illustrations depict the book’s own creation as a physical object. The result is a rather impenetrable, yet richly resonant work: ‘I wanted to create a manual, a device which, like a mandala, would impart or reveal certain knowledge if meditated upon,’ Ely adds. (via spamula)