After the Antique, 19th/20th century, King Amenhotep III

Known as Amenhotep the Magnificent this Pharaoh ruled in the 12th century B.C. when ancient Egypt reached it's zenith in both power and artistic output.

EMI films had enormous success with the Agatha Christie adaptation, Murder on the Orient Express from 1974 which was jointly produced by Lord Brabourne (known as John Brabourne in the film industry). For this project he had enlisted the help of Lord Mountbatten to help persuade Christie to sell the rights. In 1977, with Richard Goodwin, Brabourne produced Death on the Nile, intended to replicate the great success of his earlier Agatha Christie film. It featured a star-studded cast which included Bette Davis, David Niven, Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, Maggie Smith and Peter Ustinov who was cast as the distinctive protagonist, Hercule Poirot. Filming was over seven weeks on location in Egypt. Four weeks of this were on a historic Nile steamer, location work was challenging with Bette Davis commentating, 'In the older days, they'd have built the Nile for you…’.

The attention to pre-war period detail was extraordinary (as evidenced in the bespoke prop luggage which features in lot 149) with costume designer Anthony Powell wining an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Interestingly the film premiered in New York, on 29 September 1978, to coincide with the sale of tickets for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's blockbuster exhibition The Treasures of Tutankhamun which opened later that year.