In some episodes of the Amazon Prime series Carnival Row, an incidental Egyptian motif can be detected: an obelisk in the middle of the Row main square. These are episodes 1, 4, 7, and 9 of the second season of the series. But why an obelisk in a series set in a fantasy world where Ancient Egypt never existed?

The events narrated in the series take place in a city, The Burgue, in which one district, called The Row, is inhabited by fairies, fauns, and other fantasy creatures. The majority of the city has a purely human population, which exercises dominance over the fantastic beings. The apparently innocuous motif of the obelisk allows us to detect different questions of interest.

By including the obelisk in a restricted space separated from the rest of the city, a kind of “fictional apartheid”, the creators of the series make explicit the belonging of this symbol to the fauns and fairies who inhabit it as beings distinct from and set apart from humans. This is not surprising, as Ancient Egypt often represents the Other in popular culture. Furthermore, as an element of commemoration, the Egyptian obelisk takes on political overtones in the series. Placed in the centre of the Row, the obelisk embodies the resistance of the fantasy creatures to human oppression, thus allowing for all sorts of readings of post-colonialism and totalitarianisms from a contemporary perspective.

It is also worth mentioning that the inscriptions on the obelisk in The Row are authentic Egyptian inscriptions, so the creative team of the series has most probably used a real model that would be interesting to identify among the many examples of obelisks around the world.

Author: Abraham I. Fernández Pichel