The golden age

Walking along the Strand (lost in the swarms of city workers and feeling generally very small and insignificant, but that’s another story), I happened to notice an advert on a passing bus. Now I make a pointed effort to not look at adverts of any shape or form – my lowering gaze covers a broad range – because they’re all either inappropriate or designed to brainwash, or both. But this particular one did catch my eye.
 
The sign was for an exhibition of ancient Egyptian relics taking place in London. The catch phrase was something to the effect of ‘discover the golden age of the Pharaohs’. Now we as Muslims know that the Pharaonic years are hardly categorised as ‘golden’. ‘Cursed’ comes to mind, if anything.

The story of prophet Musa, the most repeated tale in the Quran, deals extensively with the personification of arrogance and iniquity that was Fira’un. And just as the Quran deals with Fira’un’s tyranny of his subjects, so does history bear witness to the cruelty and subjugation suffered by the people under the Pharaohs.
 
So, comes the question – what exactly do they mean by ‘the golden years’? Somehow I seem to come to the conclusion that the phrase should be interpreted in rather literal terms; that it is the abundance of wealth (golden) that renders the period apparently so glorious. I think the period that the West is in right now, in some distant future – when it isn’t in the ‘first-world’ category, will come under the ‘golden’ category for the very same reasons. Because we’re rich.
 
But can we really define our current state as ‘golden’ - in the holistic sense of being truly happy? Soaring numbers of divorces and single parent families, chronic depression, drugs, glorified immorality, covetousness, global warfare – I mean, really, the list is endless. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist or social scientist to identify that happiness is exactly the missing figure in this equation. This is exactly the way society’s mentality is honed. The glory of wealth and status (the Pharaohs did after all think they were God) is used to define success, not the state of being content.
 
It brought me to the conclusion that ultimately it is a question of definitions. We, as Muslims and believers in One God possess a very different mental dictionary to one that does not see life in light of a greater divine being – in light of spirituality, holistic harmony, and true contentment that only faith can realise. As a Muslim I would feel that a ‘golden age’ would be defined as a period of harmony and contentment, where the pure hearted are content with faith and reliance on God. Which means their golden age is my dark age.
 
Maybe I should go see this exhibition. The sight of excessive wealth that bred nothing is something to learn from.