REVIEW: A Beginner’s Guide to Ancient Egypt - AJ Lamarque, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane Comedy Festival

A Beginner’s Guide to Ancient Egypt

Some people go to comedy festivals to switch their brains off. I went because someone promised me a fun history lesson. What can I say? Put “Ancient Egypt” in a title and I will walk in like Brendan Fraser is waiting for me on the other side.

Presented at Brisbane Comedy Festival, A Beginner’s Guide to Ancient Egypt saw AJ Lamarque take over the Graffiti Room at Brisbane Powerhouse. This show combined elements of a lecture, comedy hour, trivia night, and niche hyperfixation. The whole thing seemed like I had accidentally stumbled into a secret classroom. A secret classroom with jokes about ancient sex literature, obviously.

The show was framed as a PowerPoint presentation, complete with an introductory film, lecture-style structure, multimedia elements, quizzes, and some very low-stakes audience participation. Nobody was dragged unwillingly into the spotlight or made to do anything horrifying.

As someone who loves history, mythology and learning things I can smugly bring up unprompted in casual conversation, this was my kind of show. AJ Lamarque guided us through the origins of pyramids and papyrus, the mummification process, the Book of the Dead, ancient medicine, hieroglyphs, work culture, and the everyday lives of people who were not just pharaohs wearing fabulous eyeliner.

Lamarque was an excellent presenter, combining the polish of a skilled public speaker, the timing of a comedian, and the obvious joy of sharing his passion. This did not feel like a comedian dressing up Wikipedia facts with punchlines. It was more like sitting in on someone’s beloved special interest, except the lecturer was funny, clever, and had a wonderfully pleasant British accent. If all university lectures were like this, I might have retained more information and complained less.

I'm not claiming to be a genius, but I did score 4/4 on the quiz, so I will be expecting my honorary Egyptology certificate in the mail, thank you. The show moved through mythbusting and mini history lessons with plenty of modern references, celebrity comparisons and political digs. Lamarque had a knack for making the ancient world seem surprisingly relatable to us. Ancient Egypt was wildly imaginative, religiously complex, and full of detailed rituals, yet it was also full of people trying avoiding work, making questionable medical choices, and leaving behind evidence that tourists have always been annoying.

That was one of the best parts of the show, actually: the reminder that times change, but people really do not. We often learn about Ancient Egypt through the most dramatic lenses: pharaohs, tombs, pyramids, gold, gods, and the occasional Hollywood mummy monster running around in bandages. Lamarque was just as interested in the average person. The people working 9 to 5, or whatever the ancient Egyptian equivalent was. The people trading resources because money as we know it was not a thing. The people taking days off work because they were embalming a relative, brewing beer, bitten by a scorpion, or dealing with a wife who was bleeding. People doodled to-do lists onto pottery because paper was not available yet. It seems more sophisticated than another chaotic Notes app list called “today to do list fr pls."

I particularly enjoyed the dive into the Book of the Dead, which Lamarque described as ancient spells as cheat codes for the afterlife. Death was not just death. It was a whole process. An administrative nightmare with magic passwords. The ancient Egyptians really said, “You may be dead, but have you filled out the correct forms?”

The “Hieroglyphs 101” section was another highlight. Lamarque explained that an actual course by that name was once available to him during a university exchange in the USA, and then generously gave us the crash-course version. Free education? In this economy! We learned some basics, played a name game in hieroglyphs, and I left fully convinced I was now fluent.

The section on ancient health practices was enlightening. Through an “ancient medicine or modern pseudoscience?” quiz, Lamarque explored some truly alarming medical ideas. There were things that sounded surprisingly sensible. There were things that sounded suspiciously close to the kind of wellness advice still floating around the internet. Some involved animal poop, onion-based pregnancy testing, dieting, and the fact that beer was considered a healthy staple. Apparently, Ancient Egyptian beer was more like an Up&Go. It was really interesting to hear how progressive some aspects of the culture were compared to what many people might assume. He was not just using history for reductive humour. He clearly wanted us to understand how complex the civilisation was.

But because it was an adults-only show, things naturally took a turn into the spicy. The final stretch included a smutty story presented as an ancient audio sex hotline, which was certainly not something my childhood Egyptology books prepared me for. Speaking of which, did anyone else have one of those awesome interactive books as a kid, with flaps and fold-outs and little secret tomb bits? Because this show was basically the grown-up version of that. If I had one note, it was that the final section felt a bit much as the show was already packed with excellent material. Lamarque had so much to share that the hour sometimes felt overflowing. That said, it is not a terrible problem when the main issue is “this comedian has too many interesting things to tell us!"

A Beginner’s Guide to Ancient Egypt was a clever, funny and properly informative hour that made learning seem like gossip, comedy and a museum visit had been blended together into one artefact. Lamarque was intelligent, warm, quick on his feet and clearly very comfortable guiding an audience through both historical detail and complete nonsense. I laughed, I learned, and I am now ready to wildly overestimate my ability to read hieroglyphs. Naturally, I now need to rewatch The Mummy.