I sit alone at this desk when I take a virtual tour of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. Not unusual, not demanding. Most of my encounters with culture now happen intimately, mediated by a screen and an unreliable internet connection. Somewhere between statues and burial objects, I do happen to stop scrolling. The chair has captured my attention. I find myself gazing at random things; and you just happened to be in my view. You are not special. This chair was. 

 

It is the sedan chair of Queen Hetepheres. Ornate, enclosed, elevated. It looks less like furniture and more like a statement. This is not a chair designed for conversation or comfort. It is a chair designed to move one person through crowds without requiring participation. Power, it seems, prefers distance (Egyptian Museum of Cairo, n.d.).

 

I do find this comforting.

 

I close my eyes, and the chair transports me to a different world. Haunting and deeply impractical. It requires several people to carry it so that one person can remain untouched. Even in the digital exhibition, it is isolated. Centred. Untethered from surrounding objects. The design does not invite interaction. It insists on observation. Design is already shaping my behaviour, telling me where I belong in relation to the object.

This is where my epiphany arrives. Loneliness did not choose me. I chose it.

 

The museum reinforces this message through curation. The chair is not contextualised through everyday use. It is framed as exceptional. The virtual interface mirrors this separation by limiting access and movement. I cannot rotate the chair freely. I cannot imagine sitting in it. I can only look. As Norman suggests, design always communicates, even when it appears silent (Norman, 2013).

 

        The chair was never meant to be social. It was meant to pass through people without becoming part of them. This surely has felt familiar. In modern life, loneliness is often framed as something to solve or overcome. Yet here is an object proving the opposite. Isolation can be deliberate. Even strategic.

 

Jean Paul Sartre argues that freedom begins when individuals take responsibility for their conditions rather than denying them (Sartre, 1946). Sitting alone with this chair, I recognise how often solitude is treated as an accident rather than a decision. The queen did not end up isolated by mistake. Neither, in many cases, do we.

 

There is humor in realizing that one of history’s most powerful objects resembles a decorative box carried by other people. Yet the design works. It separates. It elevates. It protects. It makes solitude visible and legitimate.

 

       When I close the virtual tour, the chair disappears. My room remains quiet. I am still alone. But the feeling has shifted. Loneliness no longer feels like absence. It feels chosen. Designed. Structured.

The chair does not teach me how to sit. It teaches me how distance itself can be intentional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Egyptian Museum of Cairo. (n.d.). Sedan chair of Queen Hetepheres. https://egyptianmuseumcairo.eg/artefacts/sedan-chair-of-queen-hetepheres

Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things. Basic Books.

Sartre, J. P. (1946). Existentialism is a humanism. Yale University Press.