Ancient Egypt at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

Ancient Egypt at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.
The Egyptian antique collection of the Egyptian Museum, one of the largest in the world, includes about 40,000 artifacts, most of which comes from the purchase of the Bernardino Drovetti collection in 1824 and from the excavations conducted by Ernesto Schiaparelli in Egypt from 1903 to 1920. Thematic exhibits include the parity of women in ancient Egypt. In a room dedicated to Merit, a woman who lived around 3,400 years ago during Egypt’s New Kingdom period are boxes that contained her toiletries and other possessions painted with images of a confident woman side by side with her architect husband, Kha, giving offerings to the gods and greeting visitors.The variety of expensive goods she was buried with—a large wig made of human hair, loaves of bread, jewelry, toiletries, clothing—attests to her importance. In the same room is a white limestone statue of a woman — Nefertari — and her husband, Pendua. They are the same size, same height, each with an arm draped on the other’s shoulder. The exhibit includes wedding contracts, where it stated very clearly what a man should guarantee in terms of silver and other commodities in case of divorce.


Gilded cartonnage mummy mask of a woman from the Fayum region during the Roman Period 2nd century CE. Image courtesy of the Museo Egizio.

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