Antiquities Exhibits

Perfume jar (balsamarium) in the shape of a female head (Aphrodite or Turan?) late 3rd to early 2nd century BCE Italic, Etruscan at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.  This balsamarium or perfume vase is in the shape of a woman's head, most likely the goddess of love, Turan or the Lassae, Etruscan spirits of beauty who waited on divine and mortal women at their toilet. As it was found in a tomb in Etruria (between Ferentinum and Bomarzo), most likely it was a prized possession of a wealthy Etruscan lady. The head is decorated with a diadem with two doves (associated with the worship of Aphrodite), elongated drop earrings, and a necklace of pendants. The eyes were inserted--probably glass irises were set into a fine lime paste. The base is decorated with a rosette.  It was purchased from collector Edward petty Warren for over $69,000.  Its dimensions are 4 1/8 by 3 by 2 1/2 inches. Perfume jar (balsamarium) in the shape of a female head (Aphrodite or Turan?) late 3rd t...

Osiris-Canopus with stylized atef crown 2nd century CE from the Temple of Ras El-Soda and the awakening of Osiris crowned by a tcheni in precious metal 26th dynasty (664-525 BCE) from the Egypt's Lost Cities exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum through April 12, 2020. Excavated in 1936 by Achille Adriani, director of the Alexandria Museum, the Temple of Ras El-Soda was originally found just east of ear ly 20th century Alexandria between the sea and the road to Abu Qir. It is a small Ionic prostyle tetrastyle temple constructed of limestone blocks and marble columns. In the cella were found five marble sculptures including Isis, Osiris-Canopus (also known as Osiris Hydreios) type A, Osiris-Canopus type B, Hermanoubis, and Harpokrates. The temple was dated to the second century CE based on the sylistic analysis of the statuary and the lettering of an inscription on a pillar. In Boëthius and Ward-Perkins' authoritative overview of Etruscan and Roman arc...

Gold and Lapis Lazuli Pectoral 22nd Dynasty from the reign of Sheshonq II (945-925 BCE) at the Egypt's Lost Cities exhibit in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Simi Valley, California through April 12, 2020. Excavated at Tanis in the tomb of Psusennes I and Sheshonq II, this pectoral depicts the solar boat sailing on the primordial waters under the starry sky. The blue sun is protected by the spreading wings o f Isis and Nephthys. The scene in the central disk depicts Ma'at venerating Amun-Re. Heqakheperre Sheshonq II (also spelled Shoshenq), was the only ruler of the 22nd Dynasty whose tomb was not plundered by tomb robbers. His final resting place was discovered within an antechamber of Psusennes I's tomb at Tanis by Pierre Montet in 1939. It proved to contain many jewel-encrusted bracelets and pectorals, along with a beautiful hawkheaded silver coffin and a gold funerary mask. A forensic examination of Shoshenq II's body by Dr. Douglas Derry, the...

Head of Serapis with Kalathos, 2nd century BCE (Ptolemaic Period) and granite statue of an Apis Bull from the Roman Period reign of Hadrian (117-138 CE) at the Egypt's Lost Cities exhibit now on view at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California through April 12, 2020. The cult of Serapis was introduced during the third century BCE on the orders of Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter as a means to unify th e Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. There is evidence that the cult of Serapis existed before the Ptolemies came to power in Alexandria including a temple of Serapis in Egypt mentioned in 323 BCE by both Plutarch (Life of Alexander, 76) and Arrian (Anabasis, VII, 26, 2). The common assertion that Ptolemy "created" the deity is derived from sources which describe him erecting a statue of Serapis in Alexandria, the Ptolemaic capital. The cult of Serapis was then spread as a matter of deliberate policy by the Ptolemaic kings, who also built the i...

Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins March 18 through July 27, 2020 at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California.  Mesopotamia—the land "between the rivers" in modern-day Iraq—was home to the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Among their many achievements are the creation of the earliest known script (cuneiform), the formation of the first cities, the development of advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge,  and spectacular artistic and literary accomplishments. The exhibition covers three millennia from the first cities in about 3200 BCE to Alexander the Great’s conquest of Babylon in 331 BCE and features objects from the permanent collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France. Image: Statue of Prince Gudea (detail), Neo-Sumerian period, about 2120 BCE, dolerite courtesy of Musée du Louvre, Department of Near Eastern Antiquities.

Bronze mirror from the Peloponnesos circa 460 BCE (Inv 566) Surrounded by flowers and pigeons, this mirror features a handle depicting Aphrodite accompanied by two Erotes. It is part of the permanent collection of the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Dick Osseman. Bronze mirror with Aphrodite handle at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam courtesy of Dick Osseman. Closeup of  Bronze mirror with Aphrodite handle at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam courtesy of Dick Osseman.

The Calydonian boar hunt in ancient art King Oeneus ("wine man") of Calydon, an ancient city of west-central Greece north of the Gulf of Patras, held annual harvest sacrifices to the gods on the sacred hill. One year the king forgot to include Great "Artemis of the Golden Throne" in his offerings. Insulted, Artemis, the "Lady of the Bow", loosed the biggest, most ferocious wild boar imaginable on the countryside of Calydon. It r ampaged throughout the countryside, destroying vineyards and crops, forcing people to take refuge inside the city walls, where they began to starve. Oeneus sent messengers out to look for the best hunters in Greece, offering them the boar's pelt and tusks as a prize. Among those who responded were some of the Argonauts, Oeneus' own son Meleager, and, remarkably for the Hunt's eventual success, one woman— the huntress Atalanta, the "indomitable", who had been suckled by Artemis as a she-bear and raised as a...

Ancient Egypt: Ancient Culture Modern Technology now open at the Boonshoft Museum in Dayton Ohio. This interactive exhibit features CT scans and a 3D printed skull of a female mummy named Nesiur originally excavated in 1922 at El Badari by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum presented the mummy to J. Morton Howell, American Consul General to Egypt from 1920 to 1927. Howell, originally from Dayton, Ohio donated the mummy  along with his Egyptian artifact collection to the city in 1926. His collection included sculptures, funerary art, a beautiful gilded cartonnage mummy mask and Nesiur, a woman who lived during the 25th dynasty about 700 BCE. Images: Facial Reconstruction and 3D printed skull of Nesiur, a woman of the 25th dynasty of Egypt and a gilded cartonnage mummy mask at the Boonshoft Museum in Dayton, Ohio courtesy of the museum.

A skull, on view at the Museo Storico Nazionale Dell'Arte Sanitaria in Rome, thought to have once held the brain of Pliny the Elder. Like Mary Beard, I'm afraid I'm skeptical about pointing to a particular skeleton from the Vesuvius disaster 2000 years ago and making claims it is a famous person. Sort of like all those people across the centuries claiming to have bits of the "true cross." I, too, like Professor Dunn, also immed iately wondered why, if Pliny's body was found and said to look asleep why it would not have been removed and cremated like most other Romans of the period. Matrone, the original discoverer of the skeleton, also sold off the jewels so that portion of the find context has been lost (if the objects ever existed in the first place). It was interesting, though, that the DNA analysis points to someone born in the region where Pliny the Elder is said to have been born. But the Naples area was a hub of trading activity so that could probab...

Discovering Ancient Egypt through May 3, 2020 at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland. Finds from one of the earliest temple sites in Egypt at Hierakonpolis, including a bowl decorated with very early hieroglyphs and a faience baboon, both dating back to around 3000 BC are among the objects on display in this exhibit that examines Scotland’s contribution to Egyptology through the lives of three pioneers whose wor k in the field helped to improve understanding of ancient Egyptian culture. Alexander Henry Rhind (1833-1863) was a pioneer of systematic excavation and recording and he excavated a royal tomb that contained the remains of ten princesses . Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) served as Astronomer Royal for Scotland and carried out the first largely accurate survey of the Great Pyramid and the first-ever photography of its interior with his wife Jessie. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see some of his instruments including a measuring rod he used to car...

Roman sculpture of a hound attacking a deer in the Hall of Animals in the Museo Pio-Clementino. Actaeon was the son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia. He was a famous Theban hero and like Achilles he was trained by the centaur Chiron. The Hellenistic poet Callimachus, related the most famous version of Actaeon's fate. Artemis was bathing in the woods when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seein g her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. Once seen, Artemis cursed him saying if he tried to speak, he would be changed into a stag. Upon hearing the call of his hunting party, he cried out to them and was immediately transformed. At this he fled deep into the woods, and doing so he came upon a pond and, seeing his reflection, groaned. His own hounds then turned upon him and pursued him, not recognizing him. In an endeavour to save himself, he raised his eyes toward Mount Olympus but the gods did not heed his plea, and he was ...

Ptolemaic Hellenistic mosaic floor from the royal quarter of Alexandria.2nd century BCE. Excavated from the grounds of the New Alexandria Library in 1993, this Ptolemaic mosaic from Hellenistic Egypt, dated between 200 - 150 BCE, is now located in the Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, Egypt. While it is slightly damaged at the center with cracks and fragmentary along the sides (surrounded by a grey lion-head motif), this mosai c depicts a realistic scene of a male dog with a gilded metal askos vessel (for containing water or wine) with looped handles lying nearby. The rich variety of colored tesserae pieces adds depth, lighting, and shading to the scene similar to Hellenistic Greek paintings of the time period. It could represent a household owner's pet, or perhaps it implies a domestic banquet had occurred and the askos has been emptied for the occasion courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Bignor Roman Villa in South Downs National Park, Bignor, West Sussex, UK, opens for a new season on March 1, 2020. The villa about 9 miles northeast of Chichester (the Roman city of Noviomagus Reginorum) was discovered in 1811 by local farmer , George Tupper. It was excavated by John Hawkins and antiquarian, Samuel Lysons then opened to the public in 1814. Finds there point to the existence of a Romano-British farmstead by the  end of the 1st century CE but the earliest structural remains of a simple timber structure date to about 190 CE. A four-roomed stone building was built in the middle of the 3rd century CE, and this was extended between c.240 and 290 CE by the addition of a few new rooms, a hypocaust, and a portico that faced east, At the beginning of the 4th century CE north and south wings were added. It's final form consisted of 65 rooms surrounding a courtyard, with a number of outlying farm buildings. Between 300 and 350 CE additions to the north wing included figura...

Egyptian antiquities replicas in Venice, Italy through June 2, 2020. This exhibition showcases 70 replicas produced by Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. This includes the famous Nefertiti bust, and the head of Akhenaten as well as masks of Yuya, who was a powerful Egyptian courtier in the 18th Dynasty, and Tuya the wife of 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Seti I. Replicas of a number of Tutankhamun’s belonging are also to be d isplayed at the exhibition, including the royal chamber, golden knives, and a number of warrior shields covered with gemstones. Jewelry replicas will also be on display along with royal hunting equipment. The ministry did not specify the location of the exhibit but if you will be in Venice, Italy in the next few months there will probably be promotional materials available. Also, don't forget to visit the Museo Egizio, one of the world's oldest Egyptian Museums, founded in 1824. It houses 40,000 original artifacts, most of which come from the purchase of Berna...

The Incas, Treasures of Peru through April 2020 at Pointe-à-Callière in Old Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Textiles and feather ornaments were more valuable than gold in the Inca world, weaving together social, economic, artistic, and religious life. Threads literally run through this exhibit guiding visitors from area to area on a journey through time from pre-Inca civilizations to the Inca art and cultural influences that survive in the modern day.  The two-story exhibit displays over 300 artifacts including jewellery, textiles, ceramics, ritual objects, and architectural elements.  Re-created life-size figures are adorned with finery unearthed in 1987 at a Moche funerary complex containing mummies, masks, statuettes, and pottery. https://www.entro.com/project/peruexhibit/

Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt through April 26, 2020 at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. Striking Power explores the history of iconoclasm in relation to ancient Egyptian art through forty masterpieces on loan from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Focusing on the legacies of kings Hatshepsut (reigned c. 1478–1458 BCE) and Akhenaten (reigned c. 1353–1336 BCE), as well as the destruction of o bjects in late Antiquity (3rd to 7th century CE), the exhibition pairs deliberately destroyed artworks with undamaged examples. Iconoclasm is a practice that spans history and continues to the present day, but Striking Power explains the ritual basis for image-destruction in ancient Egypt—namely that artworks served both as physical representations of an individual as well as containers of his/her powerful spiritual energy. Related activities include a series of lectures on iconoclasm throughout history between Feb. 4 and April 7. An “Egyptian Dinner Party”...

Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome at the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita, Kansas. This museum features a smorgasbord of objects from the ancient world including examples of ancient Egyptian coffins, figurines, jewelry, animal mummies and a tomb room where visitors can come face-to-face with the remains of two 3,000-year-old female mummies. Their Mesopotamia and Ancient Near East gallery features cylinder seals,  religious ceramics, weapons, coins, and sculpture. Greek ceramics and armor await visitors to the ancient Greece display and their Roman artifacts include ceramics, sculpture and a coin timeline featuring a coin from almost every Roman Emperor in the empire. If you are interested in many historical periods you can also explore displays of pre-Hispanic ceramics, prehistoric fossils and skeletal reconstructions, artifacts from the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, African masks and sculpture, and Religious ...

Odysseus the reluctant hero. Before the Trojan War when Helen is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honor their oaths and help him to retrieve her, an attempt that leads to the Trojan War. Odysseus tries to avoid the quest by feigning lunacy, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went. He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of t he plow) and (some modern sources add) starts sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, seeks to disprove Odysseus' madness and places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plow. Odysseus veers the plow away from his son, thus exposing his stratagem. Odysseus holds a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home. This tale is attributed to the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus, who lived many centuries after Homer. Image: Odysseus...

Roads of Arabia through March 1, 2020 at the Terme di Diocleziano venue of the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome, Italy. Exhibit creator Daniele Militello explains how the collection of pieces displays the profound synergy and continuous exchange between eastern and western civilizations, but even stronger, it expresses how the ancient roads of arabia have contributed to permeate and nourish the greek and latin civilization that are so common to us today, such as the concepts of religion, art, design and fashion. Exhibition objects include monumental sculpture, funerary art, jewelry, weapons, inscriptions, ceramics, and, in the section devoted to more recent cultural objects, clothing, calligraphy, and illuminated texts.

The Troy Museum in Tevfikiye, Turkey.  The Troy Museum located just 800 meters from the archaeological site of ancient Troy displays 2,000 artifacts from its total collection of over 40,000 artifacts retrieved during excavations of the site from the late 19th century up to the present.  The modern building opened in 2018 houses objects from the  Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age.  Niches on the walls of the entrance ramp contain gravestones, large-sized statues, scenes and mural-sized photographs from the various levels of the excavation in Troy.  The displays are divided into seven sections with the ground floor reserved for artefacts from the Troad region, today Biga Peninsula. These are archaeological remains from the ancient cities of Assos (Behramkale), Tenedos (Bozcaada), Parium, Alexandria Troas (Eski Stambul), Smintheion, Lampsacus (near Lapseki), Thymbra, Tavolia and Imbros (Gökçeada).   Objects on display include tear catche...

"Gods in Color - Golden Edition" through August 30, 2020 at the Liebieghaus Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Visitors to this exhibit can witness the polychromatic transformation of ancient statues and experience their original, eye-opening bright hues on over 100 painted sculptures including 60 reconstructions. Colors were used diffusely in the ancient world, with the Greeks and Romans painting their sculptures, not only for decorat ion, but to elaborate the story of each work. Polychromy gave increased depth of cultural and artistic expression. The excavatiions in Pompeii in the 18th century refuted the myth of colorless classical artwork with their undeniable remains of paint on numerous objects. In the 19th century extensive excavations of the Greek Acropolis revealed sculptures that the Persians had destroyed when they stormed the Acropolis in 480 B.C.E. that were brightly painted. This exhibit is also scheduled to travel to Naples, New York, and Sydney as well as other l...

"Ancient Theater and the Cinema" through April 5, 2020 at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. Ancient Theater and the Cinema is the first exhibition to combine ancient objects with imagery of ancient Greek theater and modern movie stills inspired by Greek plays and mythology. The dialogue between ancient and contemporary images displays the continuity of Greek theater across nearly two and a half millennia, demonstrating its enduring legacy and profound influence. Theatrical performances were widely popular in ancient Greece. Theater was an Athenian invention and Athenian playwrights were celebrities far beyond Athens. A key feature of an ancient Greek city-state (polis) was a theater, at which tragic and comic plays were staged during multi-day festivals. The performances developed from choral song and dance sacred to Dionysus, the god of wine and the theater. This exhibition includes ancient ceramics and Greek sculpture as well as Tampa collec...

Battle of Centaurs and Wild Beasts, a mosaic made for the dining room of Hadrian's Villa, 120-130 CE at the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, Germany. This centaur mosaic was found in the 18th century on the site of the sprawling, luxurious villa complex near Tivoli that once belonged to the Roman emperor Hadrian. The mosaic was found in situ along with other smaller ones that bore depictions of landscapes, animals and masks. The re latively small central panel (emblema) formed part of the floor decoration for the dining room (triclinium) in the main palace. The various individual scenes of these mosaic pictures bear depictions of wild, inhospitable landscapes that deliberately contrast with idyllic ones featuring animals living in harmony with each other. The dangers of the wild are portrayed in this mosaic in the dramatic struggle between great cats and a pair of centaurs, mythological creatures with the head, arms, and torso of a man and the body and legs of a horse. On a rocky o...

Art of the Ancient Western World at the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana. Objects dating from 30,000 BCE through 1000 CE encompassing religious ritual, funerary practices, public ceremony, and daily life. Cultures represented include Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Minoan, Mycenaean, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman. Objects include sculpture, mosaics, ceramics, portrait busts, funerary models, gravestones, jewelry, and items used in personal care. Image: Etruscan bronze horse bit at the Eskenazi Museum of Art in Bloomington, Indiana courtesy of Eskenazi Museum of Art. See more at: https://wsimag.com/culture/49247-etruscan-and-italic