Antiquities Exhibits

The Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties comprised one of the most creative artistic epochs in Egyptian history.  Artists introduced many new sculptural forms - some that continued for centuries and others that were soon abandoned.  One of the period's most dramatic and long lasting innovations was the cloaked statue.  The cloak symbolized the god Osiris, whose corpse was wrapped tightly in bandages and who was eventually reborn to everlasting life.  Individuals shown with their bodies shrouded in a thick mantle thus expressed the wish to be reborn following their own physical deaths. - The Brooklyn Museum. Image: Cloaked Official, Middle Kingdom, early Dynasty 13, 1759-1675 BCE, red quartzite, that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014.

Providing for the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian works from Eton College at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.   Funerary Statue, ECM 1474, Wood, paint, Middle Kingdom, ca. 2055-1650 BCE, H 14.0 cm x W 6.2 cm courtesy of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. Many funerary objects were created expressly for the purpose of addressing the vital needs of the deceased in the afterlife. Chief among these concerns was reliable access to food and drink, which could be achieved through artistic representations of consumables, references to them in writing, or even offerings of actual foodstuffs. Depictions of individuals actively receiving offerings on stelae are accompanied by formulaic texts invoking the king and the gods that ensure a constant supply of requisite goods, while three-dimensional representations of Egyptians at work provide the skills and labor needed for continued food production. Being buried with personal objects allowed the deceased to take these cheri...