Antiquities Exhibits

This rather sinister horned creature seems to represent the rhinoceros beetle, Oryctes nascicarnis, which is native to the Mediterranean region. The small bronze sarcophagus that it guards once held a beetle mummy, though not necessarily of the same species. In embalming beetles, as in all animal mummification, the Egyptians of the Late Period and Ptolemaic and Roman times gave tangible form to their belief that all animals, large and small were incarnations of the divine. - Metropolitan Museum of Art The earliest signs of non-human animal mummies are dated to the Badarian Predynastic Period (5500–4000 BCE), before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. It is likely that animal mummies did not exist earlier because of the cost of mummification.  Although some animal mummies indicate only minimal treatment,  recent radiological studies by archaeologists indicate that animal mummification may have more closely followed human mummification than was originally thought. The pres...

The young Egyptian kinglet stands with his arms by his sides and hands clenched holding cylinders. His hair is in a naturalistic Roman style and he wears a narrow diadem with uraeus. His eyes were originally inlaid. Could this be one of the few portrayals of Caesarion, Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar? There is actually little historical mention of Caesarion as a young man until he is named in the Donations of Antioch in 36 BCE. Surprisingly, Octavian gave public approval to the Donations of Antioch, which have been described as an Antonian strategy to rule the East making use of Cleopatra's unique royal Seleucid lineage in the regions donated. However, Octavian did not greet the news of the Donations of Alexandria with a positive response. In that ceremony, Marc Antony proclaimed Caesarion to be a god, son of a god, and "King of Kings" as well as Caesar's true son and heir. Octavian used Roman resentment over the Donations of Alexandria ...

Res Mortis: Matters of Death in the Ancient Mediterranean. Ongoing, at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah. Votive sarcophagi in the shape of a hawk that would contain an image of Osiris constructed with wheat and Nile river mud. Egypt. Ptolemaic Period 323-30 BCE. Photographed at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah. Drawn from the permanent collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, this exhibition focuses on the rich mortuary cult traditions of ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean and features funerary objects at the center of each belief. For ancient Egyptians, funerary objects reflected their  intense preparation to protect and sustain one's Ka, or spirit, in the afterlife. In classical Greece, ceramics were a popular funerary offering in place of costly metal vessels. Initially, decorated ceramics were repurposed as gifts for the dead. Roman sarcophagi frequently portrayed pagan symbolism pointing to a happy af...