Antiquities Exhibits

Today's featured "Antiquities Alive" exhibit:  The Penn Museum (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) will reopen to the public on July 28, 2020!  Here's a selection of images I have taken of their marvelous collections! Dionysos with lion garden statuary from Latium region of Italy Roman marble Etruscan Sarcophagus 3rd century BCE Mosaic thought to depict Theseus sailing away from the Cretan labyrinth, Utica, Tunisia, First half of the 3rd century CE Roman Theater Mask of a River God from a bath complex in Teano (southern Italy) Flavian Period limestone Recarved image of Ramesses II excavated at Harsaphes, Heracleopolis, Egypt 1897-1843 BCE Gilded Cartonnage Funerary Mask Ptolemaic or Roman Period ancient Egypt Plaster funerary portrait bust of a man from El Kharga (upper) Egypt Roman Period 2nd century CE Painted Pottery Horses Tang Dynasty China 7th to 10th century BCE Guanyin Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 CE or Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 CE) Chi...

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.