Antiquities Exhibits

Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Ancient Near Eastern artifacts held for sale by Phoenix Ancient Art in Geneva, Switzerland. Have you seen an amazing ancient artifact in a museum and wondered how much a museum paid for it? Well, for some items, you can find out by browsing the online inventory of Phoenix Ancient Art. I saw a fulcrum from a Roman couch shaped like a mule, quite similar to one at the Metropolitan Museum of Ar t, offered for $38,000. Would you like to purchase the Palmyran funerary relief of the Mother and Daughter featured in today's Classic Moments Daily post? Just a mere $90,000 and it can be yours! How about a 3rd-2nd millennium Bactrian Seated Female Figurine very much like one at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art? Well, its price is available on request. As I browsed the art dealer's inventory I found each piece to be truly exceptional even considering the thousands of pieces I have viewed in museums around the world. Sigh...it saddens me, though, to th...

Art from the ancient Mediterranean, Africa, East Asia, Middle East, and the Americas at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The Walters Art Museum, with its 36,000 objects that span a broad arc of time, geography, and culture, has become a national leader in arts education and is totally free at all times for all members of the public. The Walters’ Conservation and Technical Research department, founded in 1934, is the third oldest museum laboratory in the country. Some of its outstanding artifacts include one of the largest collections of Roman sarcophagi in the U.S., the mummy mask of a handsome high official of the 11th dynasty of Middle Kingdom Egypt, and the glittering Greek gold of the Olbia Treasure. Image: Exquisite gold bracelet with garnets amethysts and emeralds from the Olbia Treasure in modern day Ukraine Greek 2nd-1st century BCE. Photographed at the Walters Art Museum. Note: If you are visiting Washington D.C., Baltimore is just a short train ri...

Museum of Ancient Cultures at McQuarie University in New South Wales, Australia. This Museum celebrates the diversity and cultural achievements of ancient societies, including Egypt, the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome. More than 4000 ancient objects are the core of a research-driven exhibition narrative that explores ancient daily life, afterlife beliefs, religion, technology and popular culture as well as the largest collection of ancient coins and papyrus manuscripts in the Southern Hemisphere. Roman objects date from the Villanovan and Etruscan periods to the 5th century CE. The Greek collection includes Minoan and Mycenaean material as well as objects from the Hellenistic Period. Exhibits from ancient Egypt span the periods from the Pre-dynastic to the Graeco-Roman Period. Objects from the early 3rd millenium BCE to the Late Iron Age are showcased in the galleries of the ancient Near East and Cyprus. There is even a small collection of artifacts from the Bronze Age Indus Va...

Art of the Ancient World at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas.  Glowing with natural light, works from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Near East include a gold myrtle wreath, a lama deity, a magnificent bronze head of a god or hero, and a monumental bronze sculpture of a Roman ruler. Among the objects from ancient Egypt are a spectacular coffin of the priest Pedi-Osiris and a rare sculpture of the god Thoth as an ibis.  The museum's art from ancient America include Olmec jade, Maya stone sculpture, Nasca and Paracas textiles, and fine Moché ceramics. Images: Mosaic panels depicting the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas Roman (100-300 CE), a bronze head of Caligula 37-41 CE, and an endearing silver figurine of a Persian mountain goat (Elamite?) 3000 BCE.

Ancient Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. VMFA’s collection of ancient Mediterranean art is one of the largest on the East Coast, spanning more than 5,000 years of human history, from Pre-Dynastic Egypt in the 4th millennium BC through the fall of the Byzantine Empire in AD 1453. The collection includes objects from Egypt, the Near East, the Aegean, Greece, Etruria, the Roman Empire, and Byzantium. Image: Votive offering depicting Ulysses (Odysseus) bound to the mast of his ship Byzantine 5th-6th century CE Bronze with traces of gilding. Image courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Spanning a period of roughly 3,800 years, the collections of Ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman art at the Cleveland Museum of Art are held in very high esteem nationally and internationally. Although the collections are modest in overall numbers, they are typified by singular works of rare quality. Sasanian silver is a clear streng th in the Ancient Near Eastern collection, along with major masterpieces of large stone sculpture, and one of the very finest "stargazer" figures to have survived. In the Greek and Roman area, the collections feature exquisite small and large-scale bronzes, such as the world-famous Apollo Sauroktonos figure attributed to Praxiteles, several outstanding painted vases from the Archaic, Classical, and late Classical periods, and excellent smaller objects crafted of precious materials. Image: Sleep and Death Cista Handle 400-375 BCE Etruscan. I...

Antiquities from ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Near East, and Europe ongoing at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, Michigan.  The collections include a diverse selection of objects including sculpture, funerary monuments, ceramics, glassware, coins, jewelry, weapons and armor, including a gladiator helmet in excellent condition, as well as utilitarian artifacts. Image: An unusual collection of bronze strigils on a ring with glass flask, Roman, 1st century CE.  Image courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts.  I've seen a number of single strigils in various museums but had never encountered a set like this. It reminds me of one of those Victorian chatelaines that ladies would carry around with little scissors, thimbles, scoops, etc.