Antiquities Exhibits

This rectangular panel is the foot end of a coffin from Roman Egypt.  It was originally connected to the rest of the coffin through dowels placed in the various holes around the perimeter. The unpainted edges of the panel were likely covered up when the coffin was whole. The scene depicts a funerary banquet in which the deceased is enjoying life in the next world. It reflects Graeco-Roman iconography to which various elements of ancient Egyptian iconography have been added.  The central figure is the deceased who reclines on the funerary couch or bed.  The wing and the floral wreath worn on the head indicate the successful passage of the deceased to the Afterlife. At the head of the bed is a dancing figure playing the double flute (aulos).  The flute player stands on a base in the shape of an Egyptian shrine decorated with a cavetto cornice and sun disc with pendant uraeii snakes.  Below is depicted a female figure holding two vertical snakes. She is a protectiv...

 Looking through images I took of artifacts in Chicago's Field Museum way back in 2005, I saw this sensitive sarcophagus portrait of an Egyptian woman.  I had just begun photographing museum collections back then and had not yet developed my method of sequential identification information so I didn't have the full reference I like to provide whenever I feature a particular artifact.  The Field Museum also does not provide a convenient database of their collections on their website either so I had to do a bit more digging.  I used Google Images to try to locate similar images that might have more description and discovered that this portrait caused quite a stir back in 2009 after Michael Jackson's death because people thought it looked like a portrait of him.  An article referred to the piece as 3,000 years old which would place it in the early part of the Third Intermediate Period so I hope that is correct.  I found other sarcophagus images at the Field Mus...

Study the oldest recorded piece of writing in Wales, found in a well on the Museum site. Witness one of the largest gemstone collections found anywhere in the Roman Empire. These precious, intricately carved gems were discovered beneath the fortress baths remains, lost by bathers between AD 80 and AD 230.  Peer into the amazing contents of the Bathstone Coffin to find the bones of a 2nd/early 3rd century man, buried with a small glass perfume ointment bottle and a shale cup.  As well as many individual highlights, there is plenty of authentic Roman pottery and other utensils on show in the gallery, including an iron frying pan sporting a folding handle to fit inside a soldier’s pack. Images: courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (legionary model) and the museum (2nd - 3rd century CE Roman remains and coffin).