Antiquities Exhibits

Yesterday when I was researching the post about horses in the ancient world, I was intrigued by the detail image of a Persian horseman on the so-called Pazyryk carpet that Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones included in his blog post. The Pazyryk carpet is considered the oldest surviving example of a pile carpet in the world and is thought to have been made around 400 BCE in Armenia or Persia. It was discovered in a Scythian kurgan burial in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia. The tomb mounds discovered there are now part of the  Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The horseman of the Pazyryk culture apparently  accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China as evidenced by the variety of grave goods including Chinese silk, the pile carpet,  horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and a full-sized burial chariot fo...

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...

Yesterday I finished editing and uploading the last of my images of artifacts in the Egyptian gallery of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) to Wikimedia Commons. Next I'll be working on uploading my images of their Greco-Roman collection. Here are some of my favorites from their Egyptian collection: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Egyptian_antiquities_in_the_University_of_Pennsylvania_Museum Head of King Osorkon II of Egypt excavated at Tunis 874-850 BCE Black Granite Head of a colossal statue of Ramesses II King of Egypt from Abydos 1290-1224 BCE New Kingdom Dynasty 19 Head of a colossal statue of Ramesses II King of Egypt from Abydos 1290-1224 BCE New Kingdom Dynasty 19 Closeup of Bronze statue of a cat with gold leaf Dynasty 22 Egypt 945-712 BCE Basalt Baboon Egypt Dynasty 20 1182-1151 BCE Statue of Ramesses III Limestone Egypt 1187-1156 BCE (Reign of Ramesses III, Dynasty 20) Ka statue of the Royal Acquaintanc...

The social structure in Aegyptus under the Romans was based on a system of social hierarchy that revolved around ethnicity and place of residence. Other than Roman citizens, a Greek citizen of one of the Greek cities had the highest status, and a rural Egyptian would be in the lowest class. Gaining citizenship and moving up in the ranks was very difficult and there were not many available options for ascendancy. One of the routes that many followed to ascend to a higher social class, as in other provinces of the Empire, was through enlistment in the army. Although only Roman citizens could serve in the legions, many Greeks found their way in. The native Egyptians could join the auxiliary forces and attain citizenship upon discharge.  The Augustan period in Egypt saw the creation of urban communities with “Hellenic” landowning elites. These landowning elites were put in a position of privilege and power and had more self-administration than the Egyptian population. The Romans looked...

Cartonnage mummy mask from Balansura (Upper Egypt) 1st quarter of 2nd century CE, Roman Period at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien in Vienna, Austria. Cartonnage is a type of material used in Ancient Egyptian funerary masks from the First Intermediate Period to the Roman era. In a technique similar to papier-mâché, scraps of linen or papyrus were stuck together with plaster or resin and used to make mummy cases and masks. It c ould be molded to the shape of the body, forming a type of shell. After the material dried it was often painted or gilded. and decorated with geometric shapes, deities, and inscriptions. During the Ptolemaic era, the single shell method was altered to include four to six pieces of cartonnage. There would generally be a mask, pectoral, apron, and foot casing. In certain instances there were two additional pieces used to cover the ribcage and stomach. The materials used to produce cartonnage changed over time. In the Middle Kingdom it was common to use plaster...

Golden Mummies of Egypt opening February 8, 2020 at the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York. Golden Mummies of Egypt examines hopes and fears about the afterlife when Egypt was part of the Greek and Roman worlds (c. 300 BC-200 AD). Wealthy members of this multicultural society had their mummified bodies encased in gold in hopes of joining the gods after death. The exhibition consists of over 100 key objects from the Manchester Museum’s world-class collection, including eight mummies, as well as masks, coffins, jewelry and sculpture. Blending Egyptian, Roman and Greek imagery, the strikingly lifelike painted mummy portraits are among the most haunting images from the Ancient World. If you can't make it to Buffalo, New York, you'll have another opportunity to see it at the North Carolina Museum of Art from September 19, 2020 – January 10, 2021.

Now Open!! Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives. September 7, 2019 to February 2, 2020 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada. A North-American premiere, this exhibition of the British Museum reconstructs the lives of six individuals who lived along the Nile from about 900 BCE to 180 CE. Non-invasive techniques have enabled researchers to build a profile of each individual, painting a picture of who they were. Age , beliefs and the diseases they suffered from – each mummy has a story to tell. Digital visualizations will present new discoveries that, when viewed alongside over 200 objects from the British Museum’s renowned Egyptian collection, provide unique insights into how people lived and died in ancient Egypt. The exhibition will explore a number of themes such as mummification, health, food and diet, priesthood, music, adornment and childhood in ancient Egypt.  Irthorrou, a stolist, a high priest of the temple of Akhmim during the Late Period in ...

Archaeological collections from Egypt and Sudan - Ongoing at The Petrie Museum in London, United Kingdom. The Petrie Museum houses one of the largest archaeological collections in the world, some 80,000 objects, for Egypt and Sudan. It is named after William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), appointed in 1892 as first University College London Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology. Over three-quarters of the material comes from excavations directed or funded by Petrie, or from purchases he made for university teaching. Here you can see the Tarkhan Dress, the world's oldest surviving woven garmet, a v-neck linen shirt  radiocarbon dated to the late fourth-millennium BC. Gilded cartonnage mummy mask from the Roman Period. 5th Dynasty bead-net dress Roman period mummy portrait from the Fayum region

Our Dark Materials: Rediscovering an Egyptian Collection.  Through May 16, 2019 at the Stanford Archaeology Center in Stanford, California.   Although some museums like the Neues in Berlin have superb intact examples, many more are assembled from such fragments as you can see in this picture I took at the Petrie Museum in London a couple of years ago. The exhibit presents new examination of a forgotten collection. Artifacts from ancient Egypt provide insight into experiences of ordinary Egyptians in daily life and death. The exhibit features original artifacts, stone tools, such as a ceremonial knife, as well as ceramic containers and figurines, collected by the Stanford family and others around the turn of the 20th century including those damaged in the 1906 earthquake. 

A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt - Ongoing. At the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. Closeup of Roman Period Gilded Gesso Mummy Cartonnage of a Woman Hawara (possibly) Egypt 1st century CE Mummy cartonnage of a woman with draped garment, elaborate coiffure, eyes inlaid with glass, necklace (formerly inlaid throughout) and garland. There are also serpent-armlets, in relief, on the upper arms and wrists. The front is mostly gilded, but wreath and top and sides of head are painted photographed at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. The ancient Egyptians believed that to make rebirth possible for a deceased woman, she briefly had to turn into a man. Guided by new research inspired in part by feminist scholarship, the exhibition A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt tells this remarkable story of gender transformation in the ancient world, exploring the differences between male and female access to the afterlife...