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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters In the shadow of Amun
By Nevine El-Aref
From Herodotus to Champollion, the greatest minds from around the world have been drawn to the mystique of an ancient civilisation that flourished along the Nile Bank in Egypt for over two millennia. The unprecedented scientific progress achieved by these early Egyptians, in necrology, archaeology and mathematics, has fascinated countless specialists of the modern age. Their unquenching thirst for solving these mysteries climaxed with the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's magnificent tomb located in the West Bank of Luxor.
Bust of king Akhenaton wearing his royal suit
The trend today is to organise touring exhibitions geared towards the average Joe who entertains an amateur curiosity for all things Egyptian, but is unable to afford a trip to Egypt. Various exhibitions have been held abroad highlighting the Egyptian culture and its ancient civilisations, whether Pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, Coptic or Islamic.
In line with this trend, two exhibitions currently on display are "The Four Great Civilisations of the World" in Tokyo and "The Sun Pharaohs" in Chicago.
"The Tokyo exhibition is unique in its display," said Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). He explained that this exhibition is focused on the development of arts throughout history during the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus and Chinese civilisations.
The Tokyo National Museum (TNM) has concentrated its activities on "The Ancient Egyptian Civilisation," exhibiting 123 artefacts meticulously selected from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum.
Four vast halls of the museum have been set up for this special event. They are skilfully decorated and completely secured with cameras linked to a closed-circuit television, keeping these four halls and surrounding passages under close surveillance at all times. To ensure the displayed artefacts are secure from an unexpected seismic shock, explained Gaballa, the museum's administrative board fixed each item on a special base.
The exhibition sheds light on the development of the ancient Egyptian arts throughout the great Pharaonic dynasties.
The art works on display range from the Old Kingdom around 3000BC up to the Late Kingdom around 750 BC.
False door of Imem
They include a stunning array of statues of deities, well-known Pharaohs like Khafre and high ranking officials who ruled over this mysterious world. Coloured reliefs and bas-reliefs, painted decors, gold and silver jewellery, domestic objects, vessels that were meant to serve the dead in the afterlife, as well as a collection of statues revealing the way ordinary people lived at the time, are also on show. The mummification section features several different mummies, sarcophagi and funereal equipments. The section also boasts the gold funerary mask of the mummy of Psusennes I, a Late Kingdom Pharaoh. The mask is dubbed "the masterpiece of the exhibition" in the TNM Web site.
The exhibition will last in Tokyo for two months and it will travel to 11 other cities in Japan before its return to Egypt.
"This exhibition proved its success during the first week of its inauguration," said Gaballa, who added that the number of visitors to the exhibition, in the first four days after the opening, reached 40,000.
Among the attendees of the opening ceremony were the nephew of the Japanese Emperor, the Egyptian Ambassador in Japan, Gaballa, Egyptologists and high-ranking officials from the SCA and TNM. The collections of the three other ancient civilisations are exhibited in different museums in Tokyo and Yokohama.
"It is the first time that such an exhibition is held in Japan," declared the Web site of the TNM, which also billed the exhibition as a good opportunity to learn about ancient civilisations and the cultural legacy of the human race.
"The Sun Pharaohs" exhibition is now on display at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) marking its final stop in the United States. The exhibition is organised by -- and was premiered at -- the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA). It then travelled to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and is now on show at the AIC. It will then move to the Netherlands.
The AIC exhibition will run through 24 September. It pays homage to one of the most fascinating eras in the history of Egyptian civilisation -- the Amarna period of the age of Akhenaton, Nefertiti and Tutankhamun. More than 300 significant works of art are on display in 10 rooms, including representations of the royal family and private citizens, objects of daily life and architectural elements from Amarna. It also shows both small-scale and monumental sculptures, reliefs, and ceramics collected from 29 museums and eight private lenders.
According to the MFA Web site, the key objects of the exhibition include the exquisite head of queen Tiye from the Agyptisches Museum Berlin, the bust of Akhenaton, the Canopic Jar of a queen, a stately statue of Haremhab and a portrait of Tutankhamun from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lesser objects include sculptures, reliefs, jewellery, colorful core-formed glassware, bronze implements, furniture and textiles. As a whole, the show permits visitors to discover more and more about life in Amarna city where Akhenaton's radical vision stimulated a brief, yet brilliant period of cultural growth.
Mohamed Saleh, former director of the Egyptian Museum, said that Egypt contributed three big busts of King Akhenaton. These statues are made of sandstone and were stored in the museum's store room. One of the three busts is unique because it shows the king with the complete Maat crow, the goddess of justice. The second and third statues show Akhenaton with the double crown. These statues were discovered early this century in Karnak temple in Luxor and were never before exhibited. The SCA also sent 20 other objects such as statues of kings and royal members of the 18th dynasty as well as six engravings from Akhenaton's temple in Karnak called Talatat. These engravings are pieces of the walls of Atun temple in Karnak. When King Haremhab built the ninth and the tenth pylons in the Karnak, his labourers dismantled the walls of Atun's temple and used them in new construction.
Saleh said that some 40,000 pieces of the Talatat are well preserved and stored in Luxor. Some of these pieces depict scenes of religious life in Atun temple; others show King Akhenaton with his wife Nefertiti and other members of the royal household.
