11 - 17 October 2001
Issue No.555
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 October 2001 Issue No.555 |
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A guide through the treasure house
There have been many guidebooks to the Cairo Egyptian Museum, but none of them surpasses the present volume. A compact, if somewhat heavy 12 x 22cm publication, it is illustrated throughout with magnificent photographs by Araldo De Luca, colour plans showing the best routes through the Museum's extensive collections, detailed descriptions of more than 570 objects, and accurate and comprehensive explanations of Ancient Egyptian history and culture. It is, therefore, much more than just a guidebook, and it can be recommended even to those who do not have the opportunity to visit the Museum itself.
An Illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2001. pp631
With its 150,000 artefacts on display, and another 30,000 in storage, the Egyptian Museum is so packed with treasures that it is impossible to see all of them on a single visit, or even on a series of visits. Designed as a two-storey building with its hundred and more rooms arranged around a central atrium, one way around the museum is to visit its collections in historical sequence, from the proto- and early-dynastic period rooms through to the museum's collection of Graeco-Roman monuments. The great virtue of the new guidebook here is that it allows these collections to be seen together as part of such a sequence; without it, it is all too easy to become so fascinated by masterpieces, such as the painted statues of Rahotep and Nofret from Meidum, or the dwarf Seneb and his family from Giza, or the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb, that one loses direction or the sense of continuity that the museum, and this guidebook, offers.
For those whose time is more limited, the new guide also includes a section entitled for the Visitor in a Hurry, which provides a route through the Museum for those wanting a more synoptic tour.
But perhaps the present book's greatest value is that, because it is so beautifully produced and illustrated, it can also be enjoyed at home, on the plane, or even on the bus en route to the museum. Objects of interest can be identified from the book's List of Objects (small colour images of objects on display), showing where in the book full details are given and where the object is located in the Museum. Thus, those wanting to see, for example, the painted limestone statuette of Neferefra with the hawk Horus protecting his head found by the Czech mission at Abusir, but not wanting to get lost elsewhere in the building on their way to it, can now easily locate the object with the help of this book and its indexes. The same goes for those wanting to see the statue of Senenmut, architect and perhaps lover of Queen Hatschepsut, cradling her daughter Neferura against his chest. (This statue, in fact, is in Room 12, something duly noted in the Illustrated Guide.)
The book's design is of very high quality, accompanying texts being placed beside the illustrations to which they refer, as indeed they should be. These texts are of uniformly high standard: of the Stela of Bay discovered in the workers' village of Deir El-Medina, for example, a worker is shown kneeling beside three pairs of ears, painted blue, yellow and green. The text is indispensable here, for without it who would have known that these represent the ears of the god that "listens to prayers" and that, alongside the official cults practised in the temples and at court in the New Kingdom, the more modest social classes worshipped their own personal, household deities?
In his Preface to the book, archaeologist Zahi Hawass justly points out that in "visiting the Egyptian museum, it is easy to find yourself overwhelmed by the impressive artworks that fill every niche and corner. This is not a new phenomenon. Long ago, a visitor complained to Gaston Maspero, the first director of the Egyptian Museum, that it was too crowded with artifacts. Maspero replied that the Ancient Egyptians would have liked this. Egyptian temples were crowded with statues, and every available space in a tomb was full of scenes and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Even the typical Egyptian house was full of furniture and equipment. Thus, the crowding of artifacts in the museum is in keeping with the aesthetic of ancient Egypt itself... the museum is literally a treasure house."
This is no doubt true, but the Ancient Egyptians were free of the obligation to cater to the needs of international tourism, and it is here that the Egyptian Museum has traditionally tended to be weak. With the cabinets so choc-a-block with small objects, it can be difficult to focus on any particular piece. Here too, however, the present book comes to the rescue, drawing the visitor's attention to pieces such as a tiny wood-and-ivory kohl stick holder in the form of a bald man squatting and holding the stick, which ends in the head of a falcon. Such pieces, which have an undeniable charm, are all too easy to miss.
Besides the well-known statues and the internationally famous collection of objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun, the Egyptian Museum also contains fragments of the ostraka on which Ancient Egyptian artists made rough outlines of their work, bracelets and anklets in gold, turquoise and lapis lazuli, a unique wood-and-stucco head of the youthful Tutankhamun emerging from a lotus flower, mythological scenes of Oedipus painted on plaster found at Tuna El-Gebel dating to the Roman period, as well as scribes, reliefs, shrines, panels, funerary masks and mummies. It would be a pity to miss any of these, and, with the help of this new book, it will be more difficult to do so.
Reviewed by Jill Kamil
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