Newsletter Egypt and Sudan
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Newsletter Egypt and Sudan Issue 5, 2018 Introduction Neal Spencer Keeper, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan In 1972, fifty years after the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered, fifty objects from the king’s burial were displayed at the British Museum in a special exhibition, attracting 1.7 million visitors over nine months. Such visitor numbers remain unheard of today, though a new record has just been set for a touring British Museum exhibition. The Hong Kong Science Museum welcomed over 850,000 visitors to Egyptian mummies: exploring ancient lives last summer. Such exhibitions take years of planning, and the last weeks have seen us send the latest group of Egyptian mummies to a London hospital for dual-energy CT-scanning. While the scanning will reveal new insights into the ancient individuals, some will undoubtedly become the stars of future exhibitions, whether in Bloomsbury or beyond. Back at the British Museum, the Roxie Walker Galleries of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (Rooms 62–63) were updated with new displays to reflect the fast-changing world of bioarchaeological research, while nearby a rare queen’s diadem was put on display, a three-year loan from the al-Sabah collection. Other contributions in this newsletter highlight collections research and conservation, fieldwork and training programmes. As 2017 drew to a close, the British Museum was awarded two major grants. The Cultural Protection Fund will support a project entitled Circulating Artefacts: a cross-platform alliance against the looting of pharaonic antiquities, working with colleagues in Egypt and Sudan to track objects circulating on the art market and in private collections – this will also be a fantastic research resource. The Andrew W Mellon Foundation has provided a generous grant for the next phase of ResearchSpace, which will result in a customisation of the semantic web research platform for Nile Valley archaeological data, including 3D environments. These projects complement the Egypt Documentation Project, supported by the Arcadia Fund, which is conserving, digitising and making available historic glass plate negatives housed in the Ministry of Antiquities, Cairo. These projects all contribute to the research, understanding and protection of Nile Valley archaeology. Follow @NealSpencer_BM on Twitter and @nealspencer_bm on Instagram Exhibitions and galleries Touring Egyptian mummies: ongoing success and research Marie Vandenbeusch the side of the face, which may have been entirely gilded. Project Curator: Egyptian Touring Exhibitions, Department Surprisingly, the ensemble conveys a contradictory notion of Ancient Egypt and Sudan of value: gilding used to enhance scraps of wood. 2017 has been a successful year for the touring exhibition Unfortunately, as for many objects in the collection, we Egyptian mummies: exploring ancient lives. After its display have no information about the provenance of the coffin at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the show was lid. However, similar pieces have been identified in other staged at the Hong Kong Science Museum, attracting collections, hinting that it may come from Abusir el- more than 850,000 visitors over a four-month run, as part Meleq, an ancient cemetery at the entrance of the Fayum. of the events celebrating the twenty-year anniversary These parallels also tell us that it might not have sealed a of the handover of Hong Kong to China. From there, it traditional coffin base, but could have been placed upright travelled to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, with in a wooden cabinet. Here we see artists and craftsmen Brisbane ahead. creatively experimenting with funerary traditions, possibly reflecting changing beliefs. It also raises many new Exciting as it is to share both collection and new research questions on the cultural and social identity of the individual to people around the world, the visitor figures are only who ordered such a coffin that combines Egyptian and one way to translate the success of an exhibition. From Hellenised features, in a land under Roman rule. a research perspective, the development stages of an exhibition cast light on specific aspects of the collection. Egyptian mummies: exploring ancient lives is at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane from 16 March to Consider, for example, the conservation of the coffin 26 August 2018. lid from the Roman period (EA 55022) led by Nicola Newman, a conservator specialised in organic material. In the shape of a standing man wearing a Greek mantle and holding a papyrus roll, this coffin lid has a foot case made in a very different style, depicting a ba-bird spreading its wings and surrounded by pseudo-hieroglyphs. Looking closely at this lid gave us a clearer idea of its manufacture: it was made of twenty pieces of wood; some of them possibly recycled, secured by four large joints and no less than 46 dowels! Paint, plaster and traces of gilding are still visible on various areas of the surface, including on Coffin lid (EA 55022). Detail showing the front of the foot base decorated with a ba-bird (EA 55022). Visitors to Egyptian mummies: exploring ancient lives at the Science Museum in Hong Kong. © Hong Kong Science Museum. 2 3 Exhibitions and galleries Visions of Egypt: modern perceptions Catherine Boël represents a stunning view of the Great Hypostyle Hall Anne Christopherson Intern (2016) of the Karnak Temple, added around 1290–1224 BC Department of Prints and Drawings by Seti I (19th Dynasty). The inclusion of tiny figures combined with the unusually large scale of the drawing Egypt, with its deserts and magnificent archaeological (665 x 476mm) emphasises the size of the hall and offers sites, has captivated the west and enthralled its artists the viewer a better understanding of the monumentality for generations. The British Museum’s collection holds and timelessness of the ruins. many such works, two of which were recently displayed in Places of the mind: British watercolour landscapes The second Egypt-related watercolour in the exhibition 1850–1950, an exhibition curated by Kim Sloan from was drawn on 11 July 1917 by James McBey (1883– the Department of Prints and Drawings. 1959): The Long Patrol in the Desert of Sinai. Through this work, the viewer is faced with a much darker vision Henry Stanier (c. 1831–1894) drew Karnak in 1868 of the Egyptian desert, one that is far removed from the at a time when Egypt, with its unique architecture and light ochre hues and deep blues of Karnak. This particular customs, had become a favourite subject among British watercolour was drawn in situ by the artist as a record, not artists. So appreciated, in fact, that in his 1859 Notes On of a spectacular archaeological site, but of the First World Some Of The Principal Pictures Exhibited In The Rooms War. McBey, an official War Artist posted on the Egyptian Of The Royal Academy, Ruskin complained: ‘are we Front, was commissioned by the Government Propaganda never to get out of Egypt any more? Nor to perceive the Department to document the sights and events he existence of any living creatures but Arabs and camels?’ came across and translate them into works of art. These productions were then shown to the British public, During the second half of the 19th century, colonialism grown weary of war photography, through exhibitions and strengthened diplomatic and commercial ties with and publications. This large watercolour (464 x 365mm) Above: James the Ottoman Empire had facilitated travel to the east. illustrates an Imperial Camel Corps Patrol setting off at McBey (1883– 1959), The Long Western artists’ imaginations were, understandably, dawn to scout the Sinai. Through it, McBey captured the Patrol in the captivated by these new landscapes flooded with light spirit of the desert, displaying the ‘intuitive understanding Desert of Sinai. and colours and many left their dark European cities in of the Eastern atmosphere’ that Malcom Salaman had Pen, ink and watercolour, 1917 search of these brighter horizons. Stanier, originating lauded in his 1914 Catalogue of Drawings in Water Colour (1919,0412.25) from the industrial city of Birmingham, was one such by James McBey. Right: Henry artist. Between 1863 and 1866, he went on a tour Stanier (c. 1831– of Spain and North Africa and returned home with a Places of the mind: British watercolour landscapes 1850– 1894), Karnak. wealth of sketches. Karnak is one of three of the artist’s 1950 was on display in Room 90 from 23 February – Watercolour and bodycolour, 1868. Egyptian subjects in the British Museum’s collection and 23 August 2017, supported in memory of Melvin R Seiden. (1994,U.10). most probably derives from his stay in Egypt in 1866. It 4 5 Exhibitions and galleries A queen’s diadem from the Second Intermediate Period Marcel Marée 16th Dynasty who preceded Antef by less than a century. Curator, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan The 16th and 17th Dynasties both ruled from Thebes but only controlled southern Egypt, as the north was Royal jewellery from ancient Egypt is exceedingly rare, dominated by the Asiatic ‘Hyksos’, who ruled from Avaris and this is especially true of headgear. Visitors to the in the eastern Nile Delta. Queen Montuhotep was buried British Museum can now admire the silver diadem of a in a large painted coffin, which bore the earliest known queen, thanks to a generous loan from Sheikh Hassan examples of spells from the Book of the Dead. In 1832 al-Sabah of Kuwait. its decoration was copied at Thebes by John Gardner Wilkinson, a pioneer of Egyptology. His copies are now in The headband, made of a single sheet of silver, is fronted the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, but by two cobras, a mark of queenly ownership. Attached to the coffin and body are lost. It is tempting to speculate the back is a bow, comprising a disc, two lotus flowers, that, at the time of discovery, the mummy’s head was and four ribbons.