To Live Forever: Egyptian Art
Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum: A Preview
"To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum" is a special exhibition that explains the ancient civilization's rites of mummification.
Ancient Egyptian funerary practices and religious beliefs about death and the afterlife are vividly described by some 120 pieces of jewelry, sarcophagi (coffins), statuary and vessels in To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (July 13-September 7, 2008).
Selected from more than 1200 objects in the Brooklyn Museum's world-class collection of Egyptian antiquities, the works on display in To Live Forever... range in date from 3600 B.C. to 400 A.D. From predynastic times through the Roman period, they document how the ancient Egyptians sought to conquer death and survive throughout eternity. Their sacred preparations for the next world, including mummification and tomb rituals, define the distinctly Egyptian vision of the hereafter. Funerary objects reveal how many of the poor imitated the rich in terms of elaborate burials, hoping to improve their existences after death.
Intended for the Afterlife
An elegant Female Figurine (Predynastic, 3650-3300 B.C.) from before the pharaonic age represents the early Egyptian zest for life. With exaggerated buttocks, fleshy thighs, pendulous breasts and curvilinear arms raised exuberantly above its bird-like head, this partially painted terracotta statuette from a burial mound, probably held by hand, is associated with an unknown supernatural rite of fertility or rebirth.
The Seated Statue of the Superintendent of the Granary Irukaptah (Dynasty 5, ca. 2425-2350 B.C.) is an inscribed limestone work from Egypt's Old Kingdom age of the pyramids. The official's well-proportioned body, elaborate coiffure and hands placed on his knees are characteristic of nonroyal funerary sculpture from the period. Irukaptah's ka or life force was meant to inhabit this timeless representation of the subject in case his body perished after entombment.
A glazed faience or ceramic Statuette of a Standing Hippopotamus (Dynasties 12-17, ca. 1938-1539 B.C.) depicts a ferocious river animal reviled by the ancient Egyptians. Adorned with floral patterns typical of its marshy Nile River habitat, some of the sculpture's legs were possibly broken before its placement in a tomb to symbolically disable the creature from wreaking havoc in the deceased's afterlife.
The Canopic Jar of Hor Depicting a Jackal (664-525 B.C.) is one of four limestone vessels that separately contained the viscera or abdominal organs (liver, lungs, intestines and stomach) removed from an Egyptian after death. In antiquity, wild jackals protectively roamed the Egyptian necropoli (cemeteries) and became associated with Anubis, a god intrinsic to embalming and the religious rites of mummification.
A major component of the exhibition is the Brooklyn Museum's recently CT-scanned Mummy of Demetrios (1st Century A.D.).
The Show's Itinerary
To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum travels next to: the John and Mable Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee; and other venues to be announced.
Sources:
- Bleiberg, Edward. To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum (exh. cat.). London: D. Giles Ltd., 2008.
- Capel, Anne K. and Glenn E. Markoe (eds). Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt (exh. cat.). New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997, 121-122.
- D'Auria, Sue, Peter Lacovara and Catharine H. Roehrig. Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (exh. cat.). Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1988.
- Taylor, John H. and Nigel C. Strudwick. Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt... Treasures from the British Museum (exh. cat.). Santa Ana: Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2005.
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