Peachy at The Met: Walk Like an Egyptian at the new Exhibit on King Tut - Objects and Materials from the Funeral of Tutankhamun on View at Metropolitan Museum
Yesterday Peachy Deegan took a look at the fabulous new exhibit at The Met dedicated to the funeral of King Tut! This is him, above. It is absolutely amazing and you must see it. In one room you will see everything from mummy bandages to Shabti (a small figure that accompanies the dead to function as a laborer for the person that passed into the afterlife). You'll see how pots were smashed at major milestones, you'll see floral collars in excellent condition considering their age and much more. The large photo of the entrance to the Valley of Kings was phenomenal as well. Here is what Mr. Campbell had to say in the book, recently released:
In 1908, when Herbert E. Winlock encountered the archaeological team of Theodore Davis, he was at the start of his career, newly employed by the Metropolitan Museum and its recently established Department of Egyptian Art. Like Davis and his colleagues, Winlock could not identify the objects and materials unearthed that winter. But when Davis agreed to donate the lot to the Museum, Winlock brought them back to New York, and they became part of the permanent collection. During his research over the next several years, Winlock came to realize the tremendous significance of the finds: These were the remains from the embalmment and last rites of Tutankhamun, the now-legendary New Kingdom pharaoh who reigned briefly in the fourteenth century B.C. Winlock would rise to become the head of the Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian
art department and then Museum director. In thirty years of excavations, plus well over a century of bequests and purchases, the Museum has built one of the most impressive collections of ancient Egyptian art outside Cairo. Loan exhibitions organized by the Museum have further complemented these acquisitions, including most famously the 1978–79 “Treasures of Tutankhamun,” which presented the extraordinary riches buried with the pharaoh. (Archaeologist Howard Carter notably cited Davis’s find as “one of three distinct pieces of evidence” that encouraged him in his search for Tutankhamun’s tomb.)
Yet more than the precious metals and brightly colored stones that dazzle us, it is the simple materials uncovered by Davis—linen sheets, faded flowers, animal bones—that bring us close to the actual physical presence of the pharaohs and their people thousands of years ago. The contents of Tutankhamun’s embalming cache are on permanent display in the Museum’s Egyptian galleries, but they are doubtless overlooked by many visitors—after all, they must compete with the grandeur of the Temple of Dendur and the brilliance of Princess Sithathoryunet’s jewels. The present exhibition, conceived and organized by Dorothea Arnold, Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman of the Department of Egyptian Art, highlights these objects, placing them in context and explaining their significance.
Included in this volume is a 1941 essay by Winlock in which he describes and interprets the find. It is a classic text, by one of the early twentieth century’s leading Egyptologists. But, of course, archaeology is an ever-changing field; one discovery leads to another, and each helps explain the one that came before. We are thus fortunate to have Dorothea Arnold’s updating, based on recent scholarship, of Winlock’s original conclusions. The Metropolitan is extremely grateful for the support of the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund toward the realization of the exhibition. We are also greatly indebted to The Friends of Isis, Friends of the Department of Egyptian Art, for making this publication possible.
Thomas P. Campbell
DIRECTOR
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
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Previously, we covered the preview of this exhibit:
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We were also impressed with this limestone detail of Stela of Userhat and his wife Nefertari 1327-1309 BC-great details!
