Museum Guide

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Planning your vacation in the U.S., Europe or the Middle East? Check this new department for archaeological exhibits to visit. Starting this month, issues of BAR will contain timely descriptions of noteworthy museum exhibits in North America. In addition, a fall issue will list the significant permanent archaeological holdings in North American museums. A spring issue will do the same for the great archaeological museums around the world. Our focus in these listings is the art and archaeology of Israel, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean countries.

We welcome all information, from readers and museum professionals, on temporary and permanent exhibits, in North America or elsewhere. Please submit your information early. Our production schedules require that we have all potential listings in hand three months before an issue appears. For example, the deadline for the November/December issue is August 1. We hope our readers will let us know if there is anything we can do to make this department even more useful.

Dallas

Ramses the Great

Through August 27, 1989

During his 66-year reign (1290–1224 B.C.), Ramses II embarked on a massive building campaign unequalled by any other pharaoh. More than half the ancient Egyptian temples and monuments standing today were built or added to by Ramses. His ambition demanded a huge slave-labor force and many scholars identify him as the pharaoh of the Biblical Exodus. Seventy-five priceless artifacts from his time are on view in this touring exhibit, which has been extended to include this stop in Dallas.

For sheer size, the most stunning item on view is a huge granite statue of Ramses in mid-stride. Called the Colossus of Memphis because it guarded the sacred temple at Ptah in the capital city of Memphis, it is the largest statue ever to leave Egypt. It stands 27 feet tall and weighs 51.5 tons. Seventy-two thousand man-hours were spent on restoring the Colossus in 1986. It had been found, in 1962, in three large chunks and approximately 50 smaller pieces.

A smaller statue, made of granite and time and weighing a “mere” eight tons, depicts a youthful Ramses squatting in front of the god Huron. Other notable items on exhibit, many of them from Ramses’ family or court, include a 19-pound gold necklace, gold and lapis bracelets, a gold and sterling vessel featuring an elegant goat-shaped handle and Ramses’ cedar coffin lid minus its gold and jewels.

The museum has scheduled two lecture series to complement the exhibit. Several other museums in the city are mounting smaller exhibits on ancient Egypt. You can call the numbers above for information on those as well.

Baltimore

Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts in the Second to Seventh Centuries A.D.

Through July 16, 1989

The last great flowering of native Egyptian culture occurred in the centuries between the rise of Christianity and the arrival of Islam. Named after the Greek transliteration of the pharaonic word for Egypt, Coptic culture was a lively blend of Greek and Roman mythology, Christian and Jewish iconography, Egyptian deities and Byzantine and Persian influences.

The exhibit, the first on this subject anywhere in a quarter century and the first in America since the 1940s, presents Coptic life through 230 objects drawn from the marketplace, the home and religious, magical and funeral practices. They include sculpture, glassware, ceramics, jewelry, tombstones and written materials ranging from incantations to a portion of the Psalms. Thanks to Egypt’s dry climate, the objects on display have been extraordinarily well-preserved.

Though not all Copts during this period were Christian, Egypt was an important center for the new religion (Christian monasticism developed there in the fourth century A.D., for example). Pagan influences continued nonetheless. Two small terracotta figures in the exhibit show the Egyptian goddess Isis nursing her son Horus in a manner strikingly similar to Coptic images of the Madonna and Child.

The Copts, a minority in Egypt today, continue to practice Christianity.

Los Angeles

The First Egyptians

Through July 23, 1989

This exhibit highlights cultural developments in pre-dynastic Egypt from 4000 to 0492700 B.C., a period when Egyptian civilization grew from simple herding camps and farming villages into the powerful kingdoms of the pharaohs. It showcases the significant findings unearthed since 1967 by the expedition at Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen, or City of the Hawk), along the Nile 450 miles south of Cairo. Hierakonpolis is the largest known pre-dynastic site. The exhibit also incorporates past research, especially that of William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the father of modern Egyptian archaeology.

Some scholars believe that Narmer, king of Hierakonpolis, conquered both Lower and Upper Egypt to become the first ruler of a unified Egypt. One item on view is a cast of a triangular carved slab that shows two intertwined mythical animals, believed to represent Upper and Lower Egypt. On one side of the slab Narmer wears the white crown of Upper Egypt and on the other he wears the red crown of Lower Egypt.

The exhibit features more than 130 other items, including statues, jewelry, pottery and tomb artifacts, as well as maps, murals, architectural drawings and Kale models.

Boston

The Human Figure in Early Greek Art

Through September 3, 1989

Sixty-seven works, most of them never before shown outside Greece, trace the evolution of the human figure as treated by Greek artists from the tenth to the fifth centuries B.C. Included are marble sculptures, bronzes, painted pottery and terra cotta figures. Depictions of the human form evolved during that period from silhouetted stick figures to representations with naturalistic anatomy, movement and proportions, culminating in the classical Greek ideal of beauty that became the basis of Western aesthetics.

The oldest item in the exhibit is a painted clay centaur, a half man, half horse, made in the late tenth century in the town of Lefkandi, north of Athens. Other subjects include rituals, funerals, hunts, battles and epic stories.

This is the exhibit’s last stop on a five-city American tour.

New York

Exodus and Exile: 2,000 Years in Ancient Israel

July 13, 1989–December 1990

More than 200 objects of ritual, historic and domestic significance tell the story of social and political upheavals experienced by the people of Israel in the two millennia from the Early Iron Age to the Byzantine period. In that span the Israelites grew from a local kingdom to an international religious community, shifted the focus of their ritual from animal sacrifice to Torah study and dispersed from settlements in Israel to locales throughout the ancient world. Despite these transformations, they were united by the worship of the Israelite God and by a sense of community based on religious identity.

The objects in the exhibit come from ancient Israel and surrounding countries and include ceramic vessels, ivory furniture inlays, figurines, jewelry, metal tools and utensils, decorated architectural elements, glassware, seals and weapons.

Philadelphia

Tokens to Tablets: Glimpses Into 6,000 Years of the History of the Ancient Near East

Ongoing

The beginnings of writing and record keeping are the focus of this ongoing exhibit of more than 300 items, most of them acquired by the museum’s expeditions—the first at Nippur, Iraq, in 1889 and the most recent at Anshan (modern Malyan) in Iran in 1974. Highlights include clay token counting mechanisms dating to 6200 B.C. and a Sumerian clay writing tablet from 2600 B.C.

Other artifacts include ceramic vessels, stone and bone tools, luxury items and ritual objects. Noteworthy items from this group are two figurines from a grave at Ur in southern Iraq dating to about 4500–4000 B.C.; a large figure of a bull found near Ur made of a copper sheet and nailed over a wooden core, dating to about 2500 B.C.; and a ceramic tile of a horned-and-bearded man believed to have decorated a large public building in Hasanlu, in northwestern Iran, until the site was destroyed by invaders about 800 B.C.

Maps, photographs and an updated chronology, which sets most of the artifacts at an earlier date than previously believed, accompany the exhibit.