EGYPTIAN MUSEUM

The artifacts discovered during the last two centuries of excavation in Egypt are scattered widely through Europe, the USA and other parts of the world. Impressive displays are in the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan, Boston and Brooklyn Museums. Even when Turkey was the nominal sovereign over Egypt there were efforts to prevent the dispersal of these treasures. These efforts have been more successful since the late Nineteenth Century than before, so that an enormous amount of beautiful, valuable and informative material remains in Egypt. A great deal of it is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, built in the first years of the twentieth century. Most of the display here is typical of museums of that time and earlier. The quality of the identification of the items varies greatly. In many parts of the museum the lighting is nearly non-existent, but the experience of viewing these amazing artistic achievements of two and more millenia ago is unequalled.

Egyptian history is far too great a subject to go into very deeply here, even if I were qualified to write about it. Before the 12th Century BCE, it is common to refer to seven periods. The Predynastic extends to around 3000 BCE. The Early Dynastic period is the first two dynasties, when writing was begun and it is apparent that many of the religious traditions that prevailed for most of the following three millenia were established. The Old Kingdom is dynasties III to VI (or maybe VII). The First Intermediate period, when Egypt was disunited, includes dynasties VIII to X. The Middle Kingdom is dynasties XI and XII. The Second Intermediate period, during most of which Egypt was ruled by the foreign Hyksos, the shepherd kings from the east, ends with the dynasty XVI, when the New Kingdom was established. It dominated until dynasty XXI or XXII.

Between the New Kingdom and Greco-Roman times there was not much building of great structures that have lasted until now, but a lot happened (including a possible circumnavigation of Africa around 800BCE!). During the Greco-Roman period following Alexander, the construction of great temples, which imitated, often with great skill, the art and architecture of the New Kingdom, was revived.

In the museums, I found it beyond me to take pictures of the objects that appealed most and at the same time to take notes to identify them. I am personally most enthralled by the art of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and so my choices reflect this prejudice. Separate pages show some of the Middle Kingdom> and Tutankhamen exhibits in the Egyptian Museum and the Luxor Museum.