NEW YORK (AP) — The powerful gods of ancient Egypt are meeting on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
It will be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s been more than a decade since the museum last held a major Egypt exhibition, and since its opening on October 12th, Divine Egypt, a lavish exploration of how ancient Egyptians depicted their gods, has been a major event, as evidenced by the crowds that packed the show.
After all, little excites the museum-going public Like ancient Egypt Diana Craig Patch, curator of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, points out:
“This is the first ancient culture you learn about in school,” Patch says. “Pyramids, mummies, Tutankhamun’s tomb …They have found their way into our popular culture, books, movies, and now video games. ”
But Patch hopes visitors will learn something deeper from “Sacred Egypt.” This work explores how the gods are portrayed by the king and ordinary Egyptians, not only in temples that are only accessible to kings and priests, but also in the everyday worship of ordinary people.
Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted about 3,000 years. The show runs until January and covers all time periods, with over 200 objects on display, from giant limestone statues to small golden figurines. It includes 140 works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, as well as works on loan from museums around the world.
“The sacred landscape of ancient Egypt is full of gods. There are actually 1,500 if you count them all,” said Patch, who led The Associated Press on a tour last week. This show will focus on 25 major gods.
Even with the reduction to 25, the study remained extremely difficult. Egyptological materials and written information are fragmentary. Additionally, the Egyptians continued to introduce new gods or give established gods new roles. “That makes for a very complex but fascinating landscape,” Patch says.
One goal is to show visitors that all of these images relate to “how the ancient Egyptians related to their world. How their gods solved questions of life, death, and meaning, problems that we still try to solve today.”
Some highlights:
Opening remarks by Amun Re and King Tutankhamun
You might think that the boy king Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut, would be the star of any party, as the incredible riches from his tomb became known around the world. But in the first sculpture to greet visitors from the Louvre Museum in Paris, the sun god Amun-Re is seated on a throne, showing a much smaller pharaoh under his lap, or rather protecting him, with his hand on his small shoulder. This deity is identified by his feathered crown, curled beard, sacred kilt and jewelry, and is undoubtedly the biggest attraction. Amun-Re was worshiped at the Karnak temple complex. The letter “Re” in his name closely associates him with the sun.
Representing God: Horus and Hathor
The first of the five galleries, “Representing the Gods,” focuses on the two main gods: the god Horus and the goddess Hathor. Horus is always represented as a double-crowned falcon, which means that he is the king of Egypt and is associated with the living king. But Hathor, who symbolizes fertility, music, and defense, among others, takes many forms, including a bull, a crest, a lion-headed figure, and a cobra. In the statue here, she wears bull’s horns and a sun disk.
“So there are two main ways to express God: Sometimes it has many roles, sometimes it has only one role,” Patch says.
Re, the sun god who rules the universe
This gallery considers the most important res in the realm of the sun, creation, life, and rebirth. Re often fuses forms with other gods. “Re rules the world. He is the source of light and warmth,” Patch says.
In this room he is displayed as a giant scarab beetle. “That’s the nature of his mornings,” Patch says. “He is seen as the beetle that takes the sun out of the underworld and pushes it up into the sky.”
Here you can also find a vividly painted relief of the goddess Maat, which was in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes (now Luxor). She embodies truth, justice, social and political order. Patch Notes: “The best way we can translate this today is righteousness. She represents the righteousness of the world, the way the world works.”
Creation of the World: Multiple Creation Myths
This gallery explores five myths surrounding the creation of the world and its people.
“This is one of the things I want people to understand: Egyptians had multiple ways of dealing with things,” Patch says of competing myths. “I think that’s interesting. They overlapped.”
She stands next to a giant limestone statue of the god Min. It is a headless representation of a difficult-to-define deity associated with vegetation, agricultural fertility, and minerals.
Coping with life: solid gold statuette
Only kings and priests had access to state temples to worship their gods. What should ordinary people have done?
Patch explains: “During festivals, the god would come out of the temple in a sacred barque, and people could commune with the statue in the streets and ask questions of the god.”
In this room, the curators have arranged a series of objects as if on a bark. At the top and center is a shining statue of Amun made of pure gold. It was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1926 from the collection of Lord Carnarvon, who was involved in the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1926.
Conquering Death: Gods of the Otherworld
Some of the most impressive art associated with Egyptian gods concerns death and the afterlife. “Overcoming death was something that kings and non-royals alike had to deal with,” Patch says.
The gods in this section include Anubis, who embalms the deceased and guides them into the afterlife. Isis and Nephthys are sisters of Osiris who mourn and protect the dead. and Osiris, the judge and ruler of the afterlife.
This gallery displays the show’s iconic objects, stunning statuettes on loan from the Louvre depicting the trio of Osiris, Isis and Horus. It is made of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli and depicts Osiris enshrouded in the disc and horns of the sun, Horus with the head of a falcon, and Isis. Gold represents the skin of the gods, and lapis represents the hair of the gods.
Although this final section is about overcoming death, “as you can see, the majority of the exhibit is about life,” the patch notes say. “And that’s what these gods were all about: even if they conquered death, it was to live forever.”
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Associated Press video journalist Ted Shafley contributed to this report.
