Word: egyptians
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...that has changed, though, as a spectacular exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City this week makes clear. "Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids" is the first major show devoted to the Old Kingdom. It features some 250 objects from 32 institutions in 10 countries--including exquisite sculptures, relief paintings, vessels, furniture and jewelry--created for use in the temples and royal tombs surrounding Egypt's most familiar monuments...
...mummies laid on top of one another in neat stacks. All told, the remains were interred in four distinct ways. One type was covered with a thin layer of gold. Another lay under lifelike masks made of plaster-coated linen, or cartonnage, that was painted with scenes of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, including Isis, Osiris, Horus and Anubis. Still others were placed in so-called anthropoid coffins--pottery sarcophagi with human faces--and a few were only wrapped in linen. Bracelets, amulets, statues of mourning ladies, pottery vessels and figurines of Bes, whom Hawass describes as "the dwarf...
...surprising, given their dating, that the mummies and their accoutrements have both Egyptian and Roman characteristics: the hairstyles on the anthropoid coffins are Roman, but the style of decoration is Egyptian. The richness of the tomb decorations, Hawass notes, indicates that the inhabitants of Bahariya were prosperous. Indeed, the city flourished on its renowned wine, made from dates and grapes, which it exported throughout the Nile Valley...
...contain up to 10,000 mummies. The section now being excavated, he believes, belonged to the middle class; eventually, tombs of wealthier people may turn up. And once this huge and pristine site is fully explored, Hawass and his colleagues expect to have an unprecedented window into Egyptian life in a provincial town under Roman rule...
...EGYPTIAN ART IN THE AGE OF THE PYRAMIDS Opens at the Metropolitan Museum on Sept...