(Originally posted: 5/25/2011)
I know my last post said the next several would be on misconceptions about science, and I still intend to return to that series, but last week I had an unexpectedly pleasant experience. While in St.Paul, Minnesota, for personal reasons, I had the chance to see “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharoahs,” a museum exhibit of ancient Egyptian relics. Click through to the full story for my thoughts.
To be honest, I’d completely forgotten that an exhibit of Tutankhamun’s burial goods was still touring the US. I missed it when it was in Indianapolis a few years ago, and none of its other locations were near enough to justify travelling to see it. However, since I was in St. Paul anyway, when someone reminded me of the exhibit I jumped at the opportunity. After all, what archaeologist didn’t first become interested in the field because of King Tut?
The exhibit’s title is “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharoahs,” and it is on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota(in St. Paul) until September 5, before moving to Houston, Texas. Admission is a bit steep for a museum exhibit–$25 for non-members–but well worth it.
I was generally pleased with the exhibit, much more so than the Mayan exhibit I reviewed a few weeks ago. While it was still basically a exhibit of pretty things in glass cases, there was more text involved with this show, and a better attempt at explaining the cultural relvance of various pieces. I didn’t rent the audio tour, so I can’t comment on that, but the pieces were distributed throughout the exhibit hall in reasonably well-lit spaces with enough space around most cases to walk around and see the aritfacts from all angles.
Before entering the exhibit, patrons were corralled in a small, dark room with three video monitors that played a brief video introduction narrated by Harrison Ford. It’s unfortunate, but his is still the voice most people associate with archaeology, and his association with the exhibit no doubt draws more paying customers than would otherwise show up. Once the video was over, two large doors under the monitors swung open by themselves. That was maybe unnecesarily dramatic, but it was fun.
The exhibit was divided across several rooms, and these rooms collectively were divided into two large sections. The first several rooms contained various artifacts from throughout Egypt’s pharoanic period. The last few were devoted specifically to artifacts from Tut’s tomb, with one exhibit room devoted to each of the rooms of his tomb. Separating the two series of rooms was a small passage made up like Howard Carter’s tent at the excavations–an interesting, if barely explained, nod to the sorts of displays typical at “interpretive centers.”
In the part of the exhibit devoted to artifacts from other Egyptian kings and periods, I could discern no obvious organization to where the artifacts were placed. Similar artifacts (e.g., statues of pharoahs) were grouped together, but Old Kingdom artifacts were next to Middle Kingdom, Late Period next to New Kingdom, artifacts from kings’ tombs next to those of scribes. Text on the walls tried to oranize these artifacts into some progression, starting with kings, then moving to nobles, to officials, etc., but there were exceptions in each section. And no where were the masses of common Egyptians ever even hinted at. I know the title of the exhibit indicated it would be about the upper classes, but the anthropologist in me wanted to see some hint of the rest of Egyptian society.
Toward the end of this section, the lights got very low, and one gallery had nothing but absolutely spectacular jewelry. Most of the necklaces, of course, had been restrung, and a few we missing tiny bits of inlaid jewels or precious stones, but on the whole the workmanship and preservation was better than anything I’d ever seen for ancient artifacts.
In the center of this gallery was the golden death mask of King Psusennes, a Late Period pharoah. Not as amazing as Tut’s famous mask, but still as perfect today as when it was made thousands of years ago. The expression on Psusennes’ face–part relaxed, part smugly self-satisfied–was unnerving in its realism.
The part of the exhibit devoted to Tutankhamun’s burial goods was, for me, the highlight of the exhibit. On display were one of the lids to his canopic jars, golden sandals made for his mummy’s burial, and a variety of charms and amulets placed in the wrappings. But what I enjoyed seeing the most were the wooden-and-wicker bed and the small, child-sized wooden chair. These two artifacts really brought home the fact that you were looking at the life of a real person, one who never quite reached what we would consider adulthood. Surrounded by the glitter of gold and pieces of monumental sculpture, it’s easy to forget that Tut would barely have been out of high school in our age, and that he was the equivalent of third-grader when he became king. But seeing his bed (about 5’6″ long or so) and his childhood chair (about the size of a booster seat) drives those home, and gives you a sense of the life of this boy from 3300 years ago.
And then, of course, you can move on to looking at the shiny things again.
The final room of the exhibit was a lifesize replica of Tut’s mummy, unwrapped. I thought this was entirely unnecessary, because photos are easily available, and the mummy is so degraded as to hardly look human anymore. But I suppose many people would be upset if they didn’t get to see a dead body in an Egyptian exhibit. (The Science Museum of Minnesota has a real unwrapped mummy on permanent display elsewhere in the museum. I find that equally unnecessary.)
All in all, this was a really enjoyable experience, and one that I heartily recommend. While it could have taught more about the Egyptian culture, the exhibit did make some attempts at education, and I’m sure many of the general public would learn quite a bit.