Preamble
For you convenience I have listed below posts on this blogspot that featured Museums and Galleries.
When Rainforests Ruled
Some Textiles@The Powerhouse Museum
Textile Museum in Tilburg (The Netherlands)
Eden Gardens
Maschen (Mesh) Museum@Tailfingen
Museum Lace Factory@Horst(The Netherlands)
Expressing Australia – Art in Parliament House
TextielLab & TextielMuseum – 2013
The Last Exhibition @ Galerie ’t Haentje te Paart
Paste Modernism 4 @ aMBUSH Gallery & The Living Mal
El Anatsui – Five Decades@Carriageworks
The Australian Museum of Clothing and Textiles
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Nordiska Museet (The Nordic Museum)
Tarndwarncoort (Tarndie)
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part I
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part II
Masterpieces of the Israel Museum
Introduction
Some three decades ago we visited Cairo (Egypt). I was much younger, my hair was dyed blonde and of course, I was very lean as you are when your in your thirties. We stayed at the Hilton and we had a guided tour of the city and visited markets and other venues. We visited the pyramids near Cairo and as it was not illegal in those days to climb into them, and so we did and had a marvellous view of the inside of these wonderful structures.
The Giza pyramid complex, also called the Giza Necropolis, is the site on the Giza Plateau in Greater Cairo, Egypt that includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx of Giza.
When we descended I was suddenly pulled off my feet and found myself on a camel heading towards the desert. My husband and guide rushed into the hired car and motored after me. They forced the camel driver to a halt and it cost my husband £50 Egyptian pounds to retrieve me to the safety of our hired car. It was a terrifying experience at the time, but when I think back on it I think it was probably a rues concocted by our guide and camel driver to give both of them some additional income.
A camel driver in front of the pyramids and not the driver mentioned in this post.
We reserved a whole day to spend in the Egyptian Museum, which is a wonderful Art Resource and the topic of today's post. When we entered a soldier was at the door and before we knew it he guided us around the Museum. He could not speak a word of English but he would walk in front of us and as we approached a Museum relic he would bow in front of us and wave his arm in a gesture to introduce us to the exhibit. He stuck with us the whole time we were there. Surprisingly it was not annoying, but added to the gravitas of what we were experiencing. Needless to say it cost my husband another £50 Egyptian pounds to thank him for giving us a personal tour of the Museum.
Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Two evenings before we were leaving, an Egyptian wedding ceremony was taking place at the Hilton. It was one of the most grandest events I have ever witnessed - no money spared! We were actually invited to attend the after party and we found ourselves at a table of distant dignitaries of the couple and so had a delightful evening.
Events area of the Hilton.
On the last night, we had booked a 2-hour river boat cruise on the Nile including meals. Unfortunately, the evening of the tour I contracted food poisoning and so we had to cancel.
Two days later we arrived in Sydney and I was still feeling unwell but my memories of Egypt kept flooding back to me and so the displeasure I was feeling was insignificant to the pleasure of my sojourn in Cairo - from feast to famine!
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part I[1]
For nearly a century since the first organized excavations, Egypt has been the center of a significant social history. Before the time of Alexander's oriental campaigns, the Greeks already knew about Egypt's existence. Herodotus (484-425 BC) the 'Father of History', wrote a lively account of the country on the Nile and we know from other Greeks that travelled to the temple sites and 'immortalised' themselves on numerous monuments by carving their names on them.
Schist cosmetic palette of King Narmer (Dynasty Hieraconpolis).
It was above all the prodigious stone memorial buildings, the pyramids and temples, which attracted the people of the ancients (as it still does today). After the Roman era (30 BC - 395 AD), Egypt disappeared entirely from the occidental field of vision. The mud deposited by the annual flooding of the Nile and the desert sand-drifts buried numerous ancient relics and Egypt's once significant position sank into oblivion.
Limestone statue of a scribe with papyrus scroll (Dynasty Sakkara).
Although all great civilised nations had their share in the later exploration of Egypt, France deserves a special mention: Napoleon's campaign (1798-1801) served as a starting-point for the deciphering of the hieroglyphics by J F Champollion (1822). During the course of fortification works at St Julien in Rosette on the Delta, an unknown soldier found a black basalt stone, the 'Rosetta Stone', one side of which was polished and engraved. It bore various kinds of characters, in three columns: hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. A translation of the Greek text produced the contents of a dedication by the priesthood of Memphis to Ptolemy (196 BC); the other groups of characters revealed their meaning after considerable effort by various scholars, but the actual deciphering of the hieroglyphics was first achieved by Champollion after much careful study.
Rosetta Stone.
The cultured world continued to show interest in the numerous ancient relics, whose origins date back to many thousands of years and which enable us to draw various conclusions regarding the time of the Pharaohs. Some of them have been unearthed whilst others were preserved, only slightly damaged, on the sites upon which they were originally built.
Prince Rahotep with his wife, Princess Nefert (Dynasty Medum).
Every year large crowds are attracted to Egypt and the interest which began with archaeologists now attracts tourists from around the world who stand in awe at the various monuments and their artefacts. The exhibition of art treasures from the Egyptian Museum loaned to galleries and museums across the world has further fuelled such interest. Moreover, scarcely anyone who goes to Cairo does not include one or more visits to the Egyptian Museum. This notable collection of art treasures of predynastic and Pharaonic times draws them there.
King Chephrenm builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza (Dynasty Giseh).
At first, the objects found during the earliest excavations were housed in a small museum in Bulak. The collection owes its development to the first excavator and archaeologist Auguste Mariette-Pascha (1821-1881), a Frenchmen who worked in Egypt. In 1850 he was sent to Egypt as an offical of the Louvre and engaged in excavating and collecting artefacts in Memphis and Abydos.
Auguste Mariette-Pascha.
The museum founded under his direction, on the instructions of the Khedive was the forerunner of the famous Museum in Cairo. Mariette was succeeded by Gaston Camille Maspero (1846 - 1916), also a Frenchman and professor of archeology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (1869) and in the Collége de France (1874). After 1880 he stayed in the country and on various occasions as the Director of the Mission Archéologique. In 1886, E. Grébaut assumed the post, followed by J de Morgan in 1892 and V Loret in 1897; in 1899 Maspero resumed the directorship, which was taken over by P Lacau and in 1936 by E Drioton; since 1952 the Museum has been under the directorship of Egyptian scholars.
Inside the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Apart from numerous exhibition rooms, which are opened to the public and filled with precious objects from various millennia, storehouse and rooms unavailable for public display, are reserved exclusively for research. Even to this day, new acquisitions come in year by year from excavations or by purchase. The dry desert sands preserved these treasures and continually reveal valuable works of art.
This picture taken on April 13, 2019 shows a view inside the newly-dicovered tomb of the ancient Egyptian nobleman "Khewi" dating back to the 5th dynasty (24942345 BC), at the Saqqara necropolis, about 35 kilometres south of the capital Cairo.
Photograph by Mohamed el-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images.
The ground floor of the museum contains the most important and massive monuments, dating from the beginning of the Ancient Egyptian era up to the late Roman times: paintings, statues and reliefs which indicate the worship of gods, the belief in life after death, and a transcendental world, buildings and ships, all categorised into an established religious order. It was in the wooden sun barge or bark the 'Sun boat' that the god-king journeyed, according to the Ancient Egyptians' conception of the "other World', to the 'beautiful West', and so to the holy abiding place of the dead, where he would be restored to life.
Sun Boat
In the 'Great Gallery', on the upper floor, with the treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, are the coffins of kings and priests, furniture, household effects, vessels, manuscripts and sacred objects artistically wrought in pure gold; there are also two rooms which house the natural science collection and the king's mummies.
Gold funerary mask of Tutankhamum.
Today there are over 6000 finds (and still counting) exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Of these 41 masterpieces of Ancient Egyptian art from periods of the Old Empire, the Middle Empire and the New Empire, which are always explained in detail by Egyptian guides, have been selected in the series of posts.
King Mycerinus between Goddess Hathor and the Goddess of a province (Dynasty, Giseh).
Just how far advanced this civilisation and culture were at that time can be demonstrated by the Egyptian calendar, which is divided into three seasons: flooding, sowing and harvest, each lasting four months. This is based on the observations believed to have been made as early as 4242 BC, of the star Sirius (Sothis), with its early rising on the Egyptian horizon at dawn and the beginning of the Nile floods connected with it.
A historical summary of Egypt.
They also discovered how to make paper from the pressed stems of the papyrus reed and developed an alphabet originally comprising of 24 letters. The writing tool was a brush-like instrument or reed. They played music and their dancing was refined; they played a board-game similar to chess, and lived in well-tended houses set in artistically laid-out gardens, dressed in linen and produced works of art from precious metals and semi-precious stones.
Sedges (Cyperus alopecuroides) on papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) with wild ducks (Dynasty El-Amarna).
No other people of antiquity have left in the form of pictures, the written word, statues, buildings and detailed aspects of their lives as have the Egyptians. Their earthly existence runs its course within an established religious order, and both in pictures and in the written word, they also give the first indications of the early occidental peoples with whom the Egyptians came into contact.
Reference:
[1] P.P Riesterer,Egyptian Museum Cario, 5th Edition, Lehner & Landrock, Cario, 1995.
For you convenience I have listed below posts on this blogspot that featured Museums and Galleries.
When Rainforests Ruled
Some Textiles@The Powerhouse Museum
Textile Museum in Tilburg (The Netherlands)
Eden Gardens
Maschen (Mesh) Museum@Tailfingen
Museum Lace Factory@Horst(The Netherlands)
Expressing Australia – Art in Parliament House
TextielLab & TextielMuseum – 2013
The Last Exhibition @ Galerie ’t Haentje te Paart
Paste Modernism 4 @ aMBUSH Gallery & The Living Mal
El Anatsui – Five Decades@Carriageworks
The Australian Museum of Clothing and Textiles
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Nordiska Museet (The Nordic Museum)
Tarndwarncoort (Tarndie)
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part I
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part II
Masterpieces of the Israel Museum
Introduction
Some three decades ago we visited Cairo (Egypt). I was much younger, my hair was dyed blonde and of course, I was very lean as you are when your in your thirties. We stayed at the Hilton and we had a guided tour of the city and visited markets and other venues. We visited the pyramids near Cairo and as it was not illegal in those days to climb into them, and so we did and had a marvellous view of the inside of these wonderful structures.
When we descended I was suddenly pulled off my feet and found myself on a camel heading towards the desert. My husband and guide rushed into the hired car and motored after me. They forced the camel driver to a halt and it cost my husband £50 Egyptian pounds to retrieve me to the safety of our hired car. It was a terrifying experience at the time, but when I think back on it I think it was probably a rues concocted by our guide and camel driver to give both of them some additional income.
We reserved a whole day to spend in the Egyptian Museum, which is a wonderful Art Resource and the topic of today's post. When we entered a soldier was at the door and before we knew it he guided us around the Museum. He could not speak a word of English but he would walk in front of us and as we approached a Museum relic he would bow in front of us and wave his arm in a gesture to introduce us to the exhibit. He stuck with us the whole time we were there. Surprisingly it was not annoying, but added to the gravitas of what we were experiencing. Needless to say it cost my husband another £50 Egyptian pounds to thank him for giving us a personal tour of the Museum.
Two evenings before we were leaving, an Egyptian wedding ceremony was taking place at the Hilton. It was one of the most grandest events I have ever witnessed - no money spared! We were actually invited to attend the after party and we found ourselves at a table of distant dignitaries of the couple and so had a delightful evening.
On the last night, we had booked a 2-hour river boat cruise on the Nile including meals. Unfortunately, the evening of the tour I contracted food poisoning and so we had to cancel.
Two days later we arrived in Sydney and I was still feeling unwell but my memories of Egypt kept flooding back to me and so the displeasure I was feeling was insignificant to the pleasure of my sojourn in Cairo - from feast to famine!
Egyptian Museum Cairo - Part I[1]
For nearly a century since the first organized excavations, Egypt has been the center of a significant social history. Before the time of Alexander's oriental campaigns, the Greeks already knew about Egypt's existence. Herodotus (484-425 BC) the 'Father of History', wrote a lively account of the country on the Nile and we know from other Greeks that travelled to the temple sites and 'immortalised' themselves on numerous monuments by carving their names on them.
It was above all the prodigious stone memorial buildings, the pyramids and temples, which attracted the people of the ancients (as it still does today). After the Roman era (30 BC - 395 AD), Egypt disappeared entirely from the occidental field of vision. The mud deposited by the annual flooding of the Nile and the desert sand-drifts buried numerous ancient relics and Egypt's once significant position sank into oblivion.
Although all great civilised nations had their share in the later exploration of Egypt, France deserves a special mention: Napoleon's campaign (1798-1801) served as a starting-point for the deciphering of the hieroglyphics by J F Champollion (1822). During the course of fortification works at St Julien in Rosette on the Delta, an unknown soldier found a black basalt stone, the 'Rosetta Stone', one side of which was polished and engraved. It bore various kinds of characters, in three columns: hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. A translation of the Greek text produced the contents of a dedication by the priesthood of Memphis to Ptolemy (196 BC); the other groups of characters revealed their meaning after considerable effort by various scholars, but the actual deciphering of the hieroglyphics was first achieved by Champollion after much careful study.
The cultured world continued to show interest in the numerous ancient relics, whose origins date back to many thousands of years and which enable us to draw various conclusions regarding the time of the Pharaohs. Some of them have been unearthed whilst others were preserved, only slightly damaged, on the sites upon which they were originally built.
Every year large crowds are attracted to Egypt and the interest which began with archaeologists now attracts tourists from around the world who stand in awe at the various monuments and their artefacts. The exhibition of art treasures from the Egyptian Museum loaned to galleries and museums across the world has further fuelled such interest. Moreover, scarcely anyone who goes to Cairo does not include one or more visits to the Egyptian Museum. This notable collection of art treasures of predynastic and Pharaonic times draws them there.
At first, the objects found during the earliest excavations were housed in a small museum in Bulak. The collection owes its development to the first excavator and archaeologist Auguste Mariette-Pascha (1821-1881), a Frenchmen who worked in Egypt. In 1850 he was sent to Egypt as an offical of the Louvre and engaged in excavating and collecting artefacts in Memphis and Abydos.
The museum founded under his direction, on the instructions of the Khedive was the forerunner of the famous Museum in Cairo. Mariette was succeeded by Gaston Camille Maspero (1846 - 1916), also a Frenchman and professor of archeology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (1869) and in the Collége de France (1874). After 1880 he stayed in the country and on various occasions as the Director of the Mission Archéologique. In 1886, E. Grébaut assumed the post, followed by J de Morgan in 1892 and V Loret in 1897; in 1899 Maspero resumed the directorship, which was taken over by P Lacau and in 1936 by E Drioton; since 1952 the Museum has been under the directorship of Egyptian scholars.
Apart from numerous exhibition rooms, which are opened to the public and filled with precious objects from various millennia, storehouse and rooms unavailable for public display, are reserved exclusively for research. Even to this day, new acquisitions come in year by year from excavations or by purchase. The dry desert sands preserved these treasures and continually reveal valuable works of art.
Photograph by Mohamed el-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images.
The ground floor of the museum contains the most important and massive monuments, dating from the beginning of the Ancient Egyptian era up to the late Roman times: paintings, statues and reliefs which indicate the worship of gods, the belief in life after death, and a transcendental world, buildings and ships, all categorised into an established religious order. It was in the wooden sun barge or bark the 'Sun boat' that the god-king journeyed, according to the Ancient Egyptians' conception of the "other World', to the 'beautiful West', and so to the holy abiding place of the dead, where he would be restored to life.
In the 'Great Gallery', on the upper floor, with the treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, are the coffins of kings and priests, furniture, household effects, vessels, manuscripts and sacred objects artistically wrought in pure gold; there are also two rooms which house the natural science collection and the king's mummies.
Today there are over 6000 finds (and still counting) exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Of these 41 masterpieces of Ancient Egyptian art from periods of the Old Empire, the Middle Empire and the New Empire, which are always explained in detail by Egyptian guides, have been selected in the series of posts.
Just how far advanced this civilisation and culture were at that time can be demonstrated by the Egyptian calendar, which is divided into three seasons: flooding, sowing and harvest, each lasting four months. This is based on the observations believed to have been made as early as 4242 BC, of the star Sirius (Sothis), with its early rising on the Egyptian horizon at dawn and the beginning of the Nile floods connected with it.
They also discovered how to make paper from the pressed stems of the papyrus reed and developed an alphabet originally comprising of 24 letters. The writing tool was a brush-like instrument or reed. They played music and their dancing was refined; they played a board-game similar to chess, and lived in well-tended houses set in artistically laid-out gardens, dressed in linen and produced works of art from precious metals and semi-precious stones.
No other people of antiquity have left in the form of pictures, the written word, statues, buildings and detailed aspects of their lives as have the Egyptians. Their earthly existence runs its course within an established religious order, and both in pictures and in the written word, they also give the first indications of the early occidental peoples with whom the Egyptians came into contact.
Reference:
[1] P.P Riesterer,Egyptian Museum Cario, 5th Edition, Lehner & Landrock, Cario, 1995.
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