Minneapolis Institute of Art - "Eternal Egypt" Master works of Ancient
Art from The British Museum

On Thursday, March 6, 2003 I had the opportunity to go visit the Institute of Art in the cities.  I had been excited about seeing this exhibit as I've not seen many Egyptian ones here in MN.

The exhibit costs $10.00 per adult on weekdays and $12.00 on weekends. You get one shot going through the exhibit and that's it.  For $5.00 you can carry an audio tape recording describint the exhibit.  I didn't get one as I pretty much knew about most of the items on exhibit already from my KMT magazines. In fact, this exhibit was featured in one of them and I'm using it to spell things! That doesn't mean I know how to pronounce them though!

Go to the second floor of the Institute and way in the back is for special exhibits. The statues and such are arranged in chronological order from the Early Kingdom to Late or Old Kingdoms. I'm going to be jumping around here so what I say here won't be in order. I'm just going to describe what I remember.

The first room I went into was the Mummy room and they had 2 wooden coffins and 2 occupants. They also had a full-length x-ray of our mummy from the Science Museum. You know the one with the extra head between it's legs? I don't think they have decided why that extra head is there. (Maybe it's a relative?)

The oldest piece was an ivory plaque of King Den from the First Dynasty killing or "smiting" one of his enemies. There were lots of stalae or relief's depicting the different scenes or gods doing different things. Also what they call false doors. Just an opening in the wall like a shelf with statues or whatever.  Probably used for religious purposes or offerings.

There are lots of heads on display from the different periods.  Too many of them in fact. I thought maybe they could have tried to have more of a variety of things. But that's just me. They also had lots of square block statues and these were of scribes. Too many I thought too. You'll see 4 or 5 of them.  One is of the scribe Iny, I remember.  There's very little jewelry displayed. About 2 display cases that show earrings, rings, spacer bars - and this is the only thing with cats on it. I saw no animal mummies or too many animal statues. I found that disappointing.

There are several papyrus depicting the Book Of The Dead. The Papyrus of Ani is there. They are surprisingly brightly colored!

There are a few artifacts on Akhenaten and Tutankhamen but these are relief's more than statues although there are a few Tutankhamen statues. Some were usurped for Horemheb - the king after Tutankhamen.  Seems Tut didn't live long enough for the workers to finish carving out the statues and so Horemheb's name is on some of them. But the features are definitely Tutankhamen's!

A few Ushabti's and amulets are featured. Ushabti's are tiny statues that are buried in the wrappings of a mummy. They are of gods and such for protection in the afterlife. Note that Kings were gods in ancient Egyptian times and they were worshipped as such!

I especially like the oversized red-granite lion, which was reinscribed for Tutankhamen. I found out what graywacke was. It's a very coal black stone with no other colors or hints or hues in it and several statues are carved of this stone, notably the head of Thutmose III. At first they thought it might be the head of Hatshepsut - a Queen who ruled Egypt for a time. A large head to waist statue of pink granite represents Rameses II.  Several other giant pieces are included in this exhibit and are quite fascinating! The granite statue of Senwosret is notable too.

They had a gold/gilded mummy mask from the 18th Dynasty and I liked this. Also several different gilded and painted pieces are displayed in another case that include head, chest, legs and feet pieces. Also at the end of the exhibit is a very brightly painted wood panel of a lady's head from the Roman times. This was placed over the face of the mummy and was usually a painting of the occupant.

A naos is a shrine or a box with a god in it and you will find a couple of these. A statue of a king will be holding a "naos" One naos had the god Atum in it.

What I really found interesting was a couple of artists training or working drawings on ostraca - flat stone palettes if you will- showing grid lines on which they drew sketches of statues or whatever to be used as a scale model for the real thing.  Very interesting!

There is also a room with a video on Ancient Egypt that runs about 12 minutes. I sat through it after going through the exhibit. Also there is a shop to buy souvenirs. I wouldn't waste your money! I didn't buy anything there.

There was so much to see there and if you're not an ancient Egyptian enthusiast like I am, you'll still be able to enjoy this exhibit as everything is describe on the displays plus if you have one of those headsets to help guide you through the exhibit it should be quite an interesting experience.

I personally felt that there could have been more variety of things instead of so many heads or block statues. I would have liked to see animal mummies and more jewelry. Maybe some other objects like of household use or for work. I didn't see any urns or pottery that I remember. You have to remember though that this is a traveling exhibit from the British Museum. They have to ship all of this stuff around from city to city. So maybe heads was easier to pack and ship!  But still it was worth the $10.00. If you haven't seen it, it runs until March 16th.  From here it will go to the Chicago Field Museum and run from April 26 - August 10, 2003.

Also at the Institute are displays from Ancient Egypt. It's worth looking at too! You will find about 24 small statues of gods amongst other things. I also looked at the China displays on my way
out of the Institute. That was fun too.

During my visit I ran into another like-minded visitor.  I wore my black sweater that has white cats and mice, yellow tulips and bows and red hearts. (Mom knows which one I'm talking about.) It's very brightly colored.  Half way through the exhibit there was a voice behind me saying "Excuse me!" I thought I was blocking something or someone so I turned around to find this little old lady with a cane looking up at me. She says, " I think your sweater is far more interesting than anything in here!" I laughed! I told her I got lots of compliments on the sweater! I said that I liked cats as well as Egypt!  I thought that was awfully cute!