Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
"Everywhere you look, the glint of gold." - Howard Carter, archaeologist
The exhibit actually opened here last October at the Museum of Art, but after trying to get tickets online, the kids and I went this afternoon. Downtown Fort Lauderdale can be a maze if you don't know what street your're looking for (and considering that there's still some construction going on and certain streets are impassable) but it's really looking good. We drove through some of the more stately homes in Victoria Park, many of which have been restored to their Victorian grandeur (and are priced anywhere between $600,000 to $800,000).
Parking was less of a hassle than I thought it would be; they've constructed a 7-story parking lot named, appropriately, Las Olas Park Place, diagonally from the museum and near the Riverfront (where a 23-screen theater and several restaurants are also located). It was warm and sunny outside, and pretty soon we were in line. The tickets were sold by time slots and ours read 2:30 pm. This must have been one of the more popular times, as the museum was pretty crowded. The exhibit covers two floors of the museum itself; upstairs are relics and antiquities from pre-Tutankhamun Egypt, including the coffin of Tjuya (mother of Tiye, who was queen of Egypt and coregent with Amenhotep III). There is something quite soul-stirring about seeing intricately inlaid wood painted bright turquoise or granite slabs hewn into replicas of people who lived millenia ago.
There were sculptured masks of queen Nefertiti, considered one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. According to the Marquardt Beauty Analysis, beauty can be expressed mathematically via the Golden Ratio (1.618:1, or "phi"). Looking at the masks, I was struck by the near-perfect symmetry of her face.
Maps on the walls of the exhibit showed the extent of the Egyptian empire under Tutankhamun's rule. Models of boats and skiffs that plied the waters of the Nile were on display. The winding river, home to dangerous creatures such as the hippopotamus (probably the Behemoth spoken of in the book of Job in the Bible) and the Nile crocodile (probably the Leviathan of the Bible), as well as the floodplain and the harsh sands of the desert formed the landscape of Egypt. It's actually quite beautiful. The Egyptians wove fine linen into garments, carved granite into statues of their gods, and inlaid semiprecious stones (carnelian, for example) into jewelry. Color had special meaning for the Egyptians. Black was the color of fertile earth soaked by the flooding Nile, and thus was used to evoke resurrection. White was associated with purity. Green, associated with vegetation of the earth, had connotations of newness and regeneration. Turquoise (seen as painted on ankhs in the exhibit) was sacred to the goddess Hathor. Dark blue (the color of lapis lazuli) was associated with the night sky and the primordial waters of the universe's creation. Red and yellow are the colors of the sun. The skins of the gods was, of course, gold.
The archaeologist I quoted above wasn't kidding. After descending a set of stairs in the museum, meant to evoke his descending down to the tomb in 1922, we were greeted with statues of wood overlaid with gold representing King Tut as king of Upper and Lower Egypt. One bas-relief showed Tutankhamun as a sphinx, trampling the heads of his enemies and being aided by one of the gods in the Egyptian pantheon (Horus? It was shaped as a falcon or eagle). Everything in the lower portion of the exhibit that directly related to Tutankhamun was overlaid with gold and glittered under the museum's lights. A fan depicting an ostrich hunt was made of gilded wood; a chair that Tutankhamun used in childhood (he was 9 when he was made pharaoh) was carved ebony and ivory and also gilded.
One of my favorite pieces was an inlaid pectoral (a jewel to be worn over the chest) spelling out the name of the king. It was made of gold with semiprecious stones. The bottom of the pectoral is a turquoise basket (the hieroglyph for "all"). Above this is a lapis lazuli scarab beetle (meaning "creation" or "manifestation") with three vertical lines below it, making it plural. A carnelian sun disk, representative of the god Re, is pushed up and forward by the beetle's front legs. The scarab's wings are lapis, turquoise and carnelain, and inlaid with gold.
Once we came out of the exhibit, we saw the store. All manner of Egyptian-inspired jewelry, t-shirts, books, and souvenirs were for sale which, for some reason, I found odd. I generally assume that all intelligent people would be interested to see how past civilizations rose and fell and how their people lived and how they worshipped, etc. Seeing bookends that resembed the sacred cats of the Egyptians cheapened it to an extent, I suppose. All in all, an amazing exhibit and a very interesting slice of history.
The exhibit actually opened here last October at the Museum of Art, but after trying to get tickets online, the kids and I went this afternoon. Downtown Fort Lauderdale can be a maze if you don't know what street your're looking for (and considering that there's still some construction going on and certain streets are impassable) but it's really looking good. We drove through some of the more stately homes in Victoria Park, many of which have been restored to their Victorian grandeur (and are priced anywhere between $600,000 to $800,000).
Parking was less of a hassle than I thought it would be; they've constructed a 7-story parking lot named, appropriately, Las Olas Park Place, diagonally from the museum and near the Riverfront (where a 23-screen theater and several restaurants are also located). It was warm and sunny outside, and pretty soon we were in line. The tickets were sold by time slots and ours read 2:30 pm. This must have been one of the more popular times, as the museum was pretty crowded. The exhibit covers two floors of the museum itself; upstairs are relics and antiquities from pre-Tutankhamun Egypt, including the coffin of Tjuya (mother of Tiye, who was queen of Egypt and coregent with Amenhotep III). There is something quite soul-stirring about seeing intricately inlaid wood painted bright turquoise or granite slabs hewn into replicas of people who lived millenia ago.
There were sculptured masks of queen Nefertiti, considered one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. According to the Marquardt Beauty Analysis, beauty can be expressed mathematically via the Golden Ratio (1.618:1, or "phi"). Looking at the masks, I was struck by the near-perfect symmetry of her face.
Maps on the walls of the exhibit showed the extent of the Egyptian empire under Tutankhamun's rule. Models of boats and skiffs that plied the waters of the Nile were on display. The winding river, home to dangerous creatures such as the hippopotamus (probably the Behemoth spoken of in the book of Job in the Bible) and the Nile crocodile (probably the Leviathan of the Bible), as well as the floodplain and the harsh sands of the desert formed the landscape of Egypt. It's actually quite beautiful. The Egyptians wove fine linen into garments, carved granite into statues of their gods, and inlaid semiprecious stones (carnelian, for example) into jewelry. Color had special meaning for the Egyptians. Black was the color of fertile earth soaked by the flooding Nile, and thus was used to evoke resurrection. White was associated with purity. Green, associated with vegetation of the earth, had connotations of newness and regeneration. Turquoise (seen as painted on ankhs in the exhibit) was sacred to the goddess Hathor. Dark blue (the color of lapis lazuli) was associated with the night sky and the primordial waters of the universe's creation. Red and yellow are the colors of the sun. The skins of the gods was, of course, gold.
The archaeologist I quoted above wasn't kidding. After descending a set of stairs in the museum, meant to evoke his descending down to the tomb in 1922, we were greeted with statues of wood overlaid with gold representing King Tut as king of Upper and Lower Egypt. One bas-relief showed Tutankhamun as a sphinx, trampling the heads of his enemies and being aided by one of the gods in the Egyptian pantheon (Horus? It was shaped as a falcon or eagle). Everything in the lower portion of the exhibit that directly related to Tutankhamun was overlaid with gold and glittered under the museum's lights. A fan depicting an ostrich hunt was made of gilded wood; a chair that Tutankhamun used in childhood (he was 9 when he was made pharaoh) was carved ebony and ivory and also gilded.
One of my favorite pieces was an inlaid pectoral (a jewel to be worn over the chest) spelling out the name of the king. It was made of gold with semiprecious stones. The bottom of the pectoral is a turquoise basket (the hieroglyph for "all"). Above this is a lapis lazuli scarab beetle (meaning "creation" or "manifestation") with three vertical lines below it, making it plural. A carnelian sun disk, representative of the god Re, is pushed up and forward by the beetle's front legs. The scarab's wings are lapis, turquoise and carnelain, and inlaid with gold.
Once we came out of the exhibit, we saw the store. All manner of Egyptian-inspired jewelry, t-shirts, books, and souvenirs were for sale which, for some reason, I found odd. I generally assume that all intelligent people would be interested to see how past civilizations rose and fell and how their people lived and how they worshipped, etc. Seeing bookends that resembed the sacred cats of the Egyptians cheapened it to an extent, I suppose. All in all, an amazing exhibit and a very interesting slice of history.