The Mummy Chamber at the Brooklyn Museum
By STAN PARCHIN
December 1, 2009
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| Brooklyn Museum (exterior). Photograph by Justin Van Soest. |
The Mummy Chamber, a long-term installation of more than 170 artifacts that explores the ancient Egyptians' complex funerary rituals and beliefs associated with mummification, opens at the Brooklyn Museum on May 5, 2010. Drawn entirely from the museum's vast collection, the presentation follows the appearance of the traveling exhibition To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (February 12-May 2, 2010), its objects also derived from the institution's world-famous holdings.
The installation describes the ancient Egyptian corporal and supernatural methods used to protect mummies from harm, thus ensuring a pleasant afterlife for the deceased. As seen in To Live Forever..., the various kinds of mummification available to members of different social classes based upon their financial means are also examined in The Mummy Chamber.
The exhibition contains wrapped human mummies that recently underwent CT scanning at North Shore University Hospital to determine their sex, age and living habits. Those of the Royal Prince, Count of Thebes, Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet and Hor are on view. The history of sarcophagus or coffin production is discussed. Canopic jars that contained the deceased's vital organs are displayed alongside carved shabtis, inscribed figurines assigned to perform the dead's "work" in the afterlife. These are complemented by an assortment of stelae, reliefs and jewelry. Animal mummies and their containers, the subject of a show planned for 2012-13, are also exhibited.
Book of the Dead and Video
Displayed publicly for the first time is a portion of the nearly 26-foot-long Book of the Dead of Sobekmose, Gold-worker of Amun. Acquired in 1937, this double-sided and illustrated papyrus of spells to aid the dead in the afterlife was revived after more than two years of conservation. As other segments of the religious document, more than 3,000 years old, become available, they will be added to the installation.
Also featured are parts of a recently rediscovered video of a 1958 Armstrong Circle Theater television program. The telecast provides a fictionalized account of how the Brooklyn Museum attempted to de-accession some of its mummies in the 1950s because its officials believed they had no place in an art museum.
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