Day 9 - Offering altar

January 18, 2018

At first, I'm really challenged to decide what to write about in this room (Gallery108), which is full of elaborately carved  architectural reliefs, some of thm painted, that are replete with hieroglyphs. The reliefs depict  offerings, the preparation of victuals for the afterlife, and so on. One particularly enigmatic scene shows a figure with a man's chest and arms but a hawk's head extending an ankh to a smaller figure, a hawk wearing what I take to be the double crown of the unified kingdom of Egypt (but I need to check this).  Presumably the bird represents the pharaoh/god, but what about the bird-man?

I have become so used to writing about small things, though, that it takes me a moment to realize that what is most striking is the large offering altar in the middle of the room. The altar, made of pink granite, comes from a funerary temple that was outside the burial pyramid of Amenemhat I and dates from about 1950 B.C.  The altar is square, perhaps 6 feet on a side and 2 1/2 feet high. (in the museum, it's displayed atop a foot-high plinth). The top is divided into two areas. In one is carved a basin maybe 6 inches deep that's almost as long as the altar itself, with sloping sides. The description says it's a libation basin, but I wonder if it was the place where animals were sacrificed, and the basin held their blood. The other area has relief carvings of two ewers (proper libation vessels) flanking two round plates flanking a central beehive-shaped loaf of bread. All very symmetrical, Egyptian-style. On the sides are figures bringing offerings (what else?), although the erosion is much more severe on one side than the other. The front also depicts figures bringing offerings; on either side they face a central cartouche with the ruler's name. 

The placard says that Amenemhat wasn't a particularly successful ruler--he was constantly contending with foreign populations at his borders and was ultimately assassinated. But however successful he was or wasn't, this altar stone impresses.

I think about our conversation last night in the Schwab House book group meeting about what is lasting. Maybe in a thiusand years, only a few people will be able to tell you who Hitler or FDR was, but more people will be able to recognize a Picasso. That is, only art endures through the generations. Or maybe that's a ridiculous conceit, since only relatively privileged people have the opportunity to learn about art. Or maybe that, too, is wrong, and anybody, or everybody, would be impressed by the size and antiquity of this object.