365 Days at the Met

March 28, 2018 For a moment, I feel choked up as I enter Gallery 138, the last of the Egyptian galleries. This is quite a journey that I have set out for myself, and the first leg is now ending.  But the gallery is an excellent introduction to the  phase to follow. If anything, it's a bit odd to see this gallery's many funerary images  of men and women with hairstyles I recognize as classically Roman and dressed in Roman clothes, but who are flanked by images of Horus, Anubis, and other Egyptian gods. (This is, of course, before Constantine and the conversion of the  Empire to Christianity.) Interestingly, I learn that Dionysus came to be associated with Osiris and, less surprisingly, Aphrodite with Isis. A display case shows several objects of blown glass,  stunning in the purity of their lines. The caption explains that the technique of glass-blowing developed in the area of Syria and Palestine around 70 B.C. and quickly became the dominant means ...

March 26, 2018 Gallery 137 contains objects from the Roman period, from 30 B.C. well into the third century A.D. What is particularly interesting to me is the incorporation of classical forms and features into traditional Egyptian funerary customs.  This is evident in today's object, the mummy of a young man dating from 80-100 A.D.  To be honest, I am not absolutely sure what I'm looking at. I take it that this is the wrapped body with a painted portrait head. But was it placed on a wooden form cut to fit it for display purposes, or was this how it was originally found? Since I would estimate the whole form to be 9 feet long, it is clearly more than life-size. The body is elaborately wrapped in what appears to be a pattern of diamond -shaped linen, which is overlaid with wider diagonal bands. This must have taken a lot of time and been a very expensive process. All of this is very Egyptian. But the face, painted in encaustic (a term I had to look up - it involves...

March 23, 2018 Gallery 135, a large hall outside the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, is full of reproductions of wall paintings, largely from the area of Thebes and from the 1300-1000 B.C. period. They show scenes of everyday life (sowing wheat, gathering grapes and making wine, fishing), feasts and processions (inclusing nude or semi-nude dancing girls and musicians), animals, and geometric design elements (zigzags, rosettes, etc.). Before I came here today, I was sure I would write about one of these images. Instead, though, I want to write about two large (maybe 8 feet high) and apparently identical brownish  diorite statues of the goddess Sakhmet, dating from the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.). Like isis in the statuette I wrote about in the last entry, Sakhmet sits enthroned. But what a different world-view she represents! She has the head of a lioness (lion?). Her  ears protrude out from under a long wig; her whiskers are indicated by finger-like recta...

March 20, 2018 Gallery 134 contains a wealth of objects from the Ptolemaic period. Although a wall placard talks about the infusion of Hellenistic influences into Egyptian art, I have to say that, aside from a small fragment of a marble statuette of a dancing dwarf, its highly muscled torso twisted to the left while he looks over his right shoulde, and a few small pottery heads that look Greek, most of the objects strike me as traditionally Egyptian in their style and in the  attire and positions of their human subjects.  Such was the power of Egyptian tradition over two millennia. Continuing with the previous entry's associational kick, today's object is a faience statuette of Isis and Horus, about 6 inches tall.  Isis sits on a chair. She wears a tall crown and a  long skirt but is nude above the waist. She holds her heavy left breast in her right hand, as if she is about to offer it to Horus. She is smiling softly. Horus sits crosswise on her lap, his h...

March 19, 2018 This gallery (133) is another one I wish I had visited earlier - or, maybe better, that the Met had a brief summary of Egyptian cosmology in one of the introductory galleries. Here I read, for example, that the figures I've seen depicted on the lids of canopic jars throughout - a human, a jackal, a falcon, and a baboon- represent the four sons of Horus, and that they protected different bodily organs (although, interestingly, by the Ptolemaic period, the organs were removed but wrapped and put back in the torso of the body, rather than being placed in canopic jars). There is also a fascinating display on the meaning of various amulets that were placed on parts of the body to assist passage into and well-being in the afterlife. I suspect most visitors walk right by a magnificent Book of the Dead papyrus scroll that is unfurled along an entire long wall of this gallery and extends into the next gallery as well. But I felt obligated to take a look at it, and ...

March 16, 2018 Along with an enormous granite sarcophagus, Gallery 132 contains 13 facsimile paintings made in the 1930s. I haven't previously paid much attention to these paintings - after all, they're facsimiles, not the real thing, right?  Wrong, and indicative of a rather snobbish and misguided attitude on my part, I think.  The paintings are done  at scale and apparently accurately reproduce the colors of the originals and the conditions in which they were found. And they are fascinating. The captions discuss the representation of various groups of people, including the wealthy classes, laborers, and non-Egyptians (Nubians, Asians, etc.), with attention, among other things, to skin color. I knew some of this already - for example,  that men were depicted as darker than women. If I'd thought about it, I might also have told you the reason: Men worked outdoors, women didn't (although surely this was true only of upper-class women?). Skin color was also u...

March 15, 2018 My Egyptian peregrinations have finally brought me to the Temple of Dendur (gallery 131). My eyes tear up a bit as I think how extraordinarily lucky I am to live here in New York City with all its treasures, of which this is indisputably one.  I must say that the architects of the Sackler Wing (Roche, Dinkeloo, and Associates)  did the city, the Met, and the temple proud in designing this space, so large and light-filled. The large wall of windows slants inward, calling to mind the pyramids. And the placement of the temple on a platform above a rectangular reflecting pool really does evoke the temple's original setting on raised terrain overlooking the Nile.  The space is also a wonderful gathering spot for people of all ages, in part because -- a rarity at the Met -- there's plenty of seating.  It's a bit odd to note that the temple, which dates from about 10 B.C.E., is the "newest" thing I've seen at the Met since I began this journe...

March 14, 2018 T his study gallery (130) contains literally thousands of objects dating from various points in the first millennium B.C.E.  It is astonishing to think about a single room in a museum that would contain an assortment of objects from the Americas, say --or anyplace, really -- spannng a comparable length of time. There are hundreds of amulets, some well under an inch in size; I especially like the ones of monkeys, but a couple of lioness goddesses also catch my eye. There are statuettes galore (including one of a jackal -- or is it a dog? --  that has such sleek lines it looks positively modern), necklaces and other pieces of jewelry, and both shards and papyri with hieratic writing on them rather than hieroglyphs. (Yes, time is passing.) Also ceramic and alabaster jars, linens used for mummy wrappings, and many other things. Three large glass cases contain inner and outer coffins, and it's two of these outer coffins that I want to write about, more for...

March 9, 2018 Gallery 129 moves back in time to approximately 1290 B.C., displaying reliefs acquired by the Met that come from the memorial chapel that Sety built for his father, Ramesses I, at Abydos. Or rather, most of the reliefs were acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan, who then left them to the Met. Morgan was able to purchase them because they were found on private land and for that reason could be sold.  That's one way a country's cultural patrimony is lost, I guess. I traveled to Abydos seven years ago, but I don't know that I ever fully realized that the site was sacred to Osiris. I wish that, much earlier in my forays into the Egyptian collection, I'd seen captions to remind me that Osiris was the god of the underworld but also of resurrection, as represented by the sun's daily journey and by the yearly cycle of sowing and harvesting. Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, governed the land of the living. While a pharaoh was alive, he was identified with ...

March 6, 2018 Gallery 128 contains sculptures, reliefs, and a stele from the 4th century B.C. One of the most striking images is a statue, about 2 feet high, that shows a small pharaoh nestled against the body of a large Horus - an unmistakable visual symbol of the god's protection, or perhaps, as the caption says, the pharaoh's identification with the god. In many of the images of people I've seen, it is hard to identify the age of the person portrayed, whether because the features are idealized or for other reasons. And, of course, gods in human form are ageless.  I chose today's image because it is so realistic in its depiction of aging. It's a sculpted diorite bust, approximately 10 inches high, from a statue of a man, the rest of which has been lost. The man's nose is also largely chipped off. I would guess him to be in his 60s or more, from the pronounced creases on his forehead, the hollows under his eyes, the laughter lines (what a euphemism...

March 5, 2018 T he small and not-so-small objects in Galley 127 span some 550 years, from roughly 950 to  400 B.C.  I guess I could think of that as comparable to the time since Michelangelo's birth or the voyages of Columbus. (I was about to write "discovery of America," but I realize that would be very non-PC.) There are well over 100 small objects and amulets; a caption helpfully reminds us that, like the ancient Egyptians, we wear and carry amulets today (crosses and chais, rabbit's feet and four-leaf clovers). The object I want to write about is a 2 and 1/2 inch high sculpted head of Bes. (The photograph is probably larger than the head itself.)  He's immediatly recognizable by his grotesque features-- ears that stick out, flattened nose, and open mouth - and (as the caption says) by his feathered headdress and the lion's ruff around his neck.  Bes protects women and children in childbirth; he also protects households from evil spirits. I wond...