Britain's Egyptian treasures visit America

NEW YORK, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Americans no longer have to leave the United States to see some of the great art collections of the world, such as the British Museum's holdings of Egyptian antiquities on loan to the Brooklyn Museum as part of a 3-year national tour.

This is just one of many great collections that have found their way into American museums in recent months, including the treasures of Catherine the Great of Russia, jeweled objects from the courts of Mughal India, and art covering the entire modern era in Brazil. It adds up to an embarrassment of riches resulting from the unprecedented cultural exchange that began after World War II and has picked up momentum in the new millennium.

The British Museum has sent nearly 150 masterpieces of Egyptian art from the First Dynasty to the final dynasty of Ptolemaic pharaohs, complementing the Brooklyn Museum's own major collection of Egyptian art and providing a complete overview of one of the world's greatest cultures and its most long-lived.

The show opened in Toledo, Ohio, and also was seen in Memphis, Tenn., before coming to Brooklyn, where it will be on exhibit through Feb. 24. It then will move on to Kansas City, Mo., San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago and Baltimore, closing in January 2004. During this period the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum are undergoing renovation for the first time since the 19th century.

Many of the treasures on view were acquired by the British Museum as early as the 1830s, long before the important collections at the Brooklyn and Metropolitan museums were assembled. Titled "Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum," the show ranges from sculptures and relief carvings in stone to exquisite jewelry and paintings on papyrus and is designed as an educational experience.

"The art of Egypt is very special because it inspires people of all ages and backgrounds," said William Clay Ford Jr., chairman of the Ford Motor Company, sponsor of the national tour, in an interview. "Its appeal crosses the boundaries of time, geography and culture, and for many schoolchildren it is the first exposure to history, art, archaeology and social studies."

The show is arranged chronologically, covering the nearly 3,000-year run of the Egyptian pharaonic dynasties, interrupted occasionally by foreign rule. Britain gained access to Egyptian antiquities when it defeated Napoleon in Egypt in 1801 and remained the dominant power there until the end of the British protectorate in 1922.

Most of the major Egyptian antiquities acquired by the British government in this period -- with the exception of the Rosetta Stone, which was the key to translating hieroglyphic script -- are on view, including the colossal idealized head of 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep III carved out of creamy caramel-colored quartzite.

This serene presence dominates the vista from three of the show's galleries and is guarded by a powerful red granite lion sculpted in the same reign. The 18th Dynasty is represented by a number of other sculptures, including the impressive gray stone head of Thutmosis III wearing a white crown and a statue of Senenmunt, Queen Hapshepsut's steward, with her only child, Princess Neferure, seated in his lap.

This naturalistic touch in depicting a princess and her tutor is an example of how Egyptian art was slowly transformed from the rigid archaic stances of blunt, muscular figures in Old Kingdom Art to the more graceful positioning of elongated figures in Middle Kingdom art. Faces became less idealized and more realistic as portraits.

This transformation was climaxed by the art of Amarna artists who served Pharaoh Akhenaten and attempted a realism that even exaggerated the king's physical deformities.

There are a number of Amarna works in the show, including a sweet-faced plaster portrait of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's successor, and an image of that young king on a statue inscribed to General Horemheb, Tut's successor as pharaoh.

The oldest object is a small ivory plaque that served as a label for a pair of sandals deposited in the tomb of first Dynasty king, Den, about 3,000 B.C.

The most recent exhibits date from the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ended with Cleopatra in 30 B.C., including a statue of a priest holding a shrine with a figure of the god Atum, a rare example of a finely detailed portrait head of the period still attached to its original body, and a sculptor's model of a royal head.

The papyri displays include several from the Book of the Dead, the Egyptian travel guide to afterlife, one of them made for a 19th Dynasty scribe named Ani that is generally considered the most famous and best preserved of all such books. It depicts Ani and his wife on their earthly estate, complete with a carefully landscaped garden pool and a house with ventilator hoods on the roof.

A selection of gorgeous jewelry from the Middle Kingdom is highlighted by an electrum and gold amulet depicting a loop of papyrus stalks that served as a protection to the wearer. New Kingdom jewelry includes three gold cats from a queen's bracelet and earrings engraved with the name of another queen, Tauset.

No Egyptian exhibition would be complete without objects from the reign of Ramses the Great, one of antiquity's most power rulers and warriors. There is a bust of Ramses from a huge standing statue from a temple on Elephantine Island in the upper Nile and a gilded silver statuette of the god Amun that dates to his reign and is one of the few cult statues of the Middle Kingdom to have survived.

Artifacts from the New Kingdom, which followed the era of the intruder Hyksos kings, include an impressive shabti tomb figure representing Ahmose, founder of the New Kingdom, and a large relief showing the dead Nectanebo I, one of the last native Egyptian rulers, kneeling and making an offering to the gods of a small loaf of bread.

Not only did the sculptor hint at a touch of decadence in the sleekness of Nectanebo's figure, he gave the king only one leg, a distinct break in the cardinal rule of Egyptian art that all human figures must be shown with both legs and both hands because rebirth after death depended on the completeness of the depiction of the dead person in his tomb art.

This is an illustration of how Egyptian art was progressing on is own toward modernity, after following archaic rules of portraiture for millennia, several centuries before the Romans supposedly "introduced" naturalistic art to Egypt.