{"id":15914,"date":"2018-05-16T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=15914"},"modified":"2018-05-11T13:10:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T20:10:31","slug":"ancient-egypt-visits-victoria-with-new-museum-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/05\/16\/ancient-egypt-visits-victoria-with-new-museum-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Egypt visits Victoria with new museum exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"

For centuries, ancient Egypt has been a mystery and a source of inspiration for the West. Reproductions of obelisks, sphinxes, and pyramids were mounted in public squares, halls, cemeteries, and other urban spaces. Ancient Egyptian culture inspired literature, film, dance, music, fashion, and design. Egyptian artifacts in Western museums appeal to audiences to this day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ancient Egypt is coming to Victoria\u2019s Royal BC Museum through the Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs exhibit (photo courtesy of Lokschuppen Exhibition Centre).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Royal BC Museum (RBCM)\u2019s new exhibit, Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs<\/i>, is the latest expression of this fascination.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of sacred spaces and places is central to this exhibition, to the meta narrative,\u201d says RBCM head of learning Janet MacDonald. \u201cYou basically start with the environment, the landscape being so important for the birth of a civilization, and then from the environment spring to gods, and then you move into what a pharaoh is.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past, exhibitions on ancient Egypt focused mostly on pyramids, death rituals, and treasures of pharaohs, but there is more information available on ancient Egypt today as a result of recent archaeological work. This particular exhibit highlights everyday lives, beliefs, celebrations, and occupations of people from different social ranks in ancient Egyptian society through 300 original artifacts, some 4,500 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the exceptional things about this exhibition is it\u2019s not just three-dimensional pieces,\u201d says MacDonald. \u201cThere are all these wonderful models of temples, of workshops\u2026 There is a large model where you can actually look at where the workers lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artifacts and models are animated in the exhibit through use of multimedia. Visitors get a chance to follow a mummification process and learn how to write with hieroglyphs on a touch screen. However, the museum chose not to display any human remains or mummies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSarcophagi are still there, beautiful cartonnage are still there, mummification process is there in multimedia,\u201d says MacDonald, \u201cbut human remains will not be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Created in partnership with exhibit developers MuseumsPartner from Austria,\u00a0Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs<\/i>\u00a0is a touring exhibition including materials from the Egyptology collections of the University of Aberdeen Museums, the Roemer- and Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, the \u00c4gyptisches Museum and Papyrussammlung in Berlin, and the Gustav-L\u00fcbcke-Museum in Hamm. RBCM staff travelled to Lokschuppen Exhibition Centre in Germany to view the exhibition and meet the curators in June 2017.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge was that that exhibition was about 1,500 square metres, so it was twice the size of our temporary gallery,\u201d says MacDonald. \u201cWe spent the day walking around and checking out the exhibition. We wanted to keep the narrative thread; we had to break it apart and bring it back together again to fit half the size of what was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wafaa El Saddik, the first female general director of The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, will give a talk at the opening of the exhibition on her work in the warehouses and stores of that museum. The exhibit will also feature the \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated\u201d <\/i>discussion series.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some interesting and important conversations around contested and uncontested remains, should they be on display or not,\u201d says MacDonald. \u201cI think that\u2019s kind of the really interesting conversation within this visitor experience going forward; doing this, we will hear from people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another conversation that might happen behind the scenes is based around ownership and repatriation of antiquities. Looting and destruction of art and antiquities in the Middle East took a high toll in recent years as a result of conflicts in the region. Today, Egypt is campaigning for the repatriation of artifacts in foreign collections.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween September and December, expect to have those dialogue conversations and panel discussions,\u201d says MacDonald. \u201cWe\u2019ll pull those in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs
\n<\/i>Various times, Friday, May 18 to Monday, December 31
\nVarious prices,\u00a0Royal BC Museum
\nroyalbcmuseum.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For centuries, ancient Egypt has been a mystery and a source of inspiration for the West. Reproductions of obelisks, sphinxes, and pyramids were mounted in public squares, halls, cemeteries, and other urban spaces. Ancient Egyptian culture inspired literature, film, dance, music, fashion, and design. Egyptian artifacts in Western museums appeal to audiences to this day. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,211],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-may-16-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15918,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914\/revisions\/15918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}