THE NEW GALLERIES OF EGYPTIAN AND NEAR EASTERN ART AT THE MICHAEL C. CARLOS MUSEUM

by Peter Lacovara (Dr Peter Lacovara is Curator of Ancient Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, USA.)
Minerva Vol. 12 Number 5

Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities have long been a focus of Emory University's Museum of Art and Archaeology, now known as the Michael C. Carlos Museum. However, the tremendous growth of the collections in recent years, under the direction of Anthony Hirschel, has prompted a major re-installation in the award-winning Michael Graves building.

Fig 1. The 1993 Michael Graves facade of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, with its allusion to Egyptian architecture, is fondly known to many Atlantans as 'The Mummy'

The Museum was fortunate to have recently acquired a unique collection of ancient Egyptian mummies and coffins and related artefacts from a small, private museum in Niagara Falls, Canada. The collection, now known as the Charlotte Lichirie Collection of Egyptian Art, consisted of over 145 items, including 10 coffins and mummies along with funerary figures, canopic jars, bronzes, amulets, jewellery, pottery, basketry, wooden objects, and relief
fragments. The 'assemblage was purchased in Egypt in the nineteenth century for the Niagara Falls Museum, an eclectic institution devoted to displaying curiosities and local relics, including the barrels that held individuals on their harrowing trips over the falls.

The coffins and mummies associated with them represented an unprecedented opportunity for study and scientific investigation. Despite being on public show for so long Abraham Lincoln, General Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt were among the visitors who had admired them the coffins have never been published and were little known.

The coffins and funerary furnishing from the Niagara Falls Museum span the period from the 21st Dynasty (c. 1000 BC) to the Roman Period (31 BC to AD 395). The 21st Dynasty, which is particularly well represented in this group (Figs 8-l0), was a period of great artistic achievement in funerary art. This era marked the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period, a time that saw control of the country split between the pharaohs reigning in the Delta and the priesthood of the temple of Amun at Karnak, ruling as de facto kings in Thebes, Since tombs of the period were quite modest, all artisticeffort concentrated on the, coffin itself. The ornate ,designs on coffins have been compared to stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals, for their complex rendition of theological concepts in intricate, jewel-like colours.

One of the most beautiful and intriguing of these objects is the coffin that belonged to the Lady Tanakhtenttahat (Figs 9-10), a chantress in the Temple of the god Amun at Karnak. On the coffin lid, the Lady Tanakhtenttahat, also referred to by the shorter version of her name Tahat, is bedecked in a full wig surrounded by protective gods and symbols and adorned with her finest jewelry. Images delicately painted on the sides of the coffin depicted mythological scenes, and Tahaf being judged in the underworld and being reborn into eternal life.

Fig 2. Coffin of Nebetit from Assiut. Late 11 th Dynasty, 1957-1938 BC. Wood, pigment. H. 50.8 cm. MCCM 1921.2. With the breakdown of centralgovernment in the First Intermediate Period, fine timber was no longer imported into Egypt from the Levant. This coffin if made out of scraps of local woodpegged together and coated with gesso and painterd yellow-brown to look like a finer piece of cabinetry. It is decorated with a pair of eyes through which the mummy could magically see. In is inscribed for a Nebetit, priestess of the goddess Hathor.

Over the mummy was placed a coffin board, a device peculiar to the Zlst Dynasty, which looked like and served as a secondary lid with more decorative elements designed to protect the deceased. The mummy found in the coffin of Tahat was also of great interest. She had been carefully wrapped, but when she was examined at Emory Hospital, CT-

Fig 3 (left). Model coffin. 12th Dynasty, 1938-1759 BC. Wood, pigment. H. 16.3 cm. MCCM1998.16.2. The mummy shaped coffin prst appears in the Middle Kingdom. This model coffin may have been made to lie on a bier on board a model funeral boat or to serve as a votive substitute for the actual coffin. The wig, face, and collar represented a mummy mask over a bandaged body. This simulation later developed into the familiar anthropoid coffin. This example is shown with a full wig typicall? wornby women of the period. At her throat, she wears a magical seweret bead for protection, and a broad collar.

Fig 5 (left). Upper part of a coffin 18th Dynasty, c. 1539-1292 BC. Painted, gilded wood. H. 83.2 cm. MCCM L 1999.40. Anthropoid coflns in the New Kingdom were richly ornamented wifh Fold leaf and painted decoration.This example, typical of the second half of the 18th Dynasty, has a blue and gold striped wig and elaborate broad collar. Below the collar is an image of the vulturegoddess Mut, with her wings outstretched to protect the mummy. The body of the coffin was coloured black to simulate a mummy anointed with resin. When it was first acquired in the early part of the last century, the lower undecorated part was cut away; it will now be restored for the re-installation.

Fig 4 (above). Broad collar and seweret bead. 12th Dynasty, 1938-1759 BC. Faience and carnelian with modern restoration. H. 21 cm. MCCM 2001.15.1. The beaded broad collar with the falcon terminals was specified in the coffin texts as part of the funerary equipment needed by the deceased. The association with the god Horus undoubtedly gave this piece of jewellery a magkal healing quality. The carnelian seweret bead was intended to protect the throat and is shown on coffins being worn tied about the neck above the broad collar.

Fig 7. Floral broad collar. New Kingdom, 1539-1075 BC. Faience, modem reconstruction H. 2.5 cm. MCCM 2001.9.1. Apart from just being items of adornment, jewellery had powerful amuletic properties for both the living and the dead. The invention ofpolychrome faience with a wide variety of subtle hues in the late 18th Dynasty allowed collars imitating garlands of fruit and flowers to be produced. Such ornaments made from vegetal material sewn onto papyrus backing were an important part of the funerary ceremony and were known as wah-collars. Such collars are represented on coffins as well as on other funerary offerings, and actual examples or faience versions were included in the tomb and could be placed on the mummy. The symbolism extended beyond the collar itself to the various elements that composed it. The blue lotus flower terminals and pendant petals on this example symbolised rebirth, and the mandrake fruits and palm leaves fertility.

Fig 6. Set of 'dummy' canopic jars. Limestone with modem paint. Third Intermediate Period, c. 1075-656 BC. H. 34-39 cm. MCCM 1999.1.29-32. One of the innovations in mummification in the 21st Dynasty was placing the mummified internal organs back in the body. However, Canopic jars had become such a standard part of burial equipment that model or 'dummy' jars were still placed in tombs. This set of jars had separate lids, but the inside of the jars were not hollowed out. The images on the lids represented the Four Sons of thegod Horus, who protected the internal organs of the mummy: the baboon-headed Hapy, protector of the lungs; the jackal-headed Duamutef, guardian of the stomach; the human-headed Imsety, keeper of the liver; and the falcon-headed Qebehsenuef, protector of the intestines. The awkward carving of the lids is typical of the period, and traces of the original pigment that decorated them still appears, partially hidden under nineteenth-century over-painting.

scans and X-rays revealed that her internal organs had not been removed, according to the custom of the period. At first, it seemed a mystery as to why this procedure was left undone, especially in this era of elaborate mummification.

Closer inspection of the inscriptions on the coffins by Joyce Haynes, who specializes in deciphering ancient Egyptian funerary texts, revealed that the coffin had been reused, and Tahat's names had been partially erased and replaced with the name of a woman named Taaset. All over the coffin, older decoration and inscriptions had been covered up with new ones. Obviously, since Taaset could not afford a coffin for herself it would then be understandable that she received such a summary mummification. The unique preservation of her internal organs allowed doctors at Emory hospital to sample her internal remains, the intact brain, heart, and liver for future study.

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