5. More from the Met ...

The Egyptian Tombs exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York captivated me for several hours on my first visit to the museum with gallery after gallery exhibiting wonderful treasures from the days of the Pharaohs. A good many of these exhibits were behind glass and also the lighting effects varied greatly from gallery to gallery, so the photographs are not the clearest ...

 

 It has always worried me as to how museums obtained much of their treasures - and I am sure down through the ages a lot was "stolen" and smuggled out under the noses of bribed officials. This extract explains how the Met came about their collection - 

" ... from 1906 to 1936, the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Egyptian Art conducted excavations at several sites in Egypt. During these three decades, while working in the cemeteries in western Thebes, across the Nile River from the modern city of Luxor, the Museum's archaeologists uncovered a number of intact tombs belonging to non-royal individuals. By the terms of the Museum's contract with the Egyptian Antiquities Service, the finds from these tombs were divided, with approximately half going to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and half coming to New York. The burials contained personal possessions of the deceased and funerary gifts left by family members. They also contained mummified bodies, the examination of which has given us some idea of the appearance of the living individuals, as well as their physical condition and age at death ..."

More from the Met tomorrow ...