Metropolitan Museum Presents Egyptian Metal Statuary.


Submitted by ruzik_tuzik on Mon, 2007-08-06
06:26.
Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on
October 16, 2007, Gifts for the Gods: Images
from Egyptian Temples is the first exhibition
ever devoted to these fascinating yet
enigmatic works. On view will be some 70
superb statues and statuettes created in
precious metals and copper alloys including
bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) over more
than two millennia.

Through their long history, the ancient
Egyptians used copper, bronze, gold, and
silver to create lustrous, graceful statuary
for their interactions with their gods ? from
ritual dramas in the temples and chapels that
dotted the landscape to festival processions
through the towns and countryside that were
thronged by believers.

The exhibition will bring to New York
masterpieces from around the world, including
seven extremely rare inlaid and decorated
large bronzes from the first half of the
first millennium, the so-called Third
Intermediate Period (1070 ? 664 B.C.), the
apogee of Egyptian metalwork. Among these
will be the astonishing bronze statue of the
priestess and noblewoman Taku***, the
treasure of the Egyptian Collection of the
National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Measuring some 27 inches (70 cm) in height
and covered with a luminous latticework of
divine figures and imagery in precious metal,
this work has never before left Greece. The
exhibition is supported by an indemnity from
the Federal Council on the Arts and the
Humanities.

Understanding the precious metal and bronze
statuary of ancient Egypt poses particular
challenges. Reverently decommissioned and
buried in large temple deposits after long
use, the statues often lack historical
inscriptions or, indeed, any contextual
information. Metal statuary also reveals a
somewhat surprising view of Egyptian art,
because it represents different cultural,
social, and production structures than those
of Egypt's stone creations, with which we are
more familiar. For instance, the depiction of
Hepu (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)
with full natural hair ? as opposed to the
traditional wig ? marks him as a member of a
newly visible group, probably a soldier in
the wars of the early New Kingdom (ca.
1550-1478 B.C.). Through their recent studies
of metal statuary, scholars have been able to
elaborate a new framework for metal statuary
and gain a new appreciation of these works of
art.

The exhibition will present an updated
understanding of the development of metal
types over the centuries. Special emphasis
will be given to its time of great flowering,
the Third Intermediate Period, revealing that
the term "intermediate" does not coincide
with the artistic importance of this era.

While remarkable metal creations from the Old
Kingdom (ca. 2575-2100 B.C.) do exist,
notable use of copper and its alloys ?
including bronze for divine and royal
statuary ? emerges in the Middle Kingdom (ca.
2040-1650 B.C.), possibly due to an
increasing extension of royal patronage to
temples. Particularly charming is the figure
of the young Princess Sobeknakht nursing her
infant son (Brooklyn Museum of Art). Under
the powerful and rich pharaohs of the New
Kingdom, with its growth in international
trade and relations, the temples saw great
accumulations of riches, which are mostly
lost and known only from representations. The
sly crocodile metamorphosing to a richly
inlaid ritual implement and the large
dramatic Seth in the exhibition are rarities
from this period (Musée du Louvre, Paris, and
Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen,
respectively). At the same time, evidence of
a growing royal attention to religious
performances oriented toward a wide public is
preserved in the series of kneeling kings
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art; University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and
Anthroplogy).

These works probably figured on the decks of
boat-shaped (barque) shrines borne on
carrying poles by priests so that the divine
image, sheltered under a baldachin and hidden
by hangings, could venture out into the midst
of an adoring jostling populace in
processions on festival days.

At the center of the exhibition are
surprising works created during the Third
Intermediate Period (ca. 1070-664 B.C.), when
political disunity and shifting religious
beliefs gave new importance to the temples.
The Metropolitan Museum's lithe golden Amun
is an astonishing divine image from this
time. The shimmering color and animation of
the religious observances that surrounded
such divine images are evoked by large
figures of kings Pedubaste and Pami (Museu
Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and British Museum,
London, respectively) and of noble women,
including Taku***, who were placed in
service to the temples as divine companions
and served as musicians and choir members. A
remarkable phenomenon of the period is the
elaborate figural decoration on the bodies of
statues. While Taku***'s decoration was
perhaps intended to create a cultic space
around a divine image she accompanied, Osiris
(the god of the afterlife) and his symbols
decorate the body of another large female
statue (Ägyptisches Museum und
Papyrussamlung, Berlin). Subtle coloristic
use of alloys in several statues and other
technological practices attest to a
sophisticated technology that is inseparable
from the artistry of these statues.

During the Late Period (664-323 B.C.) and
Ptolemaic Period (323-30 B.C.), the temples
accrued enormous authority. Although a
unified kingship was reestablished, it was
the king's identification with the divine
child of great gods within the temples that
preserved his aura through the political
vicissitudes of the first millennium, which
saw frequent invasions and precarious
internal consensus. Royal images of King
Amasis with soft, childlike features ? a
figure kneeling to offer to the gods (The
Metropolitan Museum of Art) and a head
wearing an elaborate collar and forming part
of a cult implement (Egyptian Museum,
Cairo) ? exquisitely express this
understanding. Already in the Third
Intermediate Period, and even more so during
this period, the participation of individuals
in offering practices surged, resulting in
the prodigious quantities of statuary whose
variety points to diverse sites of production
and influences, resulting in an art full of
vitality and variation.

The exhibition will include information about
the place and use of the statuary in the
temples from clues provided by the statues
themselves or from archaeological evidence.
Ancient texts preserve ritual prescriptions
for the treatment of what seem to be isolated
and unique cult images, which were fed,
dressed, given jeweled offerings, and covered
for protection from dangers at night.
Miniature gold collars and bracelets directly
reflect such practices, and some statues
preserve clues to their placement and
movement during ritual performances. However,
the actual thousands upon thousands of works
that were buried in sacred deposits overwhelm
any simple linear comprehension. New
archaeological finds, such as the
Metropolitan Museum's small Harpokrates with
a finger to his mouth from Saqqara, and their
interpretation begin to illuminate the
widespread phenomenon of offering divine
statuary in Egypt during the first
millennium: a recent discovery, for instance,
revealed hundreds of such donations, from the
finest to the poorest, carefully housed in a
chapel in the innermost part of a temple. A
chapter in the catalogue will show that, even
if their function or status still remains
unclear to us, the temple in fact accepted
and maintained all these statuettes as
repositories for divinities.

A variety of education programs will be
offered in conjunction with the exhibition,
including gallery talks, a Sunday at the Met
on December 2 featuring lectures by John
Taylor, assistant keeper of antiquities at
The British Museum, London, and Regine
Schultz, curator of ancient art at The
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Gifts for the
Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples was
organized by Marsha Hill, Curator of Egyptian
Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw,
Senior Exhibition Designer; graphics are by
Sue Koch, Senior Graphic Designer; and
lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard
Lichte, Senior Lighting Designers, all of the
Museum's Department of Special Exhibitions,
Gallery Installations, and Design. --
www.metmuseum.org


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