Big Deal: Egyptology & Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hatsheptsut Temple. Pronounced: Hat-Cheap-Suit

I would like to bring to your attention a very interesting article about "the Met's Work in Egypt", which is coincidentally the title of it. It's a very interesting look at ancient-Egypt and how it fits into the life of modern-Egypt, and comes from the director himself. It says:

In eighteen months on the job, I [Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Met] have traveled all over the globe, and it is incredible to understand the scope of the Met's international reach. In fact, I have just returned from a tour of the Met's archaeological work in Egypt, activity that extends back to the earliest days of the Museum.

It was more than one hundred years ago, in 1906, that J.P. Morgan, then president of the Museum, hired Albert M. Lythgoe to be the Met's first curator of Egyptian Art, establishing the Metropolitan's Egyptian Expedition, which continued for the next thirty years. Many of the thirty-six thousand objects in the Museum's Egyptian collection today were excavated in Egypt by the Museum's staff of archaeologists from 1906 to 1936 under the system known as partage, which allowed the Met to excavate and then split its finds with the Egyptian government. Indeed, it was interesting to visit the Cairo Museum during my trip and see objects in their collection that are directly related to our own.

The Met still participates in active excavations in Egypt at the Middle Kingdom pyramid sites of Lisht and Dahshur, south of Cairo, and the New Kingdom palace and temple complex of Malqata, near Luxor. This activity goes on without any system of partage or opportunity to acquire the objects excavated. It is a scholarly endeavor, scientifically executed, and critical to understanding the cultures represented in our collection and extending the Met's work beyond the walls of the museum. I hope you will keep this history in mind when you next visit our Egyptian collection; it is a fascinating part of the Met's past, and very much a part of the research and scholarship that are the core of our mission today.

You can see images of these excavations on the Met Museum's blog (of sorts). But to give you a sneak-peak, my favorite is:

Portrait of the powerful Sobekemhat.