Met Museum’s first Egypt show in over a decade brings ancient gods and goddesses to life – Brandon Sun

NEW YORK (AP) — The powerful gods of ancient Egypt are coming together on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

It will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's been more than a decade since the museum's last major Egypt exhibition, so Divine Egypt, a lavish exploration of how the ancient Egyptians depicted their gods, is a major event, as evidenced by the crowds that have filled the exhibit since its opening on October 12.

After all, few things excite museum visitors quite like Ancient Egypt, notes Diana Craig Patch, curator of Egyptian art at the Met.

“This is the first ancient culture taught in school,” Patch says. “Pyramids, mummies, the great tomb of Tutankhamun… they have entered our popular culture, books, films, and now video games.”

But Patch hopes visitors will learn something deeper from “Divine Egypt,” which explores how the gods were portrayed by Egyptians, both royal and common, not just in the temples where only kings or priests could go, but also in the daily worship of the common people.

The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted about 3,000 years; The exhibition, which runs until January, covers all periods and includes more than 200 objects, from huge limestone statues to tiny gold figurines. It includes 140 works from the Met's collection, as well as other works on loan from museums around the world.

“The divine landscape of ancient Egypt is full of gods — 1,500, in fact, if you count them all,” said Patch, who led the Associated Press tour last week. The show is dedicated to 25 major deities.

Even if we cut the number of participants down to 25, the study was daunting. The material and textual information in Egyptology is fragmentary. Moreover, the Egyptians continued to bring in new gods or give traditional gods new roles. “And that makes for a very challenging but exciting landscape,” Patch says.

One of the goals is to show visitors that all of these images deal with “how the ancient Egyptians viewed their world. These gods grappled with issues of life, death, and meaning—problems we are still grappling with today.”

Some points:

Opening greeting from Amon-Re and the king named Tut.

You'd think that the boy King Tutankhamun, aka King Tut, would be the star of any party, given the astonishing riches from his tomb that the whole world has learned about. But in the sculpture from the Louvre in Paris that first greets visitors, the sun god Amon-Re sits on a throne, depicting a much smaller pharaoh under his knees – or rather protecting him – with his hands resting on his small shoulders. God can be recognized by his feathered crown, curled beard, divine skirt and jewelry – and this is definitely the main attraction. Amun-Ra was worshiped at the Karnak temple complex; the presence of Re in his name closely links him to the sun.

Expression of the Divine: Horus and Hathor

The first of five galleries, Expressions of the Divine, focuses on two major deities: the god Horus and the goddess Hathor. Horus is always depicted as a falcon with a double crown, which means that he is the king of Egypt and is associated with the living king. But Hathor, who represents fertility, music, and protection among other things, takes many forms, including a cow, an emblem, a lion-headed figure, or a cobra. In one of the statues she wears cow horns and a sun disk.

“So there are two main ways of representing gods: sometimes with many roles, sometimes with only one,” says Patch.

Ruler of the Cosmos: Sun God Re

This gallery examines the all-important Ra, whose domains are the sun, creation, life and rebirth. Ryo often merges form with other deities. “Re rules the world—he is the source of light and heat,” says Patch.

In this room he is represented as a giant scarab beetle. “It’s the morning aspect of it,” Patch says. “It is considered a beetle that takes the sun from the underworld and raises it into the sky.”

There is also a vibrant painted relief of the goddess Ma'at from the Valley of the Kings in Thebes (modern Luxor). She embodies truth, justice, social and political order. Patch notes, “The best way we translate it today is rightness. It symbolizes the rightness of the world, the way it should work.”

The Creation of the World: Multiple Creation Mythologies

This gallery explores five creation myths about the world and its inhabitants.

“That's one of the things I hope people will start to understand: the Egyptians had multiple ways of dealing with things,” Patch says of the competing myths. “I find it exciting. They overlap.”

She stands next to a huge limestone statue of the god Min, a headless image of a difficult-to-define god associated with vegetation, agricultural fertility and minerals.

Coping with life: pure gold figurine

Only kings and priests had access to state temples to worship their gods. What could ordinary people do?

Patch explains: “At festivals, the god would emerge from the temple on a sacred barque (sailing vessel), and people would interact with this image on the streets and ask him or her questions.”

In this room, the curators arranged many objects as if on a barge. Top and center: A brilliant gold statuette of Amun that the Met acquired in 1926 from the collection of Lord Carnarvon, who helped open Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

Overcoming Death: Gods of the Afterlife

Some of the most striking art associated with Egyptian gods deals with death and the afterlife. “Coping with death is something that both kings and non-royals have had to deal with,” says Patch.

The gods of this section include Anubis, who embalms the dead and leads them to the afterlife; Isis and Nephthys, sisters of Osiris, mourning and protecting the dead; and Osiris, judge and ruler of the afterlife.

This gallery contains the exhibition's signature object: a stunning statuette, on loan from the Louvre, depicting the triad of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Made of gold and inlaid with lapis lazuli, it depicts a shrouded Osiris, Horus with the head of a falcon, and Isis with a solar disk and horns. Gold represents the skin of the gods, lapis lazuli their hair.

While the final section is about coping with death, “I think you’ll notice that much of the exhibit is about life,” notes Patch. “And that's what all these deities were talking about. Even in overcoming death, it was about eternal life.”

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Associated Press video journalist Ted Shaffrey contributed to this report.