Vikings and more

Thus the Scots shouted at the arrival of the Vikings, I guess, although a museum in York suggests the marauders actually settled in quite well.   But this was a hoard and that suggests rapine and that's the image of the Vikings.  The Galloway hoard was a major travelling exhibition at the SA Museum.  Also in Adelaide at the time was Chihuly glass at the Botanic Gardens but we missed that one.  The Hoard must have been easy to travel, requiring perhaps just a well insured show box of two.  A hoard is a collection of ingots, jewellery and the like, so compact.  But some lovely pieces, prime amongst all an inscribed cross with chain of twisted silver wire (very lovely) and a knot of arm rings.  What I mostly took from this was the date, ~900CE.  I think it only seems recent in context of the Church, prominent given the recent death of the Pope Francis, but the Church is the oldest extant institution in Europe so perhaps an unfair comparison.  Otherwise there was lots of video, perfectly interesting with interviews with archaeologist investigators, and a smattering of Lego windows for the kids.  We managed a visit to a few other areas of the Museum: the famed and much loved, old-styled, Egyptian room, small with its mummy and more, and the stunning opalised fossils in the next room and a few meteorites.  Most unexpected was the Egyptian boomerang!  All interesting but then I always found that local museum of interest over many years.

The Galloway Hoard was displayed at the SA Museum.  Also on display are Egyptian artifacts, opalised fossils and more.

Egypt II

It's odd but there's not one but two major exhibitions of Egyptiana in Australia this year: one from the mecca, the Cairo Museum, on display in Sydney; the other, from the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities).  I wrote of the Sydney exhibition and I was overwhelmed.  Our Canberra collection was less but still worthy.  I am coming to realise that Egyptian displays all cover a similar field: the mummies and statues of stone and wood and ushabti and models and writing and beads and the Rosetta stone and more stone.  Stone lasts, as do beads and even mummified bodies.  Timber and parchment is more problematic, but Egypt is dry so lends itself to preservation.  (There's even a loaf of bread in the Cairo museum).  I've seen lots of this before, but it's still a great pleasure to revisit these eras that are so well represented overseas but little here and so much in our cultural history.  My faves this time may have been the five mummies, all still wrapped in linen, so the precision and neatness of the linen wrapping is obvious.  Mummification is a stange process to us (not least the hook for removing the brain through the nose; one was on display here) but an act of respect for them.  And the remains of paint on timber and stone that's just a hint of vibrant colours that we fail to appreciate.  (Roman and other remains suffer the same predicament).  And a mere C19th print of statues showing how deeply they were buried in sand until recent researches and tourism (Ramese II at Marnack??).  And the footwear that's just a modern thong, if not in modern rubber.  So I've mostly seen this all before but I never tire of the revisits.

Discovering Ancient Egypt is an exhibition of Egyptiana from the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden at the National Museum of Australia.

Threebies no.3

I write this as we pass by Lake George on a Murray's couch and marvel at the current expanse of Lake George.  Water, specifically the Nile, is now central to the experience of Egypt as it was to Egypt and Ramses the Great at the Australian Museum by Hyde Park in Sydney. This was a stunner of an exhibition.  Plenty of stone work, jewellery of metals and stone, sarcophagi and the rest despite a cringe-worthy introductory video that still used BC in place of the now standard BCE.  Virtually all the works on display seemed to be sourced from the Cairo Museum.  I hadn't realised that the Ramses II mummy had been found only recently (1881) given a disguised timber sarcophagus amongst 30 mummies.  I found myself in awe at the displays and photographing everything.  It's a common weakness and closely related to omnipresent mobiles with capable cameras.  His story, of course, is not so welcoming, being of wars and kingly wealth and endless servants doing his bidding and building his indulgences.  But I enjoy thus peak in on the (wealthy) past.  Our local NMA also has an Egyptian exhibition sourced from the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden and a few Australian museums.

Ramses and the gold of the pharaohs is an exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney.