From 16 June 2017, the
Manege of the Small Hermitage will be the setting for the exhibition “Nefertari
and the Valley of the Queens. From the Museo Egizio, Turin” that has been
organized by the State Hermitage and the Museo Egizio – the Egyptian Museum –
in Turin with the support of the Lavazza company.
A separate entrance for the
exhibition visitors will be provided on Tuesday and Saturdays from 18.15 till
21.00 through the Small Hermitage, from Shuvalovsky Proezd (37 Millionnaya Street).
The entry ticket is 200 RUB for all visitors.
The exhibition is taking
place within the framework of the Hermitage–Italy Foundation projects through
the agency of Villaggio Globale International.
The Museo Egizio is known
for having one of the most important collections of Egyptian antiquities
outside of Egypt itself. The display is made up of five sections and includes
255 artefacts and photographs taken in the field that make it possible for
visitors to picture the opening of the tomb of Queen Nefertari.
The formation of the
collection of the Museo Egizio in Turin was the result of two events: the
acquisition of the first Drovetti in 1824 by Charles Felix, Duke of Savoy and
King of Sardinia, and the excavations conducted by the museum’s director,
Ernesto Schiaparelli, in the early 20th century.
The collection assembled by
Bernardino Michele Maria Drovetti was the source of most of the largest objects
(statues and sarcophagi), as well as a large number of stelas, grave goods and
an extremely rich range of papyruses, mainly from the region of Thebes.
Schiaparelli worked to
expand the museum’s stocks with the aim of turning it into one of the most
respected Egyptian collections in the world. He acquired some 20,000 artefacts,
initially from antiquaries in Cairo, and then from excavations in various parts
of Egypt. From 1903 to 1929 he sent off archaeological expeditions led by
members of his staff to various places in the Nile Valley, concentrating on
sites that made it possible to fill chronological and typological gaps in the
Turin collection. The activities of the Italian Archaeological Mission, headed
by Schiaparelli, in 1903–05 represent an important stage in the history of the
exploration of the Valley of the Queens.
The “Valley of the Queens”
is a dried-up river mouth on the west bank at Thebes that was used for burials
of members of the royal family and the Ancient Egyptian rulers’ entourage at
the time of the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC). Around 100 tombs were carved out
there, mainly for queens and princes of the Ramesside period (19th and 20th
dynasties, 1292–1077 BC). The tombs take the form of a succession of
rectangular rooms leading to the burial chamber, where the body of the queen or
prince was interred in a stone sarcophagus. The rich pictorial decoration on
the walls of these tombs illustrates some of the stages in the deceased’s
journey to eternal life and meeting with the gods.
Scholarly exploration of this important
necropolis began in 1826 with the work done by the traveller and antiquarian
Robert Hay. The second scholar to investigate the rock tombs of the necropolis
was John Gardner Wilkinson, one of the British fathers of nascent Egyptology.
We owe a systematic scientific study of the Valley of the Queens to the
Franco-Tuscan expedition of 1828–29 led by Jean-François Champollion and
Ippolito Rosellini. Notable excavations were conducted at the necropolis at
different times by Karl Richard Lepsius (1842) and Heinrich Karl Brugsch
(1854).
The results of the
excavations in the Valley of the Queens (1903–05) and at Deir el-Medina
(1905−08) turned the Turin museum into one of the finest collections of Theban
materials and one of the most important centres for the study of Egyptian
culture in the New Kingdom and the first millennium BC. Besides the discovery
of the tomb of Queen Nefertari and the clearance of the tombs (previously
known, but long hidden beneath rubble) of Queen Iset, the wife of Ramesses III,
Queens Tyti and Sitre, and Prince Pareherwenemef, more than 80 other tombs and
shafts were found. The important discoveries included previously unknown tombs
of princes and dignitaries and large family burials for which older tombs had
been re-used.
The basis of the exhibition
“Nefertari and the Valley of the Queens. From the Museo Egizio, Turin” is
Theban materials acquired by Drovetti and Schiaparelli. The key figure of the
exhibition, Queen Nefertari, is presented in the context of the Valley of the
Queens, where Schiaparelli discovered her burial place.
The display begins with a
section devoted to Nefertari, the Great Royal Spouse of Ramesses II who was
considered the living embodiment of the goddess Hathor, the wife of the
sun-god. Monumental statues from ancient Thebes illustrate the functions of the
king, who was not just ruler of the country, but also the intermediary between
the people and the gods, and of his consort. Many items in this part of the
exhibition illustrate the fusion of Nefertari’s image with a number of
goddesses.
Particularly noteworthy are
the items found in Queen Nefertari’s burial chamber and a model of the tomb
that was made immediately after its discovery in 1904. Nefertari’s grave goods
on show at the exhibition include fragments of the lid of the sarcophagus
smashed by tomb-robbers, amulets, vessels, sandals woven from palm leaves that
the Queen may have worn, and, of course, 34 wooden ushabti finished with black paint that bear her name.
Elements of the decoration
of the palace, ritual and everyday objects that belonged to noble ladies and
were used at the royal court – statues and reliefs, toilet articles, cosmetic
items and jewellery – paint a picture of court life and of the position that a
woman occupied in Ancient Egypt in Nefertari’s time – the 19th Dynasty and the
first 30 years of Ramesses II’s reign.
Some rare finds featured in
the exhibition – a variety of decorative items, fragments of musical
instruments, a wooden headrest to support the base of the skull when sleeping,
vessels and bowls – give an idea of conditions in which the royal family and
the nobility lived.
A separate part of the
display is devoted to the labourers and craftsmen who were engaged in cutting
out and decorating the majestic rock tombs of the kings and queens of Ancient
Egypt in the New Kingdom. Finds from the settlement inhabited by craftsmen and
artists in a hollow between the Theban mountains and the Qurnet Murai hill, at
a site now known as Deir el-Medina, make up an important component of the Museo
Egizio’s stocks. The daily existence and beliefs of the ordinary people of
Ancient Egypt are covered in sections devoted to the labours, life and death of
the craftsmen of Deir el-Medina.
The tombs created by the
inhabitants of Deir el-Medina had a complicated fate. They were plundered,
probably as early as the end of the New Kingdom, and some of them were used for
later burials. For several centuries, the tombs of forgotten royal princes
served as family vaults for the elite of Thebes. A number of sarcophagi found
in the tombs of Khaemwaset and Seth-her-khopsef, two sons of Ramesses III
(1198–1166 BC), that were used as burial vaults for a priestly family of the
25th Dynasty period (722–656 BC) complete the exhibition. Traces of fire on
some of the sarcophagi may be related to plundering of the tombs. Christian
monks are also known to have used ancient coffins as firewood.
The display is supplemented
by richly illustrated funerary papyruses from the Drovetti collection that
probably also come from the Theban necropolis. These papyruses are of the same
age as the late sarcophagi and carry chapters from the Book of the Dead (a
collection of utterances that enable the deceased to pass safely through the
next world and unite with Osiris and the souls of the blessed) and the Amduat,
an important funerary text that describes the nocturnal journey of the Sun and
his victory over all the dangers. The deceased, identified with the Sun during
this journey, overcomes his or her enemies and becomes immortal like the god
Ra.
The exhibition curators are
Andrei Olegovich Bolshakov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Head of the Sector
of the Ancient East in the State Hermitage’s Department of the East, and Andrei
Nikolayevich Nikolayev, Deputy Head of Department of the East.
https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/what-s-on/temp_exh/2017/nefertari/?lng=
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