The American Discovery of Egypt

By Pat McDonnell Twair

Perhaps the most spectacular archaeological discovery in Egypt came in the 1920s when Britain's Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opened the sealed tomb of King Tutankhamun. Nonetheless, the true test of archaeology is the slow, meticulous sifting through dirt and detritus to piece together the overall story of a past civilization. Americans have held their own with most European schools of archaeology and, for the first time, their efforts and the objects they have retrieved in Egypt are on view in a major exhibition entitled "The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt." More than 250 items spanning 4,400 years are featured in this show that opened Nov. 5 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Americans excavated rigorously in Egypt for the first three decades of this century. This activity surged in the mid-1960s, when archeologists rushed to excavate and save monuments threatened with inundation upon completion of the Aswan High Dam. Today, there are 42 American expeditions in Egypt. This year's best-known find is Dr. Kent Weeks' recently announced discovery of the tombs of the sons of Ramses II in the Valley of the Kings.

Exquisite pieces of Pharaonic art are in this exhibition, thanks to American archeologists such as George A. Reisner, who unearthed the mortuary temple of King Menkaure, and Herbert E. Winlock, who guided the Metropolitan Museum of Art's excavations at Deir el-Bahri.

In 1919 Winlock, who is regarded as the founding father of American Egyptian archaeology, oversaw the groundbreaking discoveries of Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple. He recovered the red granite statue of this woman who was a pharaoh of the mid-18th dynasty—a unique piece in the exhibition because Hatshepsut's nephew, Tuthmosis III, tried to destroy every statue and inscription of his hated aunt after he finally succeeded to the throne.

There was no word for queen (female ruler), only "wife of the king." Hence, when the headstrong Hatshepsut ascended to power, she had herself depicted with the pharaoh's masculine beard. The still intact pinkish stone likeness of her portrays her with a royal beard, but it also reveals a feminine upturned smile and the sharp, narrow nose experts associate with this woman who, it is said, hoped to be succeeded by a dynasty of daughters and granddaughters.

Some of the greatest contributions to Egyptology come from American epigrapher James Henry Breasted, who founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and preserved Theban texts and drawings through precise and exacting methods that have set scholarly standards for a century.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Nancy Thomas has placed a 26th dynasty sarcophagus at the entrance to the exhibition as a symbolic demarcation line between the time antiquities could be purchased by wealthy collectors and when serious archaeology was undertaken by Americans. The sixth century B.C. coffin cover was discovered in 1900 and purchased by American publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

Ubiquitous figurines throughout the exhibition are shawabtis or shabtis, funerary figurines that were essential components of any royal Egyptian burial—judging by their frequency in tombs from 1640 to 30 B.C. An assemblage of 17 shawabtis—all in the likeness of the 7th century B.C. Nubian King Taharqa—is a show stopper. Another shawabti familiar in art history books is of glazed steatite, known as the Shawabti of Seniu, from Thebes c. 1525-1450 B.C. The Shabti of Sati, a 14th century B.C. faience figurine, by now is familiar to all Los Angelenos because it appears on banners on boulevards publicizing the exhibition.

The exhibition opens with the predynastic period. Many of the sites from these pre-historic eras were excavated by Henri De Morgan for the Brooklyn Museum. The prehistoric objects reveal a less stylized, often whimsical approach to art as evidenced in a limestone vessel in the shape of a frog with large pop eyes that looks as if some Disney cartoonist had created him. That proto-Egyptians had developed precision tools is demonstrated by the sculpture of a talapia fish, c. 3600 B.C., with perfect circular holes for the eyes and ridges on the back. A terra cotta figurine of a bird goddess with uplifted arms reveals common neolithic religious beliefs throughout the ancient Middle East.

One of the most remarkable objects is a sculpture of a boy carved 4,500 years ago. Insects have eaten the acacia wood, but we still can observe a teen-age boy with large eyes, sensitive smile and a finger at his mouth as if to urge the observer to be silent.

Americans uncovered much of the history of ancient Nubia, and one delightful grouping is of ivory animal cutouts that decorated funerary beds of Nubian nobles. The Egyptians encased their mummified dead in coffins, but elite Nubians were laid to rest on couches inside tombs. These furniture inlays depict a giraffe, flying ostrich, a goat nibbling at a tree and a hippopotamus deity with crocodile tail and lion's paws.

Two objects from the 18th dynasty that give some insight into Egyptian ways of life are a human-headed jar lid and an artist's sketch. The former is a stopper for a jar that is molded to resemble the head of Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's architect. It was a cover for one of four containers designed to hold internal organs of the deceased, which were removed to speed desiccation of the embalmed body. Next to it is a sketch (in profile) of Senenmut drawn within grid lines to conform to the standardized style of New Kingdom art.

A spectacular finale is a 12-ton Ptolemaic gateway that has been reassembled for the first time for public viewing. Dows Dunham of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts discovered the engraved sandstone blocks in a refuse heap and brought them to the U.S. in 1923. Seventy years later, a doctoral student, Diana Wolfe Larkin, identified the stones as pieces of a gateway and assembled them for this exhibition.

"The American Discovery of Egypt" continues in Los Angeles through Jan. 21. It will then travel to St. Louis from Feb. 2 to May 27, and to Indianapolis from July 13 to Sept. 29.

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.