Beyond Babylon... fantasy made real

Special Exhibits at museums can be extraordinary opportunities to see items that otherwise would be separated from one another by continents. The 'Beyond Babylon' Exhibit at the Metropolitan Art Museum in Manhattan was one that I was determined not to miss. It ends on the 15th of March, I believe, so time was running out for me. Fortunately, I was able to make the trip to New York to see it on Saturday.

Basically, the exhibit concerned itself with trade in the 2nd Millenium and therefore brought together items from various cultures, showing how art, religion and even entertainment were influenced in this fashion.

For me personally, however, it always is gods and goddesses, weapons and jewelry that dominate in any exhibit of this sort. It was at the 'Beyond Babylon' exhibit that I once again beheld the golden diadem of my childhood dreams and fantasies.

Ironically, many of the pieces that I loved most in the exhibit actually form part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Art Museum, reminding me of the incredible cultural resource the Museum represents.

The diadem is made of electrum and features the Stag in the very centre, an animal who throughout human history has represented kingship, power and indeed the very force of life itself. This particular depiction is a wondrous stag with extraordinary antlers that bring to mind the World Tree or the ziggurats of Babylon, although this diadem is Egyptian. Alternating with smaller gazelle heads are flowers in the traditional eight-pointed style that represent the Sun.

An official description of the piece describes it as a: 'circlet or Diadem of a queen or a princess, electrum. H. 8.5 cm. From Salhiya in the Eastern Delta near Avaris.

'This unique crown, consisting of a band of electrum 1.5 cm wide perforated to take tie-strings at the rear and mounted with rosettes and animals heads, appears to have been made in Egypt largely under Asiastic inspiration, if it is not an Asiatic import. In the 18th Dynasty, it became the fashion to decorate the diadems of princesses and lesser queens with the figure of a gazelle's head in place of the uraeus or vulture of principal queens. This crown with its four gazelle heads may have been part of the trousseau of a foreign princess sent as a bride for one of the Pharoahs according to the diplomacy of the age.'

To me, the diadem has great spiritual potency, and it would be a pity if it were nothing more than a fashion statement for a minor royal at the court of a Pharoah. As the official description states, it is NOT really Egyptian in style. The flowers with eight rays are very much part of the old iconography of Inanna or Ishtar, and may represent either the sun or the Evening/Morning Star, Venus, another attribute of this goddess.

The gazelle is a symbol of feminine beauty and grace throughout the Arab world and in many ancient folktales, transformations from girl to gazelle occur. The stag, of course, is a symbol of male potency as well as kingship.

The diadem was only one of many breathtaking treasures on display. Fabulous gold daggers and ceremonial axes with exquisite inlays were included in the Exhibit. Funerary sandals fashioned of pure gold were displayed as well. An interesting facet of one pair were the 'toe stalls' made of gold, intended to slip over the actual toes of the corpse.

Although Western corpses from Medieval Europe tend to be extremely small, it is evident that the people of the 2nd Millenium resembled contemporary humans in size. The sandals and toe and finger stalls easily could have been made for some one of our own time. The second Millenium was a period of extraordinary technological and cultural sophistication.

One of the exhibits that appeared to impress most of the viewers was the reconstruction of the Uluburun ship, the oldest shipwreck discovered, dating to 1360 B.C. when Tutankhamum was Pharoah. Artifacts from the wreck as well as a video of the discovery were included in the 'Beyond Babylon' Exhibit. The contents of the ship's hold demonstrated the wealth of trade that existed between the various nations across the globe in this period of history.

The famous 'Queen of the Night' was on display here as well, lending her weight to the Exhibit. Obviously a great Goddess, her identity still has not been definitively proven, although some scholars believe her to be the equivalent of the 'dark maiden' Lilitu, the original inhabitant of the World Tree with the anzu bird and the serpent. Others claim that she represents Ereshkigal, Inanna's dark sister who reigns over the land of the dead, the Otherworld. For me, any divine representation whose identity still is wreathed in uncertainty is one of the most compelling mysteries to be solved.

Another marvelous display was the Tod Treasure. In itself, it is eloquent proof of the trade that flourished between different civilisations during this period of history and would have been worth the trip by itself.

The 'Tod Treasure' was discovered in the foundation sand of an excavation in the small village of Tod not far from Luxor. It consists of four copper chests from the time of King Amenemhet II filled with silver, lapis lazuli and gold objects. Some of the lapis is uncut, but much of it was fashioned into beads or cylinder seals from various origins, dating to the third and the beginning of the second millennium BC. The silver consists of flattened ingots, ingot chains and coiled cups. Scholars have attributed some of the pieces to Minoan and Syrian creation. The lapis itself came from Afghanistan, and it is evident that the boxes are filled with foreign tribute from various nations to the ruler of Egypt.

Large objects may be the most dramatic pieces in any exhibition but the tiny exquisite cylinder seals displayed in the 'Beyond Babylon' exhibit are some of the most incredibly beautiful artifacts seen anywhere. The actual objects are small hollow cylinders carved from semi-precious stones such as crystal or lapis. Figures and text then were incised into the stones, creating a tableau when the cylinder was rolled over a soft surface such as clay or wax. The exquisite quality of these miniature tableaux can be utterly stunning.

I will include some photographs of cylinder seals in a separate post. It was when I looked carefully at some of these seals as well as some larger tablets of clay written in cuneiform that I was struck by the amazing beauty of this style of writing and the amount of skill and labour involved in any Babylonian written work, whether it consisted in content merely of a catalogue of trade goods or embodied the marvelous 'Epic of Gilgamesh'.

Houses of the Dead, Dollhouses and Museums

Although there really is no substitute for travel and the experience of being on the soil of the site of an ancient civilisation, museums can be incredibly exciting and enriching.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, justifiably known as one of the best museums in the world, contains as many superior artifacts from all periods of the ancient civilisations of Egypt as any museum, I daresay, in Egypt. Without venturing into the troubled waters of international theft, especially theft condoned and even encouraged by foreign governments, museums like this are an invaluable resource for students, serious academics and the general public.

It was in the New York Metropolitan Museum that I saw an incredibly detailed miniature village from ancient Egypt. Always fascinated with miniatures of every kind, and never quite losing a childhood love of dollhouses, I could have spent hours in front of the exhibit.

As you can see from the photographs, a wealth of skill, labour and energy was lavished upon this miniature world. It includes depictions of the most mundane locations and tasks, including a slaughterhouse and a granary as well as a house and temple and a model boat complete with rowers.

The model village was created as a funerary device, and was discovered in a tomb. The ancient Egyptians believed that the afterlife required tools and aids from THIS life. Perhaps partly created to stimulate memories of old skills, of old relationships or to make the gods and the company of the dead aware of the identity and social position of the deceased... who knows why an intricate model of an entire village was placed in the tomb?

These models were found in the tomb of Meketre in Thebes, dating from the 20th century B.C.

There is no dearth of original sources that deal with the religion and spirituality of ancient Egypt. In fact, the 'Book of the Dead' gives detailed instructions as to all the necessary steps in the journey between this world and the next. What may be remarkable is the degree of devotion that this religion has inspired through the centuries, even after the civilisation itself has crumbled into dust and has returned to the desert.

As a young child, I was drawn to amulets and talismans of any kind. The Egyptians were prolific creators of amulets. A childhood favourite, 'The Story of the Amulet', by E. Nesbit, only served to stoke the fires of my imagination and I always have collected talismans. Whether or not I believe that they possess some intrinsic power is uncertain. The fact of the matter is that I love jewelry, gems and tiny objects and I love 'charms'. They do not have to be particularly beautiful in order to appeal to me. In fact, some of the more bizarre protective charms can hold a greater fascination ultimately than a pretty trinket.

In the gap between any ancient civilisation and its re-discovery by contemporary society, inevitably there will be some degree of misinterpretation. I often wondered what a future society might think of our museums, for example. Museums often contains the stuffed remains of animals as well as tombs, funerary remains and even corpses. Whether preserved as mummies or simply as skeletons displayed in the position in which they were discovered, these corpses often are surrounded by other displays of jewelry, pottery and even miniature models of the villages in which they once lived. How different is this really from the displays found in ancient 'tombs'? What if we were missing the point? What if the ancients collected artifacts and created their own museums?

Obviously, in many cases, we do have documentation attesting to the religious or spiritual significance of funerary remains and tombs, but in those cases where no documentation exists, I do believe it is possible that we may be attributing a spiritual connection where none exists.

In the past few decades, for example, a host of new theories relating to shamanism have multiplied with reference to prehistoric art, especially the art of the caves. The 'shaman' figure drawn on the wall has inspired a veritable torrent of speculative prose. The figures were painted by expert artists, after all. Who is to say they were nothing more than works of art? Many modern and contemporary artists create works that could be interpreted as religious in nature... to go one step further, the imagination of an artist could be interpreted to be a depiction of a common spiritual belief or ritual when in fact it is nothing more than the product of a fertile imagination.

As usual, I have digressed from my initial train of thought. (Ah, the beauty of a web log, allowing the writer to meander freely from one thought to another!) I was prompted by photographs of the Hypogeum in Malta, existing almost intact in pristine condition thousands of years after its creation. Perhaps one of the reasons that ancient cultures focused so much attention, energy and labour upon houses of the dead was the knowledge that herein lay a sort of immortality for their culture and people.

Houses of the living change from year to year. They fall into disrepair, are torn down or expanded, bear the weight of footsteps and the ordinary 'wear and tear' of weather, humanity and other effects. The houses of the dead are frozen in time to some extent. Even community houses, where bones were added from year to year, retained a sort of timelessness. With their special spiritual and social significance, changes of any kind would not be made lightly. We know most about ancient cultures often from the tombs that remain. It is death that provides a reflection for us of life.