Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

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Carnegie Museum of Natural History presents The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects from Ancient Egypt

March 9, 2024-March 9, 2025 

Ancient Egyptian Objects Return to View, Museum Invites Visitors to Step Behind the Scenes and Follow the Conservation of More than 80 Ancient Objects

person removing soot from an ancient Egyptian artifact

Carnegie Museum of Natural History presents The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects from Ancient Egypt. The new exhibition, produced in house, opens the curtain on behind-the-scenes work and puts the art and science of artifact conservation centerstage. It also marks the return to public view of ancient Egyptian objects after the museum closed Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt in 2023 for necessary conservation. Opening March 9th and on view for one year, The Stories We Keep invites visitors to see these objects—cared for by the museum for more than a century—in a new light and to witness the work that will preserve them for future generations. 

pair of gloved hands holding an artifact

Every object in the museum’s care has stories to tell, about its creation and original use, its journey to Pittsburgh, and about the lives of those in ancient Egypt. The Stories We Keep features more than 80 items from ancient Egypt—including the 4,000-year-old Dahshur boat, one of only four in the world. CMNH invites visitors to engage with these objects like never before, have conversations with museum conservators, observe the care and restoration of objects in real time, and attempt the work themselves by reassembling replicas of ancient objects created with the assistance of 3D scanners.

Museum conservators will hold daily demonstrations and answer visitor questions about the objects and conservation tactics. Visitors can also submit questions by using a QR code, and the conservation team will address select entries in a video series accessible on the museum’s website and social media channels.


“We know how interested visitors are in ancient Egypt,” said Sarah Crawford, Director of Exhibitions and Design. “This exhibition allows visitors to satisfy their curiosity and watch as our Conservation team carries out their vital work caring for these ancient Egyptian items. We hope our fans gain new insights into these beloved objects and an appreciation for the hard work, dedication, and talent of our colleagues who safeguard them.”

person using a brush on a piece of wood

The exhibition will prominently feature the Dahshur boat, one of four funerary boats still in existence from Egypt’s 12th Dynasty. In 2023, CMNH recruited Egyptian conservator Dr. Mostafa Sherif, an expert on ancient wood restoration, to treat the boat. He joins senior conservator Gretchen Anderson, who oversees the museum’s conservation operations, and project conservator Annick Vuissoz, who arrived at the museum last month to manage the ongoing conservation of 650 ancient Egyptian objects in CMNH’s care.

“This is an entirely new experience for visitors,” said Dr. Lisa Haney, Assistant Curator and Egyptologist. “It connects us to ancient people in a new way, encouraging us to think differently about our own everyday objects and the stories they tell. We hope to create new connections between the past and the present and highlight the science that helps preserve those connecting threads.”

 
The Stories We Keep is free with museum admission and runs until March 9, 2025. General museum admission costs $25 for adults, $20 for adults 65 and older, $15 for children aged 3-18 or students with valid student IDs, and $12 after 3 p.m. on weekdays. Admission is free for members and children aged 2 and younger. More information is available at CarnegieMNH.org.  

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Looking at Love in Ancient Egypt

With Valentine’s Day here, it’s hard to ignore all of the chocolate displays in stores and the sappy movies on TV – some might say that love had been commercialized for companies to make a quick buck. While they may be right about America in 2019, the same cannot be said about the ancient Egyptians.  The Egyptians are credited with a lot.  They built the pyramids, they mummified bodies and had giant elaborate tombs.  One thing that people might not think about as often is how the Egyptians experienced love, marriage, and even infidelity and divorce.

Our first stop on the love train is the story of Isis and Osiris – two of the most famous gods of ancient Egypt.

image of Osiris

As seen in this image from the Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt here at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Osiris is depicted as green-skinned, and he looks like a mummy! These are attributes unique to Osiris and they come from the story of himself and Isis.  Osiris was reigning as king, and his brother Set was not too happy about it.  So, he killed Osiris, tore his body into a bunch of pieces and strew them all over Egypt.  In her mourning, Osiris’ wife Isis traveled far and wide to gather all of the pieces of her husband to eventually put them all back together and had a child with him.  That child was Horus, who would then go on to avenge his father and kill his uncle.  If that’s not love, then I don’t know what is.

Our second stop is on the topic of marriage in ancient Egypt.  In American culture today, weddings are huge expensive parties that include entire families, huge cakes, and poufy dresses.  This is not anything like marriages in ancient Egypt.  Early marriages consisted of a woman entering a man’s house with whatever goods that they had agreed upon and the husband signing some paperwork.  Often marriages were arranged, but there is evidence that importance was placed on a loving couple, like love poems and songs found at the workers village of Deir el-Medina.  The people living in this area were usually tomb builders or painters, like Sennedjem, the owner of the tomb in Egypt on which our reconstruction is based.

text on pottery shard from ancient Egypt

Love poems from Deir el-Medina could be found on similar surfaces as those on display in Walton Hall, like these shards of stone and ostraca (shards of pottery). Sometimes shards like these were used like “scratch paper” and discarded, leaving them for archaeologists to find.  According to Cameron Walker at National Geographic, these poems turned simple daily tasks such as catching fish into metaphors for their love.

Marriage was supposed to be everlasting for a good pair.  If you were faithful to your spouse and a good spouse overall, you could find them waiting for you in the afterlife.  If you were not good to them, you might not see them, or you might not even get to the afterlife at all.  But, Egyptian society was quite sophisticated, if things didn’t work out in life, there were options for divorce.  If either the husband or wife was dissatisfied, they could initiate a divorce, and the settlement was seemingly as simple as the marriage.  Some paperwork was signed, and assets were divided upon agreements during the marriage.  One important pillar of marriage was fidelity.  If a spouse was found to be unfaithful to their partner it would be seen as grounds for a divorce.

Overall, the Egyptians placed emphasis on being faithful and being a loving spouse.  But at least in the realm of the gods, there were cases of love that transcend our comprehension.  Let’s be honest, who would really go all over and find pieces of their dead spouse…anyone?  So, all in all the ancient Egyptians might seem to be a mysterious people but in the aspects of love and marriage they are really just like everyone else.  We are all just people looking for love and, in the case where we can’t find it, cheap sweets to tide us over.

Anthony Kamler is a volunteer in the Section of Anthropology. Museum employees and volunteers are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences working at the museum! 

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Collections Connections

by Erin Peters

As Assistant Curator who works with the ancient Egyptian collections at CMNH, I care for and research our own collections, and also strive to be aware of connecting threads with other museums, their collections, and staff. In the wake of the devastating fire at Brazil’s National Museum that destroyed an incalculable amount of irreplaceable natural and cultural heritage (which included what is reported to be the entire Egyptian collection consisting of approximately 700 objects), it is especially important to celebrate these connections, and continue to build them.

In researching how we might update the display in our Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt, Jaron Keener (CMNH Exhibit Designer and Production Manager) and I recently went to the St Louis Art Museum. Jaron and I were excited to see the museum’s newly reinstalled permanent Egyptian collection, and to view the blockbuster travelling show, Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds.

Dr. Erin Peters at St. Louis Art Museum

We looked at amazing objects (some of them rarely on view outside of Egypt), like this monumental statue of a queen in the guise of Isis.

Jaron Keener at St. Louis Art Museum

And we were interested in how objects were displayed, like this group of processional vessels and equipment installed in front of a life-size image of a boat that would have been used in processions. The boat is similar in size to our 30-foot funerary boat from Dashur.

We were also delighted to find other objects that are similar to ours in the Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt.

wooden statuette of Serapis

Our small wooden statuette of the god Serapis was found at Kasr el Harit, a small town near the Fayum in Egypt. The Fayum is a region located west of the Nile River and south of modern-day Cairo. Kasr el Harit was known as Theadelphia by the early Roman period in Egypt, and is the same site that an exquisite over-life-size wooden statue of Serapis on display in Sunken Cities was found.

wooden Serapis

While images of Serapis are common from many areas of the ancient Mediterranean, these two wooden statues are relatively rare, and show how Egypt’s desert climate has preserved an exceptional amount of material. In connecting that material across museums, cities, and countries, we can expand our knowledge and continue to discover new things about Egypt and the rest of the ancient world.

Erin Peters is assistant curator of science and research at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences working at the museum.

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Does it sound strange to walk like an Egyptian on painted floors?

By Dr. Erin Peters

We often see paintings hung on walls today, so it may be hard to believe ancient Egyptians could walk on them! Many surfaces were painted in ancient Egyptian temples and tombs, even floors. We have a fragment of a painted floor from the Meru-Aten palace/temple at Akhetaten (modern Tell el-Amarna) in the Section of Anthropology’s storage. Amarna was the capital city of the pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife, Nefertiti, who famously changed Egyptian religion from polytheistic – worshiping many gods – to monotheistic – worshiping a single god. Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s single god was the Aten, the sun itself.

Fragment of a painted floor pavement from the Meru-Aten, Akhetaten
1. Fragment of a painted floor pavement from the Meru-Aten, Akhetaten (el-Amarna), Dynasty 18, acc. # 7106.

Nature was essential to all eras of Egyptian society, but the change to worshiping one natural element heightened this relationship in the Amarna Period. We see this in the art and architecture that survives, like our painted floor pavement. As you can see in the detail, the painting depicts red poppies, a common flower in ancient Egypt. The exquisite interlacing leaves and flowers, along with the visible brush-strokes of the ancient artisan, give the poppies a sense of naturalism characteristic of Akhenaten’s reign.

Detail of fragment of a painted floor pavement from the Meru-Aten, Akhetaten (el-Amarna)
2. Detail of fragment of a painted floor pavement from the Meru-Aten, Akhetaten (el-Amarna), Dynasty 18, acc. # 7106.

This naturalism contrasts with art and architecture produced before and after the Amarna Period, like the painting in the Dynasty 19 tomb of Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina. Half of Sennedjem’s tomb is recreated in our Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. You may be familiar with the scene of Sennedjem and his wife adoring several gods in two rows within a shrine. The other half of the tomb shows Sennedjem and his wife in the Field of Reeds (what we think of as the Afterlife). The fields are surrounded by water and abundant trees and plants, including the mandrake, cornflower, and red poppy in the row at the bottom.

tympanum of the East Wall of the tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina
3. The tympanum of the East Wall of the tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina, Dynasty 19.

This detail shows rows of mandrakes, cornflowers, and poppies – all are painted in a more stylistic, or abstract way, than the poppies on our Amarna Period floor pavement.

Detail showing mandrake, cornflowers, and red poppies
4. Detail showing mandrake, cornflowers, and red poppies in the tympanum of the East Wall of the tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina, Dynasty 19.

While we see more naturalistic representations in the Amarna Period, floors were painted in all periods – so walking like an Egyptian could often mean walking on paintings!

Erin Peters is joint assistant curator of science and research at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences working at the museum.

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Reinstallation of Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt

entrace way to Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt

Building on our National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Projects for the Public Discovery Grant, Carnegie Museum of Natural History is excited to announce that NEH also awarded us an Exhibitions Planning Grant for a reinstallation of our current Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. This will be a groundbreaking and highly interactive exhibition, exploring the natural and human history of Ancient Egypt and featuring anthropological artifacts and natural sciences specimens. @NEHgov #NEHGrant