About the Exhibit

Tutankhamun, ancient Egypt's famous boy pharaoh, grew up 3,300 years ago in the royal court at Amarna, the ancient city of Akhet-aten, whose name meant the "Horizon of the Aten.” This extraordinary royal city grew, flourished—and vanished—in hardly more than a generation’s time. Amarna, Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun, a new exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, offers a rare look at the meteoric rise and fall of this unique royal city during one of Egypt’s most intriguing times. The exhibition, centerpiece of the Museum’s event-filled “Year of Egypt,” opens with a free celebration Sunday afternoon, November 12, 2006, and runs through October 2007.

Amarna, Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun will feature more than 100 ancient artifacts, some never before on display—including statuary of gods, goddesses and royalty, monumental reliefs, golden jewelry as well as personal items from the royal family, and artists’ materials from the royal workshops of Amarna. Most of the show’s artifacts date to the time of Tutankhamun and the “Amarna Period,” including many objects excavated almost a century ago from this short lived-royal city. The exhibition is designed by the McMillan Group, designers of the Los Angeles installation of traveling blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” (That exhibition, in a new installation, opens at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute in February 2007).

“The ‘Amarna Period’ in ancient Egyptian history—circa 1353 to 1336 BCE— has long fascinated archaeologists, historians and the public—and not just because of Howard Carter’s spectacular discovery, in 1926, of the intact tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun,” noted Egyptologist Dr. David Silverman, co-curator of the Amarna exhibition and national curator of the blockbuster Tutankhamun exhibition. “It is during this period that a still somewhat mystifying, short-lived experiment in religious, artistic and cultural change was happening at Amarna, and, from that seat of the royal court, quickly extended throughout Egypt.”

Located in a previously uninhabited stretch of desert in Middle Egypt, Amarna was founded by the Pharaoh Akhenaten. His wife, Queen Nefertiti, is still known worldwide for her exquisite beauty. She was not the mother of Tutankhamun, but it is likely that Akhenaten was his father. Sometimes referred to as Egypt’s “heretic” pharaoh, Akhenaten radically altered Egypt’s long-standing, polytheistic religious practices, introducing the belief in a single deity, the disk of the sun, called the Aten. With the new religion came a dramatically new artistic style, one characterized by more naturalistic figures, curving lines, and emphasized gestures. The new era, however, proved short lived—by the time that Tutankhamun died, at about the age of 19, hardly a decade into his kingship, the “Amarna Period” was not only coming to an end, but the Egyptian people’s traditional beliefs and religious practices were being restored. Plans were also underway to abandon and dismantle the city.

Penn Museum’s considerable collection of artifacts from this significant period provides the evidence for the exhibition’s storyline, which takes the visitor on a visual and intellectual journey from before the Amarna Period through to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (circa 1500 to 1292 BCE). Since the ancient Egyptians were thorough in their efforts to dismantle the royal city, excavators at Amarna in the 1920s found fragmentary evidence—hieroglyphic texts, small royal stamps, tiny molds, half-finished sculptures, and artifacts bearing glimpses of the royal family. Through drawings, maps, photography and computer recreations, the exhibition helps the visitor use these archaeological “clues” to rediscover this once-thriving royal court and city.

Central to the exhibition is a rare monumental stela depicting the solar deity Aten as a disk hovering above the pharaoh Akhenaten and his favorite wife Nefertiti. The Aten’s rays descend toward the couple, each terminating in a hand. Some time after the restoration of the traditional religion, this stela was cut down, placed face down on the ground, re-inscribed, and reused, probably as a base for a statue in the shape of a sphinx for the later pharaoh Merenptah (1213-1204 BCE). Ironically, this recycling accidentally preserved the decorated front of the stela from total destruction.

Other highlights from the exhibition, housed in two gallery rooms off the Museum’s Lower Egyptian gallery, include two statues that probably represent Tutankhamun: a bronze kneeling statuette and an elegant standing figure of Amun with Tutankhamun’s features. The latter statue is an indication of Egyptian religion reverting to traditional presentations connecting the king and the god Amun at the head of the pantheon. Other statues of traditional gods in the exhibition include the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet and the mother-son Isis and Horus. Personal items of ancient royalty—a seal and a scarab of Amenhotep III, vessel fragments bearing cartouches of queens Nefertiti and Tiye, a comb, an elegant statue of an Amarna princess—remind the visitor of the individuals who lived at that time. An ancient wooden mallet, fiber brush, unfinished statue and decorative molds for the making of glass items speak to the presence of a vibrant artisan community.

More than a decade before British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s extraordinary tomb in the Valley of the Kings, American explorer Theodore Davis found a nearby pit that contained vessels from the boy king’s funerary feast, among other things. Some of those ceramic pieces, part of Penn Museum’s collection, also will be on display.

Amarna, Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun is co-curated by Dr. David Silverman, the Eckley Brinton Coxe, Jr. Professor and Curator of Egyptology; Dr. Jennifer Wegner, Research Specialist, Egyptian section; and Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate Curator and Professor in the Museum’s Egyptian section.

In time for the opening of the Amarna exhibition, Penn Museum’s renowned Upper and Lower Egyptian galleries, recently refurbished, will add updated informational panels and labels. The galleries offer visitors an opportunity to view a wide variety of ancient Egyptian artifacts from several millennia. Materials range from monumental architecture to sculptures, pottery, jewelry, tomb goods, and mummies.

A twelve-ton, monumental granite sphinx dominates the Lower Egyptian Gallery, which houses one of the finest collections of Egyptian architecture on display in the United States. Surrounding the sphinx are the gateway, columns, doorways and windows from the best-preserved royal palace ever excavated in Egypt. The palace was built in the city of Memphis for the pharaoh Merenptah (circa 1224—1214 BCE), thirteenth son and eventual successor of Ramesses II.

The Upper Egyptian Gallery is home to the Museum’s finest examples of Egyptian sculpture. Highlights include massive stone sarcophaguses, and inlaid bronzes of the deities Osiris, primary god of the afterlife, and the warrior goddess Neith. An imposing seated statue of Ramesses II from the temple of Harsaphes sits in the center of the gallery. From this gallery, visitors may enter “The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science,” a popular exhibition that takes an in-depth look at the ancient Egyptian beliefs in the afterlife, featuring human and animal mummies, tomb artifacts, and objects and materials used in the mummification process.