De Young Museum Showcases 3,000-Year-Old Golden City Artifacts

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The de Young Museum in San Francisco is featuring more than 130 items from two of the 20th century's most significant Egyptian archaeological finds, including objects from the 3,000-year-old Golden City. This marks the North American debut for 20 artifacts from the settlement, which renowned archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass and his team discovered in September 2020. The exhibition,“Treasures of the Pharaohs,” runs through January 31.

Dr. Hawass and his team initially sought a mortuary temple for Pharaoh Tutankhamen on the Nile's west bank, near Luxor, between the temples of Ramses III and Amenhotep III. Instead, they uncovered the Golden City, a massive workers' settlement. Renée Dreyfus, ancient art curator at the de Young Museum, described the discovery to Observer:“Its walls are so high and so intact that it really is a miraculous discovery.” She added,“We know it's a huge city because they had these industrial bakeries, a stone mill, funerary monuments. You're finding things like baby rattles, baby toys and amulets.”

Artifacts from the Golden City date to the Eighteenth Dynasty, part of the New Kingdom Period, approximately 1,000 years after the Great Pyramids and 1,500 years before Cleopatra and the Romans. This site is believed to be the source for many of King Tut's treasures, with evidence of a jewelry workshop where semi-precious stones were forged. These stones included turquoise and malachite from Sinai, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, red jasper from Nubia, and red agate and gold from the Eastern Desert, obtained through trade or tribute. The findings also include glass vessels, limestone statues, and baked clay casting molds used for amulets, such as an Eye of Horus in blue faience, a grape cluster, and a lotus flower.

The Golden City was the birthplace of Akhenaten, son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Akhenaten abandoned the traditional polytheistic religion for the sole worship of Aten, the sun-disk deity, and then left the Golden City to build Amarna in his god's honor. Dreyfus explained this historical shift:“There was nothing there before. It was a new religious revolution, artistic revolution.” She noted that those who followed Akhenaten could continue their work, leaving much of the original city intact, which aids excavation. The exhibition also highlights the rigid social hierarchy of ancient Egypt but points out that the New Kingdom Period allowed for merit-based advancement. Dreyfus cited an image in the show of a figure named Ay receiving a necklace of valor from Akhenaten. Ay, who served Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamen, eventually became vizier, a role Dreyfus likened to the Secretary of State.“After Akhenaten died at such a young age, Ay worked his way into becoming the pharaoh.”

While celebrating the daily lives of common Egyptians, with items like clay sculptures of workers making beer or grinding grain, the exhibition also features royal artifacts. These include a gilded wooden coffin lid of Queen Ahhotep II and a necklace with a gilded wooden pectoral made from amber, carnelian, glass, turquoise, and lapis lazuli, also from the Eighteenth Dynasty.

The exhibition also draws from discoveries at Tanis in the northeastern Nile Delta. Though initially uncovered in the early 19th Century and further excavated by French archaeologist Auguste Mariette in the 1860s, the royal tombs were not found until 1939 by Pierre Montet. This find, 17 years after King Tut's tomb, was largely overlooked due to World War II. Dreyfus, who organized the San Francisco show following its debut in Rome, placed the Tanis treasures in the final gallery.“You've got gold, you've got lapis lazuli,” she said of the site, which appeared in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unlike the Valley of the Kings, whose tombs were plundered early, the Tanis kings were buried discreetly under the Temple of Amun complex within the city, leading to their intact discovery.

Highlights from Tanis include a king's gold funerary mask, a ritual bronze heset ewer with King Amenemope's carved hieroglyphic name, and a king's pectoral pendant crafted from gold, lapis lazuli, feldspar, and glass. Also featured is the Collar of Psusennes I, a concentric beaded item of gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, and jasper, bearing a cuneiform inscription from ancient Assyria.

Most objects in the exhibition are on loan from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and were selected by former director Tarek al-Awadi. Dreyfus stated:“I had the opportunity to install it in the way that I feel mirrors what he had in mind when he came up with these objects.” She added that the exhibition showcases the“splendor and beauty of Egyptian art,” covering the“narrative of the kings and those surrounding them, everyday life, death and the afterlife.”

We previously reported:

A joint Spanish-Egyptian mission has unearthed a well-preserved 5th Dynasty tomb of a high-ranking official near Saqqara, Egypt.

Source: Observer Arts

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