Ancient
Egyptians still give lessons on immortality
The culture was obsessed with life after death
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The mummy of Nekhet-iset-aru
is part of the exhibition 'Quest For Immortality: The world of ancient Egypt'.
The exhibition will include 230 artefacts, some dating back to 4000BC.
Singapore: With their pyramids and elaborate funerary rituals, ancient
Egyptians appeared to have been obsessed with death, but an exhibition seeks to
show that it was their love of life that drove them to seek immortality.
Quest For Immortality: The World of Ancient Egypt made its debut in
Singapore yesterday, with some 230 antiquities selected from the major Egyptian
and Near Eastern collection of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM).
KHM curator Michaela Huettner said the exhibition was one of the biggest
of Egyptian antiquities to have ever travelled, with the displays, some dating
back as far as 4,000BC and including fragile mummies, providing an overview of
the ancient culture.
"Everybody thinks ancient Egypt was mummies, pyramids and
Tutankhamun, but there was a daily life too, and that's what we tried to
show," she told reporters.
And it was this obsession with life that caused them to pursue all means
to ensure the attainment of immortality," added Hairani Hassan, the
National Museum of Singapore curator.
Ancient Egyptians believed death was only a gateway to another, eternal
life, and the desire to ensure immortality was woven into their daily rituals.
Appeasing the deities was very important, as was protection from evil
forces, and many of the objects on display attest to that.
After death, Egyptians made sure the departed had the best send-off
possible, including ancient tombstones, books of the dead which extolled the
virtues of the deceased and vessels for food, beer and wine to give them
sustenance on their journey.
Human nature
Also on display is the poignant mummy of a young mother named Nes-Khons,
whose body was preserved along with the corpses of her two babies who are all
believed to have died at or shortly after birth.
Hassan said the Singapore museum employees involved in the exhibition
held a prayer session before uncrating the mummies.
"We did it just to appease the spirits," she said. "It's
human nature to be a bit perturbed in the presence of death."
The exhibit made up of artefacts purchased and found at archaelogical
digs in Egypt, not acquired from illegal traffickers is sponsored by the
Egyptian government.
"The exhibition's appeal lies in the fact that we all, in some way,
seek immortality, we all fear death, the end of life," Hassan said.
"For the ancient Egyptians, death was not final... As they said,
‘you have not departed dead, you have departed alive'."
