Egyptian mummies are coming to Vladivostok!

Eternal life after death as imagined by the ancient Egyptians. A new exhibition will help to reveal the mystery of long-gone days, which on March 1, will begin work in the Museum-Reserve of the History of the Far East named after V.K. Arsenyev. 

A large-scale project "Ancient Egypt". The Art of Immortality is the result of studies of mummies and monuments of ancient Egyptian art from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. At the exhibition, multimedia technologies will be combined with authentic ancient Egyptian exhibits. Pushkin Museum of Art has the largest collection of ancient Egyptian art in Russia. About 90 exhibits from the museum’s storage facilities will be delivered to Vladivostok – a wooden painted sarcophagus, reliefs, statues and statuettes, fragments of mummies decor, bronze plastic, art craft items and amulets. The central place in the exposition will be occupied by 3D reconstruction of the appearance of the ancient Egyptians – a young woman 20-25 years old and a man 30-40 years old. These “reviving” mummies make it possible to imagine what the inhabitants of the long-vanished civilization of the Nile Valley looked like.

We note that the implementation of the exhibition project became possible thanks to long-term studies of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Research Center “Kurchatov Institute” with the participation of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations. The study of one of the symbols of ancient Egypt using natural-scientific methods has long been conducted in museums around the world. Back in the early XX century, along with the unfolding, which irreversibly damaged mummies, began their non-destructive study by X-ray. Today, computed tomography has been added to it, which is now widely used in museum practice.

As part of a joint project of museum staff and scientists, for the first time in Russia, computer-tomographic scanning of 10 entire human mummies, several animal mummies and fragments of mummies from the museum collection was carried out. The resulting CT images were analyzed by anthropologists, criminologists and radiologists. Scientists saw the mummies “from the inside”, penetrated through the swaddling without destroying it. Microsamples of bones, teeth and hardened embalming substances were taken from several mummies for paleogenetic and chemical analysis. Scientific staff of the museum studied the features of swaddling and decor of mummies, clarifying the dating.

Preserved for eternal existence by skilled embalmers, mummies reveal the mystery of immortality as it was understood by the ancient Egyptians. The work carried out in the framework of the joint project and its results are of great interest not only for the scientific community, but also for the general public, the researchers emphasize. We will not reveal all the secrets of the joint project of the two federal museums. Note only that among the most valuable artifacts from the collection of ancient Egyptian art, which can be seen by visitors to the Arsenyev Museum, there is an altar belonging to the Late period of the XXVI dynasty, VII-VI centuries BC. The inscription reads: “God of the gods, may he give the earth and all that is in it, eternal and infinite.” In peace and love, eternal and infinite. Ancient Egypt exhibition. The Art of Immortality" will work in the Main Building of the Arsenyev Museum (Svetlanskaya Street, 20). 

The material is provided by the press service of the State United Museum-Reserve of the History of the Far East named after V.K. Arsenyev.