Tally-Ho: The Memory Immortal

Tally-Ho is a semi-regular column of my adventures with the Adventure Crew (and sometimes other people). We figured that Singapore can’t be all that boring, and are determined to show other folks how fun Singapore can be… if you know where to look.

This is where I was today:

I was at the National Museum of Singapore to go to the Quest for Immortality – The World of Ancient Egypt exhibition. Alone, le gasp! Because the Adventure Crew has to work or go to school, and I run on a different calendar than them.

Adult admission to Quest for Immortality is $15, but I got in free because I’m a student. The exhibition runs until April 4, so there isn’t much time left to see the artefacts! The 200+ pieces are from the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) in Vienna.

Here’s a summary:

Quest for Immortality – The World of Ancient Egypt offers an insight to the ancient Egyptian’s attitude to life and the afterlife, and the preparations they made to ensure their transition from earthly existence to immortality. Discover the Egyptians’ means of equipping the dead – through mummification, provision of sustenance, magic and ritual – and explore the evolution of their burial rites as well as the changing relationship between man and ritual through time.

The exhibition isn’t so much about mummies than I’d expected; it’s more about the symbolism and meaning that the Ancient Egyptians attached to the items they used in their elaborate and extensive burial rituals. It’s quite refreshing to see the various artefacts put into their cultural context, rather than just being interesting objects on display.

Basically, the Ancient Egyptians believed that dying was just transiting to another state of being; the afterlife was just another form of existence, very similar to the flesh and blood state of living.

They mummified the bodies because the ba, which is the non-corporeal state of being (not the soul – that’s the ka) would perish without having a physical body to return to.

But yes. Pictures! Plus a sorta-kinda-not really walkthrough.

This elephant statue is only one of three known large Egyptian elephant statues. The other two are in Rome and in Aswan, Egypt.

This is the very large head of a ruler from the Ptolemaic Period, name unknown. It’s really big, and they think the full statue was about four metres high. The eyes were probably some other colored material.

This one is interesting. It’s King Horemheb sitting with Osiris, god of the sky or sun; Horemheb was believed to be the earthly incarnation of Osiris.

This is a… I can’t actually remember the word, but pieces of clay or pottery were used as sketchpads.

Jewelry was very important religious items, even for the poor. Specific materials, designs and colors had different magical properties, or were associated with various deities.

This piece has 24 different amulets made from precious stones and hammered sheets of gold. The beads themselves are precious stones, gold, silver and glass.

There was also a section about pyramids, but I guess those have been talked about to death (no pun intended) so not too much information there.

Statues also served as a kind of proxy body for the buried, and were usually placed in the tombs or offering chapels. They weren’t always faithful representations of the owners; their names on the statues were considered enough for the souls to identify their own.

Funeral cones were also used to identify tombs. They were shaped as cones so that they could be pushed into the plaster above a tomb’s doorway. The flat round part would be visible. They seemed to be more of a regional thing, mostly found around Thebes.

I overheard a tour guide saying that at least one of the cones belonged to a Pharaoh because of the words that were inscribed into the cone.

Another form of grave markers were called stele (plural form stelae). They had the names and paintings/cravings of the owner, plus inscriptions of prayers to various gods. Our concept of tombstones evolved from stelae, which is why they seem so familiar.

You can still see some of the paint on the stele – which, to be honest, kind of freaks me out. Because you realise that you’re looking at someone’s gravestone, that several thousand years ago this person really lived.

Moving on.

Tomb chapels were the accessible parts of the tombs, usually for families to conduct prayer rituals and place offerings. Offerings of food and drink were really important for the deceased; they had lists to make sure that the deceased were properly provided for in the afterlife.

The chapels also featured false doors, which didn’t actually open. These were meant for the spirit of the deceased to pass through, either to collect offerings or return to the burial chamber.

The final part of the exhibition are the coffins. Most are empty, though at least one contains human remains. There are two empty coffins at the start of that section. The neat thing is that you can look down at them to see them from the top, and you can descend a small ramp to look at their sides.

Coffins were the most important part of the entire burial, since it housed the body of the deceased – it gave the deceased some magical assistance in the afterlife.

Early coffins were rectangular and imitated the grand exterior of the Pharaoh’s palace, since the coffin was considered a house for the dead. Later on, they would evolve into the more familiar mummy-shaped type, and were made from wood, stone, cartonnage (layered linen stiffened with plaster) and sometimes even precious metals.

This exterior coffin was, I believe, made out of wood.

Another coffin:

There was at least one mummy with actual human remains, though you couldn’t see said remains.

As the mummies were being mummified, they were identified with pieces of wood with their names and the names of the families.

This particular label dates from 30 BCE to 395 CE and is written in Greek – the same practice that helped decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone.

We’re coming to the two most interesting pieces – for me, at any rate!

This piece is a fragment of a painted mummy bandage, which shows scenes from the Book of the Dead – the Egyptian funerary text, which was placed in coffins or burial chambers.

And, my personal highlight of the exhibition: the Book of the Dead.

The Book of the Dead contained hymns, prayers, and instructions that would help the deceased properly enter the afterlife. It was incredibly important, and the exhibition has lots of translated quotes from the Book.

There was a very long papyrus containing excepts from the Book of the Dead in the exhibition. It was easily eight feet long, and contained a number of large drawings accompanied by a lot of text.

Unfortunately I couldn’t really get a good look at it, because there were three(!) school excursions there. But here are some shots of a scroll that belonged to Pay-nefer-nefer:

Isn’t that incredibly cool? Not to mention the huge significance of the Book in the culture and religion of the time.

So, in all? The exhibition is amazing, but only if you’re interested in the socio-cultural contexts of Egyptian burial items. If you’re there to see mummified human remains, you’ll be sorely disappointed; but go in with a relatively open mind, and you will learn a lot of things.