I remember the day very vividly. It was almost exactly a year ago, when I came to the British Museum to see the exhibition of the Persian and Indian manuscripts from the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Khan, that the realization hit me as though I had just walked into a brick wall. The exhibition was superbly organized and the colours of the paintings astonishing, but the overall state and condition of the poor old British Museum was pitiable: the shabby discoloured façade made even worse by the unattractive temporary structure housing the museum shop and the hot-dog stall, the throngs of back-packed visitors milling in the Egyptian sculpture gallery who thought nothing of casually patting the monuments whenever an invitingly smooth surface presented itself, the temporary plywood flooring in some of the corridors and galleries, the detours which turned the building into a huge imitation of a maze or an unsuccessful adventure playground. Yet this was the place housing some of the greatest artistic and historical treasures of the world, the showpiece and demonstration of this country's attitude towards the past. Surely, I thought, this cannot go on like this much longer, the breaking point had been reached. And I boarded my coach back to Oxford, a very depressed man.
Well, I must report that my faith in the august institution in Great Russell Street has been at least partly restored. Some ten days ago I was one of the privileged people who had been asked to attend the official opening of the new Roxie Walker Galleries of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, and last Sunday I went back to look at them in detail. And they are excellent.
I am not one who is very keen on mummies and mummification. I am not quite sure how far back this attitude goes. Maybe to the time when I had to, willy nilly, give a lecture on mummification techniques to a group of first-year undergraduates. It all went well until we got to the point of how the ancient Egyptians made sure that the mummy did not lose its fingernails: by cutting the skin near the fingertips, as if creating naturally-grown thimbles, and fastening the nails with a piece of wire. It was at that point that one of the students fainted in a spectacular way and so brought my enthusiastic discourse to an abrupt end. Or maybe it was the time when I was approached by a major American television company and asked to give a brief interview about mummification. "Why me?", I asked, I had no special knowledge of nor interest in mummification. It did not matter, I was told, all they wanted were the generalities and nothing original. So I let myself be interviewed under the glare of the television lights but as the interview progressed, I grew more and more uneasy and suspicious of what it was about. So I asked. Now it was the turn of the producer to become a little embarrassed. Well, you know, we plan this series of late-night horror movies and the first to be shown is going to be The Mummy and we need a warm-up...
But like it or not, museum visitors, and especially children, want to see the mummies. This, I suspect, presents a huge dilemma to many archaeologists. I must admit that I have ambiguous feelings about putting human remains on display. Don't get me wrong, I am not squeamish; in any case, archaeology tends to dull one's reactions in a remarkable way. But these were people like you or me, and I should not like my mortal remains, or those of the people I love, to be gawped at as curiosities. And I don't believe in that old argument about the Egyptians wishing that their names should be spoken aloud and so made to live. So, I feel that if we want to put human remains on display, we must have a very good reason.
To the huge credit of the new Roxie Walker Galleries, Dr John Taylor, who was the Egyptologist who put the show together, and Roxie Walker herself, the new arrangement tries very hard - and successfully - to get away from the old-fashioned way of exhibiting mummies. Relatively few are on display, and when they are, it is in the context of the whole tomb group, with coffins, shabtis, shabti boxes, and all the other paraphernalia of an Egyptian burial. The emphasis is on what the mummified human remains can tell us about the people and their beliefs and how they help us understand Egyptian civilization. It is a modern concept which successfully combines the didactic - without trying too hard to educate us - and the historic and artistic elements. Visually, some of the coffins on display are stunningly colourful, and as the first stop of my London visit, just before I came to the British Museum, was the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Tate I was, if anything, extra sensitive to this striking aspect of Egyptian funerary art!
But for me, the most remarkable pieces are the wooden statuettes of underworld deities from the 18th-dynasty royal tombs now, at last, properly displayed: gazelle- or cat-headed deities, and even some where the head was replaced by a turtle, seated half-turned in a way which Egyptian statues never show (so we are told).
This is a very successful display. There was not a copy of the 50-pence gallery leaflet to be had and the gallery was packed. Well done, the British Museum. And shukran (thank you), ya Roxie.
Jaromir Malek
©Jaromir Malek
No part of this text may be reproduced without permission. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and of no other person or institution.