Exhibition Memoir: Encountering Ancient Egypt—'The Eternal Enigma of the Mummies'

'The Eternal Enigma of the Mummies: Encountering Ancient Egypt' exhibition officially opened in the first quarter of this year at the Meet the Museum Shanghai Jing'an venue. The exhibition gathered 123 precious ancient Egyptian artifacts from the University of Aberdeen Museums and Special Collections in the UK, all of which are being displayed in China for the first time, including two actual mummies, meeting the modern world across millennia. In the strictly hierarchical ancient Egypt, only pharaohs, nobles, and other upper-class individuals were made into mummies after death. The completed mummies were covered with exquisitely made masks and coffins, not only for physical protection but also as an idealized substitute for the deceased. For this reason, some nobles spared no expense in gilding their coffins or even making them entirely out of gold. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the flesh of the gods was made of gold, so adding gold leaf to the mummy masks and coffins not only represented the wealth and status of the deceased but also expressed the hope of obtaining a god-like body, emulating the eternal radiance of the gods. Moreover, gold, as a stable metal, does not oxidize or decay even after being buried underground for thousands of years, truly fulfilling the ancient Egyptians' pursuit of eternity and immortality. One of the precious exhibits is a relief inscribed with royal inscriptions belonging to Ramesses IV; such royal reliefs are usually found in tombs. Merely preserving the body was not enough; ancient Egyptians also needed a luxurious tomb—a mansion for the body to reside in and for the deceased to continue enjoying 'life' after resurrection. Early noble and royal tombs were essentially large rectangular buildings made of mud bricks or stone, known today as mastabas, derived from the Arabic word for 'bench'. Ancient Egyptians, who mastered the art of embalming, not only made mummies of human corpses but also of pets to accompany their owners to paradise, with cat mummies being the most famous. Ancient Egyptians were particularly fond of cats, and as worshippers of the sun god, they believed that cats' eyes glowed because they absorbed sunlight during the day and released it at night. For ancient Egyptians, death was not the end but a pause in life; after death, one would enter another life, more beautiful than the present one, eternal life. Therefore, they prepared for the afterlife by making mummies and building pyramids, creating a tomb culture that has astonished the world. Meet the Museum·Shanghai Jing'an Venue