Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
“Statuette of Osiris with golden eyes” Thonis-Heracleion, Egypt; Late Period (664-332 BC); bronze and gold; 10 7/16 x 2 13/16 x 1 11/16 inches; IEASM Excavations (SCA 1267)
“‘They were obsessed with death’ is one of the things you hear a lot with Egypt,” says Lisa Çakmak, assistant curator of ancient art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. “If anything, the opposite was true: They were obsessed with life.”
Life, and the particulars of how it was lived in the twilight of the pharaohs, is the focus of Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds, which opens at SLAM this month. Çakmak, who co-curated the St. Louis iteration of the show with French maritime archaeologist Franck Goddio, says she hopes that it will expand people’s understanding of ancient Egypt beyond the oft-trotted-out funerary objects. The show, which has already astonished audiences in London, Paris, and Zurich, includes such artifacts, many never seen outside of Egypt, as jewelry, vessels, cookware, incense burners, and bent ladles that were thrown into the water in offering to the gods. The real show-stoppers, though, are the colossal statues—some more than 17 feet tall—that were carefully excavated from the bottom of the sea over a number of years and will reign over Sculpture Hall for six months.
Those enormous statues, including one of the god Hapy, once stood in front of the temple of Thonis-Heracleion, a nearly forgotten ancient city that Goddio rediscovered in 2000 during explorations on the Mediterranean seabed. In its day, Thonis-Heracleion was one of the most powerful commercial centers in the world; it was where goods flowed into Egypt from the Mediterranean and were barged up the Nile. “Which is why it has two names,” Çakmak says. “Thonis is what the town was called in Egyptian. Heracleion was what the Greeks called it.” It was once thought to be two cities, but Goddio’s research established that there was just one—an economic and religious powerhouse. Its temple was the site where the new pharaoh was ritually legitimized, and pilgrims traveled here for the Mysteries of Osiris, a multiday religious festival in which boat processionals floated through a canal to nearby Canopus, which Goddio also unearthed.
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
A statue of a pharaoh at Aboukir Bay
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
A bust of Hapy rising from Aboukir Bay
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
French maritime archaeologist Franck Goddio
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
Remains of a statue depicting Arsinoe
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Photo by Christoph Gerigk, copyright Frank Goddio/Hilti Foundation
Goddio's crew recovers a stele from Thonis-Heracleion.
Eventually, Çakmak says, Thonis-Heracleion’s influence waned and Alexandria’s grew; Canopus became a suburb of Alexandria. That triangulation is the story of the show, but along the way, all kinds of themes emerge, including many to which modern audiences can relate. (For instance, Thonis-Heracleion disappeared under coastal flooding, a phenomenon that scientists say climate change could cause in the future.) But, Çakmak says, because this is such an unusual show, such a hybrid, you don’t have to make a deep study of ancient cultures to appreciate it (though if you do make that jump, it may totally transform how you conceive of the ancient world).
“Every curator wants to put together a blockbuster show, but no curator wants to put together a blockbuster show that has no heart or message or concept,” she says. “What I like about this show is, the story it’s telling is based on archaeological excavation, scholarship, and research. It’s a real study. But it’s also just really cool. There are really big things; there are little things; there are very ornate things; there are more modest things. And it has an artistic quality beyond the scholarly aspect: These objects are also really beautiful works of art…it’s a bit of a unicorn that way.”
FYI Sunken Cities runs March 25–September 9. For more info, visit slam.org.
And Don’t Miss
Right around Christmastime, SLAM’s beloved mummies moved to a new home: the out-of-the-way Gallery 313. It’s a space that has often been missed by museum visitors—but no more.
Çakmak led the reinstallation. “I liken it to putting the milk in the back of the store,” she laughs. People will go out of their way to find something they really want to see, and the Egyptian collection is one of SLAM’s most popular exhibits.
The small, narrow gallery is a perfect space for the mummies; it feels appropriately cozy and enclosed, the ceiling painted dark blue and starry like that of an actual Egyptian tomb. But there are cool tech aspects, too, including interactive touchscreen displays that feature CT scans of the mummies taken at the Washington University School of Medicine.
