Overview of a new exhibition, which is due to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in October, and looks like an absolute cracker, focusing on the importance of metal working (running from October 16, 2007–February 18, 2008):
Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 16, 2007, Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples is the first exhibition ever devoted to these fascinating yet enigmatic works. On view will be some 70 superb statues and statuettes created in precious metals and copper alloys including bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) over more than two millennia.
Through their long history, the ancient Egyptians used copper, bronze, gold, and silver to create lustrous, graceful statuary for their interactions with their gods – from ritual dramas in the temples and chapels that dotted the landscape to festival processions through the towns and countryside that were thronged by believers. The exhibition will bring to New York masterpieces from around the world, including seven extremely rare inlaid and decorated large bronzes from the first half of the first millennium, the so-called Third Intermediate Period (1070 – 664 B.C.), the apogee of Egyptian metalwork. Among these will be the astonishing bronze statue of the priestess and noblewoman Takushit, the treasure of the Egyptian Collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Measuring some 27 inches (70 cm) in height and covered with a luminous latticework of divine figures and imagery in precious metal, this work has never before left Greece.
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