Nelson Gallery acquires ancient Egyptian funerary display

Kansas City Star

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has announced a prominent new resident. At 8 feet tall she could come to be known as a Wonder Woman, but don’t call her “Mummy Dearest.”

The museum’s multimillion-dollar acquisition is a spectacular painted coffin of a noblewoman named Meretites created in Egypt 2,500 years ago. It did not come equipped with its human remains, but is part of an assemblage including a large outer coffin made to hold it and more than 300 other funerary objects that accompanied its inhabitant to the netherworld.

The museum spent two years working to acquire the ensemble, one of the finest of its type for its quality and state of preservation.

“She’s a celebrity, a rock star,” said Marc Wilson, the Nelson’s director and CEO.

And it’s rare, he said: “There’s not been an assemblage on the market since the 1920s.”

The museum will put the pieces on public view in 2010 in new specially designed galleries in the antiquities department.

In the meantime they will be the subject of a significant conservation study funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The study is likely to yield new information about some rare, toxic pigments used in the coffin design, said Kate Garland, the Nelson’s senior conservator.

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