Exhibition: Egitto mai visto

ANSAmed (Claudia Tomatis)

A world preview of two collections that have never been seen before is being inaugurated in Trento. The exhibition entitled 'Egitto mai visto' (Unseen Egypt) will be open to the public from saturday May 30 until November 8 at the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento.

The collections include mummies of a man, a woman, a gat, two fish and a small crocodile. The bulk of the collection comes from items kept in storage at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the most important such museum outside Cairo. The two human mummies from the First Intermediate Period (2100-1900 BC) in fact come from Turin. They were discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century during excavations by the archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli in Assiut and Gebelein. Both mummies are in a good condition and underwent analyses and cleaning for the exhibition.

The male mummy is enclosed in a tree trunk with a staff, a symbol of prestige, in the sarcophagus. The female mummy is that of Neb-em-Khis, the wife of one of the heads of the province. The latter were important military figures when central Pharaonic power was struck by crisis.