Sunday, December 03, 2006

More re Christies Mummy Sale

"On Thursday, as part of a large auction of antiquities, Christie's in New York plans to put up for bid a mummy and its sarcophagus that date back to around 990-940 BC. The sarcophagus, made of fig wood, comes from a period when both the insides and outsides of these burial containers were elaborately painted or sculpted. Ancient Egyptians were known for their lavish tombs, with beautiful scenes on the walls. But grave robbing was already prevalent by 1000 BC, and so the scenes moved from the wall to the sarcophagus, which was often hidden in a cache in a temple.
The auction house has made no public estimate of how much they expect it to bring, although the last time a mummy was sold at auction was in May 2003, when Christie's in England set a record of $1.4 million. Max Bernheimer, the head of the antiquities department at Christie's, said that this sarcophagus is in better shape and that the house is confident it will go for more than $1.5 million."
See the above page for more.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Again I must protest- WRHS has a sordid history of mismanagement and selling off objects. Lending NesKhons as a 'permanent loan' was merely a ploy on the old theme of out od sight, out of mind.

However, a detail of this story gives me yet another pause- the X-Rays that were always exhibited above NesKhons at WRHS showed a very bad break of the femur. At the time those X-Rays were taken, it was thought that this break was his COD. If this mummy doen't show this break, then they've put the wrong mummy with the wrong coffin.