: "Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt: A Family Archive From The Nile
Valley," on view at the Norton Museum of Art through April 4, has
been organized entirely from the vast collection of antiquities
at The Brooklyn Museum of Art. The centerpiece is a group of
eight papyri or scrolls, written in Aramaic, which was then the
common tongue of the multi-cultural ancient world. They
constitute the archive of a single family, telling the story of a
man named Ana-niah, a Jewish temple official on Elephantine
Island in the Nile River, his wife Tamut, an Egyptian slave; and
their children, Palti and Yehoishema.
To illuminate and provide a rich context for the story told by
these documents, the exhibition assembles a remarkable array of
artworks and artifacts. Included are statues and reliefs carved
from marble and granite, bronze statuettes, silver vessels, gold
jewelry and funerary objects in other media made in Egypt and
elsewhere over a period of a thousand years, from the time of the
Pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti (mid-Fourteenth
Century BC), to the Macedonian conquest of the Fourth Century BC.
A wealth of texts, maps, timelines, photographs and Nineteenth
Century paintings will educate visitors about this virtually
unknown episode in both Egyptian and Jewish history.
This exhibition provides unique, tangible and fascinating
confirmation of the Biblical narrative, in II Kings and Jeremiah,
of the first Diaspora of the Jewish people following the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon in 586 BC. It
is well known that most of the aristocracy of the Kingdom of
Judah were taken in captivity to Babylon, where some of them
(such as Daniel and Esther) continued to lead lives of great
distinction.
What is not well documented is the fact that the majority of
those scattered beyond the Jewish homeland went elsewhere and in
other directions - some to the great cities of what are now Syria
and Turkey. A large contingent returned to the Nile Valley of
Egypt, the land from which Moses had led the Exodus some 800
years earlier. There they became well integrated into Egyptian
society and led productive lives in peace amid the native
Egyptians, the Persians who had recently conquered the ancient
kingdom and even a colony of Greeks whose power and influence
throughout the Mediterranean world was at this time on the rise.
The Norton Museum of Art is at 1451 South Olive Avenue. For
information, 561-832-5196 or www.norton.org.
