Director of the Ashmolean Museum Christopher Brown on the spectacular collection that tells Tutankhamun’s story
The year 2014 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the University of Oxford’s Griffith Institute. The Institute was established by Francis Llewellyn Griffith, Oxford’s first Professor of Egyptology, who left a substantial part of his estate for the creation of ‘a permanent home or institute for the study of the ancient languages and antiquities of the Near East… in or adjacent to, the Ashmolean Museum’.
The association between the Museum and the Institute — one the home to a world renowned collection of artefacts from ancient Egypt, Sudan and the Near East, the other the repository of an archive of some of Egyptology’s greatest scholars, and each centres of scholarly research – has been maintained both physically and intellectually ever since. It seemed appropriate therefore to celebrate this long relationship by exhibiting some of the Institute’s greatest treasures to tell the story of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter’s remarkable discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1922.
Howard Carter at Tutankhamun's tomb
The Ashmolean is of course a museum of both art and archaeology, and they are brought together in this exhibition. Howard Carter was a meticulous archaeologist who would take an astonishing ten years to record the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
He was also a talented artist and draughtsman who, along with other contemporary artists, captured in pencil drawings and paintings the detail and vibrancy of many of the objects he uncovered. Of equal importance was the archaeological photography of Harry Burton, who produced images that are works of art in their own right.
The exhibition also explores the impact of the discovery on the fashion and politics of the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ and investigates what the tomb’s contents can tell us about Tutankhamun and his time though spectacular ancient objects drawn from the Ashmolean’s own collections as well as major international loans.
Discovering Tutankhamun
Until November 2
The Ashmolean
Call 01865 305305 or visit ashmolean.org
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