A 100-carat diamond
expected selling price:
$25 Million
THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015
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In this Feb 27, 2013 file photo, Japan’s Misao Okawa, then
114, poses with the certificate of the world’s oldest woman,
which was presented to her by Guinness World Records.
This file picture taken on March 4, 2015 shows the world’s oldest woman Misao Okawa with her
family members at a nursing home in Osaka, western Japan. — AP/AFP photos
Italy’s Egyptian museum reopens after ‘pharaonic’ revamp
H
The inner coffin of Kha is seen at the Egyptian Museum of Turin, Italy.
A visitor looks at a mummy in the Egyptian Museum.
uge black and gold sarcophaguses with kohl-rimmed eyes dwarf
visitors at Turin’s palatial Egyptian
museum, which is reopening to the public after a “pharaonic” five-year renovation. What was it like to be an early 20thcentury explorer, stumbling across the
ancient tombs of pharaohs and dignitaries and unearthing the mummified
bodies and treasures within?
Now visitors donning 3D glasses in the
museum in northern Italy will be able to
explore a reconstruction of the tomb of
Queen Nefertari, Ramesses the Great’s
favorite wife, as well as that of another
tomb and a cult chapel. The red-brick
building in the heart of Turin’s historic
centre, built as a Jesuit school in the
17th century, has undergone a 50 million
euro ($53.7 million) makeover that has
doubled its exhibition space to 12,000
square meters (129,000 square feet).
“The (refurbishment) works were really pharaonic. This renovation is not the
end of the journey, but the beginning,”
museum director Christian Greco told a
press review Tuesday. “ The Egyptian
museum will become a great international museum once again,” he said. One of
the top 10 museums in Italy in terms of
visitors-with over half a million people
through its doors in 2014 — it is opening
to the public for free yesterday, one
month before this year’s Expo begins in
nearby Milan.
Organizers hope some of the millions
of visitors expected in Italy’s economic
capital for the six-month Expo will be
enticed to add Turin-and the world’s only
museum outside of Cairo dedicated
entirely to Egypt-to their itineraries. The
collection-which boasts 32,500 pieces,
only a small portion of which are on
show-is laid out over four floors and covers a period from 4,000 BC to 700 AD.
Towering sarcophaguses
The star draw is clearly the new sarcophagus gallery, where varnished wooden or stone burial casings sporting intricate hair braids and long goatees stand
with their arms crossed, and a mummified
body lies curled on its side. A large part of
the museum’s current display of statues,
papyrus texts, sarcophaguses and mummies were bought in 1824 by King Carlos
Felix (1765-1831), king of PiedmontSardinia and of the House of Savoy. They
were part of a collection put together by
Bernardino Drovetti, a Piedmontese diplomat and antiquarian appointed French
Consul to Egypt by his companion in
arms, Napoleon.
Sniffed at by France, the collection was
offered to Italy-and archaeologically savvy
Carlos Felix jumped at the chance.
Egyptology at the time “was very in fashion. The public were discovering these
objects that were so new, that told an
obscure, far-away story,” Beppe Moiso, one
of the museum’s eight curators said.
French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion,
known primarily for deciphering the
Egyptian hieroglyphs on the famous
Rosetta Stone, studied the Turin collection
when it was first put together. From the 8metre (26-foot) long papyrus of the Book
of the Dead-now on display behind glass
— to the food preserved from ancient
tombs, Champollion was so impressed, he
said that the “road to Memphis and Thebes
passes through Turin.” — AFP
A visitor uses his cell phone to take a picture of hieroglyphic papyrus at
the Egyptian Museum.
Hieroglyphic papyrus are displayed.
A visitor passes near the sarcophagus of Butehamon.
Ancient Egyptian statues are displayed at the Egyptian Museum.
The coffin of
Merit, architect
Kha’s wife.
A visitor looks at Egyptian artifacts in the Egyptian Museo delle Antichita Egizie. — AP/AFP photos