Tutankhamun's Childhood Home Exhibited At Penn Museum

Visitors who already have been to the Amarna exhibition will soon have something new to see: on October 3, 2007 to June 2008, the exhibition will be adding a famous sculpture of the head of King Tutankhamun from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of a short-term loan exchange with that institution. Penn Museum's own kneeling statue of Tutankhamun, a featured item in the final section of the Amarna exhibition, will come down, to join the Met's exhibition, Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples, opening in New York October 16.

Penn Museum's Amarna exhibition was originally conceived and developed as a complement to the record-setting blockbuster Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which closed at The Franklin Institute September 30. Amarna, which opened in November of 2006, was originally scheduled to close at the end of October 2007.

"We have been delighted with the positive response that Amarna has received from Penn Museum visitors," noted Dr. David Silverman, Penn Museum's Egyptian section Curator-in-Charge and co-curator, with Research Scientist Dr. Jennifer Wegner and Associate Curator Dr. Josef Wegner, of the Amarna exhibition. "By focusing on a very brief period of Egyptian history, and a time that was really unlike any other, the Amarna exhibition, surrounded as it is by galleries with Egyptian material that spans five millennia, provides visitors to Penn Museum with, we think, a really powerful way to think about and explore this complex, fascinating culture."

In addition to his role developing the Amarna exhibition at Penn Museum, Dr. Silverman was curator of the two most popular exhibitions ever in the United States: Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs which just closed at The Franklin Institute, and Treasures of Tutankhamun, thirty years ago in Chicago.

Penn Museum has a long history of research and excavation in Egypt, and the Museum houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Nubian material in the United States, with more than 42,000 ancient objects from that region of the world.

The Amarna exhibition is adjacent to the Lower Egyptian Gallery, which features a 12-ton granite sphinx of Ramesses II and colossal architectural elements from the Palace of Ramesses' son and successor, Merenptah, circa 1200 B.C.E. New from fall of 2006, the gallery offers a twenty-foot timeline featuring major activities in Egypt over 5000 years, as well as world events. Artifacts from the earliest, Pre-dynastic period (circa 5000-3000 B.C.E .), brought together in one section of the gallery, provide insights into the earliest known periods of ancient Egyptian culture.

The Upper Egyptian Gallery is home to the Museum's finest examples of Egyptian sculpture. The material on display, including carved relief, stone coffins, and exquisite three-dimensional sculpture, testifies to the superb craftsmanship of Egyptian artists and sculptors throughout its long history.

The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science, long a favorite among visitors, is adjacent to the central Upper Egyptian gallery. The exhibition features nine mummies, and extensive information on the mummification process and the cultural context that made this practice such a central one in Egypt for so many years. -- www.museum.upenn.edu