Sounds, beliefs, and daily life of ancient Egypt
Entering the archaeological section, the first rooms is dedicated to the Egyptian collections.
Here, you can find necklaces and ornaments, as well as delicate papyri from Carlo Anti’s excavation campaign in the ancient town of Tebtynis.
An exceptional artifact is the Pan flute, a symbol object of the museum and present in its logo, also known as syrinx: it is an ancient wind musical instrument of Greek tradition. It was made with marsh reeds between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, and, despite the fragility of the materials, this instrument has been maintained in exceptional conditions. Thanks to detailed analyses, it has been possible to virtually reconstruct the sound of the instrument which you can therefore listen to at the appropriate multimedia station.
In room 2 are preserved artifacts ranging from the Middle Kingdom (end of 3rd millennium BC – 17th century BC) to the Ptolemaic period (end of 4th – 1st century BC), to the Roman imperial age and up to the late Roman and Coptic period (6th century AD). Among the artifacts from the Ptolemaic period, you will notice a fragment of a funerary stele from the Egyptian city of Akhmim and a pink granite statuette depicting a pharaoh. Many other objects are linked to the cult of Isis and Osiris, a votive tradition that remained in vogue until the Hellenistic and Roman ages.
Among the most represented artifacts in the Egyptian collection of the Museum are undoubtedly the ushabti, small funerary statuettes destined to work symbolically in place of their owners in the Afterlife, guaranteeing an afterlife without fatigue. A particularly suggestive specimen (E33), dated between 1070 and 945 BC and part of the Neumann collection, portrays a man with an oval face and large black eyes. Its details, such as the tripartite striated wig and the band on the forehead, are finely decorated in black. In his hands he holds two hoes, agricultural tools, which characterize him as a farmer. Therefore, this ushabti was supposed to take care of cultivating the land in place of the deceased in the Afterlife. Finally, two columns of hieroglyphs clarify to whom the object belonged and therefore who the deceased was: “The Osiris, the prophet of Amun Harkhebis.”