Posted on 11/14/2008 5:33:15 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A rare 2,500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus shattered in a student protest almost four decades ago is expected to be a whole, new artifact when it returns to its home in Montreal after a sojourn in Gatineau.
The elaborately-painted Hetep-Bastet coffin and the mummy inside are on loan to the Museum of Civilization, which plans to hand the ancient wooden coffin back to its owner, the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), in far better condition than when it left.
Over the past three months, conservators at the museum have been painstakingly piecing together a few large pieces and hundreds of tiny fragments broken from the lid and the back of the coffin during a violent student protest in 1969 at the Ãcole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, which received the coffin as a gift from the Cairo Museum in 1927.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
The coffin contains a woman who was in her 60s when she died 2,500 years ago in ancient Egypt. (CBC)
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Gods |
That should be "École des Beaux-Arts de Montreal". |
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“Splendors of Ancient Egypt” toured US museums in 2000. The last exhibit got me laughing.
It was a wooden coffin with a mummy in it, from the late Greek-Roman Period, around the year zero. On the outside of the coffin were wide horizontal stripes in red and white paint. But the zinger was that the half lid over the mummy’s face was painted dark blue, with white stars, to look like the night sky.
When the half lid was opened, and you stood back, you saw the American flag.
A friend asked my why I was laughing. I replied, “I guess the time machine at least works halfway!”
[the lid of the ancient joke sarcophagus creaks open]
People who make mummy jokes aren’t wrapped too tight.
/rimshot
I'd like to know more about this. Was it accidental or intentional?
Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, which received the coffin as a gift from the Cairo Museum in 1927.
In other words the Brits handed over Egyptian artifacts to Canada.
Brits do a lot of looting other people’s stuff.
Pretty sure it wasn’t accidental. I mean, it doesn’t look like a capitalist or anything... :’)
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