Inlays and Shrine Elements

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In temples, statuettes of Egyptian gods were housed in small shrines, from which they emerged for rituals. Gods also had processional barks that carried shrines in which the god remained concealed during processions within and outside the temple. Wood shrines densely inlaid with figural, hieroglyphic, and decorative glass elements are attested from the late sixth century B.C. onward. Inlay elements might be placed in separate cells or be contiguously adhered on a common background. Most such shrines are, however, only known from the jumbled masses of elements preserved in temple deposits after the shrine(s) in the deposit had decayed. This imagined scene draws from a large group of fine, monochromatic and mosaic glass inlays that were purchased together. From the same aggregation come column drums, bronze bolts appropriately in the form of a "door bolt" and "union" hieroglyphs, a square bronze rod, and four bronze attachments. The lot also included bits of gilded plaster. For more information, see the Curatorial Interpretation below. Link to a blog about Ptolemaic Art at The Met Nile and Newcomers: A Fresh Installation of Egyptian Ptolemaic Art

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art