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historically important and fascinating, the Egyptian galleries have something for everyone, writes

Jonathan Glancey

"Do you see anything?" murmured Lord Carnarvon, like the candlelit, Howard Carter first peered into Tutankhamun's tomb. "Yes, wonderful things," was the famous response. These wonderful things that came to light Nov. 26, 1922, causing a popular fascination and lasting throughout the world with all things ancient Egyptians mummified.

The Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in Britain (founded 1683), this Saturday the doors open at six newly renovated rooms devoted to its collection of some 40,000 ancient Egyptian and Antiquities Nubia, a collection of excellent quality.

that covers the cultural history of the Nile, from its prehistoric roots to the days of Egypt under Roman rule, the exhibits here are very important from a historical perspective. Mesmerizing, too. The new galleries mark the completion of a second phase of 66 million renovation and transformation of the Ashmolean by its director, Christopher Brown and his architect, Rick Mather. The first opened in 2009 to criticism.

Each of the six rooms has a different theme and character, starting with its origins in Egypt and ending with Egypt meets Greece and Rome. Pre-dynastic sculptures occupy the height and beautifully illuminated Ruskin Gallery formerly occupied by the museum shop, but in the 19th century was the home of John Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts. Ruskin was the first Slade Professor at the University of Fine Arts. The shrine of Taharqa, delivered in boxes of Sudan to England in 1936, meditates on the center of the gallery renovated Griffith, under a glass dome designed by Mather, in the absence of clearly Egyptian sun, is used to highlight sculptures carved around the structure of 2600 years.

"The Egyptian galleries used for a series of small dark rooms," says Mather, "to end an impasse that had almost feel your way out. However, they were full of the most amazing things - the collection of the Museum of Cairo rivals in some areas - what has become a way that visitors can find your way around easily and naturally, without a map, but with the feeling that things are to find by chance. be seen through to other galleries, each drive you care for the next. And no dead ends. "
The history of archeology of ancient Egypt is updated with a complaint in the glass of the 2500 CT scan of a mummified body. Two years who died around 100 AD The work of art by the sculptor Angela Palmer, allows visitors to see how the child inside clothing unwrapped mummy linen. The examinations were performed by radiologists John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Reveal that the child probably died of pneumonia.

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