Today, I’d like to tell you about an Egyptian exhibition visiting the town of Burgas this summer. Arriving and opened with a great deal of media turmoil and costing 16 BGN per capita. I myself was prepared to drive all the 170 km in one direction to Burgas from Stara Zagora where I was staying with some friends, only to see how Tutankhamun has come to see us in Bulgaria. Not for some other reason but because everything was telling me this should be the same exhibition that I came upon by accident in Prague some 5-6 years ago and that impressed me tremendously. To the extent that I have been trying ever since to provide for the planning and funding of a similar one here in Bulgaria – of course, not about Tutankhamun; we have our own values. I cannot show you the other exhibition; I can only say it was creative, interactive and deserving attention in every possible aspect.
Here is the largest premise of the Egyptian exhibition. It shows the ‘beautiful things’ that Howard Carter saw when he succeeded to take the first peep inside the untouched tomb of Tutankhamun so many years ago. To me, the enormous gilded ‘wardrobe’ guarded by elegant golden women and keeping the alabaster canopies (jars) with the organs of his Pharaoh-ship is probably the most beautiful of all beautiful finds, maybe even more than the notorious golden mask I have shown on the first photo above. So, the exhibition in Prague started with an interactive story about the family of Tutankhamun, here limited to a board at the entrance in bad Bulgarian. Then we were taken through a room with a very well-made movie about the discovery of the tomb – here they showed a movie on the third floor against additional payment; I didn’t go to see whether it had anything in common with what I knew. In Prague, there were separate ‘rooms’ showing the premises of the tomb as they looked upon their discovery – no such thing here. And finally – the replicas of the finds themselves:
My favorite ‘matryoshka’-style burial of pharaohs: the mummy is in a small body-shaped coffin; then a bigger one, an even bigger one, and finally the biggest one. The outer sarcophagus is made of clay; the inner ones are of wood, gilded and richly decorated. If only one was a pharaoh… So, in Burgas we only got the replicas (and even only a part of them, I think) of the original Egyptian exhibition of Tutankhamun. I had to feel doubts even when I learned that it was accommodated in the building of Burgas State Opera instead of some spacious park as it was in Prague. Plus, the information about the finds was not well presented and the Bulgarian signs were very bad.
As an example, I am showing the above alabaster cup which in itself is a wonderful sample of alabaster craftsmanship – but pay attention to the sign below it. Here I intend to stop murmuring; I am an ancient maniac – or rather a maniac in ancient history, so the 16 BGN are not too much for me. But there comes the question why were the citizens of Prague given one experience and we here were given a totally different one? Not good, brothers and sisters, not good at all. The exhibition is staying in Burgas until the end of this month; if anyone is a maniac like me, go and see it. Against additional 4 BGN, they give 3D-glasses at the second floor, showing halls from different tombs. I myself will show you at the end something else which I like very much, namely the Egyptian decorative breastplates or collars whose elaboration was taking – I presume – an awful lot of time due to the miniature details. Like this:
If you are into exhibitions and museums, you may check my posts in My Museums Section.
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