MET-itations by Leslie Sewell

 A perfume vase in the form of a woman holding a dove.  This gallery contains many items from the eastern portion of the Greek world, particularly the island of Rhodes.  but who is the woman, who does she represent?  Was perfume used just for adornment or did it have any religious significance.  Does the dove signify peace as it often does for us?  Or hope? or perhaps just nature.  I stand and contemplate.

  This is the beginning of the galleries of the Ancient Greek world.  The Bronze Age items here, from around 3200-1050 BCE includes items from Crete and Mycenae. Many of these items seem delicate and fragile.  This is a period in the ancient world when Greek culture spread through large movements of people across the Mediterranean and Black Seas.  This lays the foundation for democracy, literature and art.  Looking at the works in this gallery is a meditation on the chronology of the world and this room arguably represents the very beginning of Western civilization.   The timelessness of these articles is somehow comforting.

 This is the last gallery in the Ancient Egyptian section and contains facsimile drawings that were made by archeologists who unearthed the tombs.  The tombs date from around 1400-1100 BCE in the New Kingdom period. The drawings were done to scale and in the original colors as near as it was possible to get that.  They mostly depict everyday life like these fishermen casting their nets.  The Egyptian galleries with their emphasis on life and death cause a lot of reflection on these essential parts of existence.  What are we to make of our life?  How do we measure how successful we have been along the way.  If our heart is weighed at death balanced against a feather how would we fare?  Would the scales balance?  If there is balance have we really lived a just life which will usher us into the afterlife in a good state.  And if not what of that?  It is comforting in a way to reflect that people who lived thousand of years ago had all ...

According to the Met this statute might be the Ptolemaic queent Cleopatra VII.  But maybe not.  She is holding a corncopia which suggests wealth and the dress and other items indicate the second or first century BC.  In any case it's a lovely statute and there a number of other statues in this gallery or other royal personages.  There are also a number of beautiful temple cult bas relief sculptures. While looking at this sculpture I'm reminded of a recent performance I saw at the Metropolitan Opera of Antony and Cleopatra, a new opera by John Adams.  This Cleopatra was impetuous and strong.  Although Cleopatra is only in the play by inference we also recently saw a performance by the Riverside Park Hudson Shakespeare Company of Julius Caesar .  This wonderful group puts on free performance every summer and makes for an enchanting evening.  (If the weather cooperates, which it usually does.).  Although Shakespeare is not particularly kind to C...

  A gallery even more concerned with death than some previous ones.  It contains this statute of Anubis, the jackal headed god and also a long scroll from the Book of the Dead that contains spells and writings on the next world.  This is a room to contemplate life and how it is lived.  I spend a long time staring at the magnificent drawings.  The figures like Anubis and others are garbed in fabulous cloth and I wonder who the weavers were.  I recently read a novel about weaving and embroidery and how much it is entwined with women's history.  I don't know if women were weavers in ancient Egypt but it wouldn't surprise me if they were. The book says that weaving is like meditation.  I believe that.  If so their work is still with us and the beauty continues.  Art is deathless.

Calm and peaceful are the sense for today. Something about the stately images that have lasted for thousands of years remind me that the concerns of the day which can seem so fraught and difficult will pass and that life resumes.  Earlier today I watched a discussion on artificial intelligence that did not suggest that it was the beginning of the end of the world but rather the beginning of a new way of approaching the world that would be beneficial to humankind,  I don't really like predictions about the future as they usually turn out to wrong, but at least its more reassuring when they are hopeful than apocalyptic. (Note:  there is no gallery 130)  

 These galleries contain no monumental works, but rather small items that reflect the lives of the people.  They include items of the Pharoahs but also those of craftspeople and others who worked for the court.  Some of these items were items from royal tombs but others from more ordinany people.  They included food, cosmetics, jewelry and such items.  The Egyptians like to adorn themselves in life and in death.  Beauty was an important element.  In most societies physical attractiveness and athletic ability are often attributes of leadership and it appears this was also the case in ancient Egypt.  Viewing the small items of life leads to a sense of belonging and kinship.

The greatest female king, Hatshepsut, commissioned the monumental sculptures in this gallery to adorn her spectacular funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri, near modern day Luxor. Sometime after her death around 1450 B.C., her co-regent and successor Thutmose III, who ruled more than fifty-four years, ordered the destruction of her images. (from the Met information) Just like a man who its  threatened by an accomplished and successful women. But focussing on her successes and abilities is inspiring.  This galley is filled with amazing statues of her that the Met reconstructed from the fragments that were found shattered at her tomb site.  Remembrance of the past is part of us and our future and helps us on our journey.  To remember those who not only had a personal history but also helped to shape the larger world is inspiring.  In the span of my life there have been many shattering events both personal and monumental to the la...