Meditations on the Tisch gallery

 TheTisch Galleries, unlike many other galleries at the Met is not dedicated to a single type of art but is instead used for a rotating collection of block buster exhibits.


The current exhibition "Divine Egypt" includes this wonderful statue of Anubis, the jackel headed god associated with death.  This exquisite work is painted wood and from a later period.  It is in excellent shape.  

This exhibit which focuses on the gods and worship of Pharaohnic Egypt is beautifully arranged with many statues and other depictions of the gods.  The exhibit recreates much of the character of the time and even the air seems like a dry North African day.

According to the MET

"in  ancient Egypt, images of gods weren’t just images—they brought the gods to life. Egyptians believed that it was through their depictions in tombs, temples, and shrines that the deities could enter sacred spaces and become active participants in rituals, offering a vital connection between the human and divine worlds. Over Egypt’s long history, its belief system grew to include more than 1,500 gods with many overlapping forms and traits. Subtle visual cues like what a figure wore, how they posed, or the symbols they carried helped identify them and their roles.

Divine Egypt brings together almost 250 works of art and objects, many of them on loan from institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, to examine the imagery associated with the most important deities in ancient Egypt’s massive body of gods. Depictions of the stately falcon-headed Horus, the lion-headed Sakhmet, and the serene, shrouded Osiris reveal the striking ways the kings and people of ancient Egypt recognized and interacted with their gods."

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