Egypt: Cats, Coffins, & the Afterlife
From museums in Rome, Paris, Berin, Turin, & London
From the Vatican
The Vatican contains the famous Sistine Chapel, but also a large selection of masterpieces starting from Egypt and Mesopotamia. These details are from 7th-6th C. BC tombs in Thebes (above) and Memphis (below).
Statue of Osiris-Antinous, 131-8 BC, from Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli. Hadrian’s lover Antinous was deified by the emperor after his death — hence the hyphen linking him to Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife.
![Torso of the bull god Apis, 1550-1070 BC. “Initially, […] sacrificed and reborn, [later] an intermediary between humans and other powerful deities,” such as Osiris (Wikipedia).](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55c58254e4b0a9ad6b25bf97/1533412744418-RYHBX7L9PNNA0L7755AG/IMG_6336.jpg)
Torso of the bull god Apis, 1550-1070 BC. “Initially, […] sacrificed and reborn, [later] an intermediary between humans and other powerful deities,” such as Osiris (Wikipedia).
This room in the Vatican is modelled on Hadrian’s 2nd Century Serapeum, a sanctuary for the worship of Serapis, a Graeco-Egyptian fusion of Apis and Osiris.
From the Louvre
From Neues Museum, Berlin
From the Egyptian Museum, Turin
From the British Museum
Room 61 of the British Museum contains serene, lively frescoes depicting the idealized life of a 14th C. BC scribe called Nebamun. A good write-up and selection of these can be found at the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/egypt-art/new-kingdom/a/paintings-from-the-tomb-chapel-of-nebamun
