By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
``Egypt is the gift of the Nile,'' wrote Greek historian Herodotos. It's true that in a sense, Egypt is blessed with water and fertile soil around the Nile. But people nearby developed a distinctive worldview about life and death by examining the annual inundation of the river. Pyramids, mummies, myths and other elements that many people know of about Egypt mainly stem from that worldview.
To show off the cultural heritage of Egyptian civilization, the National Museum of Korea will hold a special exhibition, ``Egypt, the Great Civilization,'' from April 28 to Aug. 30.
``I'm glad to host this extraordinary exhibition at the museum on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its opening. This is the largest-ever exhibition of Egyptian civilization here,'' Choe Kwang-shik, the museum's director, said during a press conference.
The exhibition presents 231 artifacts chosen from "Egypt-Oriental Collection" from Kunsthistorisches Museum of Austria, covering 300 years of Egyptian civilization. Aside from well-known mummies and objects related to pharaohs, images of deities, amulets, makeup tools, hieroglyphic papyri, diverse tools and receptacles, as well as burial goods, will be on display.
Egyptian art involves metal and wooden crafts, calligraphy, and ceramics and sculptures of gods and goddesses. From a 1cm amulet to 197cm statue of the goddess Sekhmet and from a mirror to a coffin, artifacts were chosen to present the various worldviews and wishes of ancient Egyptians.
Among other items, the mummy of Nes-chonsu, in cartonnage wrapping from 760-656 B.C., is one of the most intriguing pieces for the Korean audience. From the hieroglyphs from its outer coffin, the mummy can be identified as a woman named Nes-chonsu who lived 760-656 B.C. The result of computerized tomography shows that two infants were placed between her legs and mummified together. The twins might have died right before or after their birth. They were wrapped with linen several times.