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<\/p>\nA touring exhibition of more than 100 objects from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (EMC) and Luxor Museum is making its first US stop in San Francisco this summer. Treasures of the Pharaohs, curated by the former EMC director Tarek El Awady, will feature statues, jewellery, ceramics, furniture and even clay moulds spanning 3,000 years of the region\u2019s history. Perhaps the most enticing draw will be the 20 artefacts on display for the first time in North America from the so-called Golden City, a remarkably well-preserved community dating from the 14th century BC on Luxor\u2019s west bank, uncovered in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe discovery of the Golden City is amazing in that it shows exactly the time when Amenhotep III was ruling,\u201d says Ren\u00e9e Dreyfus, the curator of the show\u2019s San Francisco edition. \u201cA city of workmen, it was found while looking for Tutankhamun\u2019s mortuary temple. The city seems to be composed of workshops, homes, and an administrative centre of people who worked for the pharaoh.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A limestone headrest, found in the Golden City, was used to protect the sleeper from insects at night Massimo Listri<\/p>\n
Amenhotep III, who ruled between around 1390BC and 1352BC, was likely King Tut\u2019s grandfather. He presided over a prosperous age of wealth and stability that resulted in the flourishing of artistic and architectural endeavours, including the construction of the famous Luxor Temple. Amenhotep\u2019s Golden City appears to have been largely abandoned after his son Akhenaten rejected the prevailing polytheistic tradition in favour of the singular worship of the sun god Aten, moving the capital to Amarna. The Golden City has drawn comparisons with Pompeii for both the insight it provides into daily life and its appearance of having been frozen in time.<\/p>\n
Dreyfus points to two artefacts in the show that exemplify the sudden change in religion. The first, which she chose as the show\u2019s opener, is an Old Kingdom statue of the Triad of Mycerinus\u2014depicting what Dreyfus calls \u201cthe essence of the understanding of the Egyptian Kingship\u201d in the form of the 26th-century BC pharaoh Menkaure, the goddess Hathor and the god of the province of Theban Nome. \u201cI love starting with that object,\u201d Dreyfus says. \u201cIn one glance, you can see that the pharaoh not only rules over all of Egypt but that he\u2019s a deity at home with the gods.\u201d The second object, made more than 1,000 years later, is a limestone carving of Akhenaten and his family worshipping Aten.<\/p>\n
While these kinds of official artefacts have long served as clues into the culture of Ancient Egypt, newly discovered objects from the Golden City fill the void of how ordinary people lived. \u201cThe everyday objects found there are extraordinary,\u201d Dreyfus says. Among the homes, bakeries and workshops along the city\u2019s intricate networks of serpentine walls and streets, evidence has been discovered of everything from how people manufactured bricks to how they worshipped and cared for their families. \u201cThey even found a baby\u2019s rattle,\u201d Dreyfus says. One of Dreyfus\u2019s favourite objects is a simple limestone headrest that once protected the sleeper from insects at night.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the real treasures of the pharaohs may not have been the jewels and gilded wares after all, but rather the people who made these beautiful objects. \u201cThe treasures of the pharaoh are the people who worked for and under him,\u201d Dreyfus says, \u201call the people who administered to the king and brought him up.\u201d<\/p>\n