{"id":139392,"date":"2026-03-16T05:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T05:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/139392\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T05:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T05:12:06","slug":"penn-museum-unveils-exhibition-featuring-century-old-watercolors-of-egyptian-tombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/139392\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Museum unveils exhibition featuring century-old watercolors of Egyptian tombs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penn Museum unveiled an exhibition featuring century-old paintings of an ancient Egyptian burial ground last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The display<\/a>, which opened to the public on Feb. 28, includes artifacts and watercolor paintings of tomb artwork that were created during Penn Museum excavations from 1921 to 1923. Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Josef Wegner was the collection’s lead curator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Wegner described the exhibition as \u201cretrospective\u201d and explained that it grew out of efforts to revisit Penn\u2019s archaeological archive from its excavation at Dra Abu el-Naga as its record were never published in full.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re involved in a project to return to these archival records and collections and really do justice to the importance of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Wegner, the curation team wanted to highlight watercolors produced by Ahmed Yousef, an Egyptian artist hired by archaeologist Clarence Fisher during the Penn Museum’s excavations in the 1920s. He added that Fisher\u2019s decision to commission watercolor copies of the tomb artwork stemmed from the fragility of painted plaster surfaces inside tomb\u2019s chapels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOpening these structures often causes atmospheric changes; humidity and air circulation can lead to damage,\u201d Wegner said. \u201cAt some of these tombs, we\u2019re pretty sure the decoration no longer exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition<\/a>, titled \u201cAncient Egypt in Watercolors: Paintings and Artifacts from Dra Abu el-Naga,\u201d will remain on view through November. It includes multimedia components such as projection screens with interactive fly-throughs of two tombs, which were produced using photogrammetry, photographic documentation, and 3D modeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tamara Mkheidze, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures concentrating in Egyptology who served as one of the exhibition\u2019s student curators, explained that Dra Abu el-Naga\u2019s significance stems in part from its location within the Theban Necropolis and nearby the Karnak Temple complex. The site includes tombs of elite officials such as Egyptian viziers \u2014 whom Mkheidze described as \u201ca prime minister in our modern world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She added the exhibition offers access to material that has rarely been seen publicly \u2014\u00a0including the watercolors, which have been in the museum\u2019s archives for about 100 years and have remained unseen in the United States until now. According to Mkheidze, the watercolors are a \u201cglimpse into the past\u201d because many of the depicted tombs are no longer accessible.<\/p>\n

After comparing Yousef\u2019s paintings to other archival sources, including photographic negatives and field notes, Mkheidze has found that the depictions are \u201cnot epigraphic drawings.\u201d The paintings were created by \u201csomebody who would sit in the tomb and copy the scenes, but there are some discrepancies between the photographic evidence \u2026 and those drawings,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

Mkheidze added that the discrepancies matter when researchers attempt to reconstruct tomb scenes accurately, but also highlighted the watercolors\u2019 historical context, as a local Egyptian artist was working with a U.S. expedition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wegner expressed hope that the exhibit will serve as an entry point for students and visitors to engage with Penn Museum research and its Egyptian collections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a little pocket museum at the corner of the campus,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most important archaeological museums in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wegner hopes that the watercolor exhibition will \u201csegue into\u201d the team\u2019s larger project \u2014 \u201cEgypt Galleries: Life and Afterlife\u201d \u2014 which is set to open<\/a> on Dec. 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn Museum unveiled an exhibition featuring century-old paintings of an ancient Egyptian burial ground last month.\u00a0 The display,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-139392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}