Ramses Is Rolling Over In His Grave

All the sacred objects that went with him to his tomb could not protect him from 21st century marketing. I'm not even sure what you call these plush items from the gift shop. Pharaoh emojis? Those are two words I would never hope to see together. Right below the emojis was a basket of rubber duckies, some gotten up as mummies, others as pharaohs. It's so hard to resist that wide headdress! 



Backstory: we went to San Francisco to see Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs, a multi-media exhibit featuring royal sculpture, recently discovered animal mummies, and treasures from the royal tombs. Confession: my knowledge of Egyptian history comes from a mixture of The Ten Commandments, Death on the Nile, Aida, and various tomb raider movies. The biggest take-away for me from the exhibit was how detailed the objects were. Not just the lines in the stone indicating fabric texture, but the fact that the surfaces were covered in writing, drawing, and design elements--you could spend hours looking at just one coffin. 

The first Extra is an ostracon, with a practice drawing of Ramses IV in a chariot. Ostracon, a piece of discarded pottery or a flake of limestone, is effectively scrap paper that artists used to work out their designs.

The second Extra is just what it looks like: a mummified cat. It was the custom for people visiting tombs to make offerings, described as similar to lighting a candle in church, except they were accustomed to leaving mummified animals for the gods. It is said that it was big business for the towns near the tombs: animals had to be bred, fed, raised, cared for, killed, mummified, sold. Tomb visits were a huge source of income!

It was a grand day out, as Wallace would say. Lunch at our favorite Burmese restaurant, and an afternoon immersed in another world. 

We also spent a few minutes at the Faith Ringgold: American People, a retrospective covering fifty years of her painting and quilting. Her work is so dense, complex, challenging; we were too tired and sated with facts and artifacts to give this exhibit the attention it deserved. I always think of bright quilts when I think of this artist; what struck me today is the way she combined painting on canvas with sewing and writing, blending media in a way that had not been done before. The third Extra, Dinner at Gertrude Stein's: the French Collection Part II, #9, is a look at the salon through the eyes of a young black aspiring female artist, pictured on the left. The handwritten text along the top and bottom borders details her impressions of the gathering.