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Home / Exhibits / Permanent Exhibits / Egypt
Searching For Eternity:
Life and Death in Ancient Egypt
This exhibition has moved to the lower level in Fondren Discovery Place.
Mummies, coffins, pyramids, and tombs are familiar symbols of ancient Egypt, suggesting a civilization concerned only with death. In fact, the Egyptians loved life so much that they tried to prolong it in death. Spanning 4,000 years of Egyptian history, Searching for Eternity provides fascinating insight into this compelling culture. The exhibition features hundreds of ancient artifacts, as well as informative photographs of monuments and tomb paintings.
The Egyptians believed that after they died, they would live forever in another world. In their burial process, they gathered everything from this world that they might need in the next life. These objects provide information not only about death, but also about life in ancient Egypt.
According to Egyptian beliefs, each person was composed of three parts: the life force, the ba or personality (sometimes called the soul), and the physical body. When someone died, the body remained behind while the two spiritual parts went to the next world and lived forever. The exhibition includes a number of small statues of the human-headed ba birds.
The most important gods of the dead were Osiris, king and judge in the afterworld, and the jackal-headed Anubis. Relief carvings and statuettes in wood, bronze, and faience show how the Egyptians saw these gods. Osiris judged the dead to determine if they were worthy of entering the next world. If not, they would die a second and final death. However, the Egyptians believed they could use magical texts to tilt the scales in their favor. Anubis served as guide to the dead and was the patron of embalmers. He oversaw the making of mummies.
Mummification protected the body of the deceased, in case his or her spirit wanted to return to earth. The process involved drying out and preserving the body. Soft internal organs were removed and processed separately. On display are objects connected with this practice, including wooden tags used to identify bodies during the mummification process, containers (canopic jars) used to hold various preserved organs, amulets sewn into the linen wrappings of mummies, and fragments of the outer decoration of coffins. The exhibition features the mummy and coffin of Ankh-hap, who lived about 2,000 years ago. He must have been fairly rich to afford a wooden coffin, but the inscriptions on that coffin give only his name and those of his parents. Where in Egypt he lived and what he did are unknown.
Magic was also an important part of life and death in ancient Egypt. Amulets of all kinds protected both the living and the dead. Among the many amulets included in the exhibition is one belonging to Amenemhet, a mayor of ancient Thebes under Rameses the Great. Pictures on tomb walls and small funerary statuettes also provided magical services. These statuettes (ushebtis), many of which are on display, were designed to work in place of the dead in the next world. As many as 400 could be included in a single burial—one magical worker for every day of the year, along with a supervisor for every ten workers.
It was important that the name of the dead survive and that the spirit be fed. Entombed with each mummy were the important possessions that the dead might need in the next world: food and drink, jewelry, cosmetics, and games. Offerings to the dead were placed in the tomb chapel. The exhibition includes many such offerings, together with clay cones stamped with hieroglyphs of the names and titles of officials. These cones decorated the tomb exteriors. Also on view is an exquisite relief of a crocodile from a mortuary temple.
Another highlight of the exhibition is a collection of objects associated with the cult of the god Thoth, including a baboon-shaped coffin and a pottery jar containing the mummified body of a bird. Numerous images of Thoth as a baboon or ibis attest to the piety of his followers. The exhibition also features objects once buried in the Valley of the Kings, including funerary statuettes of King Seti I and his wife, Tuy, the parents of Rameses the Great. In addition, a small monument commemorates how the pharaoh Amenhotep III was killed. The exhibition concludes with a contemporary depiction of how the modern world sees ancient Egypt.
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