A nicely painted but none-too-fancy 2,200-year-old Egyptian coffin that stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble late in May has joined the Field Museum’s permanent exhibits on daily life in Egypt in the time of the pharaohs.
The coffin, on extended loan from Exelon Corp.’s chief executive, John Rowe, appeared in the museum’s permanent Egyptian gallery Friday. Probably made by provincial artisans for a middle-class person of some means, the coffin, according to one Egyptian authority, is “colorful, whimsical and charming,” but the sort of object museums usually don’t provide space for public exhibition.
An avid history buff, Rowe bought the beautifully preserved empty wood coffin about 10 years ago from a Chicago dealer to display it in a glass case in his office at Exelon headquarters. He reluctantly gave it up last May 25, a day after Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, publicly castigated Rowe for owning such an object.
Hawass did so at a Field Museum news conference for the opening of the seven-month run of a blockbuster traveling exhibit, “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.”
Rowe wasn’t present when an Exelon representative at the news conference mentioned the coffin in Rowe’s office in remarks to reporters. Minutes later, an angry Hawass arose and threatened to remove Exelon from the Tut exhibit’s list of sponsors unless Rowe gave the coffin to a museum or returned it to Egypt.
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“I don’t think this is right,” Hawass said at the time. “An artifact like this is not supposed to be in an office or a home, but in a museum. How can he sponsor an exhibit like King Tut and keep an artifact like this in his office?”
At first, Exelon officials said Rowe had no intention of giving up the coffin. But the next night, Rowe mollified Hawass when he announced the coffin would go to the Field on loan.
Last Friday, the coffin was put on display at the museum in the same glass case in which Rowe showed it off in his office. It took some time for museum curators to figure out where and how to display it. They built a special, secure platform for it to lean on inside the display case.
There is no record of where or when the coffin was found. But the intricate drawings on its surface are in such good condition, its colors still so vibrant, it obviously was stored in perfect conditions for at least 2,000 years.
“We decided to put it here in this gallery devoted to showing how ordinary people in ancient Egypt lived out their daily lives,” said Robin Groesbeck, the museum’s director of exhibitions. “We think it makes a nice addition to the exhibit.”
The coffin’s style and the inconsistencies in the quality of its exterior decoration hint that it may have been built in a provincial workshop employing groups of artisans of varying levels of skill, said Emily Teeter, a University of Chicago Egyptologist.
“It’s done in a kind of funky, provincial style, not in the style of the royal court,” she said. “Instead of being a piece of great elegance, it is whimsical and charming, kind of funky, not following the formal principles of Egyptian art.”The details of the paintings on the surface of the coffin are really quite skillful and charming, showing a lot of care had been taken in the decoration. That is in contrast to the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the coffin, parts of which are so carelessly executed they are illegible.
“There are other examples of this kind of coffin around. But museums usually show off formal pieces of Egyptian art, and these aren’t usually on display. It’s nice to see this one.”
Since the museum placed it on display with no announcement or fanfare Friday, visitors to the permanent Egyptian exhibit apparently have not given it any special attention.
“I just came out of the Tut exhibit and came to look at this part of the museum,” said Belfor Arichavala, 16, who arrived with a group of students from Lane Technical High School. He stopped for a few moments to look at the coffin before moving to other exhibit cases.
“Once you’ve seen Tut, everything out here looks a little shabby,” he said. “But it amazes me to see how complex things were even back then, to see how they did all this work to make these amazing things.”
Rowe himself came to see the coffin in its new home over the weekend, telling the museum he was pleased.
“I enjoy seeing something of mine on display at the Field and hope its visitors enjoy it also,” he said Monday through a spokeswoman. “As usual, the Field has handled the display with taste and accuracy.”
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