New Kimbell exhibit highlights the role of royal women and artisans in ancient Egypt

Along with Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Hatshepsut, Nefertari was one of the most celebrated Egyptian queens.

She was considered the most beautiful wife of Ramesses the Great, referred to as the “the one for whom the sun shines.”

When her elaborate tomb was rediscovered more than 3,000 years after her death, Nefertari’s mummified knees were one of the few items left in the coffin. Now they are on view in Fort Worth.

From December 6 through March 14 at Kimbell Art Museum, “Queen Nefertari’s Egypt” is a traveling exhibit of 230 ancient Egyptian objects from Italy’s Museo Egizio. The show highlights the role of royal women and artisans in Egypt’s New Kingdom period, the height of Egyptian civilization a thousand years after the pyramids were built.

The touring exhibition has had its share of challenges during the pandemic. With travel restrictions keeping Museo Egizio staff and couriers out of the country, they helped their Fort Worth colleagues unpack and install the show on Zoom calls, and the time difference put the start time at 6 a.m.

Ramesses the Great was one of the greatest pharaohs. During his sixty-six-year reign, military campaigns expanded the territory and brought goods, gold, and treasures to Egypt’s ancient capital, Thebes. He also built many monuments and temples dedicated to gods, himself, and Nefertari, one of his eight wives with whom he had one hundred children. His favorite wife’s name and image appears on many of the monuments he constructed.

“We didn’t really know much about Nefertari until 1904, when her tomb was discovered,” said Jennifer Casler Price, Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African, and American art. “It was one of the largest and most splendid tombs that had ever been discovered.”

Indeed, a model of the tomb built a few years after it was discovered tells us this house of eternity is large-scale with two-levels and multiple chambers. Elaborate murals provide imagery of gods from the underworld. One can only imagine the treasures plundered in antiquity, perhaps a mummy mask and coffin made of gold, but Queen Nefertari’s tomb was fit for a pharaoh.

“Women in the New Kingdom period had a certain amount of equality,” said Price. “They had businesses and owned property. Queen Nefertari was literate and helped her husband with diplomacy, and that was very unusual in her time. But I don’t know that they had autonomy. The women in the palaces had male overseers.”

Shortly after discovering Nefertari’s tomb, Italian archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli and his team excavated nearby Deir el-Medina, the ancient village of stonemasons, draftsman, painters, and scribes.

“These artisans were at the highest level of craftsmanship,” Price said. “They built the tombs of the pharaohs and their queens. They built Queen Nefertari’s tomb.”

“Queen Nefertari’s Egypt” showcases objects from both excavations to capture the lives of commoners and royalty in ancient Egypt.

Daily life for women in royal palaces is revealed with everyday objects they used, often recovered in a burial context. These personal items—like perfume jars, boxes, spoons, jewelry, pottery, and cosmetic tools—were meant to accompany royal women into the afterlife. There is also a flute and percussive instruments that rattle and clap.

The light levels in the galleries are low to protect a surprising amount of pigment remaining on many objects. Several necklaces, rings, and figurines, for example, still have a shiny turquoise glaze. But there are also galleries full of ancient coffins, statues and sculptures of pharaohs and gods, and images of the underworld, so entering the exhibit is like entering a tomb.

From Deir el-Medina, funerary monuments and fragments of limestone used as sketchpads reveal high-end painting and carving with images of gods, images of the deceased, protective symbols, handwriting, and ram-headed sphinx. There are wooden hammers and copper chisels used to create tombs and monuments, a scribe’s palette, and beer jars.

The shattered lid of Queen Nefertari’s coffin—which was mostly looted, corpse included—are the centerpiece of another gallery. Mummified for protection through the underworld and for reanimation in the afterlife, the knees of the queen are on display, along with her sandals.

Displayed in various ways to reveal their complexity, the show ends with a gallery full of the funeral receptacles used to bury wealthy and powerful ancient Egyptians. Mummification took over two months, the body went in a wooden coffin, the coffin went into a sarcophagus decorated with carvings and paintings, which was placed in a tomb.

This story was originally published December 4, 2020 at 5:30 AM.