Immerse yourself in an ancient world. On September 28, 2000, my boyfriend and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to visit an archaeological exhibit on Egyptian art. Located on the first floor between 83rd Street and Fifth Avenue, the exhibition consists of thirty-two galleries, each illustrating a period of Egyptian history. It is difficult to explain the colossal impact that this exhibition outlines. But given the opportunity in this essay, I will try to describe to the reader how the Metropolitan Museum of Art managed to draw an overall picture that reflects the aesthetic values, history, religious beliefs and daily life of the ancient Egyptians throughout the entire journey . of their great civilization. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Within the walls of this vault-like exhibition area, you'll find precious jewelry, stone sculptures, and giant tombs. While many of the precious works of art are found behind glass walls, some of the most impressive carvings and stone slabs are found right in the center of the floor, with nothing else between you but the temptation to touch. I was transported to a long-gone world and found myself feeling faint. The collection consists of approximately 36,000 objects dating from the Paleolithic to the Roman period (ca. 300,000 BC 4th century AD), as seen in Gallery 1 in a timeline against the wall. According to Mrs. Robins at the information desk, the collection stems from the Museum's thirty-five years of archaeological work in Egypt starting in 1906 by Mr. J. Perpont Morgan, president of the Museum, until his death in 1913. After his death, the museum conducted fourteen seasons of excavations at Lisht (artefacts seen in Gallery 10- Middle Kingdom - Lisht). Mr. Albert M. Lithgoe, a famous American Egyptologist led the first excavation teams and was the first curator of the Department of Egyptian Art. As the years passed, more and more discoveries were made, such as in the tomb of the first Chancellor of the Middle Kingdom Meketre. At this site was discovered an intact chamber consisting of twenty-four painted wooden models of boats, gardens, offering figures, and food production scenes that are more detailed than any found before or since. Over the years, the Department of Egyptian Art has also managed to obtain private collections through inheritances, purchases, donations and from private individuals willing to provide funding. Additionally, the Department of Egyptian Art staff continues to excavate Egypt, conduct research for publication, and organize special exhibitions. Identifying the beginning of the exhibition was a little difficult. As I mentioned previously, the exhibition consists of thirty-two galleries, making it an extremely large exhibition. Some galleries have subsections called studios. We weren't clear on what that meant, and it seemed like no one on the staff really knew what the study was. The security guards, located in different parts of the museum, were not of much help. They send us to a map on the walls which was also a little confusing. We finally managed to locate the beginning of the exhibition and thus begin the journey. The first thing you see is an illustration of a Fifth Dynasty temple with its description. It took me a while to discover that there were thirty-two sections and that they were in chronological order. I was a little off. What was this temple doing in Gallery 1 Dynasty 0? Since no explanation was given, I continued on to Gallery 2 - Dynasties 1-10. Here there were examples of linens, sofa frames, stone slabs, statues. All located behind glass walls and with their indicators that explain a littlethe origin and hypotheses or facts about the meaning of the piece. Galleries 3 to 5 depicted the Eleventh Dynasty. A study of subsection (4A) was also included here. It is in this Gallery that we see the best preserved artifacts discovered in the tomb of Chancellor Meketre. I only knew this much later when I visited Gallery 4A where brief explanations were given for the various artefacts throughout Gallery 4. My initial reaction was: shouldn't this be before the models presented in Gallery 4? Another interesting fact is that this small room is almost invisible and hardly perceptible. It's almost hidden. If it weren't for my boyfriend accidentally noticing it, I would have completely ignored it and probably never discovered the importance of this section. Upon entering Gallery 6 - Amenemhat I, I noticed a brief description depicting the end of the 11th Dynasty up to Amenemhat I located on the wall. From here on out, this would prove very useful in piecing together the pieces that didn't fit into the short labels placed before the item. It's also worth mentioning that at this point I noticed that things were arranged in chronological order, at least as best as possible, and that the different galleries were marked accordingly. (Later we would encounter confusion again. Up to this point everything was fine.) There were also descriptions of the different excavations that had taken place. In Gallery 6 we see the description of the excavations of the Pyramid of Amenemhat I. The end of this section led to Gallery 11, so we had to go back to look for Gallery 7 if we wanted to continue looking in chronological order. This was time consuming and a bit distracting.Gallery 7 Senwosret I. In this section, there was a good example of something that was said in class and it helped me understand a little more what the professor he was trying to illustrate while talking about hypotheses made in archaeology. The object was a ritual figure wearing the red crown. In the label preceding the object, we read, a certain characteristic and distinct style of this wooden sculpture agrees well with the chronology suggested by the archaeological context. This therefore implies that a hypothesis was correct precisely by virtue of a distinguishable characteristic. With Gallery 8, it is obvious to the viewer that the different artistic styles have changed becoming more detailed and precise. We see this contrast in the object titled The Steward Schetepibreanth Statue. His face is young and idealized. His muscles are emphasized and his wig and kilt are richly detailed. This is in stark contrast to the worried expression found in royal portraits of the second half of the Twelfth Dynasty. In Gallery nine, mirrors have been placed inside the sarcophagus placed here so you can see the elaborate art inside the coffins. There were two sections of the exhibition that caused the greatest impact on me. The first was in Hatshepsut's 12th Dynasty Gallery 18. Eight enormous sculptures adorn this section. They were all approximately 9-12 feet long (this is a guess because this information was not available) and were recovered at Deir el Bahri. For me this was one of the most beautiful sections of the exhibition. It showed some of the grandeur and splendor of this civilization, giving it new depth and understanding for the imagination. At this point, a good break was absolutely necessary. We were bombarded with so much information that we felt drained and without much conviction to move forward. At this point we had spent about 2.5 hours touring the first half of the exhibition. The second half of the expedition turned out to be the beginning of a maze. We were unable to find Galleries 14-16. At the end of Gallery 13, which consisted of a.