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The Vatican Museums is plural because it hosts a large variety of collections.
Today I am going to drag you kicking and screaming through the Egyptian Rooms. Or rather half of that, as a part was closed to the public... Damnit.
Mummy? Why yes, here she is, the old thing:
Her hand are a tad flat but her feet were remarkably well preserved.
She was laid down next to a display of canopic jars:
Look! Thoth!
This is an old painting on cloth. It is amazing that fragments still survive to this day...
The loveliest display, however, is the reconstitution of the Serapeum of Villa Hadriana. The Emperor Hadrian never quite recovered from his stay in Egypt - in particular because his beloved Antinous drowned there - and he had a whole series of statues made in the Egyptian style and put at his palace, in Tivoli.
The status in the foreground is Isis emerging as Apis (hence the horns) from a lotus flower, with priestesses in attendance.
While statues of Osiris in the semblance of Antinous look on:
Say. Nice nipples, if a little bit on the side...
No kidding this was my first view when entering the room:
Nice butt too. Shame about the cloth, though...
Romans were crazy about Egypt and had a spree of Egyptomania.
This statue of the Nile is fine:
But Anubis disguised in a toga is plain ridiculous.
Thank goodness right after that display, there was a nice collection of sculputes representing Sekhmet, the lioness.
MUCH better (and anthentic Egyptian)...
These last two are on the loggia which opens on Cortile de la Pigna (the Pince Cone Courtyard):
Bigger view here:
If you can see them, there was also has a couple of lions (some pope at some stage must have had a passion for the beasts)
Unbearable cuteness of paws (even in granite):
Next bit: Apoxyomenos.
Today I am going to drag you kicking and screaming through the Egyptian Rooms. Or rather half of that, as a part was closed to the public... Damnit.
Mummy? Why yes, here she is, the old thing:
Her hand are a tad flat but her feet were remarkably well preserved.
She was laid down next to a display of canopic jars:
Look! Thoth!
This is an old painting on cloth. It is amazing that fragments still survive to this day...
The loveliest display, however, is the reconstitution of the Serapeum of Villa Hadriana. The Emperor Hadrian never quite recovered from his stay in Egypt - in particular because his beloved Antinous drowned there - and he had a whole series of statues made in the Egyptian style and put at his palace, in Tivoli.
The status in the foreground is Isis emerging as Apis (hence the horns) from a lotus flower, with priestesses in attendance.
While statues of Osiris in the semblance of Antinous look on:
Say. Nice nipples, if a little bit on the side...
No kidding this was my first view when entering the room:
Nice butt too. Shame about the cloth, though...
Romans were crazy about Egypt and had a spree of Egyptomania.
This statue of the Nile is fine:
But Anubis disguised in a toga is plain ridiculous.
Thank goodness right after that display, there was a nice collection of sculputes representing Sekhmet, the lioness.
MUCH better (and anthentic Egyptian)...
These last two are on the loggia which opens on Cortile de la Pigna (the Pince Cone Courtyard):
Bigger view here:
If you can see them, there was also has a couple of lions (some pope at some stage must have had a passion for the beasts)
Unbearable cuteness of paws (even in granite):
Next bit: Apoxyomenos.
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