Review: Discovering Ancient Egypt at Queensland Museum Kurilpa

So I finally visited the Discovering Ancient Egypt exhibition at Queensland Museum Kurilpa on the 30th of December. The exhibition started back in October, but getting to the Museum isn’t easy for me, so I finally went and saw it when a visiting friend suggested we should see it. While she is another ancient history alumna from The University of Queensland, she is also English and therefore wanted to escape Brisbane’s summer heat for a few hours.

While I too enjoyed the air conditioning, I wish I’d been to see it sooner, as the Museum was packed with families, including the exhibition. No, I don’t like crowded exhibition spaces, but I love seeing children as engaged with the past as much as I was at that age. That kind of engagement is why ancient history will always be popular. The exhibition uses timed entrance, so it could definitely have been more crowded, but this should be taken into consideration by visitors if they have a neurodivergency or suffer from claustrophobia. If this sounds like you, try for a weekday outside of school holidays or look into the Queensland Museum’s lower sensory times.

The exhibition is on loan from Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities) which has conducted archaeological missions in Egypt since the 1950s.

The exhibition opens with an inspired use of lights. The first gallery is devoted to a reproduction of the front facade of the Temple of Taffeh. This temple was first built following the Roman conquest of lower Nubia during the reign of Augustus, and was gifted in 1979 in response to assistance in saving Nubian monuments placed at risk by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The exhibition projects lights into the recreated facade to show how the temple’s use changed through time. I loved this way to show how the passage of time changes the use of a site, but I came away not understanding the original date of the Temple of Taffeh’s construction, and the impression that subsequent exhibition might relate more to this temple which is not the case. Having looked a little more into how this temple came to the Netherlands, this could not be the case.

Temple of Taffeh shown as Coptic Church

Temple of Taffeh shown as ruin

Instead, the exhibition provides a wonderful overview of early Egyptian history, discussing and including artefacts from the pre-dynastic period (4th millennium BCE) through to a few items from the Middle Ages, as well as some material looking at the early history of Egyptology, including an undersized reproduction of the Rosetta Stone. Much of the material has come from Saqqara, a cemetery site not far from Cairo, but was the cemetery for the old capital of Memphis which was used throughout most of antiquity, and thus alone can provide a sweep of that history. Personally, I would have been tempted to make an exhibition surrounding just Saqqara as an example of Egyptian history, but I am not the exhibition curator, and I guess that would be too specific for a broader audience. But hey, I can dream.

The exhibition contains more than just material from the Saqqara dig. The exhibition includes some mummified remains which mostly came from the region of Thebes (well south of Saqqara). Full disclosure, I did not see these. Queensland Museum has worked the exhibition space to make it easy to by-pass the human remains. This has been done in such a way that given how crowded the exhibition was, I missed that gallery. I am disappointed, not because I wanted to look at mummified remains, but according to the exhibition catalogue, it also included ancient unused linen mummification bandages, a beaded net which just happens to be attached to the mummified remains of a man named Harerem, and some beautiful canopic chests. Please note, people are asked to not photograph human remains. My friend who moved ahead of my brother and I did not miss the gallery and has allowed me to share her thoughts on the approach of placing them in a side gallery.

I think the separate room elevated the mummies from other exhibits - visiting them in their own quiet place created a different atmosphere. Now that we have discussed it, I think it was really very good presentation. But... It was easy to miss, tucked away in a corner, so while I understand and do appreciate what the curators intended, it's not helpful to have too quiet a spot.

In fact, this decision made her more deeply consider how museums display human remains, and how taking this approach helps us remember that these are people, not artefacts, and left her wondering if this was becoming a more common approach. Our discussion made me remember how one ancient person’s remains led to a child of 8 or 9 scream with delight to his mother when I visited the British Museum in 2005, and how this separation approach might prevent such things from happening. I think it is appropriate to quote from the Queensland Museum’s “Subject Matter Warning”:

Please be advised that this exhibition includes sensitive subject matter, including the display of human and animal remains. In a separate gallery, there are five mummified individuals, the woman Ta(net)kharu or Tadis, the young girl Sensaos, the man Harerem, an unknown male and an unknown female. Visitors have the option to bypass this gallery if they prefer. While these remains are in the Museum’s care, we honour them with profound respect and dignity. We have consulted with First Nations groups and Egyptian–Australian communities about their display. We approach this matter with a deep sense of responsibility and the trust placed in us. The existence of these remains encourages contemplation of profound questions about life, death, and the evolution of funerary rites and practices over time. We hope the exhibition prompts visitors to reflect on these same big questions.

Given the discussion this provoked between my friend and I, the curators’ hopes were met. I must say, even without looking at this gallery, the exhibition is worth visiting.

In addition to showing numerous artefacts, the exhibition includes a number of videos including discussions of the history of the dig at Saqqara since 1975 and the museum’s more recent collaboration with Turin’s Museo Egizio, how papyri are conserved, and a discussion of ushabti, but bear in mind that this collection uses the term “shabti” instead. From a multimedia perspective, there is also the chance to manipulate scans of a mummified snake which is included in the exhibition.

The final gallery in the exhibition is devoted to two different areas for discussion: the opportunity to look at Egyptian items from the Queensland Museum collection and how they were donated, and a film made about the excavation workmen at the Saqqara dig which you can read a little about here. I thoroughly recommend taking the time to watch this short video, as every excavation relies upon this local workforce and they are often ignored in the reporting surrounding archaeological digs. My attitude towards these workers may also be coloured by my decades of reading the novels of Elizabeth Peters. If you know, you know, and perhaps I ought to devote a blog to that series of books. Watch this space, maybe. 

As I have already hinted at, this exhibition is definitely worth a visit, but there are a few of things I found annoying:

• The smaller items - jewellery and amulets especially - are hard to view from a wheelchair. 

• The didactic panels for jewellery, especially the intricate 18th dynasty Dolphin-shaped earring and the Ptolemaic period bull’s head earring, would benefit from larger photographs, as they are very difficult to view.

• The lack of clear signage that could be seen in a crowd to the mummification gallery. As I said above, the exhibition is worth viewing regardless, but the fact that both my brother and I missed a sign or obvious side gallery in the crowded space is telling.

Now onto my favourite parts. As I already mentioned, I loved both the start and finish, but there are other things I truly loved. 

The inclusion of “chubby” figures on a Ptolemaic period Book of the Dead. 

Book of the Dead of Nesnakht, CI 11a, vel 14 (apologies for the reflected lights).

I have seen plenty of Graeco-Roman period artefacts that I only knew were of that date thanks to the didactic panel, so this was a pleasant surprise, as those figures are not typically Egyptian in styling.

Another item the likes of which I have never seen before in an exhibition devoted to ancient artefacts is this basket.

Oval basket, AU 20.

I imagine that baskets might not survive well, so I especially liked this. This one dates to the 18th dynasty (sometime between 1539-1292 BCE).

And finally, these linen amulets which were used to protect mummified people.

Linen amulets, dates unknown, AU 30c 1-5 (the museum catalogue includes 5, but I only saw 3)

These interest me because they have opened up a new avenue for thought in relation to my own research. I have discussed various types of medical amulets in my research, but while I have come across directions for medical spells to be written on charta, which can be either scrap paper or fabric, I had never come across fabric amulets as material culture. Instead, I have come across papyrus and metal amulets instead. I imagine that fabric would be even more comfortable for living people than the dead.

All in all, if you are in Brisbane between now and the 17th of August 2025, I thoroughly recommend spending $29 and seeing this exhibition. And $40 for the exhibition catalogue is quite reasonable too in my opinion.