Coming soon to the Carlos: Life and

coMing in 2023 Life and the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection

Life and the afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection, which will open at the Carlos in spring semester 2023, is an exhibition about the power of ancient Egyptian objects to educate, engage, and inspire. The Georges Ricard Foundation gifted the Senusret collection to the Michael C. Carlos Museum in 2018 with the goals of its conservation and of the promotion of knowledge at Emory and throughout the greater community. In keeping with this trust, the exhibition highlights objects that have promoted technical and scholarly collaboration, faculty and student research, methods of analysis, provenance tracing, and object history.

The collection, named after King Senusret II’s pyramid village, Hetep-Senusret in the Fayum, celebrates the sacred and the profane, the past and the present. Themes include the history of the Senusret collection, the beauty and protection of ancient Egyptian amulets and jewelry, religious votive statuettes that acted as donors’ magical participants in temple cults, and burial items that symbolized afterlife concepts and provided for the everyday needs of the deceased. Burial objects include the coffin assemblage of the priestess of Osiris, Taosiris, which protected and transformed the mummified body, and wooden models that magically served the deceased’s wants in the hereafter.

Life and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection invites viewers to experience the meaning of ancient Egypt’s past and embrace its future to encourage learning. Z

left Model Solar Boat. Egypt. Middle Kingdom, ca. 2000–1760 BCE. Wood, stucco, pigment. Gift of the Georges Ricard Foundation. 2018.010.415

below Mummy Mask of Taosiris. Egypt. early Ptolemaic, ca. 275 BCE. Cartonnage, pigment, gold. Gift of the Georges Ricard Foundation. 2018.010.673