EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Burial assemblages Opposite page: the early Twelfth Dynasty tomb of Shemes at Asyut. Above and right: the Fourth Dynasty tomb of the ‘king’s acquaintance’, Perim, from Gebelein (Copyright: Museo Egizio, photos: P. Dell’Aquila).
The two large rooms devoted respectively to Deir el-Medina and the intact tomb of Kha and Merit (discovered in 1906) offer a perfect synthesis of the principles underlying the displays of the new Museo Egizio, which is always striving to strike a balance between rigorous scientific presentation, reconstruction of contexts, and accessibility and visibility of the artefacts. In the case of the Deir el-Medina sub-collection, the richness and variety of materials on one hand and the paucity of contextual information on the other called for a solution that could enhance the narrative and didactic potential intrinsic to these artefacts. We hence arranged the objects not according to their find-spot (which is too often unknown), but in thematic units: life and religious beliefs of a small community, professions and the logistics of work on the royal tombs, funerary rituals and the village necropolis. 17