A UK exhibition pulls back the curtain on the artisans whose anonymous contributions gave rise to 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian design.
Made in Ancient Egypt, which opened this month at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, features commemorative stela, golden coffins and masks, and sundry curios created in a style that changed very little down the centuries.
Egypt was simultaneously “a world in which art was too important to be sold and auctioned, exhibited and criticised,” The Guardian wrote, and one in which highly-skilled creators could often express their own individual creativity: One swivel-lid spoon, constituting a vibrantly colored woman balancing a cosmetics jar, evinces not only proficiency but the “joy ancient Egyptian artists could find in their work.”