New Grand Egyptian Museum – Grand Opening this week!!! Wow!!!

My first memory of my imagination being captured by ancient civilizations and travel, I think, was the October 29, 1965 issue of Life magazine (I was 12 years old), which featured the Abu Simbel temples of Ramesses’ II on its cover, focusing on the incredible UNESCO project to relocate the temples before they were flooded by the Aswan High Dam. The cover highlighted the monumental effort involved in dismantling and moving the massive stone structures to hire safer ground.

I’m sure that multiyear project continued to put out PR that caught my attention but I remember the cover of National Geographic from the 1969 issue. Perhaps my peaked interest in archaeology was part of why I took up making pottery as a late teen in high school, which eventually paid my way to Europe.

It was during that first visit to Italy, in the City of Turin (Torino), that I met Luigi Briccarello. He was an old man who was high functioning autistic, spoke well 17 languages and read 27 languages, many of them ancient dead languages. One day, he invited me to go with him to the Egyptian Museum in Torino, at the time the third largest Egyptian museum in the world after the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. As we walked through the museum, he read to me the sarcophagi and papyri like they were newspapers! Wow… my surfer-boy thinking from SoCal was forever changed!!! And my sensitivities to antiquity and their stories were fueled!

Luigi Briccarello and Scott Haskins at the Egyptian Museum in Torino, Italy 1973

Such was my interest in archaeology that when, at the end of my bachelor’s degree, I was inspired to pursue the professional field of graduate studies in Art Conservation, my intent was to work in the field of archaeology salvaging, saving, preserving and restoring artifacts as they came out of the ground. I had a very romantic vision of my life!

Removing overpaint from Renaissance murals in Northern Italy.

But fate presented me with the opportunity to get into the conservation field being accepted into a painting conservation program in northern Italy. At first, I thought this would be a quality steppingstone towards my final destination of working in the archaeological field. But after a month of actually working on murals in a 1000-year-old monastery, I began to change my mind to stay with working on murals and paintings… though the thought and my interest about the preservation, restoration of archaeological materials stayed with me even until the end of my master’s degree level graduation.

One of my mentors in my educational process was Paolo Bacchin, a veteran of mural and paintings conservation from Vincenza who had worked for UNESCO on murals in lost temples in the jungles of Cambodia and had great stories and lessons about those experiences. He had also worked on murals in the tombs of Egypt and those experiences fired up my imagination.

When I graduated with that degree, I received an introduction to meet with Dr. Matteini, head or Director of the Fortezza da Basso conservation laboratories in Florence where he guided me through the archaeology conservation labs as they were working on world famous Greek bronzes of warriors and attic ceramics. What an amazing, stimulating experience and memory that visit was!! He offered to me an opportunity to work in that lab, even though my professional background experience had been in murals and paintings. But I had just invested and had great success in obtaining my three-year painting conservation degree, and I could not see compromising that focus by now changing specializations… so I stayed with the specialization of painting conservation.

You can imagine how advanced studies about antiquity in Italy would fuel my passion and interest… and it has never died.

Egypt with its support from the International community has finally seen the value in putting into context the Egyptian historical evidence in a way that spectacularly shows the high quality and major influence this civilization has had on our world for maybe 5,000 years (I agree strongly with Relational Archaeologists/Anthropologists/Ancient Studies Scholars that there has been a worldwide interaction of civilizations throughout the world’s history). The establishing of the new and amazing Grand Egyptian Museum has taken a long time, it seems to me, but that’s probably because with much interest I’ve been so anxious to how it progresses. Well, the Grand Opening happened this week!!

What a quality build, down to very fine details to represent the ancient civilizations. For example, When you stand in front of the facade of the Grand Egyptian Museum, you will notice a small hole in the wall, which is filled with cartouches with the names of ancient Egyptian kings. Many people think that it is just a ventilation shaft, but in fact it hides a truly extraordinary astronomical and historical secret!

This hole was specially designed to commemorate one of the greatest phenomena in the history of ancient Egypt – the alignment of the sun with the face of Ramesses II in his temple at Abu Simbel.

The hole is tilted at a precise angle, so that on the day of this phenomenon, a ray of sunlight passes through it and falls on the face of the statue of Ramesses II in the great hall – as if light itself were returning to visit him and celebrate with him his birthday and the day of his coronation as Pharaoh of Egypt.

Ramesses II

This is a series of images related to the mummy of Ramesses II, found in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Ramses II reigned from 1279 to 1213 BC, during the 19th Dynasty, making this relic over three thousand years old.

The first image showcases the mummy’s fragile state, a testament to the passage of millennia. The subsequent images offer a digital reconstruction of what Ramses II may have looked like in life. The reconstruction, while scientific, carries the weight of history.

What resonates most is the idea of bringing the past into the present. A ruler, once commanding armies and shaping an empire, is now reduced to dust, yet science attempts to restore his image. A poignant reminder of mortality and the enduring human quest to understand the Egyptian ancestors.

This is a big item on my “bucket list.” May your imagination and interests be stimulated and alert to the wonders of the world!!!

If you have art restoration questions, feel free to call us to discuss your questions at 805 564 3438 or write us at FACLOfficeManager@gmail.com Let’s have a chat!!

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