NCMA Egypt

Lavishly presented with vivid photographs of ancient artifacts, this introduction to the Egyptian collection at the North Carolina Museum of Art presents fascinating insights into the everyday lives, customs, and religious practices of ancient Egyptians.

NCMA Curator of Ancient Art Caroline Rocheleau guides you on an exploration of the museum’s Egyptian Galleries. The collection’s strength resides in funerary material, which includes beautifully painted coffins, magic servant statues (called shabtis) that would do the owners chores in the afterlife, and a canopic jar that once contained the mummified liver of a man named Qeny. The collection is brought together in an extremely powerful manner by the False Door of Ni-ankh-Snefru (called Fefi) (circa 2321–2278 B.C.E.). The remainder of the collection focuses on the many gods worshipped in Egypt, including the fierce lioness Sekhmet, the goddess of war and medicine. The app is based on the recently published catalogue Ancient Egyptian Art and highlights 11 of the most important objects in the collection.

NCMA Egypt features

- An introductory essay that tells the story of how the North Carolina Museum of Art came to acquire a small but coherent collection of Egyptian art that that beautifully illustrates major aspects of ancient Egyptian culture.
- Lush, pinch-zoomable images of each highlighted artifact.
- A short overview of each object including dates, materials, dimensions, and provenance.
- A scholarly description of each artifact, providing fascinating historical and cultural context, drawn from Ancient Egyptian Art, the catalogue of the NCMA’s Egyptian collection.
- Detailed photos of hieroglyphic inscriptions coupled with transliteration and English translations.
- An illustrated timeline of ancient Egypt.
- A glossary of Egyptological and archaeological terms.
- Background on GlaxoSmithKline’s support for scholarly research on the NCMA’s Egyptian collection.

About the NCMA
The first art museum in America to be established with state legislation and funding, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh exhibits a growing collection that includes major holdings in European painting from the Renaissance to the 19th century, Egyptian funerary art, sculpture and vase painting from ancient Greece and Rome, American art of the 18th through 20th centuries, African art, Jewish ceremonial art, international contemporary art, and site-specific sculpture in its 164-acre art park, one of the largest in the country. Admission is free.