Egypt Exhibition

I remember going to an Egyptian exhibition once, long enough ago that all I remember was darkness, a lot of people pressing together in a cramped, dimly lit space and the las room which contained a sarcophagus and a mummy, tightly wrapped in fine white linen. No really - my impression, as I leaned over the glass was that of a strong and flexible ivory coloured material that on hindsight, is oddly clean, that is, if my memory is even reliable to begin with. It wasn't at the National Museum though, I think it was at the old location of the Asian Civilizations Museum, situated in a narrow lane somewhere near the old MPH flagship store - you remember - the one with the sky painted on the domed ceiling.

Some things never change, as this new Egyptian exhibit at NMS shows. The mouth of the cave-like entrance stretched upwards cavern-like and it was invitingly dark. The small lights illuminating the interior is the kind to be found in museums, even then and I feel an odd sense of deja vu. Then again, the Christian Delacroix exhibit last year was just as dimly lit. It was bloody crowded. We had to queue outside for about 15 minutes, though it could have been longer; it certainly felt that way. One thing new though - sufficiently creepy music was echoing off the recesses of the exhibition hall. I don't know if it was the music or the exhibits themselves, but it felt creepy to be surrounded by so many statues and objects, all neatly laid out, clinically. There is something dead about these things, and I sense, oddly, desperation and urgency in the men and women who created these things in their colossal scale. It felt, somehow, like reaching back across eons, or of bridging the centuries. Here was this stone fragment from 1200BC (or so) and here was me, roughly 3000 years later staring through glass and fuzzy light at it. I can understand PY's itch to touch one of them. Looking, I can't help but wonder what the people who made them were like - same as the Lourve exhibit, same as the Lacroix one but with the Ancient Egyptians, there is the sense of being that much closer to eternity.