Reassessing the purpose of artifacts through Estonian Egyptology

For Estonia, it took longer for such an exhibit to arrive. The country's “first major exhibition of ancient Egyptian art”, Egypt of Glory: Art from the Nile Valley, opened at Kumu Art Museum in October 2020, ending in March 2021.

Curated by Paolo Marini from the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Torino, Italy and Dr. Jaanika Anderson, Acting Director of the University of Tartu Museum, it was a reminder of the pivotal force that the ancient Egyptians were as an early society. For their beliefs, their art, their engineering, their productivity. Astonishment over the scale at which ancient Egypt grew as a civilization has only grown, in academia and pop culture alike.

Amidst the sparsely-illuminated, tomb-like rooms of the exhibit, Kumu laid out many of the fundamentals of what is known about ancient Egypt, namely, its deeply spiritual way of life and powerful royalty. In addition, the wooden sculptures, bas-reliefs, figurines, scarabs, earrings, amulets, and necklaces on display reiterated the significance of decoration and design for this civilization.

A great deal of this knowledge would be missing if archaeologists hadn't excavated and studied these kinds of artifacts. One such archaeologist was Baltic German scholar Otto Friedrich von Richter, who documented his time in Egypt through sketches and handwritten notes. Dr. Anderson deems him part of a wave of individuals of his time who travelled around to discover and study ancient civilizations.