The allure of the pharaohs captivates Rome

Why do the pharaohs continue to fascinate us? The answer is simple: because, unlike almost all other ancient civilisations, Egypt does not really seem like a distant past to us; thanks to the pyramids, they still seem impossible; the funerary masks look as though they have stepped out of a fantasy tale; and the hieroglyphs retain the charm of a script that speaks and remains silent at the same time. Mystery and rationality coexist in the pharaohs: on the one hand, there is the cult of the afterlife, the tombs, the curses and the promise of eternity; on the other, sophisticated engineering, administrative skill and a vision of power that still inspire admiration today. It is probably this interweaving of enigma and intelligence that explains the extraordinary success of Treasures of the Pharaohs, the exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome which attracted over 400,000 visitors, one of the major exhibition events of recent years in Italia.

The figures tell us a great deal, but not everything. The 60,000 students involved, the more than 40,000 primary school children and that significant proportion of visitors under 30 are certainly striking figures, disproving the cliché that young people have no interest in museums. Even more interesting is the fact that the exhibition has succeeded in transforming a seemingly distant subject into a contemporary experience, capable of appealing to diverse audiences without compromising scientific rigour. The success of the project was the result of a complex international collaboration. Curated by Tarek El Awady, former director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and produced by ALES in collaboration with MondoMostre, it has brought together 130 masterpieces from that very museum and the Luxor Museum, many of which have never before left Egypt. The exhibition brings together the magnificence of pharaonic power and the daily lives of its servants, the sarcophagus of Tuya and the golden mask of Amenemope, the Triad of Mycerinus and the extraordinary artefacts from the Golden City of Amenhotep III, discovered as recently as 2021.

And the story doesn’t end in Rome. From 1 August, the exhibition will head to the United States, first to the De Young Museum in San Francisco and then to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. This will not merely be an international tour, but recognition of a cultural project that has won over the Italian public and is now taking on the world’s most competitive museum market. From 15 June, a Virtual Tour will also be available, making permanent what, by definition, should be temporary. In an age when exhibitions spring up and disappear rapidly, digitisation thus becomes a form of memory; and so, just as the ancient Egyptians built monuments to defy time, contemporary museums are attempting to do something similar through technology. The tools may have changed, of course, but not the ambition to leave a mark that outlives its own era.

Treasures of the Pharaohs – Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome – until 30 June