Browse Exhibits (5 total)
Conceptions of Gender & Sexuality from Pharaonic Times to the Early Christian Era
Examines a number of Egyptian artifacts from antiquity relating to the construction of gendered & sexual categories, focusing primarily on women & so-called 'non-normative' peoples.
Domestic Worship and Appearance in Roman Egypt
The object data collected from the excavations at the site of Karanis in the Egyptian Fayum can provide an insightful window into the domestic lives of its ancient inhabitants. Room H in House 409 of the site is rife with examples of the worship of a household god as well as personal grooming. With a blue glaze statue of Aphrodite and a broken stone altar beside bronze mirrors and other cosmetic items, parallels can be drawn between worship and personal presentation as well as the regularity with which supplication was treated, leading to analysis of the effects of daily rituals on an ancient Graeco-Egyptian household. This exhibit contains 15 items discovered in Room H, contextualizing them in relation to each other and detailing the evident and likely purposes of each object.
Household Religion in Karanis
Karanis was founded in the mid-third century BCE as part of Ptolemy II’s attempts to reclaim agricultural land in the Fayum region and became prosperous during the later Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It was most likely populated into the 6th or 7th centuries CE and then disappeared underneath the sands until the 19th century. From 1924 to 1935 it was excavated by the University of Michigan, which uncovered a large part of the town and recovered thousands of artefacts. (Wilfong 2014, 1-2) Due to the large volume of materials recovered and documented, Karanis is an excellent resource to learn about the activities of an agricultural town during the Greco-Roman period in Egypt.
This exhibit will look at one house in Karanis and the materials discovered within to try to reconstruct the appearance and the practice of domestic religion in a town during the Greco-Roman period.
Karanis Textiles
The site of Karanis in the Fayum area of Egypt provides an in-depth look into Roman-Egyptian textile production, as more than 3,500 textile fragments were found, many alongside tools used for preparing wool, spinning, and weaving. This exhibit focuses on textile fragments found in Area 249, which is between the northernmost rubbish heaps and the main center of town, as the location with the greatest quantity. It also presents various representative tools found in Karanis that would have been used in textile production. This exhibit discusses the manufacturing and social significance of textiles in Karanis and greater Roman Egypt.
