Antiquities and Ancient Art: A Study

From as early as Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign, ancient Egypt has enchanted the Western world. In 1922, the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the intact tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun. It was the best-preserved pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. According to Howard, “It was a sight surpassing all precedent, and one we never dreamed of seeing.” News of the finding spread fast and sparked an immediate craze for all things ancient Egyptian. Egyptomania swept across Europe and the United States influencing the next century of art, architecture, and popular culture.

Initially a collector of 20th Century sculpture and paintings, it is undoubtable that the amazing discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb would have influenced the collecting habits of the young and still impressionable bookmaker, Henri E. Smeets (1905-1980). Indeed, Smeets would later spend a great deal of time and resources collecting important objects from ancient Egypt. In 1973, he lent a limestone head of an Amarna princess to the Brooklyn Museum, and in 1977, three years before his death, had a single owner sale of his entire antiquities collection in London, in which the sarcophagus mask seen here was included.

Apart from quality and date, the conventionalized facial features of this exquisite sarcophagus mask share stylistic traits with the mask of Tutankhamun, chief among them the gold face, calcite eyes, and lapis lazuli-colored inlays. Well-preserved and elaborately decorated with two images of Osiris, a winged scarab, and hieroglyphic inscription, this iconic mummy mask is emblematic of our modern-day fascination with the land of the ancient pharaohs and Nile River.