Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs, British Museum, review: 'ambitious'
THE TELEGRAPH
By Alastair Sooke
UNITED KINGDOM---Midway through the British Museum’s new exhibition, "Egypt: Faith After the Pharaohs," we encounter an object that epitomises what the show is about. It is a basalt bust of Germanicus (Augustus’s great-nephew, and a beloved general of the early Roman Empire), which was probably carved after he visited Egypt shortly before his death in Antioch in AD 19. Long after the Julio-Claudians had lost control of Egypt, somebody set about the bust by hacking off its nose as well as chunks of its right ear. With a few strokes of a chisel, this champion of a bygone pagan era was branded, for eternity, as a slave of God. [link]
By Alastair Sooke
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| Basalt bust of Germanicus Roman, about AD 14-20 Probably made in Egypt |
