Egypt is among the participants in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “Africa & Byzantium” which opened mid-November and runs till 3 March 2024.
Attending the opening was an official delegation from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), headed by Mo’men Othman, chief of the Museums Sector at SCA.
The Egyptian exhibits constitute 11 pieces of antiquity loaned by Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and Coptic Museum, and St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. They include icons and metalworks of chandeliers and crowns, also a manuscript.
On its website, the Metropolitan Museum of Art posted:
Art history has long emphasised the glories of the Byzantine Empire (circa 330–1453), but less known are the profound artistic contributions of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had a lasting impact on the Mediterranean world. Bringing together a range of masterworks—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, paintings, and religious manuscripts—this exhibition recounts Africa’s central role in international networks of trade and cultural exchange. With artworks rarely or never before seen in public, Africa & Byzantium sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of medieval Africa. This long-overdue exhibition highlights how the continent contributed to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the vibrant multiethnic societies of north and east Africa that shaped the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.
Watani International
28 November 2023