Monsoon Monday at the MFA

I hadn't left my apartment in over 24 hours and was starting to go a little mad, so I decided to visit the Museum of Fine Arts with my roommate, which was almost a mistake considering the miserable January rain we're having today and the fact that both of us got quite wet. Since October, there's been an Egyptian exhibit at the museum featuring the contents of Tomb 10A from 2,000 BC that I'd been meaning to visit for ages. Upon finally going I am happy to report that the exhibit did not disappoint.



Children often adopt strange fascinations with things- trucks, snow-globes, dinosaurs, whatever. Well, my childhood obsession was Egypt. In elementary school, I probably checked out every book about Egypt written in a first to eighth grade reading-level from the library and as I paged through them I dreamed of one day working to uncover a hugely important artifact with mystic properties that would propel me forward on a super-natural adventure while also changing history forever (perhaps I also watched The Mummy a few too many times). Though my career aspirations have drastically changed since childhood, I have always maintained an interest in Egyptian history and artifacts, and was very pleased with the way in which the remnants of Tomb 10A were displayed at the MFA. The tomb casings in particular caught my attention, and they've been hung and lit in a way that allows people to easily study the mastery of the hieroglyphics and carvings of the coffin. The thing about hieroglyphics is that they can sometimes seem like pictures a child with rather impressive fine motor skills drew, but these were not and each hieroglyph was a beautifully detailed works of art. The colors and fine brushstrokes revealed not only the governor's wealth and power, but also the Egyptian's dedication to beauty and precision.

I wonder, if a culture still wrote with hieroglyphics, would there be a greater weight to the words we use? Would we be more careful with what we write? Can you imagine a blog written in hieroglyphics? If they looked anything like those in Tomb 10A it would be a marvelous sight, indeed!