Collections: Ancient Egyptian

detail of a sculpture of the head of a pharoah, dark stone, with one gold eye and the other missing, and damage to the beard and ear.

A standing figure of Horus, the falcon-headed Egyptian sky god, and his painted wooden shrine are among the highlights of our ancient Egyptian artworks. Charles Lang Freer took three trips to Egypt between 1906 and 1910, initiating a collection that now includes more than one thousand objects dating to as early as 2500 BCE. The image of Horus and his shrine are from the Ptolemaic Dynasty (ca. 305–30 BCE), as is a pair of stone falcons, probably from a temple near Alexandria. The museums also hold a world-famous collection of glass vessels produced during Dynasty 18 (ca. 1539–1295 BCE) and a group of amulets depicting gods, goddesses, and sacred animals.

MORE TO EXPLORE