04 Mar 2008 - 20 Jul 2008




Curated by: Italian Egyptologist Francesco Tiradritti, PhD
Exhibition Project Manager: Nina Pirnat Spahić
Exhibition and Graphic Design: Ranko Novak


The term "Pharaonic Renaissance" indicates a period spanning the beginning of the seventh to the middle of the sixth century B.C. (XXVth and XXVIth dynasty). In this period Egypt knew a moment of renewed splendour after the three centuries of political and economic crisis that followed the New Kingdom.

In the Pharaonic Renaissance, cultural manifestations are characterized by a conscious retrieval of the past. Archaic tendencies aimed at preserving the country’s cultural identity are recognizable in several other moments of Egyptian history. Only in the Pharaonic Renaissance, though, can one find a conscious re-modelling of older artistic expressions into new forms. This resulted in a renewed view of the main religious and social concepts, which undergo noticeable changes indeed during the Pharaonic Renaissance. This moment is vital to the history of Egypt also due to the arrival of the first Greek travellers. The latter, charmed by the Nilotic culture, exported it to their homeland and then to the entire Mediterranean basin. It can be hence said that contemporary European culture is eventually a direct result of the way of feeling and thinking elaborated between the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.

Studies on the Pharaonic Renaissance have grown over the last few years, and the exhibition in Ljubljana aims to reflect this. This is the first time the public is being offered an up-to-date analysis of this era through a highly valuable exhibition. Besides the era between the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., other classical periods of Egyptian history (Old, Middle and New Kingdom) are also documented, supplying a necessary introduction to the event. The exhibition is hence also the spark for a more generic reasoning about archaism and the sense of history in ancient Egypt. This is in turn another topic focusing the attention of contemporary Egyptological research.

140 exibits within the exhibition come from major European collections: the British Museum (London), Louvre (Paris), Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the Egyptian museums of Berlin, Munich and Florence, Civico Museo di Storia e Arte (Trieste), Archaeological Museum »A.Salinas«, Palermo, Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) and Archaeological Museum (Zagreb). Some items belong to the private collection of the lost Giuseppe Sinopoli, who developed in his last years a real passion for classical, Egyptian and near-eastern antiquities.

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