Pyramid Scheme

Ancient Egypt has cast its spell.

The civilization that left its mark three millenniums ago emerges in the present, from Verdi’s tale of star-crossed lovers in L.A. Opera’s “Aida” and the new Elton John-Tim Rice Broadway musical of the same name, to Disney’s animated film “The Prince of Egypt.”

Weeks ago, freshly unearthed tombs rigged with curses and booby traps from the Valley of the Golden Mummies sparked a giddiness reminiscent of an Indian Jones adventure.

The mysteries of Egypt have lured thousands to exhibits at museums in Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

Orange County also will enchant visitors with a major exhibition, “Egyptian Treasures From the British Museum,” opening Saturday at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art.

“The fascination with Egypt is that it’s one of the oldest, most sophisticated and largest civilizations of the world that produced many mysterious monuments,” said Armand Labbe, chief curator and director of research and collections for Bowers.

Monuments such as the Sphinx, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the gold-strewn tomb of King Tut were meant to impress and inspire awe, Labbe said.

Though Labbe is not curating the Egyptian exhibition, he has spent two decades researching the subject. “This particular show has allowed me to go more into depth about Egyptian culture and artifacts than I ever have before,” Labbe said.

The show is curated by John Taylor, assistant keeper of the Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum.

The collection of 100 Egyptian artifacts includes sculptures, paintings, papyri, hieroglyphs, jewelry and household furnishings found or used in daily life thousands of years ago.

Most of the items are related to rituals for the dead. “The preoccupation with death is actually a preoccupation with life,” Labbe said. “They celebrated life and they wanted to make sure that their prosperous life would continue in the afterlife. That was the purpose and function of the pharaohs, the intermediary figures between the gods in heaven and human prosperity on Earth.”

This explains the pyramids, built at Giza between 2570 and 2525 BC and the only remaining monuments of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The pyramids were the royal tomb of pharaohs.

Ancient Egyptians knew how precarious life was, Labbe said. Although they were blessed with fertile land near the Nile River, the Egyptians knew the green valley was flanked by desert, the realm of death where the sun god vanished and tombs were buried.

Death was considered simply a rite of passage. Egyptians took to their tomb all the possessions they thought they would need in the afterlife. The artifacts survived, preserved in burial places built of stone or cut from rock.

Funerary practices included decorating the walls of their tombs with scenes of daily life. The papyri from the British Museum are famed for their colorful vignettes, which illustrate spells to help the deceased reach paradise.

Human bodies were embalmed and well-preserved to help ensure that the spirit survived in the afterlife. Mummies were therefore wrapped in as much as 450 square yards of linen.

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One of the largest artifacts is the coffin of Horaawesheb, containing the mummy of a woman from between 900 and 800 BC. The painted, carved wooden coffin in the silhouette of a person belongs to an incense-bearer in the temple of the god Khonsu at Thebes.

“Egypt is so accessible,” said Renee Friedman, research curator for the Egyptian Department of the British Museum. “I find it a humbling experience to work with things the ancient Egyptians did because there are so many human touches.”

Friedman will begin a lecture series tied to the exhibition. She will speak at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Bowers on her excavations, including how she uncovered the hairdressing secrets of a 6,000-year-old female mummy.

The exhibition sparkles with gold or gilded items. A gold-painted mummy mask, for instance, was often worn over the head and chest of the deceased. Gold was the preferred material of the wealthy and also symbolized the flesh of the sun god with whom the dead wished to be united.

Ancient Egyptians preserved body parts such as the heart, liver, kidney and intestines in granite canopic urns. The collection includes a set from about 600 BC that were fashioned to contain Pharaoh Psamtek’s mummified organs, which had been removed during the embalming process.

Each lid bears a likeness of the head of one of the sons of Horus, the four deities who were believed to protect the jars’ contents. Falcon-headed Qebhsenuef guarded the intestines, human-form Imsety the liver, baboon-headed Hapy protected the lungs, and jackal-headed Duamutef the stomach. The hieroglyphic text on each jar contains a protective spell.

Cats and animals also were mummified. Among the treasures is a wrapped feline mummy done after 30 BC from Thebes. Egyptians believed their gods and goddesses were able to manifest themselves on Earth as sacred animals. Cats in particular were revered.

The medium-size collection to be displayed at Bowers is from the British Museum, which houses one of the largest collections--almost 100,000 objects--of Egyptian antiquities outside of Cairo.

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Days before the show’s opening, couriers from the British Museum heaved several large wooden crates from a commercial plane to trucks to get to Bowers.

Handling the fragile antiquities, the couriers travel with and guard the artifacts--sometimes waiting for hours at customs--until the entire collection is secured at the museum.

The artifacts are packed with high-density foam, tissue and plastics.

“The heaviest we had to carry in this collection is the statue of Ramses,” said courier John Hayman, who struggled with work crews to unpack the 1,500-pound statue of pure black granite.

Anne Shih closely watched the exhibition unfold--a project two years in the making. The Taiwan-born Shih was instrumental in bringing in Bowers’ last blockbuster show, a display ancient Chinese artifacts that set a record attendance of 101,765 visitors. Shih, a volunteer who serves on the museum’s board of governors and as president of its Chinese Cultural Arts Council, first saw the Egyptian treasures at an exhibit abroad in March 1998 and wanted to bring the show to Bowers.

Bowers is counting on another blockbuster.

“This exhibition has set all attendance records in Hong Kong and Shanghai,” said Peter C. Keller, president of Bowers. “It’s in line with what Bowers wants to do in bringing the great art-house treasures of the world to Southern California. We’re maintaining what we started with ‘Forbidden City.’ ”

The exhibition brings the notion of a global village even closer to Southern Californians.

“So much of our Western culture is derived from the ancient Egyptians,” Labbe said. “If we are really interested in understanding our roots and the meaning of life, then this is a culture that has answers if you look beyond the metaphors.

“Besides, when was the last time Orange County has had an Egyptian exhibit? This is a grand opportunity for people to see these artifacts since most won’t be traveling to the British Museum in London to see it.”

BE THERE

“Egyptian Treasures From the British Museum,” Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Closed Monday. $11-$17. Children younger than 5 admitted free. Advance tickets are available: (877) 250-8999 or (714) 567-3600.