Egypt’s sunken mysteries

There is still time to catch the Egypt’s Sunken Mysteries exhibition before it leaves the Institut du monde arabe in Paris for the British Museum in London, writes David Tresilian

For the past three months the Institut du Monde arabe in Paris has been hosting Osiris, Egypt’s Sunken Mysteries, an exhibition of finds made by marine archaeologist Franck Goddio off Egypt’s northern coast in the remains of the ancient cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canope. The exhibition closes at the end of January and then makes its way to the British Museum in May, giving visitors to the French capital a few final weeks to catch it before its new incarnation in London.

A pair of vast stone statues parked outside the Institut on the left bank of the Seine give a taste of what is to be found within. Discovered during Goddio’s excavations of Thonis-Heracleion, submerged since the 8th century CE beneath the waves of the Gulf of Aboukir east of Alexandria, these colossal statues of a king and queen made in the Ptolemaic period once stood in the Temple of Amun in the ancient city. Together with a fragmented stele of the pharaoh Ptolemy VIII dating to 118 to 116 BCE they have now found the new function of ushering visitors towards the Sunken Mysteries exhibition.

Opened by French president François Hollande and Egyptian Minister of Culture Mamdouh Eldamaty in September (reported in Al-Ahram Weekly by Nevine El-Aref on 17 September), the exhibition presents objects found by Goddio and his team in the remains of the underwater cities as well as items from various Egyptian museums exhibited for the first time in France.