ATLANTA, GA.- For more than 3,000 years, a series of kingdoms flourished along the Nile Valley south of ancient Egypt in the Nubian Desert of modern-day Sudan.
The High’s exhibition “Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” (June 2-Sept. 3, 2023) features more than 200 masterworks drawn from MFA Boston’s vast holdings, now the largest and most comprehensive collection of ancient Nubian art and material culture outside of Africa. The works highlight the skill, artistry and innovation of Nubian makers and reflect the wealth and power of their kings and queens, who once controlled one of the largest empires of the ancient world.
“Not only are the objects in this exhibition beautiful examples of artistic achievement, but they also underscore the incredible power and influence of kingdoms that were for many years misunderstood and underappreciated in their historical significance,” said Rand Suffolk, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director of the High. “We are grateful for the opportunity to help tell this story and to share works with our audience from regions of Africa not extensively represented in our own collection.”
The High’s exhibition focuses exclusively on a later period of ancient Nubian history, the Napata Empire (750-332 BCE), during which Nubia took its place as a world superpower and produced monuments and artworks of uncontested beauty and power. The empire is named for the city of Napata, which served as an important spiritual and trade center for hundreds of years before becoming the ruling capital of the expansive kingdom in the eighth century BCE during the reign of Piankhy, who along with his successors ruled as the 25th dynasty.
The exhibition includes rare artifacts from Napata temples and royal cemeteries, including skillfully crafted pottery; gold and silver amulets; spectacular jewelry of Piankhy’s wives and other royal women; dozens of funerary figurines from the tomb of another ancient Nubian king, Taharqa; and statues of kings Senkamanisken and Akharitene found at Nubia’s holiest site, the “sacred mountain” at Gebel Barkal. Also on view are more than a dozen plaques featuring cartouches of Egyptian hieroglyphics for King Anlamani. Together, the objects illustrate Napata’s spiritual significance and its military and artistic distinction as the center of power during an important period of Nubian history.
Though many artifacts from their cities, temples, palaces and pyramids exist today, the Nubians left behind few written records. As a result, their story has largely been told by others — in antiquity by their Egyptian rivals and in the early 20th century by Western scholars who infused their research with prejudice and the modern concept of race. The exhibition explores how these narratives have evolved over time, reflecting more recent scholarship that has proved ancient Nubia’s position as an autonomous nation-state separate from ancient Egypt, with its own sophisticated systems of governance, trade and commerce punctuated by innovations in art, architecture and science.
“This exhibition aims to be corrective,” said Lauren Tate Baeza, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman curator of African art. “Responding to previous generations of historians and archaeologists who presented racial biases as fact, it seeks to counter colonial-era misattributions of ancient Sudanese artistic and scientific prowess to their neighbors and the lasting relative erasure of early Sudanese civilizations from the canon of ancient history.”
The exhibition is presented on the Second Level of the High’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.
