Magic Carpet - Debbie Lawson

Red Gull - Debbie Lawson

Exciting and intriguing exhibition of new work by Debbie Lawson, winner of the 2013 J D Fergusson Arts Award. 
The show, titled 'Magic Carpet' presents a series of new sculptures partly inspired by the Arabian Nights stories. Many of the works on display use the unusual medium of patterned carpet to cover the sculptural forms.
The Exhibition starts on Saturday November 23 at the Fergusson Gallery.

Debbie Lawson: 'I think of my work as a series of episodes that take you on a journey through the landscape of the domestic interior, where popular narratives and personal histories are intertwined so that the imaginary and material reality seem inseparable. Visual codes collide, giving form to new animated hybrids with a quietly sinister inner life and aspirations to be bigger than themselves. At the heart of the work is a focus on the cultural traditions surrounding everyday objects – specifically those found in the aspirational home. And although it may look elaborate, the impetus behind the work comes from a stripped-down idea of sculpture: the patterned carpet I use as an outer surface emphasises the innate qualities of form while at the same time disrupting them so that it appears to alternate between three dimensions and two, creating a visual slippage. My interest in seeing the monumental through the prism of the small-scale or domestic comes from a preoccupation with a specific form of narrative, where the central protagonist, a seemingly naive and unassuming character, embarks on a series of episodic adventures, seeing through the apparently innocuous to expose hidden, and often darker, or stranger, meanings. For Magic Carpet, I have created a new series of sculptures partly inspired by the Arabian Nights – a classic of literature whose interwoven stories have a textural, multi-layered quality that feels appropriate to my choice of material.'

Say Hello to Takherheb

Perth Museum Mummy in its coffin or sarcophagus.

Six months ago Perth Museum & Art Gallery’s Egyptian mummy made an exciting trip down to Manchester Children’s Hospital to undergo radiographic (CT scan and x-ray) examination of the mummy and stylistic analysis of the sarcophagus. The exciting results of the first phase of study are now in, the revelations including that she was indeed female and that she had a name.

scan of the Perth Mummy revealing
anatomical condition of the skeleton

The radiographic examinations revealed a human skeleton which had suffered extensive damage to the chest and pelvis, sometime after the body had been mummified. The damage is so extensive that determining the sex anatomically proved impossible. The torso damage also means that it cannot be established whether she went through the typical mummification process of internal organ removal.

X-ray of the Perth Mummy skull
revealing no breakages
and the eye sockets packed with linen.

The skull remains intact and radiography revealed that as part of the mummification process the brain mass was removed through the sinus cavities. The eyes were left in position and the globes packed with linen.

Dental examination revealed the loss of the back teeth on the upper jaw as a result of root infection. The surviving teeth on the lower jaw show heavy wear caused by a fibrous diet contaminated by inorganic particles such as sand.  

CT of the Perth Mummy skull 
revealing recessed alveolar

Diet was also responsible for the loss of many of the upper teeth. It caused the thickened ridge of bone which contains the teeth sockets – the alveolar bone – to recede around many of the teeth, causing them to loosen and eventually fall out before the bone healed.
The embalming process appears to have displaced some of the teeth and made the lower jaw protrude; certainty is difficult because the jaw joint is obscured by embalming materials.

The left calf-bone is missing, probably removed when an attempt in antiquity was made to unwrap and lift the mummy’s feet. She is very tightly bandaged and there is no evidence of amulets wrapped in the bindings. The mummy wrappings are of brown linen. A single shroud covers the upper torso with a vertical band laid head to feet and horizontal bands at the face, neck, chest, waist and feet. A twisted piece of linen is tied around the neck. This could be the remains of a strap used to lift the body into the coffin. Damage to the linen around the skull and feet shows that a resinous substance was applied partway through the wrapping process before a final layer of linen was applied.

Photograph showing Mummy bandaging technique and coffin snake decoration.

Investigation of the coffin design and its hieroglyphs indicate that it was made for a female of the 25^th-26^th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. This gives a date of approximately 760BC – 525BC. The female design traits include the hair styles and the serpents painted on either side of the lower half of the coffin. Stylistic investigation suggests that the coffin was probably made in the provincial town of Akhmim. This is on the east bank of the Nile and today is the largest town in Upper Egypt. The mix of design elements painted on the coffin reflects the provincial practice of selecting design elements that suited a customer’s taste or that they had seen in use elsewhere and found aesthetically pleasing.

Photograph of hieroglyphic inscription on the coffin lid.

The vertical columns of hieroglyphs on the lower torso of the coffin lid appear to record the names of the mummy’s parents and may also preserve details on geographic location and possibly a job title.

However layers of ingrained dirt prevent them form being read. Only specialist conservation of the coffin will reveal this further information. What can be read suggests that the name of the mummy is Ta-kr-hb (Takherheb), a female name. This name is known from other inscriptions (including another mummy, kept in the Museo Archeologico, Florence, Italy) but its meaning is not currently known.  

The story of Takherheb continues to unfold and the on-going study includes analysis of the mummification agents used in the embalming of the body and of the pigments used in the decoration of the coffin. Additional funding is needed to clean and conserve the coffin which may enable specialists to decipher more of the hieroglyphs on the coffin and to stabilise the condition of the mummy.

Perth Museum is hugely grateful for all the hard work carried out by the Manchester University team: Lidija McKnight, Judith Adams, Campbell Price, Robert Loynes, Stephanie Atherton, Roger Forshaw and all their colleagues in the radiographic team of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

If you are inspired and want to learn more try some of the online resources you can find here

Online Mummy resources

For more information on Ancient Egypt try some of these websites, which include some fun interactive games:

Manchester Children's Museum: Ancient Egypt

British Museum: Ancient Egypt

National Museum of Scotland:
Egyptian tomb adventure

National Museum of Scotland:
The Three Pyramids

Magic Lesson: Ancient Egypt

Egyptomania in Perth

The Egyptian collection of Perth Museum reflect the collecting of all things Egyptian, known as 'Egyptomania', that was hugely popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The bulk of the Perth collection was acquired in this way, by antiquarian and amateur collectors who sent or brought back items from Egypt.
Some appear to have been acquired first hand from excavations in the Valley of the Kings, Thebes, for example, whilst others were acquired second-hand via dealers in Cairo.

The star of Perth Museum's collection is the mummy, which was transferred from the Alloa Society of Natural History and Archaeology in 1936. Like the mummified hands and the mummified Ibis shown here it was recently analysed in Manchester by a team of Egyptologists and radiologists from the University and the Children's Hospital. This data was gathered as part of a UK-wide project to assemble a research database of human and animal mummy samples, CT scans and x-rays.

The exciting results of the mummy examination revealed that she had been badly damaged after mummification - possibly part of a tomb-robbing episode - that she had a name, Takerheb and that she probably came from a town on the east bank of the Nile called Akhmim. With public support Perth Museum would like to raise the funds to enable the conservation and display of the mummy, including a full facial reconstruction to give us a sense of what she might have looked like in life.

Mummiefied Hand

Once robbed from a tomb some mummies were cut up and the pieces sold or otherwise traded into the antiquities market.
This example comes from a tomb in Saqqara and has a protective amulet exposed within the layers of bandage. The hand has been separated at the metacarpal/wrist joint. Radiography confirmed preservation of soft tissues, ligaments and muscles overlying the bone.

Mummified Ibis

Ancient Egyptians believed animals and birds could also go into the afterlife. This had two aspects. One was the desire to play with pets in the afterlife, which meant cats and dogs were mummified alongside their owners. The other was the practice of animal cults in which the spirit of a particular deity was believed to reside in an animal. When the animal died it was mummified and a new live animal selected. Huge numbers of animal mummies have been found, including millions of ibises at Saqqara alone, so many that it is possible that the Egyptians bred them specifically as offerings and that they were kept in sacred colonies.
This example is presented as an ibis. Birds were sometimes kept as pets but the ibis was believed to represent the god Thoth. Radiography of this bundle revealed no material in good enough condition to confirm the ibis identification proclaimed on the wrapping. There are lots of small bones and feather elements combined with mud suggesting that this was a using up of left over bits from other mummifications. It was clearly re-packaged in the mid-nineteenth century to appeal to collectors and tourists. It may have been found at Saqqara. It was donated by Dr Henderson.

All-seeing eye amulet

One of the most widely worn protective amulets was the wedjat eye: the restored eye of Horus. It was worn by the living, and often appeared on rings and as an element of necklaces. It was also placed on the body of the deceased during the mummification process to protect the incision through which the internal organs were removed. This example dates to around 700 BC and is made of faience, a special type of blue-green ceramic.

Hare amulet

The ancient Egyptians associated the hare with alertness and watchfulness and so with the protective goddess Wienut. Hare amulets were made of made of many materials including gold and ivory. This example is made of porcelain. Hare amulets were worn to give their wearers swiftness and alertness so as to escape all dangers. They also worked as fertility charms.

Scarab beetle amulets

The scarab beetle was an important amulet type from around 2,600BC onwards. The real beetle lays its eggs in dung and then pushes the ball of dung before it wherever it goes. When the young beetles hatch they appear to do so miraculously from the dung. Thus to the ancient Egyptians the scarab beetle was a symbol of rebirth and represents the god Khepri, who was thought to push the sun disc through the morning sky, as a scarab beetle pushes its ball of dung.
Initially scarab amulets were used as protective seals in life and later their use was extended to funerary rites. The heart scarab was placed over the heart of the mummy to prevent the heart from speaking out against the deceased.
Amulets were worn by the living and the dead in ancient Egypt. Some protected the wearer from danger and others gave the wearer special attributes such as strength. They were generally made in the shape of animals, plants, sacred objects or hieroglyphic symbols. Different combinations of shape, material and colour determined the effectiveness of a particular amulet

Wall fragment with inscription

The more elaborate tombs in which the mummies and their grave good were placed were often richly decorated. This fragment of decorated walling comes from a tomb in Thebes .The hieroglyphic inscription is so partial that it cannot be meaningfully translated. The white background was common for tomb decoration around 1500-1000 BC.

Ushabtis

Small funerary figures that could be made of wood, stone, ceramic or faience. They were produced in huge numbers and along with scarabs are the most numerous of surviving ancient Egyptian antiquities. Their purpose was to be a substitute for the deceased in the event of the deceased being required to do manual labour in the afterlife. Often they carry an agricultural hoe and a basket. They were generally placed in the tomb amongst the grave goods - sometimes covering the floor around a sarcophagus - but were sometimes wrapped in the bandages of a mummy.

Canopic Jars

Were usually made of stone or ceramic and were used to preserve the mummy’s internal organs for the afterlife. They came in sets of four, one each for the stomach, the intestines, the lungs and the liver. As the seat of the soul the heart was left inside the mummified body. The lids could be either plain or shaped like the face of the deceased, the head of Anubis or the four sons of Horus. A variant myth tells that the brother were the sons of Osiris and born from a lily flower that rose from the first ocean.

This group comprises two lids each of Imseti and Daumutef and a third lid of Imseti, on the jar. The human-headed Imseti or Imset, was guardian of the liver and was himself protected by Isis. He is the only one of the sons of Horus shown as a human. His name may mean ‘he who smoothes or pleases’. The inscribed jar is a 19th century fake, made as a collector’s piece to go with the genuine lid.

Duamutef lid

This painted pottery lid depicts Horus’s jackal-headed son Duamutef, protector of the stomach and protected by the goddess Neith.