Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art

Purview

The vast majority of this collection comes from Egypt and dates between the 4000s B.C.E. and the 7th century C.E. In the 600s, many Egyptians converted to Islam and the region was ruled by an Islamic government; Egyptian artworks from that time forward can thus be found in the Arts of the Islamic World collection.

In art history, the Classical World typically refers to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. At its height in the 2nd century C.E., the Roman Empire ruled the entire coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, much of Europe, and as far east as the Caucasus Mountains. The ancient Near East reaches east from the Mediterranean Sea and includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Persia.

At the Brooklyn Museum, artwork from Europe before the Renaissance—beginning in the 14th century—is in this collection; artwork from the Renaissance onward can be found in European Art. Artwork from North Africa and the Near East that predates Islam—beginning in the 6th and 7th centuries C.E.—can be found in Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art.

History

The earliest representation of ancient art in the Brooklyn Museum was in the form of plaster replicas of ancient Greek and Roman statues. The Museum collected its first authentic classical objects in 1901 and its first ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern objects the following year. Over the next few decades, the Museum committed to building a unique collection of art from ancient Egypt.

Between 1906 and 1908, the Museum sponsored an archaeological expedition that excavated sites dating to the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. In the early 20th century, sponsoring institutions were permitted to keep a portion of the finds each season.

The majority of the collection came from other collectors. In 1916, a gift of over 450 objects from the personal collection of American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour marked the beginning of the Museum’s ongoing relationship with his estate. The Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund was endowed in 1931 to facilitate the creation of a curatorial department dedicated to Egyptian art; the fund continues to support the department’s activities today.

A large number of the objects currently installed in our galleries of ancient Egyptian art arrived at the Museum in 1937, when more than 2,000 objects were transferred from the New-York Historical Society.

Like many institutions, the Brooklyn Museum has slowed its collecting of ancient artworks from Egypt and the Near East in recent years. Today, the department strives to present new approaches to the study of ancient Egypt, as seen in A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt and African Ancestors of Egypt and Nubia: From the Green Sahara to the Nile.